Dec
20
Author’s Note
OK, so my travel agenda has been a bit light of late. As in, I didn’t leave the state of Ohio between mid-May and early December. Thus the Tripped-Out Running posts have been a bit lighter than planned, though I’m grateful to Drew, Chad, and Bill for their contributions on Denver, Peru, and Philadelphia respectively. However, the new job will lead to some interesting travel, so I look forward to reviving this feature over the next year. And, as always, your guest posts on interesting destinations are welcome.
Photo credit: Hawthorne Bridge by Wikipedia user Cacophony, used under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 license – click on the photo for the full panorama version.
Overview
Early in December, I finally had the opportunity to visit a key customer in my new job, and this customer is located in Portland, Oregon. The last time I’d been to Portland was back in 2001 (also in early December, ironically), which, coincidentally, is the last time, until a few weeks ago, that I had run a half-marathon. Funny how patterns tend to repeat themselves.
Anyhow, I think the concept of a “mecca” for a discipline is an overused analogy – but Portland comes as near as anywhere to fitting the bill for an (shall we say?) epicenter of US long distance running. With Nike headquartered not far away in Beaverton, and having established the Oregon Project for rebuilding American preeminence (or, at least, presence) in long distance running, the city has more than its fair share of marathon elites as residents. With an almost unmatched year-round climate conducive to running – average highs below 80° F in the summer, and average lows just below 40° F in the winter, and averaging only around 5″ on snow per year – plus the benefit of training at altitude (in the nearby mountains – the elevation of Portland is only 50′) and with plenty of hills to build the challenge, you couldn’t realistically design a better training location within the latitudes of the US.
The Run
As with my last trip, I had the fortune of staying right in downtown (at the Hilton Portland & Executive Tower, this time – in which I stayed a whopping 9 hours). Unfortunately, unlike my last trip, I only had one day (actually, less than 20 hours) in the city, enough to squeeze in one run. Deciding where to run in Portland is a no-brainer if you can only do it once – the Willamette River’s waterside paths are designed for running (and cycling). It is easy to find the Willamette from downtown – just go down. If your intrinsic altitude sensors are miscalibrated from your flight, then simply take the “named” (east-west) streets across the “numbered” streets (north-south) until you can go no further. You will end up at the “Governor Tom McCall Waterfront Park” (don’t worry about it if you miss the sign – if there’s water and a park, you are there). From here, you can head south if you’d like – but you’ve only got a mile to work with until the path ends under (or nearly under) Interstate 5. Maybe that can be your warm-up, but you really want to head north ultimately.
Yes, it's as easy as it looks
The path, as you can imagine, is generally flat, though there are some ramps and steps to optionally navigate. The morning I arrived at the park, some female athletic team was running loops on the ramps and steps. But the generally flat trail lends itself to doing a good pace, tempo, or even interval run. Alas, on this trip, what I originally thought was a stiff back from seven hours on planes (I had flown in from Cleveland via LAX to avoid weather at O’Hare), but later evolved to some form of issue with my piriformis (I believe) led to the need for a recovery-type run. No matter, as the views are so good it’s easy to not care about pace.
The first interesting feature of the run is the bridge you take across the river, the Steel Bridge, which is less than a mile from the typical entrance to the park. When crossing the bridge, you run parallel with the Union Pacific and Amtrak rails on the lower deck; thus there are no ramps to deal with. Once you reach the Eastbank Esplanade, you begin to enjoy the best views of the city, though the views get better on your northbound “back” than on your southbound “out.” The run is pretty straightforward for a mile-and-a-half, until just before the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI), right before which you appear to enter private property. Just stay straight and skirt the west side of the museum (along the river), and pass under the Hawthorne Bridge at which point the trail will end and you may become thoroughly confused.
At this point though, a marked bike path comes to your rescue, and takes you east on Caruthers Blvd. until you reach SE 4th Ave., at which time you turn south with the bike path and soon enter the Springwater Corridor (watch for truck traffic around here). Then things get easy – you simply follow the bike path along side the railroad with no vehicular traffic with which to cope. This goes on forever – 21 miles, apparently (though it is not all yet finished, and you may need to follow some more bike paths along streets for a short distance), and, at least near the river, it is very flat.
I ended up turning around just beyond the 5 mile point out from the hotel as I had some conference calls to attend. The run back was more scenic as you get a better view of downtown, beautiful even in the predawn darkness. The trail was well-used, more by cyclists than runners, all of whom used lights to make themselves more visible – as did many of the runners – making all of them some of the most responsible fitness enthusiasts I have ever seen (I felt woefully inadequate without a light).
Portland is one of the easiest destinations in the world to run in, if you want to stick to the obvious choice of the riverfront paths. And, even were I to stay a few more days, I would probably be tempted to return to the same route, so as to avoid the delays of intersections and risks of curbs and bumpy sidewalks. I’m not as familiar with the Portland suburbs, so if anyone has any advice to contribute for those who come hear seeking information on how to run in the city, please feel free to add it to the comments.
Oh, and did I mention that the overnight low this December 13 morning was 53° F, making me fully comfortable in shorts and a short-sleeve shirt? A far cry better than the low-teens and gusting winds (with lake effect snow) that I had left behind in Cleveland. One could certainly picture building a successful running “career” while based out of Portland.
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