Spring Break Surfing Trip

My wife and I wanted to do something special with our daughters this year for their spring break, and the school district, where my daughters attend school, had their school spring break very late this year. In the past we might have planned a ski trip, but my daughters had spent the entire winter in ski lessons, and were probably ready for a change in their activities. So we decided to take a gamble and try our luck with the weather in mid-April on the Oregon coast. In the past we had camped in a tent on the Oregon coast, and were made very well aware of how bad weather on the coast can make a wonderful place very unpleasant to stay in, so we chose to hedge our bets and make the trip in our new Wolf Creek camper. We have only had our camper for around 6 months, and almost every trip we have taken in it on has been a ski trip, and never longer than 3 nights. Over the winter there had been a few rough times (especially for my daughters) in learning to adjust to living with a family of four in a very small space that sits in the bed of a pickup truck. This was going to be a much bigger adjustment, since we were planning on spending a full week in the camper.

beach swing at Cape Lookout

To keep things interesting I planned for us to stay at 3 different Oregon State Parks along the coast. I organized things so that other than our first day of travel, we would never have more than a 3 hour drive, and we would get to spend most of our time enjoying the parks. We decided to end the trip with a night at the indoor water-slide resort, Great Wolf Lodge in Grand Mound, Washington (this would hopefully give us a chance to get our girls good and clean before we brought them back home).

Beach at Cape Lookout State Park

On our drive down we made a stop in Seaside Oregon at one of the best surf shops in Washington or Cleanline Surf. They have a huge selection of surf gear for sale or rental. We made sure everyone in our family was set up to be able to play in the waters of the cold Pacific Ocean. After gearing up we headed on to our first campsite, Cape Lookout State Park. The park is west of highway 101, between Tillamook and
Pacific City. It is a fairly large state park on a sand spit between that separates the Pacific Ocean from Netarts Bay. Along the Pacific side of the sand spit there is a long beautiful beach that can be accessed with a short walk of a few hundred feed from the park camp sites. The park has full hookups which made life even easier in the camper. The family had fun playing on the beach, but during our stay here the temperature barely hit 50, we had a mix of sun and light rain, and a stiff wind on the beach kept everyone bundled up. No one was too interested in surfing, but my daughters were completely entertained by exploring the beach and hunting for shells.

Looking back to Cape Lookout

After two nights at Cape Lookout we headed a couple hours south to our next location. The second spot we camped at was a tiny campsite, not even large enough to warrant “State Park” in the name: Beachside State Recreation Site. Beachside is about 30 minutes south of Newport, just south of the tiny town of Waldport. We had visited this park about three years prior and stayed in a tent. That visit had been in early summer during a usually hot period when the temperature throughout Oregon and Washington was getting up into the mid 90s; that is until you went to the Oregon Coast, where a mile east of the coast you entered a huge fog bank and the temperature dropped to the low 50s degrees. That trip was rather disappointing, but I remembered the park and wanted to give it another chance.

The best thing about Beachside State Recreation Site is that you can have your campsite literally right next to the beach. Our camper’s back door opened to an amazing view of the Pacific Ocean. With the drive south the weather seemed to improve with mostly sun and

the temperature getting up to the low 60s. After getting settled in at our campsite, we all put on wetsuits, grabbed our boggie boards, and enjoyed hours of playing in the very mild surf. We were the only people venturing into the water, so we must have been quite an interesting site, several other campers at Beachside even took chairs onto the beach to watch our pathetic attempts at surfing.

"RV parking" in Newport

The next day we headed back up to Newport to check out a restaurant that my wife had read about, Local Ocean Seafoods. It’s a fresh fish market and restaurant where you can buy freshly caught fish to take with you and prepare for yourself or have their chefs prepare the days catch for you. We enjoyed and incredible meal sitting outside beside Yaquina Bay in Newport. Then it was back to our campsite at Beachside for some more surfing.

Tillamook Ice Cream!

With our week over halfway though it was time to start heading Tillamook cheese factory and a sampling of their cheese and ice cream. Then about another hour on the road and we were at our final campsite Nehalem Bay State Park. Like Cape Lookout State Park, Nehalem State Park also sits on a narrow sand spit. It was probably the largest of the three campsites, and the quietest with very few visitors. I had a chance to briefly speak with one of the park rangers, who told me that this was breif quiet time before May when things begin to pick up, then from July through September just about everything is booked.

Unlike the other two campsites, the beach was separated from the campsites by a tall sand dune that required a brief hike over to get to the beach. Once on the beach you could walk all the way into the town of Manzanita 2 miles away which is exactly what we did to pick up some supplies and get some dinner.

Our Seaside surf stop

The next morning my wife emailed a friend who is a surfing instructor in Seaside, hoping to get information on
where we should take the family for a day of surfing. She suggested “the cove” in Seaside; basically the far Southern end of the beach at Seaside. It was nice to have the camper to prepare a hot lunch and to have a place to change in and out of our wet suites before surfing. We surfed mild but well-spaced waves until my 6 year old daughter was pretty much warn out. Then packed up everything and headed back to Nehalem Bay State Park for the night.

That night we left our wet suits outside under a canopy, hoping they would dry a bit before we headed back North towards our final stop. Unfortunately that night it rained, and rained hard! The next morning everything was soaked. There was nothing we could do other than lay blankets and towels down all over the camper and load all our wet gear in it.

We drove up North for our final night of the trip, this time in a hotel room at Great Wolf Lodge, where (for me at least) the wave pool seemed rather disappointing after several days of surfing. My daughters both had a lot of fun at the lodge, which seemed to me like a Las Vegas casino for children. After a week in quiet state parks, 1 day was the absolute limit I could handle for Great Wolf lodge, so the next day around noon we headed back home to Seattle.

I look forward to getting to make a similar trip to the Washington coast when the weather gets warmer and perhaps spending a bit more time in just one place.

Lord Hill 50K Trail Race

Last Sunday I ran the Lord Hill 50K Trail Race; my second trail race and my second ultra marathon . With nothing planned for the start of the year I needed some encouragement to kick start my running in the New Year. In the first few months of the year there are very few organized races, but the Lord Hill race at the end of February seemed like a somewhat aggressive but attainable goal, and despite the fact they offered a 5 mile, 10 mile, 20 mile and 50 kilometer race, I figured I might as well sign up for the full thing and do 50K. I was surprised to find out my wife signed up shortly after me (but for the much more reasonable distance of 10 miles). The course was a 10 mile course with the 50K races doing the 10 mile course 3 times, then a small 1.1 mile loop at the end.

Immediately I discovered my training schedule was going to be very limited with Tuesday’s devoted to City League ski racing and Saturday’s devoted to taking my daughters up skiing for lessons. I tried to get in as many runs as I could with my usual 6.5 mile maintenance and a longer weekend run when I could pull it off. By the time of the race I had only managed 2 runs on trails, and only one run over 10 miles in length. Add to my severe lack of training, the weather forecast was calling for 1 to 2 inches of snow between 10 AM and 4 PM on the day of the race; this would be exactly the time I would be running. I knew I was in trouble.

As the day of the race came around, I tried to reassure myself that I wasn’t trying to set any records with this race, and that I wouldn’t push myself too far and I would drop out if it was no longer prudent to run. On race day I awoke to pretty much blue skies in Seattle, and I figured my concerns about the weather were unwarranted and the forecast (as always in Seattle) was wrong. We drove on out to Lord Hill Park near Monroe, WA but as we neared Monroe the skies suddenly were filled with clouds. Upon arriving at the start of the race, one of the parking volunteers commented that he hoped we had really good mud shoes, and that the race was going to start with a river crossing.

A pre-race briefing was provided to the 20 mile and 50K racers at 8:15, then the 20 mile and 50K race was to begin at 8:30. However, just before the race was to begin it started snowing. As the race kicked off we ran about 100 yards, before crossing the previously mentioned “river”. The river turned out to be little more than a creek that could easily be jumped over; however I found out that as I did my second and third loop of the course the creek became increasingly more difficult to jump over.

The small creek was the least of my worries during the race. After about half a mile the course turned sharply up “Oh Lord Hill”, a steep series of climbs, straight up a hill on a narrow muddy single track trail. The hill was steep enough so that pretty much everyone just walked it. After “Oh Lord Hill” the rest of the course was a beautiful (albeit very muddy) single track course winding though woods, along creeks, and past a large pond. There was an aid station at the 4 mile point on the 10 mile loop, which worked out to be a great spacing as the majority of the effort was put into the first mile of the course as you climbed “Oh Lord Hill”. The first loop was interesting with snow falling and the course receiving a little dusting of snow, but by the second loop the snow had stopped, and by the third loop the sun was out. I now had no excuse not finish this race.

At the end of my third loop I was greeted by my two daughters and wife (who had time after she completed her race to drive an 45 minutes, pick up my daughters, have lunch with them, do some shopping, then drive back 45 minutes to the race course, and wait 45 minutes before I finished loop 3). After thanking them for meeting me I headed out for the final 1.1 miles (and the most difficult 1.1 miles I’ve ever run).

When the race was over I ended up finishing in 7 hours and 29 minutes and coming in 39th place out of 55 racers. Not a ranking that is going to win me any prizes, but one that I am proud of anyways. And now with a couple of days to recover and some time to contemplate the race, I find myself looking on the internet trying to find the next race and a little bit surprised by the fact that I can’t wait to run my next 50K.

The 2011 Portland Marathon

Two minutes, and twenty four seconds. That’s how much time I missed my marathon goal time of sub-four hours by. In all fairness I was trying to cut 44 minutes off my previous marathon PR, but it should have been completely doable. I am pretty psyched that I ran so much faster of a marathon than my last marathon, but the fact that I failed to beat four hours, means I’m going to have to run another marathon. Darn this running addiction.

Overall, the Portland Marathon this year was a much more enjoyable experience than it was last year. The weather was mostly dry with mild temperatures, perfect for running. My strategy for running the marathon was just to come out as fast as I could maintain and then constantly adjust my speed based on how I was feeling, and constantly asking myself if I could run a bit faster. Other than noting the pacers, I really didn't use them at all, I just tried to keep as fast of a pace as I could maintain. My time at the half way point was 1:56:46, which would make it my 3rd fastest half marathon time! I did walk a bit on the climb up to the St John’s bridge. After the St John’s bridge I was dragging a bit, especially though miles 20 and 21 but then I really picked up the pace during the long hill leading down to the Broadway Bridge driven in part by the thought that around mile 23 there would be the beer aid station! After the Broadway Bridge my quads were really hurting, they almost felt like they were cramping. Between the leg pain and exhaustion of having just run 24 miles faster than I had ever run that distance before, I just couldn’t bring myself to push any harder and so I finished pretty slow.

So now nearly a week after the marathon, I’m feeling good enough to take a short run. I do need to get back into training since I have the Salty’s Half Marathon in a few weeks, followed by the Seattle Half Marathon a month after that. Right now I’m thinking about waiting until the packet pickup on the day before the marathon, and if the forecast is for dry weather on the day of the marathon I might just upgrade to the full Seattle Marathon. Other than that I have no other races planned for 2011, with the exception of participating as much as possible as my 8 year old daughter works on completing the Seattle Kids Marathon. However, for 2012 I would really like to run the Chicago Marathon!

Father and Daughters Breakfast

Last night my oldest daughter (7) requested breakfast at "the place where the let you put things on pancakes". I assumed this to mean Portage Bay Cafe. It's a great place for breakfast, but always requires a wait to get in, and as breakfast food goes it's not cheap. However this is a father and daughters only weekend (mommy is off on a girls weekend) so I want to make sure that the girls had a great weekend.

The girls of course ordered Mickey pancakes and loaded up with fruit and syrup at the toppings bar. After most of the fruit was cleared away from my oldest daughters pancake, all that remained was Mickey's smiling face.

Unfortunately, shortly after the picture was taken, Mickey's face was brutally ripped off. I am sorry to say, Mickey did not survive the event. My girls however, seem to be generally okay with it.