It’s been a while . . . . January came and went and now here we are. I am in the middle of a solid training block for the Gorge Waterfalls 50k in mid-April and that feels good. Two months to go and I am slowly extending miles and getting in some hills. Hill work for trail running means trail walking, or “power hiking,” or just plain old, “hiking.” The secret sauce of trail running is that you go long by going slow. At least that is my secret sauce. Speaking of which – there’s sheet-pan salmon to behold as well. Totally tasty and very easy to put together. Cheers –
The sunrise from the top of Mt. Baldy near my house. It takes about an hour to get there and the climb is about a thousand feet. Looking east towards the Cascade Mountains the sun was beautiful on Saturday morning.
After cresting Mt. Baldy, I made my way back down to campus where the group and I ran across the Autzen Footbrige to cross the Willamette River. It was cold, but lovely.
Sheet pan salmon! The key here is the oven temperature of 425 degrees F. The marinade can be whatever you’d like for the veggies and they go in the oven for 5 minutes to start cooking. Then the salmon fillets go on. In this case I used butter, seaweed salt, a little white wine and lemon juice. Then bake it up for about 12 minutes or so until it is done. Solidly good meal.
Paul, from one of my running groups, the “UO Noon Runners” turned 86 today. This group has a tradition of doing a “birthday run” of some type, whether it be a mile, your age in miles or kilometers, or something of the sort. We all met up to run with Paul for his birthday mile before heading over to a place for coffee and treats. It was a wet, cold and rainy run, but a good crowd showed up for it. Paul is inspiring as are this small community of runners. I am grateful that circumstances caused me to bump into them and that I stuck around (it’s been 6 years I think). When I’m 86, I hope to be able to do a birthday mile, too.
Paul leads the group, pushing a stroller. He joked that he set a world record for his age group on the Amazon Mile bark trail at 17:59. Good stuff, indeed.
We got hit hard starting on Saturday and we still have several thousand people here that are without power. At one point we had no cell service, no internet and no wireless service. I felt as if I were living my best 1989 life! In addition, we had a large limb fall and break off a good part of our front gutter. Photos below, news at 11.
This was right after it happened. It was very loud and initially I thought the whole oak tree had fallen. We are very fortunate it was not worse.
Daylight view.
Freezing rain and ice on branches is no joke. And no fun. Onwards . . . .