Powell Butte and Leif Erikson: great weekend of training

For a Black Saturday workout I ran with Ronda, Steve, Micheal and Susan at Powell Butte Nature Park.
I had never been there before and it is a great place to run. A little bit of hills (we were doing about 1200 feet of climbing per 6 miles) interspersed with nice trail downhill and some good flats to stretch the legs out. The trails were only slightly muddy which was a good sign for this time of year. Apparently the park is about to be radically changed with an addition of another buried water reservoir but I do plan to go back. We parked at the main parking for the park but you can also easily access the trails off of the Springwater corridor.

I mapped out our run as shown in the picture. Actually I could not tell you if you paid me where or how we went to get my approximately 16 miles with ~2000 ft of climbing. Steve led most of the way but it really is impossible to get lost long term in this park as eventually you will either hit the butte summit or return to the parking lot / restroom area. This map has a pretty good representation of the park trails.

Continuing the build week of training it was off for 20 miles of fun on Leif Erikson before church.
Just a little note...it is still dark at 7am! The first 2 miles were a little tentative with the lack of light but after that I am really happy with how this tempo run went. The trail is muddy but in quite good shape.
I fueled and hydrated well with only a little bit of issue with my gut.
I have been introducing PowerBar chews that I picked up at the Y2K9 race. I can say I like 'em! I do need to try the Cola flavor but the lemon is not bad.
The legs felt great and I was even about to really pick it up for the last 3-4 miles. Now in fairness these are more downhill than not but I will take it :-) I had been worried about the legs after the bootcamp workout with lots of wall sits taking the quads to fatigue. I did have trouble biking in to work on Friday! But the legs were back and happy today.
10 miles heading out: 1:16:01
10 miles heading in: 1:08:35 Wahoo...negative split!!

Next week is very similar: total of around 70 miles with some good tempo thrown in to keep things honest.
Then it is taper week towards the Surf City marathon and another go for a PR. Trisha is also training hard for Surf City and I know she will blow her PR out of the water.