Kristen in Wonderland...

Well, folks, my co-worker Eric and I got brave today and decided to do our first run outside from work. I've been chicken and have been running inside on the treadmill, and Eric is just starting to train for his first Hood to Coast Race in August (which I am also going home for - yay!).

For those of you not from Portland, let me back up... Hood to Coast is a relay race that goes from Mt. Hood on the Eastern side of Portland all the way to the Pacific Ocean on the Western side of Portland. I think the total mileage is something like 187 miles, and a team of 12 runners do a relay of three legs per runner for the whole distance, non-stop (as in, you just might be running at 3:00 in the morning for your second leg). I've done this race for the past 5 years, and I wouldn't miss it! :)

Anyways, back to the run. We set out, excited to finally break free from the treadmills. It was really nice running through the forest - it almost felt like running in Forest Park in Portland. We had a nice little chat, bla bla bla, and then decided to turn around. Well, we started running back, definitely in the right direction, when, suddenly everything started looking the same, but nothing looked familiar. We decided to turn left, thinking that certainly that was the way back to campus. We ran and ran (and ran and ran) and never seemed to find campus. Soon into our run, we began running next to a set of train tracks, which we thought would surely lead us to the train stop in front of the Nike campus. Yeah, not so much. By the time we figured out that we had gone the wrong way, we were already so far away from campus that we decided to just keep running until we hit the train stop. We did just that, and then took the train back to campus. How terribly embarrassing. :)