Route scout

Jane is my running partner.  In all honesty, Jane is my running partner who is taking a running hiatus: she's pregnant.  Very pregnant.  So there is no running happening with Jane.  However, when Jane and I were running together, and we were training and running an ultramarathon we spent a lot of time together.  So, while we ran we chatted about all sorts of things.  We decided on one of our long runs one day, out on the Banks-Vernonia trail that we should organize a three quarter marathon.  We've both run lots of organized runs, we know what runners like in a run and we know that the slowest runner is the runner that needs the most motivation to keep going.  We figured out how many people we knew who were in bands (really, in Portland, you can throw a rock in any direction and hit a band/band-member/soloist, "I'm with the band").   We decided our run would benefit colon cancer because my sister had recently been diagnosed with colon cancer.  So, we were off to begin our planning.  We formed a summit: three of us, Elizabeth, Jane and I.  We doled out tasks and reviewed our binder of How to Plan a Race.  I mapped out a course and recently we met with the City of Portland to discuss permitting issues as it relates to the course we mapped out.  As it turns out we have some kinks that need to be worked out and now we need to do some tinkering with our route and so we are going to scout a new route, further east along the former route.  Fortunately this weekend is supposed to be nice weather so Jane and I will be either walking or riding bikes along the Springwater heading towards Powell Butte/Gresham area with our cameras and pads of paper to see what we see and map the distance.