Wildwood end to end

On the last Sunday of December, a group of friends and I ran the well-known Wildwood trail in Forest Park. There is a small group of friends who run this trail from end to end annually and I was just lucky enough to be invited!

We started out at the Newberry trail head and then ran east to the zoo. One of the biggest perks of running with friends is that when it gets hard, and it does, there are people to encourage and support one another. We also had an amazing crew of a couple runners’ partners to meet us with items such as fuel and hydration and gear swaps. Just seeing them was a little pick me up! It was amazing at mile 20+ to get a new pair of socks, too! Something so minimal can really make a big difference.

We were fortunate to have good weather, the forecast predicted 95% chance of rain, but we only had sprinkles for a very short amount of time during the whole run. The trail was a bit muddy in some spots, but relatively easy to manage. For being the end of December, it wasn’t too cold either, we lucked out with temps in the mid 40’s.

Having run 26.2 (plus a little more), I knew I could probably run a 50k, but I really hadn’t trained much over the holidays between Every Woman’s Marathon and the end of December when we ran. It was challenging to run over more mixed terrain than roads and with some elevation gain, but overall, the trail is not technical and there aren’t many obstacles barring a few trees to climb over or out of commission bridges.

This experience was something that I will always remember, because it was my first intro to ultra!!! I have raced in Forest Park and run at Mt. Hood and Smith Rock, and in Bend, but never over 25k. I am so happy to have had the opportunity to run with awesome friends, on a beautiful trail, have incredible support, and complete about 31 miles straight! The icing on the cake, was that my friend who organized the run had burrito orders all set for each runner for after our run and his wonderful girlfriend had them waiting for us. I am not kidding when I say it was the best burrito I’ve had! This is a tip that I definitely recommend to anyone attempting a new challenge– have yummy food to look forward to after!