Jessica and I are fortunate enough to live in a city that has a park with 70 miles of trails - yup, you read that correctly! Forest Park, in Portland, Oregon, is a magical, inspiring, incredible and sometimes, well most of the time, a humbling place! The hills can be unrelenting depending on the trail you choose. It's worth the pain because you feel as if you are a million miles away from cars, phones and noise.
We love running in Forest Park however, early in our training season, it can take a lot of motivation to get us there. To keep us motivated, we signed up for a hilly half-marathon in July, thus we need to run hills! We also signed up for a trail race series. It's a fun, casual race environment but what is great is that because there's timing and a group of people, we naturally run faster.
During our trail race last week (and Jessica's first trail race!), we came up with our top tips for keeping us and you all motivated to hit the trails:
1) Sign up for a series or a trail running group - strength in numbers!
2) Start small - no need to conquer an 8 mile trail run or the hilliest route on your first couple of runs.
3) Sign up for a hilly race - this will force you to train on hills.
4) Take your watch off - don't let your slower pace distract you. Just head into the trails and run.
5) Instagram your runs - you will make all your friends jealous!
Have fun in the trails!