The Cook Park Route

Just the other day Alice at work asked me if I had any favorite 20 mile running routes that I could recommend. Now there's a question that you don't get every day. And for her that's a question that you really can ask of only a tiny number of people that you see in your every day life.

She started working in our office a few months ago and it wasn't long after that I over heard her talking to someone about a run she had been on. Not really having said anything to her before, I now had an icebreaker to get to know the new person. "So I heard you say that you run sometimes..." I says. "Oh more than sometimes" says Alice, "it's what I do--when I'm not here at work". Good answer!

I found out that she qualified for Boston for the first time this year too, but because her qualifier was Portland, which occurred before Boston stopped taking new entrants in mid-November, she actually gets to reap the rewards and run next month. Being at the peak of her training cycle, the question about a favorite 20 mile route made some sense. Runners keeps a mental recipe file of routes that we like and choose from them depending on our needs for a certain workout. When I want a mid-length route thats nice and flat and I can start from home, I run to Cook Park and back.

I've been using this route almost every week during the winter, usually as my Sunday long run. On Fridays I've been running Brookman, which I have already written about in this blog, because of it's series on undulating hills and for that feeling of being further out in the country than I actually am. On Saturdays I've been hitting the track. But on Sundays I just want to put in some long slow miles on a level route that is safe from traffic and has a destination as a turn around point. Cook Park.

Now if I leave from my front door and make the out and back, it's almost exactly a half-marathon: 13 miles. But most of the time I'm too lazy to put in those extra three miles and because I live at the top of a hill, I have to finish those miles with a steep climb. Since I'm not training for anything, I usually opt out of the longer harder option and drive down to the bottom of the hill making the route flat and an even 10 miles.

I park at my dentists office, he doesn't know or care because it's Sunday, and head out usually listening to Fdip and sipping on some Gatorade. The first mile is really noisy as I run down Tualatin-Sherwood Rd to 124th. That's how we name a lot of our roads around here. They just get the name of the two towns that the road connects. Go figure. Anyway, once I start north on 124th the rest of the run is pretty quiet as I navigate thru open warehouse and big office building areas surrounded by lots green space. Last week as I was going along one of these roads I startled a Great Gray Heron who took off right next to me and coasted to a landing a short ways away. It was cool.

After a few miles I get into what is left of the historic area of Tualatin. Of course it's hard to tell because they really have done nothing to preserve any of the old part of town. It's a town that's very unique in that it has no core area where it began. It's all gone. But I run thru the area where it used to be which includes a skate park, ball field and boat launch. I head north along the Tualatin River sometimes taking the old trail thru the woods and other times the new paved walkway. It depends on weather and how much light there is.

Pretty soon both trails converge and then rise slightly to cross the river using the new Ki-a-kuts bike and pedestrian bridge. The bridge is named in honor of the last Chief of the Atfalati (pronounced AT-FALL-i-TEE) indians who lived in this area before we got here and "improved" it. The indian tribe name is actually the source for the name of the town. Atfalati became "Twality" which became Tualatin. Again, go figure. But I like the new bridge. Just bikes and people walking their dogs. Lots and lots of people walking their dogs.

On the far side of the bridge is a turn in the path that leads to Cook Park, which is just a few minutes away-when you run as fast as I do. I run along the other side of the river now, go thru a little area that is supposed to be a butterfly garden and then hit the parking lot to the park. From here I usually run deeper into the park just to get to the proper halfway point according to the Garmin and then make the about face. There are restrooms here which I usually visit. Ya know, I was sipping on that Gatorade.

I gave Alice a short list of some of my 20 mile routes. Honestly I don't have that many and the ones I do have, most everyone else uses too-Forest Park, two laps around the Waterfront Park/Esplanade/Sellwood loop. I mentioned Champoeg which I used several times when I was doing the big numbers last fall, but she didn't seem that interested. Running routes are like that I guess. They're kinda personal.

Here's a video I took with my phone last time I ran across the Ki-a-kuts Bridge: