Third Portland Summer in the Books

Since it is officially fall I can say, with all due apologies to Green Day, summer has come and passed. My third full summer in Portland is now over. 

When I first thought about moving to PDX back in 2010, I had misgivings. You always hear about how rainy and dreary it is. Months and months of gloom are only punctuated by perhaps a few weeks of sunny weather hear and there.  As someone who hates to race in the sun, I still love to run and live in it. So I decided to scout the area out by planning a few gigs in the area to both run and check out the scenery (re: weather.)

Every trip here produced fantastic weather. But my local friends always said "Yeah, don't get used to this." or "This is a fluke. It will rain tomorrow." Fortunately, after nearly four decades on Earth I have learned that most people have their head firmly up their ass. So when the time came to finally make the jump, I ignored their warnings. I was Portland bound.

I am not exactly sure if I am breaking some Portland code by telling you this but the weather here is absolutely fantastic. Sure, it rains but to speak like a 14 year old girl, it doesn't rain rain. But you don't need to believe me. Check out this nifty website that allows you to check different cities annual rainfall against each other.  Time and time again, Portland has fewer inches of rain than its supposed other cities.  Yeah, it has more gray days than some might like and the rain lingers during the winter, but having grown up in NW Pennsylvania, I will take some cold rainy weather over frosty, icy, horrific snow any day of the week.  In fact, Erie, PA was the snowiest city in America last winter and that is just some 40 miles away from where I grew up. I'll take the rain.

Today, in Portland, it rained a little bit and then has been grey most of the day (N.B. Because I can't decide if I want to go with "gray" or "grey" I am deciding to use the both.) Then I heard on the news that it was the rainiest day in Portland since June. June! But if you ask my friends, Portland is a mucky land of dreariness and wet. OK, fine. All I know is that for running, I have picked one awesome city.

Then again, most cities are awesome for running. When runners learn I live in Portland, they say, almost without fail "Well, that's a great city for running." It is. But so was Salt Lake City, my last home. Before that, I lived right outside of Washington D.C., in Arlington, VA.  That area is so wonderful for running that I credit it with kindling my interest in the sport.

The more I travel the more I realize how much virtually every place is wonderful for running. This realization has finally brought me to the point that I want other runners to know how much awesome is out there as well. Within the next few weeks, I am going to be unveiling a partnership with an awesome company which will help me further every runner's knowledge of the great places to run in America (and hopefully the world.) 

Stay tuned for more information!