Portlandia

Weekend trip to Portland... just for the heck of it. 

On Saturday we wanted to run in a park - it turned into a trail run with plenty of hills - an unexpected, but nice surprise. 

Then we hit up the Portland Farmer's Market. It was just a small one - with it being January and all... but still fun... and I bought jam!

We also had the most delicious bagel sandwich ever! It had cream cheese, pesto and roasted squash. Mmm.... 

We walked down the street with all of the food trucks and even though we didn't need more food.... we stopped here:

We wandered around downtown... and shopped for books at Powell's. The store  is enormous.. and a little overwhelming. I bought a used copy of "The Beautiful and The Damned". 

We stopped at Stumptown Coffee for a break before dinner. 

I found a cool vegetarian place called Vita Cafe for dinner. 

Veggie spicy "wings"

Carbo loading :) 

Vegetarian Ruben! 

Sunday we had another 20 mile run. Dustin planned another great route for us. We ran from our hotel through a nice residential area, passed through the University of Portland, ran over St. John's bridge, through downtown Portland and back over the Hawthorne bridge. After St. John's was an industrial area that seemed to last for too many miles, but we endured. And the bridges were awesome!

St. John's bridge

After the run was brunch of course... I had found this place online a while back...  

There was a little bit of a wait, so we were starving by the time we sat down... that resulted in us ordering this delicious pumpkin cinnamon roll... 

And I had the buckwheat and oatmeal pancakes. :) 

I've been obsessed with finding good vegetarian and/or "healthier" restaurants to try wherever we go. Obviously I don't always get the healthiest thing on the menu, but I still don't feel as bad about eating pancakes when they're full of grains (and we'll just let the cinnamon roll go...) :) 

I know it looks as though I've turned into some sort of foodie... but it's difficult being hungry all of the time! And that's what running has done to me. I'm trying to be more conscious of the types of food I'm fueling with however. I'm currently reading "Eat & Run" by Scott Jurek and it's making me think about how food affects my running. I know some people run to eat... but I want to eat to run.