The Real Oregon

We’ve all known marathon runners. They are those lean, mean people who spend six months of their lives training fastidiously, getting up at dawn to run six miles this morning, three tomorrow, and 11 on Saturday — or, whoops, was that 12.5? — all of which means they don’t have anything much resembling a life for half the year.

We have a different training regimen for marathons. Here it is:

1. Sign up.
2. Do the marathon.
3. Hurt like hell Monday morning.

Finish a marathon without ever training? Yes, you can do it, and yes, you should give it a try. (OK, it’s true we do occasionally exercise in regular life. We are not slugs. But we’re not endorphin addicts by any means. We’re talking three 20-minute aerobic sessions a week. That’s it as far as running goes. Running is boring.)

We’ve finished four marathons now without being hospitalized even once.

And the best place to do a marathon with no preparation is at the Portland Marathon, which takes place this year on Sunday, Oct. 7.

It first occurred to us that you could just up and do a marathon, without enduring a lot of stultifying training rigmarole, when we came back one summer from a long hiking trip in Idaho. We had been routinely doing 20-mile days over steep, rough trail, at high altitude, in all kinds of weather, carrying packs.

How hard could 26.2 miles on city streets really be?

We signed up, with the idea of walking. And we did it.

OK, the first thing we learned was, walking 26 miles on city streets actually is different from walking the same distance on trail. For one thing, when you’re in the mountains you take regular breaks. You eat lunch. You have a nap. You stop for water. You enjoy the view.

Surprise: The whole idea of the marathon is to get there in less time, so there’s this subtle, unrelenting pressure to keep walking. There go the rest breaks.

The second thing is, walking on city streets is actually harder in some important ways than walking on mountain trails. Paved streets are so uniform that you use the same muscles over and over again, and they get tired and sore. And any issues you have with your shoes become similarly intensified. Think bad blister possibilities.

But, as a friend says, marathoning is basically about pain management anyway. Bring along plenty of naproxen sodium. We gobble it down at about Mile 8 and use meditation from there on out.

The best approach is to blend walking and running. We’ve done several marathons in which we would walk a mile, run a mile, walk a mile, run a mile — OK, you get the idea. Each time you shift gait it’s like a rest stop.

So why Portland?

Because it’s the most walker-friendly marathon in the universe. No one looks at you funny for walking. They keep the finish chutes open for a full eight hours, so even if — as happened to us once — you suffer pretty bad leg cramps at Mile 13, you can hobble in for an official time.

And because the Portland Marathon is really fun. You have live music at just about every mile. People are nice. They cheer you on even when you’re hours behind the real athletes. The city is beautiful. The snacks are great.

Go try it and see.

Here’s your once in a lifetime chance to see a batch of top of the line paintings by Rembrandt van Rijn without leaving Oregon. From Saturday until Sept. 16, the Portland Art Museum is showing “Rembrandt and the Golden Age of Dutch Art.”

The 90 paintings, prints and other works in the show are borrowed from Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum while it undergoes extensive remodeling; summering in Portland are six Rembrandt paintings, including his famous late career “Self-Portrait as the Apostle Paul,” shown above at a preview this morning.

It’s a great show, and would be even without those Rembrandts. But a major celebrity dead white Euro male artist, whose name you’ve actually heard of, makes any art show even sexier.

Tickets are $15, with timed admission. Check pam.org for details.