Author Archives: Lisa Eirene

About Lisa Eirene

About Lisa Eirene Lisa lost 110 pounds through calorie counting and exercise. She swims, bikes, runs, hikes and is enjoying life in Portland, Oregon. Her weight loss story has been featured in First Magazine, Yahoo Health, Woman's Day and Glamour.com.

Barefoot Summer

Posted by Lisa Eirene

One of my favorite memories as a kid was spending summers on my aunt’s farm south of Salem. The annual family reunion was the highlight of the year for us kids! We’d run around like we were feral. Playing, swimming, eating, jumping into hay in the farm, playing with cousins. So much fun!

On Saturday we got to go down to my aunt’s farm for a birthday party for my cousin Adam. He turned 40 (holy cow! I’m not far behind and holy cow his kid is now 16 and driving!!! God we all got old…) and we got together to celebrate.

I was excited to see everyone and also excited for Logan to get to experience “farm life” a little bit and running around barefoot in the grass.

He got to try an Otter Pop for the first time. Not sure if he liked it. He seemed a bit confused by it at first. Hahaha!

My cousin Carrie, expert mixologist, made this magnificent drink:

Fresh raspberries from their garden blended with ice, 7-Up and Peach Vodka. It was so good and refreshing and easy to drink too many of!

Logan LOVED the cows and chickens! In fact, if you saw my Instagram, Logan got to feed the cows! He LOVED it. He spent a lot of time feeding the cows and laughing. 🙂

They set up the sprinkler for the kids. It was 95 degrees out and I thought Logan would love running through the sprinkler (I know I loved it as a kid) but he didn’t seem to be too much of a fan. Maddie the dog loved the sprinkler, though!

My uncle grilled up sausages, hot dogs and the best hamburgers you’ve ever had (they are very fresh and organic if you know what I mean…but we try not to think too hard about where they came from….!). It was a potluck and everyone brought something. I made my Greek Orzo Salad again. There was a pasta salad, coleslaw, potato salad and a fresh fruit salad with strawberries, blueberries and mangoes.

And of course birthday cake:

Logan LOVED the cake and ice cream, of course. And man he was SO filthy.

He was covered in dirt from running around barefoot, cake and ice cream, Otter Pops, and just summer. LOL I loved it. I loved seeing him running around playing with his cousins and having fun outside. Thankfully my aunt let us give him a quick bath in her amazing clawfoot tub (original) before we headed back to Portland.

It was such a good weekend and so much fun!

New Route

Posted by Lisa Eirene

I went on a new route for my lunch time run on Friday! It kind of happened as a fluke. I was running to the Hawthorne Bridge just as the alarms started going off that it was going up. I looked at the river and didn’t see any boats coming, so it was kind of a mystery. I decided to keep going instead of waiting for who knows how long for the bridge to open up (and I didn’t want to just turn around).

So I kept running along the waterfront to the South Waterfront. It’s the new area south of the Hawthorne where there’s a bunch of high rises and OHSU buildings. I decided to try and cross the new(ish) Tilikum Crossing bridge. It’s the bridge that is just for people, bikes, buses and the Max.

Since I’ve never actually been on the new bridge, I didn’t know where it really was on that side of the water. I got a little lost. Then I flagged down some other runners and asked them. They kindly gave me good directions and I set off.

I found the bridge and it was really nice! It was kind of steep and pretty windy, but the wind felt nice because it was such a hot day out.

It was a decent run, which was nice because I’ve been sick for several weeks with a sinus infection (thankfully the antibiotics are kicking in). My last run before getting sick was awful (clearly because I was getting sick!) so this was much better. Other than feeling really hot, my run was good.

I got to the other side of the bridge and picked up the Springwater trail right by OMSI.

It was cool finding a new route because the same old thing a few times a week can get really monotonous. This new route will be a great way to mix things up!

I ran by OMSI and then crossed the Hawthorne Bridge back to downtown. It was a pretty hot day, even though I went out on my run early. It was 79 degrees and I felt like I was getting overheated. My face felt really hot and my heart rate was pretty high at the end of the run. So I ended up walking a lot more for the last mile of my run trying to cool off and calm my heart down.

Here is the map of my run:

You can kinda see where I got lost and then turned around and found the route to South Waterfront!

I think in the future I will do this route again. If I can get faster and not be overheated and not have to walk so much, I think I can stretch it to the Morrison Bridge. But we’ll see. I do have limited time for my lunch. I think my next run I will try this route again but go the opposite way so I can find the best route downtown to get to the bridge.

Yay for new horizons!