Those Lost boys are back

"Perfect beach near Cape Yakataga;" Photo by Eric Parsons.

Date: Sept. 9
Mileage: 20.1
September mileage: 233.3

So Dylan and Eric of the Lost Coast Bike Expedition have successfully completed their coastal ride to Cordova and are back in Anchorage. They must be two of the baddest, saltiest guys with two of the baddest, saltiest Pugsleys in all the land. They have some epic stories that simultaneously fill me with jealousy for what they experienced and relief that I wasn’t there - a mark of any good adventure, in my opinion. This morning, Eric told me about their crossing of the Hubbard (aka “Terror”) Gap in packrafts. The narrow gap was raging with tidal currents and clogged with glacial ice. Just they were trying to paddle around all of those obstacles, a massive chunk of ice calved off the Hubbard Glacier and crashed into the bay, sending a breaking tsunami their way. Eric said the wave bounced off nearby cliffs and ricocheted back to them, and all they could do was grip their paddles and hope it didn’t flip their boats. Harrowing stuff. Good stuff. And great photos are already up on their trip blog.

So of course I had to ask Eric the question that I’m sure he hears from everyone - was taking the bike worth it? He said he had to give it some thought, but in the end, decided it was. “We did a lot of pushing and carrying our bikes,” he said. “But there were also a lot of really good beaches and we could cover ground a lot faster than if we were walking. We’d look back after a really fun couple hours and think, wow, that would have taken us all day.”

And on his blog, he wrote, “A simple joy comes from mountain biking in places they have never been before. The untangibles that come with traveling through and experiencing these raw, wild, awe-inspiring landscapes is what motivates us and will keep us coming back again and again.”

I have to say, this recent string of good news - Geoff’s win in the Wasatch 100 and Dylan and Eric’s success on the Lost Coast - have really boosted me through this new rut I’ve been tossed into. After I found out I can’t secure extra time off work in October, I took three entire days off the bike - cleaning my house, plodding through a number of chores I’ve been neglecting, and generally feeling sad about being shut out of Trans Utah. I set out today and felt super strong - no huge surprise there, after three pretty mellow days. Despite being stranded in a “no train” zone, I still felt compelled to push hard. I ascended the Perseverance Trail in a gray cloud and descended cold and soaked in sweat and mist and mud and the satisfaction of a good hard effort. But as soon as I rolled back to my apartment and hopped in the shower, the emptiness started to return.

Of course there will be future events and future goals. There always will be. I think what I am mostly feeling sad about is this new realization that even though I have no children, no debt, no health problems, and no definite obligations, I have shaped this life that is not my own. There’s this sense that being chained to a desk is as good as a prison sentence, and yet, I feel a strong reluctance to give up the shackles.

Geoff crushed Wasatch 100!

"I really pushed myself to break 20 hours and came up a minute short," Geoff told me over my mom's cell phone at 11:04 p.m. Alaska time, mere minutes after he cruised in to Midway, Utah, to win the Wasatch 100. He was ahead of 260-odd runners, and a stacked field at that.

I left the house at 10 a.m. in a thick, low-lying fog, knowing the weather report called for partly clear and hoping to find the sun somewhere. I planned to hike up Mount Juneau, but at the last minute veered north for Heinzelman Ridge, my mountain nemesis. I have tried a few times to climb to this ridge and every time become lost, once hopelessly lost. Heinzelman was one of my selling points when I was trying to convince myself to buy a GPS. The approach is a maze of multiplying trails. Too many times I have pushed through thick devil's club and knee-deep swamps and wished I could just relocate my original path. I just wanted to find my way back. But finding my way to the top - that would be the ultimate reward.

If two paths diverged in a wood, I would always choose the wrong one. That is just who I am. And so it was today, following the path I chose until it petered to nothing. And in my usual elevation-hording stubbornness, I continued to press upward through the thick brush and thorns, hoping to find another trail. When that didn't pan out, I moved to turn back in defeat, but thought better of it. This time, I had GPS. I pulled it out and visualized a direct path to the tongue of Thunder Mountain. I bushwhacked deeper into the devils club swamps and blueberry bushes bulging with purple berries, calling out to the lurking bears: "Hey Bears! Sorry to trespass in your territory. I'm just looking for the human trail, and I'll be on my way."

I first checked Geoff's Wasatch 100 standings at 9 a.m. Alaska time. He had just left a place called Sessions Lift Off, at mile 28 of his run. "I should go hiking today," I thought. "Even if this fog doesn't lift." I thought Geoff's struggle called for at least a little solidarity.

Streams of sunlight started to push through the fog, and I knew I had hit the upper reaches of the clouds. I was coated to my knees in slime and mud; luckily my shoes had stayed attached to my feet in several of the deeper bogs. I assumed I'd just try to reach sunlight and turn back the way I came, following my GPS line home. I never expected to find the real trail. What were the chances that in all of this big mountain, we'd ever meet again? But as I crossed an open meadow, I saw a strip of blue plastic tied around a tree. When I approached it, I saw footprints.

My parents drove all the way from Sandy to Brighton to see Geoff off at his 75-mile checkpoint. "How many chances do you get to see this?" my mom said as she called me at work. Geoff had already come and gone, "But he had some soup and he talked for a few minutes to the checkers," she said. "They thought that was so funny that he was chatting with them. They kept telling him to hurry up because he's in first place!"

Tree line is where the fog finally let go, and for the first time I had a perfect view of the sweeping space above me and the white bright world below. The mountain tundra was splashed in fall color amid the lingering greens of summer - an intense, almost iridescent mixture of color and light surrounding the spine of Heinzelman Ridge, and I couldn't believe I found it.

My mom and I talked excitedly as though Geoff had his race in the bag at mile 75, but I couldn't shake my concern. I remember seeing him elated and strong at mile 75 of the 2007 Susitna 100. Then I passed him, several hours later, on my bike at mile 88. It was well after 2 a.m. I shined my headlamp in his face, which was strained and gray. His hat was coated in frost. His eyes had that clouded-over look of a corpse, and he didn't even say hello, as if he didn't know I was there. "How are you feeling?" I asked him. "I'm hurting," was all he said. I pedaled with him for a while, but he gestured like he wanted me to move on. "Do you need anything?" I asked. "No," he said. There wasn't anything I could do to help him, and even as my right knee popped and screamed, I had this sense that I didn't understand the first thing about hurting. That was Geoff's first 100-mile run. He fell to the snow when he reached the finish line.

"There were no low points in this run," Geoff told me at the Wasatch 100 finish line. "Even in my Resurrection Pass training run, I had low points. So this was really nice." He was audibly glowing, and I wished I was there to see it. My mom took the phone back and informed me that he was dripping sweat at it was 1 a.m. and cold and he was going to go change his clothes. Geoff's official finishing was just 30 minutes shy of the official course record. As of the time I published this blog post, an hour and 10 minutes after Geoff won the race, the second-place finisher had not come it yet.

Geoff's final stats for the day: 100 miles; 26,131 feet elevation; 20:07 finishing time. My final stats for the day: 7 miles; 3,254 feet elevation; 3:45 duration. Obviously, there's no way to make a comparison, but still ...

You can't beat those few moments in the sun.

Dead end

Date: Sept. 5
Mileage: 127.4
September mileage: 213.2

Today I set out to ride what I called the "Dead End Tour" - pedaling to the end of every major road in Juneau and back: Douglas Highway, Thane, Mendenhall Glacier, Echo Cove. The weather was on the nice side of mostly cloudy, so it was not hard to get revved up about heading out for a long ride. I purposely set the start time at 10:30 so I would have a time crunch on top of the distance goal. I had eight hours before I needed to be home and in the shower in time to make it to my friends' house for dinner. That meant I was going to have to keep a solid pace of 16 mph and not take more than a couple short breaks.

The pace started out hard at first; I was not feeling fantastic for most of the Douglas Island leg. But by the time I hit the mainland, my energy level started to improve. After two hours, I ate my first Power Bar, even though I didn't feel like eating it, in keeping with my vowed fuel regimen of at least one Power Bar every two hours. By the time I returned from Thane and moved into the long leg at mile 43, I felt like my day was just getting started.

The next leg, all 80 miles of it, was about as ideal as a road bike ride can be for me. It was painless without being too slow, and fun without being too easy. I was lost in thought for much of the ride, looping through an onslaught of memories and considerations and daydreams, only to snap back to reality in a rush of endorphins and realize I was climbing a hill at full bore. Without even thinking too much about it, I was keeping my odometer consistent, using the solitude time to think about my life, quietly observing the first changing colors of autumn and the elaborate cloud formations, and devouring the glut of happy chemicals that stack up whenever I turn pedals for long spans of time. It was a perfect ride ... the kind of ride in which I feel both elated and relaxed ... the kind of ride that makes me wonder why anyone would use illicit drugs when it's possible to feel this way naturally. It really didn't feel like 127 miles and it certainly didn't feel like eight hours. I had to shoot the picture just to be sure.

I walked in the door thinking, "Wow, I'm not it too bad of shape right now. Eight hours consistent and not feeling wasted, not even really feeling all that off ... I could certainly go much longer." That happy realization and the good mood it created might have lasted all evening if I just neglected to check my e-mail before heading to dinner, but no, I had to check my e-mail. I got the final word from my boss. I can't take that first full week in October off. The answer was no.

Which means no Trans Utah for me.

Talk about an enormous buzz kill. Beyond the excitement about the event itself, it's the thing that's gotten me out there in the rain and wind and eight-hour road extravaganzas, much of which I've been reluctant to do and which I've struggled through parts, but most of which has been ultimately rewarding and a huge motivator to keep me happy through the long work days, especially now that I'm living alone with four cats again. It's easy to say that I could endurance train anyway, without Trans Utah on the horizon, but it's harder in practice without that carrot on a stick. Plus, this is just another one of those things that cause me to ask myself ... why am I living alone with four cats and working so hard just to have my only reward be to work harder? Not that I'm about to join Geoff in the alternate lifestyle of living out of my car and running ultras, but the question does linger.

Maybe something to think about on my next long ride.

By the way: Geoff is out running the Wasatch 100 as of 5 a.m. MDT Saturday! I think the race is posting live results here.