It's coming up ... it's coming up

Have I ever told you the story of the 2006 Susitna 100? I know it’s out there — this blog essentially blossomed around my training log for that race. I wrote about my experiences before and after I finished. But, amid the relentless march of time, I quickly left it behind and moved onto whatever came next. I don't feel like I gave the 2006 Susitna 100 the reflection it deserved. After all, it was the pivotal moment of transition between a former version of myself — then more tentative, fearful, and inexperienced model — and the stronger, more adventurous and independent version that I’ve continued to develop in the aftermath. As with all major developments in life, this change is an ongoing process that will never end. But it began at the Anchorage REI, on a snowy November afternoon just about exactly five years ago.

I was walking out of the store when "the document that changed my life" appeared in my peripheral vision: A brochure, torn, wrinkled and taped to a bulletin board. It was illustrated with a cyclist’s silhouette that had been pasted over a photo of snow-swept tundra. White text advertised “The Susitna 100: A 100-mile race across frozen Alaska.” The brochure filled me with an inexplicable sense of recognition — like looking into the rippled depths of a fun-house mirror and seeing a vague image of my future self. I tore the single sheet away from the wall and carried it into the storm.

It made sense that this brochure captured my attention — after all, I had recently moved to Alaska, and in nervous anticipation for my first Alaska winter, had purchased a pair of studded tires for my 2003 Gary Fisher Sugar. So I was already a winter cycling subscriber. But what didn’t make sense is how the Susitna 100 managed to capture my intrique. After all, I had only ridden my newly converted full-suspension mountain bike in snow a few times, and found the riding to be profoundly more difficult than the summer version of mountain biking. The Susitna 100 covered 100 miles, which was profoundly more mileage than I had ever ridden a mountain bike in a day. And this profoundly long stretch of profoundly hard mountain biking was also framed in the context of a race. I had never competed in a race before. Ever. Not a 100-mile summer mountain bike race, not a cross-country race, not a 5K, nothing. I did once enter a three-mile fun run, way back in middle school. I was the kid who hung way off the back, happier to chat with my other non-athlete friends than struggle toward the gray anonymity of mid-pack. My underachiever friends and I proudly pointed out our positions in third-to-last, second-to-last, and last place every time we walked by the results board in the hall. In the 14 years since, nothing had changed in my attitude, and I happily stayed far away from competitive sports.

So it made sense that my initial admissions of interest in the Susitna 100 were met with disbelief and confusion. My parents, who had just recently digested my unsettling decision to follow a guy 3,000 miles away to Alaska, secretly began to wonder if someone was force-feeding me crazy pills. My friends back in Utah, who once watched me crumble into fear-fueled panic during a relatively harmless rafting trip in the warm desert, quietly changed the subject when I spoke of my impossibly dangerous fantasy. My then-boyfriend, Geoff, shrugged and told me I could do the race as long as he didn’t have to. He had even less interest in winter bicycle racing than I should have. He did, however, have a fleeting interest in competitive running, but at that point even his running had yet to develop into much more than the occasional snowshoe race. When he discovered the ski, bike and foot race offered a 50K version called the Little Su, he resolved to join the madness by training to run the “short race.” From this spark, he would eventually win the Little Su 50K after running “the hardest race of his life,” then do it again in the 2007 Susitna 100, then go on to dominate endurance runs across the country and become one of the top ultramarathoners in North America. But that’s his story. This is my story.

Training for the Sustina 100 taught me that not only is training good preparation for a race, it’s good preparation for life. I froze my fingers and then learned how to keep them from freezing. I steered into snow berms and re-taught myself bike handling. I toppled over the handlebars and discovered how to take a crash. I knelt into the snow and gobbled down peanut butter sandwiches before the chill could grab me. I pressed deep into the daunting wilderness and discovered the wilderness would embrace me back, if only my heart was open enough to accept that beauty trumps fear.

Despite my training, when I showed up at the start of the race, I was an emotional, mental and physical rookie in every way, and I looked the part. The night before, I had spent 95 agonizing minutes gluing my hopelessly tight 2.1” studded tires to my bike’s 26” skinny rims (for the record, studded tires only work on ice, and are useless in snow.) Threads of the sticky substance still clung to the wheels and dangled from the spokes. For my mandatory survival gear, I had stuffed a flimsy dry bag with 15 pounds of sleeping bag, water and clothing and strapped it to a seatpost rack. I dangled a stuff sack with an inflatable Thermarest and batteries from the handlebars, and wore even more water and clothing on my back. For food, I strapped a square handlebar bag to the inside triangle of my bike, filled it with chocolate and Power Bars and added chemical heat packs to keep the Power Bars from freezing (an amusingly hopeless idea.) I wore a snowboarding coat, rain pants and thin overboots; beneath that, a fleece jacket from The Gap, polyester long johns and hiking boots, and beneath that, an actual cycling jersey and padded shorts. For my hands I had neoprene kayaking gloves and over-mittens; for my head, a balaclava and hat. I wheeled my back-heavy, full-suspension Sugar next to rows of sleek fat bikes and sighed. I felt like I was standing at the starting line of the Tour de France with a beach cruiser.

To be continued …

Sprained ankle

It's been a quiet week for me. On Tuesday I rolled my ankle while running along the Rattlesnake Corridor and ended up with a first-degree sprain: swelling, pain and minor bruising. I have ambitious hopes for the winter season and can't afford to prolong an injury right now, so I took it very easy all week. When exercise and activity is your default setting, it can be a little unsettling to cut back. I've felt a bit off all week, with pent-up energy simmering on low in the background, and gray, wet, Juneau-like weather swirling around me. I still don't know if I'll ever be able to get this winter training season off the ground, but I'm at least mature enough now as an athlete to not get overly frustrated by injuries, even silly ones caused by my own ineptitude (better to have a silly injury than a major one.)

I got lucky that this week's Thursday Night Ride was a relatively inactive one, with a "skills clinic" at the park and a jaunt/sprint-before-closing to three local breweries. I can ride a bike with a sprained ankle but on Wednesday/Thursday it was still pretty tender. I sat out the skills clinic and instead used the time to test the manual setting on the Lumix camera. I was going to skip the brewery tour altogether, seeing as how I don't drink beer, but decided that a social outing was better than sitting at home and clawing at the door. I drank brewed rootbeer and Diet Pepsi, much to the dismay of every proud-to-be-a-Montanan local brew connoisseur in the vicinity.

I hobbled too slowly to get many shots, but discovered that low shutter speeds on moving objects don't create a double image, but ghost the subject altogether. Interesting.

One of the clinics involved doing chin-ups while staying clipped into the bike. I don't see how that's a useful mountain bike skill, but I guess this was the annual beer tour.

Riding the rings. This looked hard. I was fairly grateful to have an opt-out.

Beat flew out to Missoula later on Thursday night. We managed to carve out a fun weekend despite my limitations, involving trail outings where I rode my bike and he ran. On Friday we climbed Mount Sentinel with Bill. Beat ran the trail and we descended down the canyon road to avoid the singletrack bumps and jostling that really aggravated my injury. We froze nearly solid in the cold evening wind. I forget that most of the winter riding I did in Juneau didn't involve prolonged descents — thousands of feet of elevation change within a single ride is the norm around here. It's hard to dress for. Of course you can carry extra layers, but eventually you just have to ask yourself whether it's worth carrying them just to avoid 20 minutes of discomfort, because after sweating out your base layer, it really takes a lot to hold in heat.

By Sunday afternoon I was again tired of the low-level ankle babying, so we went out despite a mood-dampening mixture of snow and rain. It was the first time this season that I got Pugsley out for snow riding — although a wet inch on top of mud doesn't necessarily qualify as a snow ride. Beat had no problem keeping up with me on the climb up the Stuart Peak trail, and we continued climbing together until it became too steep and slippery for me to pedal.

We got up early Monday to head back to the airport, and I was able to get out for a 90-minute dawn ride up the canyon. I also threw in a 15-minute shuffle of a run. I have a big ankle brace and was able to complete my half-mile-out, half-mile-back to my bike without pain, but it's a bit sore again now. Patience will prevail, but I can't help but watch my calendar creeping forward, and wonder if I'll ever really start running. So far success has been elusive, and I have proven myself to be more than a bit of a klutz. (I'm beginning to think of mountain bikes as safety tools invented for people like me — wilderness wheelchairs for the clumsy.) Still, I'm not giving up just yet.

The race of life

I often ask myself why I race. Why have I devoted so much time and energy over the last five years to racing? I'm not particularly skilled, nor do I have much natural athletic talent. I don't possess competitive fire and my biggest adversary in any race I have ever competed in has been myself. And yet I keep going back out there. I shadow others on the dusty trail. I press deep into the lifeless tundra. I sweat and bleed and cry out in pain so I can find what lies at the finish line. What lies at the finish line? I never find out. It's just out of my grasp. And thus, the pursuit continues.

I have been thinking about the next race. Thinking it's time to really start training. So on Tuesday, I officially kicked off the winter training season by going for an eight-mile run on the smooth, wide, slightly inclined Rattlesnake River corridor. For the first four miles, I marveled at how great my legs were feeling despite the 130 miles of bike racing on Saturday-Sunday. The frosty night air swirled in my headlamp beam, and when the light started to dim, I decided it was time to turn around. I kicked up the pace because I was feeling great, and because my light was dying. Then suddenly, without provocation or reason, my left ankle twisted violently and my body slammed into the dirt. A shock of pain rippled through my feet and legs. I tried to get up, but an overwhelming wave of nausea forced me to lay back down. I rolled onto my back. The pain gripped my ankle like a vice, and I tried to remove myself from it by focusing on the stars. The night was deathly quiet, and cold. The sky was deep with stars, like a bowl of diamonds. I smiled, in spite of myself, because it was so beautiful. The pain dissipated a bit. I stood up and the electric shock returned. I sat back down and focused on the ice threads weaving together in puddle near my feet. I smile again, in spite of myself, because they were so beautiful, too. I stood back up and started to hobble. The stars shimmered. The cold air needled into my thin running shirt and tights. It was going to be a long walk back to the trailhead with a sprained ankle.

I didn't know how bad the injury actually was, but initially I assumed the worst. I lost my focus on the stars and ice. I thought only about cold and pain. I thought I had ruined my entire season, right there, on the very first day. What had I done wrong? Did I go out too soon after the 25-hour race? Did I wear the wrong shoes? Did I need a better light? I didn't even trip over anything. There was nothing to trip on. It was a smooth, wide trail. Did I just not know how to run? Was I ever going to learn? After all, I have yet to get through a real run this fall without injuring myself. What in the world was wrong with me? Why did I even want to run in the first place?

My mood was dark this morning. I can't help it. I don't like being hurt. I received a message from my friend Bill, the friend who won the solo division of the 25 Hours of Frog Hollow. It was November 10, a significant date for him, a difficult date, a date that represented loss. My heart ached for him, and everything he's going through right now, and I started to tap out a message of support, when I received a prompting that I had another message.

It was from Ben, the man who took second place in the weekend's race. For 25 hours, Ben and Bill had been engaged in a dance unlike any I had ever witnessed - mirroring each other's moves, surging and attacking, pulsing pain and fire for an entire day and an hour. Just to be the first to find out what lies at the finish line. It was both inspiring and astonishing, to watch two people dig so deep for so long. On the sidelines were me, Bill's often-absent co-racing friend, and Amy, Ben's wife and hardworking support crew. Amy was so sweet to Ben, preparing his bottles, fetching him snacks, catching naps but dutifully waking up every hour to see Ben through the pit. Amy was also five or so months pregnant with her first child, a son. She talked excitedly about the future. They would name him Bodhi Finn, she told me. I told her a friend of mine also just had a son named Finn, and that he too was likely to become a little bike-racing epic adventurer. Ben's determination and athleticism were inspiring, but Amy's love and devotion were even more so. Amy brought the big picture to it all, the reason for it all, that even as we struggle mightily to reach the finish line, there's nothing at the end but each other.

"Jill, I just wanted to say nice blog write up," Ben wrote to me. "I almost lost it with your line about racing and life. We went in for our regular check up yesterday morning and found out that our little boy's heart was no longer beating."

Sometime in the last couple of weeks, Ben and Amy's active little boy managed to kick and move enough to twist his umbilical cord. The hospital induced labor. Bodhi Finn Welnak was born at 2:25 a.m. Wednesday, November 10, at 1 lb. 5.8 oz. He put up a fantastic fight but in the end, he did not make it. Bodhi died November 10, too.

"It's these times when life and racing really do mirror themselves and why I gravitate to long adventures," Ben wrote. "It's like the 15th hour of a 24 hour ... you just don't know how you'll get through it. But, you bear down, jump back on, and keep going. That's just what we will do."

It's these times when my life falls into perspective. I have seen Ben and Amy's strength and love and know it will carry them through this difficult time, but my heart aches for them, and for Bill, and for the unexpected falls in this race of life.