Back to the learning curve

The loose snow churned under my tires as I ground up a nondescript logging road that’s steep in the summer, and practically vertical when smothered in winter powder. Temperatures dropped to eyelash-freezing levels as Bill pedaled behind me. We didn’t say much. I was breathing hard and concentrating harder, and both activities seemed to strain my sore muscles that weren’t exactly making the most of this “rest day.” All I wanted was a relaxing Tuesday night ride, but that was before we pushed our bikes through shin-deep powder on the Kim Williams Trail, pedaled over snow and ice-crusted railroad tracks and then climbed the packed snow on Deer Creek Road, all on a 37-pound Pugsley with a mere 8 psi of air in the wide tires. Finally at our intended destination — the logging road — we discovered the snow was deeper than we anticipated. Bill was struggling to hold my line with his skinny tires. I stopped to catch a breath amid a swirl of frosted air. “Everything is so much harder in the winter, everything,” I said.

The tables turned when we flipped around and worked our way back to the paved Pattee Canyon Road. Bill’s studded tires gripped the thick layer of ice but Pugsley skidded with a terrifying lack of restraint as my numb fingers pumped the brakes and numb butt cheeks clenched into a frozen knot. Halfway down the canyon, we saw Norm out for a hike and agreed to meet for a slice of pizza. We met up at the Bridge, where I shivered until my toes and ears went numb as well, then rode stiffly home. Bill has this habit of GPS’ing rides to gauge his effort, although his Garmin doesn’t measure the impact of snow and ice, which in my opinion makes a much bigger difference than distance and elevation. In three hours we rode 21.4 miles and climbed 2,136 feet in temperatures around 23 degrees. When I was training for the 2006 Sustina 100, a three- or four-hour ride was about the most I ever got myself into, except for a select few "long" weekend efforts. “Since when did three hours of sustained hard effort become a rest day for me?” I wondered.

I think about the 2006 Susitna 100 often these days, probably because I’ve recently been struck through the heart with similar fear, excitement and newness. Racing, for me, is a simple metaphor for life — it’s about living through a seeming lifetime’s worth of pain, joy, frustration, despair, exhilaration, beauty and happiness in the span of a day, or sometimes a week, or sometimes three weeks. Training is practice for life, and it’s a beautiful way to live. There is much to “train” for, because so much in my life is beautiful and rich right now — from these cold white winter days in the snow-drenched mountains of Montana, to spending time with Beat and rediscovering that passion really is amplified when it’s shared. Beat, like me, likes to drink life by the gallon and won’t apologize when others tell him that’s an excessive amount. We don’t waste much time worrying about the broad future that we can’t control anyway, but we do like to scheme and dream about future adventures — and in 2011, for both us, there’s a lot of untread ground.

Wednesday wasn’t a rest day. I penciled in a three-hour run, which seemed a reasonable increase given my base fitness and minimal time I have left to “practice” running before February. I invited Bill, who hasn’t even started his 2011 race training yet and thus can still tag along for strange, slow adventures. We jogged through town and clawed our way up the face of Mount Sentinel, where the snow really became deep. We ran down the other side through the thick powder, sometimes staggering as though we were mired in a bottomless pit of sand. If I shifted my stride to a walk I was able to hold about the same speed as I could running, but the point of the excursion was to run, so I lifted my legs out of the snow with all of the effort my jagged muscles would allow. “If the conditions are like this in the Su, I won’t finish,” I said. “At the same time, I’d be perfectly happy to average 3 mph in the Su.”

Still, Wednesday’s run amounted to 10 miles, not 100. According to Bill’s Garmin, we moved 10.22 miles and climbed 2,262 feet in three hours. Again, Garmin knew nothing of the deep, loose snow, which after the stacked efforts of this week made it my hardest run yet, even compared to the longer runs in Banff. I walked stiffly into my warm house and remembered exactly what it used to feel like, coming home after my 2006 training rides: fatigued, terrified, partially frozen ... and strangely — almost blissfully — content. Whereas Tuesday contained familiar hardships, on Wednesday I was back to new territory. I realize, come what may, this is exactly where I want to be. It’s all a beautiful, grand experiment, just like life.

I see a darkness

Feathers of sunlight escaped a quilt of clouds in the early afternoon. I used my usual half-hour lunch break to wander the streets of downtown Missoula, soaking in a bit of daylight before the clouds closed in and it was time to return to the desk, until 5 p.m., when the sun sets. That's when I planned to go back out for my two-hour run.

"The winter darkness is hitting me harder this year than it did last year," I confessed to a co-worker later in the afternoon.

"How is that?" he asked. "Last year, you lived in Alaska. It's lighter and warmer in Missoula."

"Actually, it's not either," I replied. "Well, I guess there's technically more daylight here. But I don't often see any of it. I go to work just after the sun rises and leave just before it sets. When I lived in Juneau, the sun set at 2:30, which was also about the time I went to work. So I had all of the daylight hours to myself, every single day. I miss that schedule. Whoever decided 9-to-5 should be standard work hours is not a friend of mine."

And the more I think about it, the more I realize how much this work schedule has affected me. At first, going out after sunset had a novelty to it. The trees carved spooky silhouettes, and darkness and moonlight cast familiar trails in new ways. I acquired a fancy new bicycle headlight, a new headlamp, a slew of batteries and red blinkies, and resolved to make the most of my new, dark world. But then the novelty wore off, replaced by a discouraging sameness. I realized there was little more to see than the narrow island of my headlamp beam, and blinking red lights from distant towers on the mountains. I started leaving my camera at home, because there was nothing to photograph. This was a telling gauge of my enthusiasm. Biking — and running — isn't necessarily about exercise or fitness for me, it's my way of exploring the world. When my camera stays at home, so does my motivation. I feel less excited and more fatigued. I look for excuses to turn around. It doesn't bother me that it's 10 degrees out as I run through wafting snow. I genuinely don't mind going out in the cold. What I'm discovering about myself is that I don't necessarily enjoy going out in the dark.

This is actually a big reason I decided to take up running, which involves less prep time, and less overall time for similar fitness benefits. Then I picked an impossible goal like the Susitna 100 to serve as my main motivator. I know I have a long winter in front of me. Perhaps I will grow to love the night, appreciating the tiny details — the mounds of snow, the flecks of ice — as much as I used to relish expansive views and blaze blue sky. Somehow, I doubt it. But I am thankful for healthy legs to carry me through the snow, for an iPod to stave off the creeping boredom, for my boyfriend and Missoula friends who are often willing to keep me company in the dark cold, and for a camera with a self-timer for those occasional creative impulses that allow me replace actual photo opportunities with personal experimentation.

It's all biking and running, and it's all good, even in the winter.

Yanksgiving

An overstuffed Subaru Forester with four adults and only one set of skis attached to the roof rack pulled up to the tiny border crossing in Roosville, Montana. The Canadian border guard stepped into the single-digit cold, collected three American passports and a Swiss passport, and boredly rambled through his routine.

"Where are you from?"

"Um, we're from Kalispell, she's from Missoula, and he's from the Bay area," said Ted, the driver.

"And were are you going?"

"Banff."

"And what is your purpose in Canada?"

"We're going to celebrate Thanksgiving." (Long pause.) "Um, American Thanksgiving."

It sounded suspicious, even to us. We smiled and held our collective breath. The border guard returned our passports and without another question, said, "Welcome to Canada."

And thus began our holiday in Canada that our Canadian friends dubbed "Yanksgiving," because in the Great White North, the harvest holiday is celebrated in October, not the frigid end of November. That didn't stop them from inviting Danni, Ted, Beat and me up for a four-day weekend full of hiking, running, tons of food, running, candy, more food, running, huge 70s-theme disco extravaganza party, food, and plenty of sunshine.

We woke up early Thursday to a daunting blizzard of a Thanksgiving storm. The trip required a 120-mile drive from Missoula to Kalispell in my 1996 Geo Prism with its summer tires and general lack of stamina. Early in the morning, the snow on the road was so thick I couldn't tell pavement from fields from sky. Everything was a monotone gray in the pre-dawn darkness. My abs hurt from being clenched so tight during the four-hour drive, and more than once we came seconds away from just turning around and giving up on the entire weekend. But we kept at the slow crawl north, trading Geo for the Subaru in Kalispell, and by the time we crossed into British Columbia, bright light began to shine through patches of blue sky.

What can I say? Canada loves me. I've been back to this country enough times now that the weather hasn't been fantastic every time, but my ratio of sunshine and nice temperatures is still well above average. Beat had never been to Canada before, so we made a point to stop at Tim Horton's for Thanksgiving "dinner." It was just a regular day at the donut shop in Invermere, with nothing containing turkey on the menu. We made up for it by eating turkey jerky in the car, then headed for a night hike up Sulphur Mountain almost immediately after arriving in Banff.

On Friday morning, Leslie, Beat and I went for a run on the Spray River trail. The Spray River trailhead is the beginning of the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route, and the parking lot is the starting line of the Tour Divide. For all the times I've been to Banff, I actually haven't been back to the Spray River trail since June 2009. It was fun to return to the familiar scenery, now drenched in snow and winter light.

The Spray River trail itself was quite soft, which made for a surprisingly strenuous 11K run, on top of another 6K or so we did in town and around the nearby woods. (Note to skiers: Yes, this is a multi-use trail.) I felt like I was working harder for less speed than the night before, when we gained 2,500 feet in 5 kilometers, also on snow. It was a revealing run — both that winter training should emphasize time on feet, not mileage, and that trail conditions will actually have to be pretty good for me to have a chance of finishing the Su100 on foot.

Keith ("my TransRockies partner"), Beat, Leslie and I went for a tour of downtown, including a trip to a specialty wine store where Beat and I disinterestedly paced around the periphery, and an international candy shop where we greedily purchased at least 20,000 calories of sugar.

On Friday night, the Canadians came over for Yanksgiving dinner, which Leslie graciously cooked in its near entirety: An whole turkey, yams, scalloped potatoes, Brussels sprouts, rainbow vegetables, corn, cranberry sauce, and fruit crumble.

On Saturday we got outside for a big effort, and Banff handed us a perfect bluebird day. First stop was Sulphur Mountain.

Looking out over Banff and the Bow River Valley. That little mound in the center of the picture was to be our next stop — Tunnel Mountain.

Beautiful country in the summer and winter. I figured out I've visited Banff a surprising seven times since my first stop in June 2009. I often visit the same trails, and I still can't get enough of them.

Leslie and her friend Iris stand on top of Sulphur, trying to stay warm. I felt like a bit of an impostor among all of the real runners.

Here is a view of the Bow River Valley from the top of Tunnel Mountain. I'm not sure about the total distance we did, but it was about 4,000 feet of climbing and descending, mostly on packed snow trails, in just over four hours (with some tourist sightseeing on top of Sulphur.) The temperatures all weekend were seasonable, with highs near -8C and lows around -17C. My left foot hurt afterward, probably from running with an ankle brace, but it was my longest run yet and I think it went well.

Saturday night offered the overall purpose of the journey, which was not, in fact, to celebrate an American holiday, but to celebrate several milestones (a 40th birthday, 20th anniversary, and nursing school graduation) with our friends Dave and Brenda. They threw a huge '70s-themed party up at a ski resort. I didn't bring a costume and so I had to cobble together something that ended up being more of an '80s ski bunny look. What you can't see in the photo are my white moon boots, which were the best part of the costume by far. We ate cupcakes and danced into the night, and my ski bunny outfit was perfect for walking the mile-plus home from the bus stop. Fun weekend. I'm always thankful to visit my "home" in Banff.