The waiting game

We arrived in San Diego on Friday morning and immediately launched into the pre-race rituals of eating, buying more supplies that are likely unnecessary, eating, fretting, driving around, going to a pre-race meeting, eating, staring blankly out the window, and eating. I'm here with four friends who are actually running the San Diego 100, so despite my crew status, I've been going through the motions as well, including the eating. It's 10 a.m. and I've already had two breakfasts, with a third on a plate just waiting for my stomach to clear a little space. I may or may not end up pacing 50 miles starting this evening. For now, all I can do is wait, and kill a little time. I actually enjoy having mandatory time to kill, allowing for guiltless reading of blogs, napping, reading magazines, and eating ... it may not seem like I have too many responsibilities, but true boredom is not something I indulge in very often.

I grabbed a quick picture of my friends Martina, Steve and Beat just minutes before the 7 a.m. start of the race. This photo nicely captures the mood of the morning. Martina is the woman I'm supposed to pace starting at mile 51.3, sometime this evening. The outlook that I'll have an opportunity to do this is not overwhelmingly positive right now, as you can probably discern from the look on her face. She's not feeling too much optimism about the prospect of her first 100-mile finish here. As for Steve, this will be his third 100-mile run this year, and I think he has a kind of "wait ... why am I here again?" look on his face. Beat's in for his fourth 100-miler of 2011, his fifth at the San Diego 100, and I think 30th or more over his ultrarunning career. So Beat is geared up for the simple pleasures of a known challenge - emerging from coastal fog, high ridgeline views, the desert at midnight and Haribo Fizzy Colas. If Martina drops out early I'd like to catch up to Beat somewhere farther down the trail and join in on the fun.

I'm thrilled just to be here, on a high ridge of the Laguna Mountains just a few miles north of the Mexican border. It's an impressively gorgeous region, where cool coastal fog creeps around the rugged slopes of desert mountains. I want to run here; I want to run 100 miles here, but it's not my time for that. For now all I can do is wait, and sit on this bench overlooking the Anza-Borrego Desert in the pleasantly warm June sunshine, and be happy that today, I get to wait here.

100-mile stare

I still vividly remember the first time I interacted with a runner in the midst of a 100-mile trail run. It was July 2007, on a rock-strewn trail just below Resurrection Pass on the Kenai Peninsula in Alaska. My ex, Geoff, was running the 50-mile version of the Resurrection Pass 100. I borrowed a mountain bike from a friend and planned to shadow Geoff's trail and cheer him on when I passed. Of course, I made the mistake of leaving about a 45 miles after the race started, so of course I never caught up to him (this is before I realized that I on a mountain bike had no chance of moving faster than Geoff Roes on foot, even in a self-supported 50-mile run.) It rained buckets all day long, until the muddy, rocky singletrack wore the borrowed bike's rim brakes to metal and I had to walk most of the descents. I was walking my bike down one of the last steep sections of trail when I passed a woman bathed in chocolate-colored mud and walking with a pronounced limp.

The organizers of the unofficial race started the 100-miler at about 3 p.m. the afternoon before in an effort to wrap up the 100-mile and 50-mile race at about the same time. This woman had been racing for nearly 24 hours and still had about 16 or 17 more miles to go. She wasn't moving much faster than 3 mph, maybe 2, downhill, and her stilted body language spoke to an intense difficulty in each step. At the time, that kind of effort was nearly impossible for me to comprehend.

The Resurrection Pass 100 had only two aid stations, one at mile 44 and another at 88. The cruelest part of the 88-mile checkpoint was that it was also the finish. Racers had to leave from that checkpoint and run another six miles uphill on a steep gravel road, and then turn around to wrap up the 100. More than a few competitors, unable to face the psychological Everest of the spur, have called it quits at mile 88. I would even meet another woman a couple more miles down the trail who swore it was her plan to do exactly that. I just assumed that was the fate that awaited this obviously suffering runner.

"Wow, this is a full-on mud trap," I said as I passed, trying to inject just a bit of humor into the situation since I was walking a mountain bike downhill and we were both caked in grime. And even though I already knew the answer, I asked, "Are you in the 50-mile race or the 100?"

"The 100," she said in a raspy voice.

"How are you feeling?"

"My calves are shot," she replied. "Feet are painful. I'm wiping out a lot."

My brakes are shot," I said. "I'll probably have to walk most of the way back to Hope."

She looked at me with this bloodshot, memorably intense look of determination in her eyes. "Rather be you than me," she said. "But I'm going to finish this. Even if it takes me all night."

I nodded. "Great race. Good luck."

"Good luck," she replied.

I never did learn whether or not the woman finished the race. But I believe she did, and even though I never learned her name, she lingers in my memory as the kind of "hard woman" that I admire and seek to emulate. I still think of the look in her eyes when I encounter moments of weakness and pain, and it really has made a difference in my outlook over the years.

I've since had a few of my own "100-mile-stare" experiences, both on the outside and inside-looking-in. Few "single-day" endurance efforts fascinate me more than a 100-mile run. I'm really looking forward to traveling to San Diego this weekend, meeting some of the 150 runners signed up for this endeavor, and shadowing the race myself as a pacer. Despite recent injuries, my friend Martina has decided to start the race after all. The original plan was for me to pace her, and I still hope to do so if she pushes beyond mile 50. Whereas for Beat the SD100 is almost a longer "training run," it's a truly unique experience for Martina, and pacing her — if the opportunity arises — may just provide a wholly new education in determination.

The Tour Divide also starts this weekend, Friday morning to be exact. I won't really have a chance to follow the progress of the race at all until Monday, but it will be interesting to see where the starting field of 70 southbound and 15 northbound riders are strung along the course three days into the race. It's a unique year because of flooding and record snowpack in the Rockies. Significant sections of the course have been rerouted, but the riders are still likely to encounter plenty of swollen streams and snow fields. And despite the re-route, there's still a good chance my overall women's course record will fall this year. Cricket Butler, now a two-time veteran of the Tour Divide, delayed her start to June 30 and as far as I understand it, plans to ride the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route in its entirety. Cricket beat me handily in every single stage of TransRockies last summer, so I know she's a better mountain biker than me. I'll be cheering her on especially starting June 30, but I wish all of riders the best of luck and an amazing experience.

I'm just wrapping up the final proof on my own Tour Divide story and hope to have the paperback ready to distribute by next week. I've received some interesting feedback from readers so far, several of whom either know me personally or are directly involved with Tour Divide racing. To make a sweeping generalization, the women I've heard from have been almost overwhelmingly positive, while men seem to have a more reserved viewpoint on the book, using terms such as "brutally honest" and sometimes an outright "too personal." This book is quite personal, and I admit probably more than a little uncomfortable at times. It's a book about coping with what emotionally amounted to a divorce as much as it's a book about racing a mountain bike 2,700 miles.

In the name of full disclosure, I probably should have titled the book "How to Ride the Tour Divide When You're Kind of an Emotional Wreck." After I wrote up the first draft, I went through a range of outlooks about this book, from deciding I would never publish it to trying to re-write the entire thing so I could gloss over the personal stuff. In the end, I decided it was important to my integrity as an artist to maintain a raw kind of honesty, because ultimately that was the truth of the experience. The 2009 Tour Divide happened during an unsettled and upsetting chapter in my life, and my reactions, and the way I interacted with others — including my ex-boyfriend and fellow racers — weren't always admirable or fair. I've since adjusted my outlook and have an amicable relationship with Geoff — in fact, I'm really, really excited for this year's Western States 100 — but the period of time I captured in my book is, amid scenes of overwhelming beauty, sometimes ugly.

So there you have it. I hope you'll still read the book and share your honest opinions with me. Writing, just like endurance racing, is an endless learning process.

Also, for kicks, I recently distributed a few "lender" copies at a bibliophile Web site called LibraryThing to get reactions from readers who had never heard of the Tour Divide and probably had little interest in endurance racing. So far I've already received a few short reviews. You can read them here.

If you want to read along during the Tour Divide but don't have an e-Reader, you can purchase a PDF of the book that will work on any computer with Adobe Reader or other PDF viewer program at a 20-percent discount — $7.16 — for the duration of the race at this link. You can click on the "preview" link below the book cover to preview the first 20 pages. Signed paperbacks will be available for $15.95 plus shipping within the next week or two.

Slow and steady

The day after the Canyon Meadow 50K, Beat and I went out for a long mountain bike ride. I call it long because, to most people, a 26-mile mountain bike ride with 3,300 feet of climbing is on the moderate to long side. When just went out for the fun of it; Beat wanted to ride the Fatback because it's been a while since the Fatback's been out, and also because we expected to run into mud from the weekend's heavy rain.

I was feeling slightly sluggish and had some residual tightness in my hamstrings from the race, but my Garmin stats showed a similar heart rate and speed, proving that, for the most part, a 31-mile run doesn't even force me to skip a beat these days. I like that about my fitness and also my general pacing. A 50K doesn't shut me down because, to put it simply, I don't run fast. Of course, "fast" is all relative, even when I just compare myself against myself. I do run fast compared to what I could do a year ago, but slow compared to what I'm likely capable of.

There's an age-old dynamic in there that I still struggle with. Of course a side of me wants to be "fast." That side will be thrilled if I start to get my 50K finishing times under six hours or collect a few mugs at more competitive local races. That side of me might even be tempted to sign up for a road marathon just so I can see where I fit in with the grand scheme of "running." But as I become more entrenched in my outdoor-seeking lifestyle, I become less interested in seeking the outer limits of my speed abilities. Why? Because, in my experience, the pursuit of speed skirts an edge that can easily lead to injury, burnout, and a frightening lack of outside time. But the pursuit of consistency has led to a condition where I can go for a fun six-hour run in the mud one day, and an exhilarating three-hour mountain bike ride the next, without issue. Who knows what kind of couch-bound pain I might frequently find myself in if I tried to run as fast as I could, all of the time?

We all have our rewards. But it's true, for someone who claims not to really care about results, I participate in a lot of races. Both of my memoirs are about racing. And I've structured the entire first half of my summer around a race, the Tahoe Rim Trail 100. The contradictions I see in myself have sparked a new nonfiction project idea that I'm starting to research — an article about the ways racing, specifically endurance racing, has become synonymous with adventure, and vice versa.

This project started when I began looking into the history of the Alaska Wilderness Classic, arguably the original "adventure race" and still one of the most difficult races you've never heard of. For the people who organized this race back in the early 1980s, it wasn't enough to cross 200 miles of undeveloped, sometimes uncharted Alaska wilderness using any human-powered means they could. They wanted to do it as fast as they possibly could, and to record who could do it the fastest. Why? What drives them? And how do they compare to the motivations of those lining up for the Tahoe Rim Trail 100, or the Tour Divide, or the Canyon Meadow 50K in monsoon rains for that matter? It's a rather vague question to ask but I think researching it could reveal more than a few interesting profiles and stories, and maybe even larger insight into the modern condition. That's always the hope. But this is just one project I've started to outline, among several.

Meanwhile, Beat and I are gearing up to head down to San Diego for the San Diego 100 this weekend. Beat is entered in the race and I'm planning to pace either him or our friend Martina for the last 50 miles, hopefully. The San Diego 100 is considered to be more of a "runner's race," which means even as half of a 100-miler, I'll still likely have to cover this distance considerably faster than I have yet, during the last half of the Bear 100 and the whole Susitna 100. And honestly, my role is actually less of a "pacer" and more of a "protegee" trying to learn about the ins and outs of a trail 100-miler. So my goal is just to keep up, learn tons, and go into Tahoe Rim Trail that much stronger, mentally. Because, ultimately, when it comes to my racing, mental strength is what I'm seeking. That's my motivation, and reward.