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.
The sport of ultrarunning incorporates a particularly unique practice that participants refer to as "pacing." I can't think of a single other sport where an individual athlete recruits another runner, usually a volunteer or friend but sometimes paid, to shadow them on the course for a fair portion of the race and provide what basically amounts to emotional support. Physical support is discouraged and "muling" (carrying of any supplies) and short-roping are outright forbidden. A pacer can help with navigation (no, [insert fatigued runner's name here], that's a yellow ribbon, we go right. Yes, the ribbons were always yellow.) Depending on the runner, a pacer can also play the role of a relentless drill sergeant (What? Your feet hurt? Well you better start crying, because your feet are going to hurt a whole lot more if you don't pick up the pace soon), or soothing caretaker (I promise it's only three more miles to the next aid station. How many to the finish? Um ... not many more.) A pacer can also provide a voice of reason amid the pain and delusion (Yes, last I checked there were no reports of pink rabbits around here.) But what do pacers actually do? Why is pacing so popular, even among top competitors? And what's in it for the pacer, really? Half the work and none of the glory. The common motivations for pacing in ultrarunning still elude me.
I personally approve of pacing, for the very reason that it allows an opportunity to enjoy all of the camaraderie and scenery of a particular race without the responsibility or competition. Race pacing holds a special place in my heart because that's essentially how Beat and I, in our own strange and elusive styles, coerced each other into a first date. Shadowing Beat for 50 miles of the Bear 100 last September was a fantastic and memorable experience, and similar to other couples who enjoy revisiting the location of their honeymoon, I like to believe we can recreate the magic.
The San Diego 100 is held in the Laguna Mountains about 35 miles east of San Diego. It's an intriguing region, with conifer-studded mountain tops, wildflowers and green coastal shrubs on the west side, and the stunningly barren Anza Borrego Desert to the east. Just before the morning of the race, a thick layer of marine fog drifted in from the coast. It burned off to reveal a brilliant blue sky before the 7 a.m. start, but not before trapping an air mass that kept the higher elevations unseasonably cool while hot desert air gathered below. I watched Beat and our friends Harry, Steve and Martina start, the set to whittling away the morning with lots of breakfasts and blogging. The race checkpoints were all on the higher ridges, so I sat and shivered in my fleece jacket while my friends withered in the oppressive heat on the trail. Martina, the friend I was originally set to pace, developed stomach issues at mile 13. She battled on but unfortunately timed out at mile 31. Steve slumped into the 44-mile checkpoint with white streaks of salt across his shirt and a palpable expression of distress on his red face. He told me the heat was annihilating the runners and he could no longer take in food or water. He admitted to obsessively fantasizing about the extreme cold of the Susitna 100. Beat looked a little better for the wear after a volunteer gave him two Popsicles, but I drove toward the mile 51 checkpoint expecting carnage.
The moment was so similar to the way I remembered it, the way it was in September. The sun drifted below a nearby hillside and orange light spread across the horizon. Cool air settled as the breeze began to dissipate. I wasn't quite prepared because I had only just arrived at the race's halfway mark, and was still sitting in my vehicle when I noticed Beat's distinct grin and blue Skinfit shirt weaving through a crowd of spectators and volunteers. I nervously approached him and received the same playfully stern look. "Well, are you running?" Of course. That was the plan, even if it wasn't always the plan. I shouldered my hydration pack and grinned. This wasn't the Bear 100 anymore; I wasn't a beginner anymore, with ultrarunning or with Beat. We set out together into the expanding evening.
I really do love running overnight. The world closes in and hours drift away. Focus narrows tightly and opens to new and unexpected spaces, sometimes at the same time. The overnight trek is one of the best reasons to run a 100-miler, and, in my opinion, the best half of one. Beat had weathered the heat of the day fairly well, but the rocky desert trail had chewed up his feet, literally. We jogged the flatter portions of singletrack — this was difficult for even me due to the technical nature of the course — and kept a brisk walking pace on the climbs. Walking with Beat proved surprisingly difficult for me as well. For the first time since we started training together, I really noticed how much faster Beat's walking stride is compared to mine. Have you ever followed someone who walks faster than you down a street? You wonder, "Why is this person walking so fast?" as you lengthen your stride and quicken your feet to keep up with them. The motion not only feels unnatural, it's strangely more fatiguing to lesser trained muscles than running. Now, imagine doing this for several dozen miles.
But, as pacer, it was my job to maintain Beat's speed, and give him sweaty kisses when he said something funny or sweet. As the hours trickled toward early morning, the heat of the daytime swung extremely and rapidly in the other direction. I had looked at a local weather forecast that called for a low of 40 degrees, so I was prepared with the same clothing that I used in the Susitna 100 (minus heavy socks, down coat and shells), and by 2 a.m., I was wearing all of it, including mittens. Breath condensed thickly in the air and our Stroopwafels developed a nearly frozen consistency. The strange inversion kept the higher elevations relatively temperate at 45 degrees or so, but temperatures in the lower-lying regions near creeks easily dropped into the mid-30s. One crewperson I spoke to swore she noticed ice buildup in standing water bottles, although I doubt the temperature dropped below freezing. Still, for the runners, it was an insufferable change from 90 degrees earlier in the day. Steve caught up to us and admitted he was no longer fantasizing about the Susitna 100. His gloved fingers were so cold he was reduced to shoving them down his pants, prompting more jokes from our frozen tundra days. For me, properly dressed and relatively fresh, it was all good fun. But for the runners still reeling from earlier heat sickness, it was added insult to injury.
But, as it does in the best moments of real life, the sun always comes up for long-suffering ultrarunners. We left the mile 80 aid station and started along a particularly stunning section of the Pacific Crest Trail just as the night sky gave way to a spectacular strip of crimson red light over the desert horizon. Despite staying awake all day and night and traveling 30 miles, I didn't feel all that much physical fatigue, but my left foot had developed a pain that was transitioning from "annoying" to "semi-crippling." It's a burning, highly sensitive sort of pain on the lower outside of my foot; as best as I can determine, the pain is highly localized in either the lateral plantar fascia or connecting tissues surrounding it. I call it "hurty foot" because it feels like a bad bruise but doesn't seem to have the lingering effects of full-on plantar fasciitis. Of course, I always worry that it might develop into such.
I've only developed the full extent of this pain three times, all during 100-mile races. The last time it flared up was at mile 70 of the Susitna 100. Beat, like any good pacer would, helped talk me down from extreme grumpiness and the pain eventually numbed a bit. It didn't seem to produce any long-term damage. The time before that was at my mile 40 of the Bear 100. Beat stuck it out with me with me as my hobbling speeds slowed to 2 mph or less, and ended up finishing the race at least two hours later than he likely would have. This time, I didn't want Beat to take another time penalty on account of a broken pacer. Although I was loving our "date" and anxious to see the last 13 miles of the course, I had been reduced to moving too slowly to travel with Beat. I had to drop at the next checkpoint, my mile 37.
Beat went on to finish the San Diego 100 in 27:18:35, about 30 or 40 minutes after Harry. The sun brought back Steve's stomach problems and he finished in 27:27:27. As for my hurty foot, I do think there's the good chance it's the result of the unusual motion of strenuous walking over long distances, given that it hasn't cropped up at all during any of my more runnable 50Ks. I will have to stay wary of it ahead of the Tahoe Rim Trail 100, and probably should engage in nightly frozen water bottle rolling exercises. But overall it was a fantastic pacing date. Even though I still don't entirely understand the purpose of pacing, I hope I have a chance to redeem myself as one, someday.
