Links to the other side of the world

Beat put me on a mandatory absolute taper after I complained of *slightly* sore knees during our ride on Sunday (hardly my fault. I believe it was Beat who coaxed me into powering that hog of a Fatback up 2,500 feet of hill.) Complete rest is working out for the best anyway as I've plunged into a whirlpool of things to do, including calling practically every pharmacy in Santa Clara County in search of a backordered typhoid vaccine.

And suddenly it's here. Late Tuesday night we leave for Nepal. There's about 36 hours of travel in there, but eventually, theoretically, we will end up in Nepal. Until two months ago I had never even ventured outside of North America and now I'm traveling to a region that is geographically and culturally unlike anything I've ever experienced. It's been a perspective-changing year of adventure for me, and this one is the largest of all.

The race Beat and I will be participating in begins November 20. The route covers 155 miles and 30,000 feet of climbing in the foothills of the Annapurna Range in six stages. There are more than 200 competitors. Beat has placed in the top 10 in past Racing the Planet events. We are not planning on running together. In fact, my plan is to save my knees and satiate my camera's memory card by largely power-hiking through the stages, which average about 25 miles each. I'll save the hurrying for less sensory-overloading adventures. But, if you're interested, you can follow my progress at these links:

Follow the latest news and results of Racing the Planet Nepal:
Event Web site
Daily stage updates
Daily results
Stage photos
Breaking news

There is a fair chance that I will have little to no Internet access during the next three weeks, so this blog will have to go on a mandatory taper itself (although I'm confident the post-Nepal deluge will more than make up for it.) In the meantime, the holidays are coming up. If you have someone on your list who is into cycling, adventure, or reading about cycling adventures, consider giving them one of my books. Both are discounted for the holidays and will be available for shipping after I return around the first week of December. "Be Brave, Be Strong" is the story of my attempt to ride as fast as I could down the spine of the continent in the 2009 Tour Divide. Since I released the book in June, it has received a number of positive reviews, and promises hours of entertainment during the long winter months. (The other one, "Ghost Trails" is about winter adventure on the Iditarod Trail in Alaska.)

Order signed copies of "Be Brave, Be Strong" for $12.95 each at this link. The books will be shipped with a personal message to the address of your choice after Dec. 10.

Signed copies of "Ghost Trails" are available for $14.95 and the two books together are $25.95. Priority shipping is $4.95 for up to three books.

And, if you don't want to wait for early December shipping, you can order from Amazon at this link.

Or, if you have a brand new e-reader on your Christmas list, you can order copies of the eBook at these links. The Kindle versions include photos for only $4.99. The iPad and Nook versions are discounted to $2.99.
"Be Brave, Be Strong" for Kindle
"Ghost Trails" for Kindle
"Be Brave, Be Strong" on iTunes and B & N Nook
"Ghost Trails" on iTunes and B & N Nook

Three adventures and a wedding

A deeper exhaustion was setting in, the kind that seems to trickle through my veins like chain lube on a cold morning. Even simple tasks lagged beneath a slow drip of energy. Tiredness like this doesn't happen in an explosive burnout; rather, it seeps in through the cracks, the bike racing and the hiking, the sleep deprivation and the shivering, the calorie deficits and traveling, always moving. Bill, Mo and I didn't arrive in Draper until late Tuesday evening, and then there was lots to do — laundry and unpacking, hanging up wet camping gear, shower and important e-mails, dinner in there somewhere. My dad pointed to a pair of snowshoes and poles he had borrowed from his friend. "We can go hiking in the morning, if you want," he said.

I stayed up way too late writing a blog entry, which, like a diary, I use as an outlet for images and thoughts that I sometimes just have to get out of my system before I can sleep. But 8 a.m. came awful early. Maybe I haven't adjusted to Mountain Time yet. Then I remembered, Daylight Savings Time already took care of that. The extra hour hardly helped my cause; I was either racing a bike or vomiting. Either way, that hour took place a long time ago, or at least felt that way, and time's slow trickle only added to my feelings of sluggishness. But cutting tracks up the snow-blanketed Wasatch Mountains is just not something I can do anytime I please, especially with my dad. I loaded the borrowed gear into his truck. We drove to the Red Pine trailhead, which was completely empty despite the bluebird morning, and started hiking through a foot of fresh powder. Dumped by a big weekend storm, it was the first major snowfall of the winter. We were tromping down the season's base.

The air was a brisk 25 degrees or so, but the reflections of the sun and muscle burn of powder stomping soon brought my energy levels back to normal. I've long believed that all it takes for me to snap out of slug mode is a good, hard climb — at least until the endorphins wear off. Regardless, I was really enjoying myself. My dad, who is about to enter his first full season of winter hiking, only recently discovered the joys of the snow slog. Breaking trail in deep snow requires the effort of three to four miles to travel one — of this I am convinced — and no other numbers really matter. Two and a half hours of hard stomping brought us four miles and 3,000 feet of elevation gain to the frozen shoreline of Upper Red Pine Lake — altitude 10,200.

"Wow, feels high up here," I said to my dad, although the moderate altitude really just seemed like an convenient excuse. I felt tired as would if I had run twelve or sixteen miles, although I acknowledge that my tiredness was more cumulative than a reflection of the difficulty of the hike. After all, my dad felt fine. We examined the route to the upper ridge and debated climbing there. Excitement prevailed, and I really wanted to go. However, the conditions on the upper slope were discouraging. There was too little snow over the boulders to travel with the snowshoes, but too much to simply hike and not risk a bad ankle or knee injury. We agreed that Upper Red Pine Lake was a great final destination, and loped back down the trail as my exhaustion settled in like a peaceful blanket.

I vowed to rest over the next two days, but I think anyone who as been part of a close relative's wedding understands how that didn't really happen. I started to wonder if I had dug a hole I wouldn't be able to crawl out of before Nepal, but in the same breath, I wasn't really that concerned. There was no acute strain, and no pain — just peaceful, almost blissful fatigue. Evolution gave us all the ability to walk for five days straight, and modern culture gave us the ability to choose not to. The more I experiment with endurance sports, the more I believe endurance is a matter of choices more than physical abilities or exceptional talent. I decided to choose to not be tired, and hauled some more heavy boxes across the parking lot while wearing a bridesmaid dress and stiff shoes. Here I am with my sister, Lisa, who is a full-time, swing-shift nurse and the mother of an extremely active 20-month-old. Compared to her, my own claims to tiredness are pathetic excuses.

And it was a fantastic experience to see my sister Sara and her new husband Spencer so happy. It was also fun to visit with people who I haven't seen in 15 years. Now my baby sister's all growed up, sniff. And yes, I will purposefully rest as much as I can in the week I have remaining before Racing the Planet Nepal begins. My three Utah adventures and being a part of Sara's wedding were more than worth the withdrawals I had to make from my energy bank, and the deficit won't last long. I'm back in Cali now, meeting Beat's new hexapod robot (yeah, there's a funny story; boys and their toys). I'm also unpacking, packing, back to running (six miles today, felt great), nervous, excited, loving the adventure of life.

Recovery in Zion

My earliest memories of the outdoors — well, beyond a kiddie pool in the grass and Texas fire ants — take place in Zion National Park. There is something about evening light on towering cliffs in the Court of the Patriarchs that inspires a bewildered and lasting kind of awe, even in a six-year-old. I love this place. I sought it out frequently as a teenager and once crossed the entire park from north to south as a twenty-year-old backpacker. I still get back as often as I can, preferably in the late fall, after the crowds have gone and the canyon has erupted in a palette of primary colors — red rocks, yellow leaves and blue sky.

Bill had never visited Zion before, so I convinced him to take a couple of days after the 25 hours of Frog Hollow to explore the park. "Call it active recovery," I said with a wry grin. The three of us hadn't slept at all on Saturday night, I rode a mountain bike 169 miles and Bill cranked out an unfathomable 260. Really, what we should have done was found the nearest bed and collapsed for three days, but we convinced ourselves that five hours of leisurely hiking would work just as well.

Our first active recovery adventure was the Angel's Landing trail, where a blaze of fall colors lined the cliffs. Bill brought his big DSLR camera and the hikes involved a stop every three minutes or so to capture the moment. As evidenced by this blog post, I was pretty camera happy myself. And if you've ever been on a hike with three camera-crazed people, you'll understand how slow, stop-and-go hiking can sometimes be even more exhausting than running. But the scenery was incredible.

Angel's Landing is an impressive example of extreme trail engineering. These are the "switchbacks" that allow people to amble up what used to be a cliff.

Then come the chains that aid people across a narrow sandstone fin and actual cliffs. Bill and I were both struggling quite a bit on this section — blame sore quads, numb fingers and weakened legs. At one point I got down in a squat and wasn't sure I could lift myself back up. Bill also wasn't a huge fan of the exposure. But wow, what a view.

There was a dusting of new snow in the higher elevations. That and the diminishing clouds made for a dramatic skyline.

Gazing over the 1,500-foot sheer drop to the valley below, while feeling proud of ourselves for managing a 1,500-foot climb one day after a 25-hour race.

Bill learns how Angel's Landing earned its name.

Bill, Mo and I gather for a group portrait at the top.

Somebody built a snowman with the last of the melting snow at the top. His face seems to convey a kind of existential crisis.

Working our way back down the chains. Again, the sore quads were not happy.

We arrived at the bottom of the canyon and started up the Emerald Pools trail. I haven't even been there since I was a child (if you've ever visited Zion's during the peak tourism months, you'll understand why.) But it was a treat to go in the fall.

Surprising how difficult four miles with about 400 feet of climbing can feel. But wow, worth it.

We spent the night at the national park campground, trying to use our still-somewhat-wet Frog Hollow gear to stay warm. We built a fire and sipped chili-pepper-laced hot chocolate, then retreated to our tents as overnight temperatures dropped into the low 20s. I woke up several times in the night thanks to restless leg syndrome, and went for moonlight walks to calm down my twitching muscles as I sipped water to quell a ragged cough.

The silver moonlight on the cliffs was stunning. But by 7 a.m. I felt fully spent rather than rested, and still had to make my way through the morning as Bill and Mo got a slow start. Keeping yourself warm can be surprisingly strenuous if you don't have much energy to begin with. I walked and packed up and ate breakfast and walked some more as my core temperature just continued to dip lower and lower. In its own way, my shivering morning at the campground felt like as much of an endurance test as Frog Hollow itself.

But most of that was forgotten as the bluebird day revealed itself. We vehicle-toured the eastern side of the park and managed one hike on the Canyon Overlook Trail — two miles round trip with a short nap on the ledge. Still wrapped in my down coat, wool socks and mittens at 50 degrees, I pulled my hat over my face and basked in the sun as the chill finally started to melt away from my core.

It was a beautiful, if not perfect, way to recover from Frog Hollow.