The toughest miles

"I can't do this," Beat's voice crackled across the satellite connection. "It's not possible."

"It doesn't matter," I said. "Look what you've done already. You're amazing. All you need to do is get to Luce's Lodge. Get some rest, get some sleep. Sleep for a day if you want. All you have to do is get to Luce's."

I hung up my cell phone and stared hatefully at the snow flurries floating outside my window. The Iditarod Trail was a relative breeze just one week ago when I traveled these same miles in the Susitna 100. Now it was buried in more than a foot of new, unconsolidated snow, and not a single machine had been through to break the trail. The runners were breaking the trail, at a pace of about 1.5 mph, and the bikers were still farther behind. They had covered only forty miles in 24 nearly non-stop hours. At that pace, Beat was right — it wasn't possible. 

Geoff and Beat analyze Geoff's Iditarod sled. 

The race began so optimistically, under an overcast sky and 28 degrees on Knik Lake. Runners and bikers fluttered around and observed everyone else's gear. I spent much of the pre-race hour chatting with Geoff and Beat. One might think such a situation would be awkward, given I haven't seen Geoff since August 2010. But in the preoccupation of the moment, it was all an infectious mixture of anticipation and anxiety. At 2 p.m. Sunday, 47 racers embarked on their respective 350-mile or 1,000-mile journeys. The bikes took off toward the packed road and the runners formed a line across the lake toward the Iditarod Trail. We spectators waved and watched with admiration and, at least some of us, envy.


I felt frustrated about how demoralized Beat was when he called me at 1 p.m. Monday, because there was nothing I could say to boost his spirits. I couldn't promise that snowmachine traffic would come to save him from the wallow, and I couldn't lie away the fact there was more snow in the forecast. These aren't supposed to be the tough miles of the Iditarod; they're supposed to be the warm up. The tough miles of the Iditarod come later, over the mountains, across the deep-frozen Interior, into the unknown. I been holed up at a computer, waiting for news all morning. But I didn't want to dwell on my frustration. I packed up my gear and snowshoes and set out toward Lazy Mountain.

Beat and David Johnston model their individual race fashion.

Beat acquired the satellite phone one day before the race, mainly because he's a gear geek who can't resist a chance to use intriguing technology. I admitted that I'd love to hear from him during the race, but I certainly didn't expect it. I know how it can be out there. The outside world truly becomes another world. The first text came at 4:26 a.m. Monday: "bivy wall of death w/ anne, geoff, david and more. we're lead group breaking trail. overtook pete. Then "miss you, love you. not sure can be finished."

I received the first call just after 9 a.m. "I'm still on the Sustina River," Beat said, meaning he had traveled about thirty miles since 2 p.m. the day before with only about two hours rest. "We're taking turns breaking trail," Beat told me of the group of runners he was traveling with. "When I'm out front, I'm leading the race. All of the bikers are behind us now." I was floored by this news, because I slept through the text and had no idea trail conditions had gotten so bad. There was no trail. They might as well have been cutting a path across a remote wilderness, plodding through bottomless powder like turn-of-the-century polar explorers.


The packed surface of the Lazy Mountain trail was so icy that every step forward in my snowshoes netted two skids back. I should have packed crampons. I stepped over into the deep powder beside the trail and began the slow plod up the steep slope. Every step was an ordeal; I sunk to my knees down to an icy base, so the footing was both slippery and strenuous. The low ceiling of clouds grew closer, and I knew that soon all I'd see were shapeless shades of gray.

Out of the gate at Knik Lake.

Beat sounded so discouraged when he called at 1 p.m. Progress was almost nonexistent; he estimated he had traveled six or seven miles in the four hours since we last spoke. He had been struggling with every ounce of strength for a standstill. The temperature was above freezing and he was wet, and growing cold. He had fallen behind the lead group because his sled wasn't performing well in the deep snow. It kept tipping over and dragging like a flat tire through the wet powder. "Who knew I'd wish I used a toboggan?" he said. I felt guilty because I too pushed for skis over a plastic sled. The sled performed flawlessly in the Sustina 100, but it wasn't designed for unconsolidated snow.

"Just take it easy," I urged. "Go slow, take breaks. You have nothing to gain by pushing hard."

"I have to push hard to to go forward," Beat said. "I don't have a choice."

I couldn't help but sigh. "Yes, I know," I said. "I understand. I do understand."


As the fog grew thicker, visibility decreased to a few bleak twigs among the snow. I was drenched in sweat despite wearing only a single layer, and my poles stabbed uselessly at the powder. I was beginning to resent my Lazy Mountain hike, but for my own reasons of coping with a situation I couldn't help, I felt obligated to keep at it. I was compelled to join the slog and show my solidarity for all 47 racers in the Iditarod Trail Invitational who had yet to even see the first checkpoint.

Those who have never traveled long distances in bad snow conditions can't really understand how incredibly frustrating and difficult it is. It's the definition of futility, fighting a useless war with no end in sight. Climbing a mountain, well, that was easy. At least I had the top to look forward to. Beat only had the knowledge that there was no way he could maintain this level of effort, and no way he could finish the race at his current pace. He had no reason to believe that would change.

I reached a wind-swept saddle and decided this would have to be the place I turned around. The snow was too crusty to register tracks, and I couldn't risk forging my own trail in light that was so disorientingly flat. I was as likely to step off a cornice and plummet down a 70-degree slope as I was to follow the proper ridge. But as I stood at a rock outcropping shooting photos, I noticed the muted glare of the sun breaking through the clouds. When I looked up, I saw streaks of blue amid the gray. "Maybe I can get above this," I thought. As long as I could see rocks to help me gain my bearings, I decided it was worth a try.

Facing the long path ahead.

A 6:10 p.m. text brought a new injection of hope: "big meal at Luce's. now Yentna with Shawn."Beat had not only made it to Luce's Lodge, he was planning to continue up the river. It didn't necessarily mean trailbreakers had put a track in place, or that the going was any easier, but at least he had enough optimism to head out the door. He planned to take a long rest at Yentna Station and set out toward Skwentna in the morning. Who knows what tomorrow will bring. Still, Beat is a master at taking things one step at a time — the bad steps and the good.

Sure enough, a few hundred feet more elevation carried me out of the clouds and into a clearing. At first I could only see hints of Matanuska Peak, and then it appeared in gold-tinted brilliance. Clouds continued to drift across the mountain and I climbed as hard as I could, determined to tag the peak before they closed in again. At the top at 3:45 p.m., I sent a quick text message to Beat's satellite phone: "On top of Lazy Mountain. Climbed above the clouds and found the sun. It is coming your way I can tell. You're amazing and I'm so proud of you."

Susitna 4, chapter 4

My first steps out of Luce's Lodge were excruciating. I had taken another 45-minute break, applied more Hydropel and dry pairs of liner and insulation socks, and allowed the vapor barrier to dry as I ate another grilled cheese sandwich. But the damage had been done. My soles were on fire, tingling and aching in a way that made each step feel like I was walking on hot coals. I gulped short, shallow breaths of the subzero air as I hobbled down the hill to my sled. Beat's one piece of advice for my consistently troubled feet cycled through my head: "Just remember, it always goes numb." But in those initial seconds out of the checkpoint, even walking required solemn concentration, the kind I imagine yogis employ when walking across hot coals.

After packing up my sled, I managed to work through the hobble and resume a somewhat reluctant but consistent rhythm. I caught and passed Jane, which surprised me because I thought I was really starting to slow down at that point in the race. The first hints of dawn crept across the sky, casting violet light on the steep river bluffs. My peripheral vision caught the profile of a downhill skier in full tuck on a nearby slope. I turned and watched as the skier rocked back and forth as though awaiting a signal at a starting gate. This rocking continued until it occurred to me that there was no way the skier could possibly be real, but when I squinted, I still only saw a skier. It took at least five more minutes of forward motion before the shape of a tree began to replace to colorful skin suit and helmet I could have sworn I witnessed.

As dawn grew brighter, I doubted Beat's assertions; my feet were not going numb. Out of sheer frustration, I quickened my stride and began running. And electric surge burst from my feet and injected a new kind of power into my legs. Running actually felt really good; all my tired walking muscles could finally rest as my running muscles kicked into gear. Again, I doubted I was actually moving any faster. My sled held me back and while my steps were more frequent, my stride was much shorter — a frantic sort of shuffle. But I convinced myself my speed had increased significantly. "If I can just run for a while, I'll make better time and I'll be off my feet sooner," I reasoned. I knew I'd need energy for running, so I reached into my pocket and cracked open the Sour Gummy Lifesavers, of which I only brought one bag specifically to serve as a treat. I plowed into the gummy candies with the same enthusiasm I'd felt for my food all day. In fact, I'd actually been rationing my supply since Luce's 1, just to ensure I showed up at Flathorn Lake 2 with at least 3,000 calories (and I started with over 8,000.) Plus, I ate two grilled cheese sandwiches and a cup of soup and a roll at the checkpoints. I was pretty proud about how well I'd been doing with my calorie intake.

Sour gummies. I love them, love them, but when I am running, I can not handle them. My stomach withers under the bombardment of citric acid and quickly shuts down. I can no longer even count how many times sour gummies have turned on me during an endurance effort, and yet like an abused but loyal pet, I keep going back. I had downed about half of the five-ounce bag when I began to feel nauseated. Dizziness set in and I took a five minute break to await expected vomiting that never actually came. No choice but to resume walking as my stomach struggled to recover, during the first miles of the race in which I failed to take in any calories. Nearly twelve miles, actually, or four full hours. For other runners in this race, four hours without calories was nothing. But I already felt like I was skirting the edge of energy drain even while I was snarfing deep-space rocket fuel. My sugar levels crashed and I sputtered. Dizziness resumed but my stomach still warned me that any effort to take in anything would be severely punished.

I crawled up the Wall of Death and stumbled into the Dismal Swamp with desperation gathering in beads of sweat on my bare forehead. It was not warm outside — still in the teens — but I felt like the air was hotter than California. I took off my jacket only to immediately catch the chill of the cold breeze wafting across the open swamp. It was so quickly frigid that I put my jacket back on, and soon felt too warm again. The Dismal Swamp appeared as a desert, barren and hot, and I felt like a lost hiker picking my way across an eternity of sand. It might as well have been an eternity; the oasis of boreal forest across the horizon never got any closer. My body no longer seemed capable of regulating temperature in anything but extremes, my blood was desperate for sugar and my stomach was nothing more than a cruel master, withholding relief.

As blissed out as I had been on the overnight trek from Alexander Lake, by late Sunday morning I turned a complete 180 into a spiral of grump. I tried to hide my mood from the wonderful volunteers at Flathorn Lake, and made a struggling effort to stuff down the usually delicious jambalaya that they served me. I resumed my checkpoint sock routine and winced at the condition of my feet. The doughy skin looked so fragile that any rubbing movement threatened to remove multiple layers. (I remain convinced that were it not for the magic of Hydropel, I would probably not have any skin on the bottoms of my feet right now.) I used the excuse of "drying my feet" to burn up nearly an hour at Flathorn even though I had resolved to stick to twenty minutes. It didn't matter much at this point. "Fifteen more miles, just fifteen more miles," I consoled myself. When it comes to mileage, I still think in bike terms, where fifteen miles doesn't sound so bad. I couldn't conceptualize the reality of five hours of agony, so I didn't. "Just fifteen more miles."

I'm not sure what exactly motivated those first steps along Flathorn Lake and back into the forest toward Point McKenzie. I was really reluctant to make them. I grumbled that the popular ultrarunner mentality of finishing all races at all costs is really sort of dumb, and what's so great about a hundred miles anyway? I wasn't injured, so I wasn't about to ask for a ride on a snowmachine, but if there had been an exit road at any point, I was completely certain I was willing to bail, right there, less than fifteen miles from the finish. Would I actually have bailed? Probably not, but these are the things I grumble to myself when grumbling is all I have.

I didn't realize that my foot pain was actually a bit of a blessing in disguise. As Beat promised, after a while it did go numb, only to be replaced by extreme sleepiness. The final leg of the course traversed a gas line that cut into the forest at a slight uphill slope in a perfectly straight line. The only reason I couldn't see the finish from twelve miles away was because the Earth is a sphere. What I could see were the Talkeetna Mountains, rendered flat beneath an overcast sky. The clouds ensured there was no change in the light all day long, so 10 a.m. looked like 1 p.m. looked like 4 p.m. There was no indication that time was passing, or that I was actually moving. Sleep took over as I walked.

I did everything I could to keep myself awake. I turned off my iPod and sang, out loud, the lamest and most annoying songs I could think of. I slapped myself on the face and pinched my arm the way I do when I'm driving sleepy. I became terribly excited when I had to pee. I held it in as long as possible because that kept me awake, and relished in pulling to the side of the trail and doing my business because it was a chore, something different. I stopped a few times to purposelessly organize my sled. I weaved back and forth across the hundred-foot-wide gasline trail. I resumed eating Sour Gummy Lifesavers. Oh yes, I did do that.

I put my head down and let time go by. Sometimes in racing, like in life, that's all you can do. It's not all Northern Lights and bliss, but somehow it's the tough challenges that make it all worth it. This is not about suffering so much as it is about overcoming suffering, which everyone must do in life, and it's empowering to understand the ways in which we can overcome it. Still, I felt fully defeated when, just two miles from the finish, I noticed a yellow light approach from behind and watched Jane run past. She was running. I mean, she was really running. Whether she was running to beat me or simply end her own agony faster I did not know, but I did not really care. Every time I had attempted to run in the past ten miles (because that, too, broke up the boredom) I nearly vomited. I was not ready or willing to participate in a two-mile sprint. Not only that, but the whole idea seemed so preposterous and egotistical after 35 hours of slogging that I couldn' t even entertain it. A man passed shortly after and implied a question as to whether or not I was going to chase Jane for second place. "She deserves it," I said. I felt so miserable. It's petty, but I resented being passed. This no longer bothers me at all, but my fragile mood at the time took it hard, and that did cast a sour pall over my finish.

Jane did put in an awesome final sprint, finishing a full twelve minutes in front of me. Actually, two more guys passed me in those final minutes, the last of whom jogged by less than fifty meters from the finish. I joked that we should finish together for a tie, and he still blasted ahead. I walked (didn't even attempt the finish line shuffle) across the line at 8:42, for a finishing time of 35 hours and 42 minutes. I had actually achieved my best-case scenario goal of a sub-36-hour run. I collapsed into a bed at the rented cabin and fitfully but gratefully snoozed for several hours as I awaited Danni's finish. She came in after 41 hours (40:59 according to her watch.) We were both so overtired that Danni passed out mid-sentence and I nearly broke into tears when I became lost and drove in a few circles while trying to find our hotel in Wasilla. The satisfaction of finishing (and acknowledgement of my grotesquely swollen feet and heat blisters) wouldn't come until later.

But the satisfaction was there, growing ever deeper as the pain subsided. That's what lingers in hundreds of happy memories, the meaning behind the madness.

Susitna 4, chapter 3

The first person I saw out of Luce's Lodge was a runner. I could see his white headlight bobbing up and down from a long distance up the river, and smiled at the realization that he was actually running. This made sense, as he was more than twenty miles in front of me. I did some quick math and realized he was on a sub-24-hour pace, moving with forceful speed — or at least as much speed as this soft trail would yield. In all the years of the Susitna 100, 24 hours has only been broken by a few people. When we finally crossed paths more than five minutes later, I realized he was my friend, David Johnston. I raised my poles and waved my pogies around. "Yay, Dave!"

Dave stopped running. "Is that you Jill?"

"Yeah."

"You're doing awesome!" he exclaimed.

"I'm doing awesome? Holy cow, you're doing awesome," I said, feeling embarrassed that Dave was actually stopping to talk to me. "You should go, you're in first place!"

Dave waved his arm. "Aw, I don't care. I just can't wait to get back to Luce's. I have a beer waiting for me there."

"Sounds, um, relaxing," I laughed. "Hey, thanks for stopping to chat. I enjoy passing everyone like this on this course."

"My favorite part is seeing everyone," he said with his characteristic grin. "The rest just hurts bad with many mental sacrifices."

I laughed again and waved as he continued running. I admit I enjoy being involved in sports that are still small and quirky enough that even the race leaders still stop to chat and guzzle beers. Not that there's no competition in the Susitna 100. Dave still had Joe Grant hot on his trail, and would have to continue to make mental sacrifices all the way to his 24:11 finish.

Boosted by more friendly faces, I made good time to Alexander Lake, the turnaround point and mile 53 of the race. The bottoms of my feet had been simultaneously aching and burning, so I pulled off my socks to do another foot check. The skin looked like it belonged to a dead person — ghastly white and wrinkled deep into my foot. There was a patch of gray on both heels. Trench foot. I couldn't decide how to proceed. I had only one more pair of dry liner socks that I was going to save for my second Luce's stop. If I removed my insulation socks, my feet were going to slide around in the size ten shoes and probably blister badly in the process. And if I removed my vapor barrier, I was going to expose my soaking wet feet to the cold — now 13 degrees and rapidly dropping beneath the clearing sky. I slathered on more Hydropel and ate my soup slowly in hopes my liner socks would dry some.

I checked out of Alexander Lake at 1:38 a.m., about ten minutes after another woman foot racer, Jane. I still wanted to travel by myself, but I felt better about being in the proximity of another person, now that there were fewer people to encounter on the inbound trip. As much as I relish in my chances for solitude, I still value the presence of other people — which is one of the reasons I enjoy racing. And because the Susitna 100 was a race, I admit I realized that Jane and I were in second and third position at that point, and I didn't have to concede second just yet.

Jane's red blinking light provided a navigation point as I traced the trail back across a series of frozen swamps. At the first long straightaway, I turned off my headlamp and caught my first glimpse of the aurora borealis. As my eyes adjusted, the soft white blur sharpened into a masterpiece of light, tinged with streaks of green and magenta. I shed a few tears at the overwhelming beauty before I became lost in it. Time seemed to stop, and Earth stood still as the lights pulled me inward. I was mesmerized, listening to the distant echo of my own footsteps as my mind freely danced with the sky.

The Northern Lights are so much more dynamic than their depictions in photos and films. Columns and shapes pulsed and expanded like rapid brush strokes, painting multi-dimensional images that instantaneously blended into new brush strokes. The transition was so seamless that it almost appeared static, until suddenly the circle I had been watching became an arch, and then a elliptical stream stretched across the star-speckled sky. I believed I could see the universe expanding in front of me, as though a thousand light years were passing in the space of a thousand footsteps. I had never experienced Northern Lights with such encompassing depth, and it occurred to me that the fact my body was so exhausted helped open my mind to the surreal intensity of it all. There was also the simple fact that the whole reason I was out here at all, fifty miles from the nearest road at 2 a.m., was because I had crazy hobbies like the Susitna 100. I smiled at the sheer providence of finding myself in the right place at the right time, which often seems to be the place I find myself whenever I leave the confines of my comfort zone.

In an seeming instant, I was back at Luce's Lodge. I had walked most of twelve miles with my headlamp off and neck craned toward the sky, only occasionally switching on the yellow light to gain my bearings, or trace out the trail once I lost Jane's blinking red beacon after stopping too long to take photos. It was a truly special experience that I can scarcely piece together now, and any descriptions I write appear rather weak. But I'm beyond thankful I was there to witness it — slow enough to be there, fit enough to be there, crazy enough to be there.

Released from my aurora trance, I returned to a world where my feet hurt and the rest of me was becoming increasingly tired. I crossed paths with Danni about two miles after I left Alexander Lake, and figured there was a chance she might catch me, but I should probably count on spending the rest of the race alone. I also noticed my wet toes were beginning to feel pangs of cold. I checked my thermometer and saw the temperature had dropped to five below. A thin fog had settled over the river, masking the remnants of the aurora. It was 6 a.m., and I still had 35 more miles in front of me.