Finish and aftermath

Fatback coated in ice the morning after the White Mountains 100.

The sweet release of sleep only lasted about twenty minutes before I woke up with wrenching pain in my right big toe — the pain of renewed circulation. I endured another twenty minutes of intense throbbing and frostbite panic before I remembered that my toe had gone numb all the way back before checkpoint three, and the reason it went numb is because it was crammed against the tip of my boot while I pedaled. I tried to drift back to sleep, but then the coughing fits returned. I'd had a bunch of coughing attacks out on the trail but these were worse, searing my throat and producing crystallized chunks of phlegm that were a disconcertingly dark shade of brown. I managed to sleep fitfully for two more hours, then woke up to the sensation of shivering in my zero-degree sleeping bag. I checked the car thermometer. It was still four below outside at 8 a.m.

My plan had been to just wait at the trailhead for Beat to finish. I was too tired and apathetic to do anything else. But when I realized that this meant languishing in my sleeping bag for upwards of twelve hours, compounded by the fact that I didn't have anything to eat or drink, I decided to make the hourlong drive back to Fairbanks. I managed to catch our host, Joel, between naps at his house. Joel got into the White Mountains 100 at the eleventh hour, or more accurately fifteen hours before the race started, after five months in limbo on the wait list. Joel finished strong, in just over sixteen hours, but he too was shattered by the effort.

It was reaffirming to chat with another cyclist about what I found difficult about the race, and find out he agreed. Not many people understand what piloting a snow bike across a hundred miles of wilderness trails really entails. They see an average pace of five miles per hour and quietly scoff ... "what's so hard about that? I can run that fast." Actually, I can, too, and in many ways I believe the effort of snow biking is comparable to a trail-running effort — at least in my own experiences. Yes, snow biking has coasting, it has the potential to be faster, and it's considerably less rough on my joints and feet than running. But the energy output is still high, and I do believe that most of my struggles in the White Mountains 100 were caused by going out too hard. I wouldn't try to run a six-hour 50K at the beginning of a 100-mile ultramarathon, but that's essentially the effort level I exerted on my bike in the first forty miles of the White Mountains 100. My fitness, and indeed my genetics, just weren't conditioned to hold up to the demand.

I did collect some interesting data (if only to me) from my GPS. I have the comparisons for my pace in the 2011 and 2012 race. The 2012 race is slightly truncated because my GPS died a couple hours before I finished, but most of it recorded. Unsurprisingly my speeds were slower over the entire course, and in a fairly consistent way. To me, that proves the course was just across-the-board more difficult this year. It was! That's my story and I'm sticking too it.

After chatting with Joel I don't remember if I ate or drank anything. If I did it wasn't nearly enough. I headed back out to the Wickersham Dome trailhead to watch Beat finish. He put in an incredible effort and finished in 33 hours and 37 minutes, two hours faster than last year. He was the third of seven runners, and the second of three men. He had few issues besides sore hip flexers, and I think less post-Iditarod race fatigue than even he expected. Beat had a great race, and thought the trail conditions weren't all that bad. Well, no, not compared to the Iditarod. Ha!

It really amazes me how strong Beat is at these consistently hard efforts, recovering from them in a matter of days. Beat was essentially fine within hours after he finished, while I continued to struggle. I tossed and turned for most of the night as my heart raced and I gasped for breaths that I couldn't seem to catch. I thought I still hadn't cooled down from my hard effort, but several Facebook friends (how I love social media) diagnosed me with something much more obvious — dehydration. David Shaw, who finished the 2011 White Mountains 100 just a few minutes before I came in, wrote, "It's called volume shock. When dehydration sucks the fluid out of the blood, the blood thickens and volume goes down which means your heart has to work much harder to keep blood pressure up. You respiration rate is probably high too, another compensator. Drink and eat, drink and eat."

I took his advice, drank a lot of water, took some electrolyte tablets, and felt significantly better by the afternoon. Strange how such small changes can cause huge swings in health and well-being. And once again I revealed myself as a master of poor recovery.

This is essentially what most my friends pointed out after the race — "You're bad at recovery. You never let yourself recover from anything." I went straight from the Susitna 100 to playing hard in Alaska and the Yukon to training for the White Mountains 100. I don't really see this as a problem. I enjoyed every moment of playing and training, and didn't have any injuries or specific fatigue going into the White Mountains 100. I agree that with more focused intervals of training and resting, I could get my body to a point of being stronger and faster. But this isn't really my interest or my goal. If I had to sum up my fitness goals in simple phrases, they might be, "I want to do what I want, when I want. I don't want to be tied to a specific activity or regimen. I want to avoid injury. I want to travel long distances under my own power and have the strength and energy to do so."

Motivations for racing are as wide-ranging as the individuals who participate in races, and yet most people assume we're all the same — "We want to be faster. We want to beat others." Moving fast and placing high in race standings is certainly satisfying, but it's not why I race. I race to challenge my perceived limitations and confront my fears. I race to be part of a community, to connect with others who share my passions. I race to learn more about myself and the world around me. I race to overcome difficulties and prove to myself, again and again, that I'm capable of doing so. I race to fuel the stoke for day-to-day outdoor adventures, which collectively have provided more personal rewards than all of my races combined. Some people train to race. I race to train. I race so I can pursue adventure. As a sometimes reluctant adult, I view training as as euphemism for "go play outside."

It was 27 degrees and clear the afternoon before Beat and I left Fairbanks. I had downed six liters of water and only recently started breathing normally again when Beat decided to take the Fatback out for one last spin through the snow. He came back forty-five minutes later and described a beautiful loop that was "just a little farther than we ran the day before the race." That distance was only about four miles, so I thought it wouldn't be too outlandish to go out and enjoy one last romp in the winterlands myself.

The afternoon was indeed painfully beautiful, with sunlight sparkling on the snow and golden light high in the spring sky. I was still low on energy but, thanks to the impact-absorbing wonder that is a bicycle, had little muscle soreness or joint pain after the race. Still, I took it easy and savored the cool air, knowing it would be my last taste of Alaska for a while. I took Beat's advice and followed the main trail as it continued to wend through the spruce forest. I pedaled and breathed, pedaled and breathed. Somehow an hour went by, and I didn't appear to be anywhere near where I started. I rode another fifteen minutes before I arrived at a mushing clubhouse that I knew was at least five miles from Joel's place by road. I had already been out much longer than I intended, wearing only a pair of running shoes, nylon hiking pants, and a soft shell over my cotton T-shirt. I cut to the road and raced home, mainly because I was chilled and needed to build some heat. Without trying I had turned an questionable recovery spin into a fifteen-mile, moderate-effort ride. And yet it didn't feel that bad. In fact, it felt kind of awesome.

Now my friends are asking me if I'm actually going to rest and recover now that I'm done with my winter season. I already have a 400-mile mountain bike race planned at the end of April, and regardless of conditioning, I'm really excited for that one. It's going to be a beautiful route across Southern California, and it's been too long since I've embarked on a bike tour. In fact, I really should start planning an overnighter to get ready for the Stagecoach 400. You know, for training. I also need to start a routine of nightly sabbaticals in the sauna. You know, for heat acclimation.

If I required an extended period of downtime after a race it would mean, to me, that I've failed in my fitness goals. If I fail in a race because I pushed my limits of recovery too far, well, that's okay. At least then I'll know what's too far.

Fade to white, part two

I didn't actually believe I was going to walk the entire rest of the race; I just needed a mental reprieve from maneuvering my bike and crashing and thrashing out of the snow and doing it all over again. I blamed my fatigue on my heart, but my mind was tired, too — tired of intense focus and anxiety. I pulled over to let a few skiers pass, gliding over the fluff. "It's too bad you don't even get to enjoy the downhill," Anchorage skier Abby Rideout said as she coasted by me. "Meh!" I called out with an exaggerated shrug as though I wasn't jealous of her effortless speed, which I was.

I hiked to the edge of the ice lakes and pulled microspikes over my boots. The ice lakes are not lakes at all but a narrow, sloping valley covered in a film of wet ice known as overflow. Overflow forms when an upwelling of ground water seeps over the surface of the snow in freezing conditions, building variable layers of ice and open water. The condition of overflow changes quickly — shin-deep slush can freeze to bumpy ice which can submerge in a new upwelling of water in a matter of hours. A volunteer had told me the ice lakes were knee-deep earlier in the morning, and since my overarching goal is self-preservation in all situations, my plan was to walk this section all along. A thin veneer of new ice shattered beneath my boots and sunk my feet to my ankles in water. Thanks to my prior frostbite experience, overflow is one of my great fears. Crunching and groaning ice echoed in the wind, an eerie chorus matched in volume by the pounding of my heart. Turns out my heart did have some oomph left — all I needed was a little more fear.

If you've read my blog for any length of time, you probably know that I enjoy confronting my fears. The ice lakes are more than a mile long, and after about fifteen minutes of anxious tiptoeing I managed to punch in fairly deep, over my right ankle. I stopped to watch the slushy water cascade over my boot with childlike fascination, exhausted as my mind was. Amid the sudden quieting of my footsteps I could hear the sounds of the environment — gurgles from water seepage, metallic clinking of wind-driven snow, and the moaning breeze. The low cloud ceiling blended flawlessly into the snow, obscuring the ground and creating the optical illusion of spruce trees ascending into the sky. The whole world was black and white except for the ice surrounding my feet, which was a bright glacial blue. Because my soft shell and base layer were soaked in sweat, the cold wind stabbed into my core with a "help, I'm alive" kind of urgency — both exhilarating and terrifying."What is this place?" I said out loud, with a genuine sense of wonder. And then, in the next breath, "I love this place." It no longer mattered that I wasn't quite strong enough. I was here.

Shortly after the ice lakes, I forgot about my silly resolve to hike it in and got back on my bike. Trail conditions were much better than they had been on the other side of the divide, but the surface was quickly filling in with new snow. I could see several ski tracks but no tire or snowmachine tread, meaning enough new powder had fallen to obscure older tracks entirely. When snow is falling that quickly, a trail can become unrideable in a matter of hours. This knowledge boosted me into hard-riding mode again. I really didn't have the stamina for it, nor the energy, because these effort levels caused me to feel pukey and made it impossible to eat anything but Gummy Lifesavers, of which I only had one package. (Note: These were regular Gummy Lifesavers, not the sour kind that made me so ill during the Susitna 100. But it is ironic that they were the only food I had that didn't make me queasy.)

This section of trail is the most fun of the White Mountains course, a gradual descent swooping through the woods beside cathedral-like spires and dramatic gulches. Sadly I was too blown to enjoy it, and also crashed two more times. After my second crash I laid in the snow for several seconds, letting the soft pillow envelop me and contemplating whether I could take a power nap right there. The chill roused me to action before I dozed off. I couldn't arrive at checkpoint three soon enough.

Checkpoint three manager Dea Huff catches a much-deserved nap in the Windy Gap Cabin. Photo by Beat.

I arrived at Windy Gap, mile 60, at 7:30 p.m. I had only been on the trail for eleven and a half hours but honestly, the way I felt, you could have tacked another day on to that. I was surprised when Dea told me I looked "fresh" compared to others who had been through before and also said I was the "best dressed" of the bikers. (I was wearing a sweaty jacket, freebie mittens from the Arctic Winter Games in Whitehorse, and clashing shades of blue and purple — but everyone loves my down skirt.) Dea served me her signature soup with six meatballs. I crammed the steaming chunks down my throat. My eyes watered as the food seared my tongue, but I was too hungry to wait for it to cool down. Every time I stopped moving, I felt ravenously hungry. And yet, as soon as I started pedaling again, my appetite faded behind a wall of nausea.

The trail past Windy Gap cabin the next morning. Photo by Beat.

Snow was still coming down hard after I left Windy Gap, enough so that I had no choice but to put on my goggles. I despise wearing goggles, and have discovered that the only times I can make myself wear them are when it's snowing too hard to see without them, or so windy that the chill can freeze skin in seconds. My goggles have a brown tint that rendered the already flat light into low-resolution fuzziness, like an old photograph. I think not being able to see much actually did me some good, as I could no longer see the deeper ruts in the trail and thus took no evasive action that probably would have caused me to swerve and crash into the snow bank. A few times my front tire dropped out from underneath me before I realized I was descending into a stream bed — my depth perception was so bad that I couldn't even discern six-foot dips. Finally it became dark enough to switch on my headlamp. I didn't know what was worse — a complete lack of depth or squinting through the static television effect of snow swirling through the beam. Either way, I seemed to be riding better than I had been all day. Go figure.

I reached Borealis cabin, mile 79, at 11:15 p.m. Abby was just leaving and a couple of male skiers were discussing the benefits of classic skis in this year's trail conditions. As soon as I was drawn into the discussion it turned into a debate about which year was the most difficult for the White Mountains 100. "Definitely this year, no question," I said. The first skier disagreed, arguing that the minus 25 temperatures of 2010 made the trail much worse. "Maybe if you're a skier," I said. "But bikes can handle the cold. New snow slows us down." Everyone agreed that this year was probably the year for skiers, in the unofficial competition between the three disciplines. A skier was the first to arrive at Windy Gap cabin, and if the snowstorm that followed me down the pass had come five hours earlier, a skier might have won the race. But it's amazing what strong snow bikers can do, and the top three guys, all bikers, would finish in the twelve-hour range. The lead skier finished in thirteen hours flat.

I've never seen any of this section of the race because it's always dark when I travel through here. Now I'm wondering if maybe I should just try the White Mountains 100 on foot one of these years. Photo by Beat. 

I left Borealis with one of the skiers, Brian Jackson. He took off his skis to climb the steep hill out of Beaver Creek, but even though we were both walking I couldn't even strain to keep his pace. "Your fault for bringing that heavy bike," he had joked earlier when I complained about the push up the divide. I watched Brian's headlamp fade up the hill. As far as I could tell there weren't any other cyclists in my time zone, so I figured I'd be spending the rest of the race alone.

The sky began to clear before it even stopped snowing. Through the squall I could see the moon, and then stars, and then subtle streaks of white light — the Northern Lights. Finally the snow tapered off, and then the temperature dropped precipitously. It was ten degrees above when I left Borealis, but down on the slopes along Wickersham Creek it felt at least fifteen degrees colder, possible twenty. It was definitely below zero. Before I arrived at Borealis I decided my wet soft shell was no longer keeping me warm, and traded it for a fleece jacket, then tied the soft shell around my waist. This was plenty warm for the hard climb immediately after the cabin, but let in a harsh chill as soon as I started pedaling again. By the time I decided to use my soft shell over my fleece jacket just to block the wind, it had solidified into an ice sheet. I could barely bend the coat enough to wrap it around my torso. My clothing situation was not ideal.

Luckily, I had packed my expedition down coat in my seat post bag. It was two pounds of extra gear I likely wouldn't need, but I appreciated having an insurance policy on my bike. I was already on the cusp of feeling uncomfortably cold, and temperatures were dropping. Not having any more layers would have been unnerving. As it was, I could only stay warm if I crammed some sugar into my system. Every time I felt a chill, I would choke down a peanut butter cup or a piece of Twix bar. I really didn't feel like eating, to the point where the nausea caused by swallowing made me feel dizzy, but candy worked. The kindling sparked and I'd feel warm again, for a few minutes, until it burned out. I'd waver until my teeth began to chatter and choke down another peanut butter cup. I thought about putting on my down coat but I knew I had hard climbs ahead of me, and I didn't want to pour any moisture into my insurance policy if I didn't have to.

Photo by Beat. This is where I felt the coldest. Beat recorded temperatures of 15 below in the early morning. 

This section was punctuated by a few deep overflow sections. I picked a bad line over this crossing and punched my front wheel into water all the way to the hub, soaking half of the brake rotor. This instantly froze into an impenetrable ice film, and the front brake wouldn't work for the rest of the race.

The Wickersham Wall viewed from the distance. Photo by Beat.

But even beyond the deepening cold, I was more concerned about the unseen monster looming in front of me — the Wickersham Wall. The Wall is the direct route up to the top of the Wickersham Dome, gaining a thousand vertical feet in a little more than a mile. By itself it wouldn't be a big deal, but in the White Mountains 100 this obstacle comes at mile 93 of a 100-mile race. Even after cresting the wall, the trail continues a general climbing trend on rolling hills all the way to one mile before the finish. It's brutal, just brutal.

I needn't have worried so much about it, though. I had already pedaled in survival mode for the better part of fifty miles, and the Wall was simply the next step. Plus, I had eaten so much candy in my efforts to stay warm that I actually had a little energy to spare, and felt a boost while I plodded up the foot-stomped snow. When I reached the ridge I found I could pedal uphill, even where I saw the footprints of other cyclists. This energy and alertness boost carried all the way to top of the dome, as though I was finally coming around. But by then, it was too late — I was at the one-mile-from-the-finish sign. I coasted in with a subdued sort of elation, riding my squealing back brake and wondering if perhaps I wasn't broken, and perhaps I'd never been broken. These are the questions I always ask myself after a hard effort — how much of the challenge was physical, and how much was mental. I still believe most of this is mental, and as long as we maintain the basic physical needs (food, water, warmth), most anything we deem impossible is achievable. And so I wonder ... I wonder ...

Photo by White Mountains 100.

But I was tired. I was stupid tired. I arrived at the finish at 4:47 a.m. for a finishing time of 20 hours, 39 minutes (the race started at 8:08 a.m.) I knocked on the RV that was race headquarters and announced my arrival. The volunteer must have taken a photo that I don't remember her taking, and directed me toward the warming tent. "I'm not going to the warming tent," I replied. "I'm just going to go to my car and sleep for a while before driving back to Fairbanks."

"You can sleep in the tent," she said. "There are cots in there and a heater. It's nice."

I considered this and said, "But my sleeping bag is in my car" — as though this statement should have conveyed proper logic as to why I couldn't sleep in the warming tent. Alas. I rolled out my sleeping bag in the back of a borrowed Jeep and fell into a dreamless sleep.

Fade to white

My lactic acid-saturated legs were stomping out another 31-minute-mile when I crumbled. Or, more specifically, my heart crumbled. Its once enthusiastic thumping had faded to a humming-bird buzz, and a seemingly erratic one at that. Even this 1.9 mph bike-pushing pace was driving me dangerously close to what felt like a maximum effort, and I began to wonder if my heart had the capability to quit before I did. Is this what happens when athletes blow up? I mean not just bonk, but completely implode? I had often wondered, but I can't say I've ever gone hard enough for long enough to really find out. I suspected the White Mountains were going to show me exactly what it was like to defeat myself, here in the depthless expanse of the Cache Mountain Divide, where vision fades to white and the wind drives breathtaking cold in late March. Not the best place to suddenly feel like my body was broken.

Ah, back at the White Mountains 100. My favorite race. As Beat put it, the WM100 is one of the best hundreds around — "flawless organization and hard and a ton of fun." He also called it "like the Iditarod without the drama." The White Mountains 100 traverses a scenic loop through a small mountain range north of Fairbanks. The race incorporates all of the best parts of winter endurance racing in Alaska — largely self-supported travel through the backcountry; camaraderie among a diverse group of cyclists, skiers, and runners; a spectacular range of scenery including white-washed mountain peaks, craggy cliffs, rolling hills, tall spruce trees, boreal forest and eerie burns; a chance to see the Northern Lights; unpredictable weather and trail conditions; exciting obstacles such as overflow; friendly organizers and quirky participants; Alaska-specific food (moose chili and hot Tang, anyone?); and challenging, fun mountain biking (that just happens to be on snow) — all in a "short" hundred miles. Beat and I both agree that the White Mountains 100 is worth the herculean effort just to get there — making it through the race lottery, preparation, packing and travel, all while ignoring a lack of recovery and specific training. Beat was three weeks off his grueling eight-day effort on 350 miles of the Iditarod Trail. My snow bike training amounted to a hundred-kilometer tour on Yukon's Dawson Trail, during which I regularly commented, "I'd forgotten just how hard snow biking is." Yes, the White Mountains 100 promised great things for both of us, and we were excited.

Since I've finished this race twice before, my goal was to "ride harder" this year. In 2011, I was feeling demotivated to endure much suffering after the Susitna 100, and took it pretty easy during most of the race. If it wasn't for a surprise bonk seven miles from the end, I would have coasted to my 17:55 finish. Finishing faster than that wasn't necessarily my goal this year; there are so many variables in snow biking that times are almost irrelevant from year to year. But I wanted to put in a good effort this year and see where it took me.
 
The day before the start, it snowed. A few inches of fine fluff coated the previously hardpacked trail, and before the first volunteers set out Sunday morning on snowmachines, nearly all of the course was still untracked. A single bike traveling in these conditions would only experience increased resistance while powering through the powder. But add a few dozen bikers, skiers, volunteers on snowmachines, and their accompanying erratic tracks, and you have a rutted, somewhat technical trail. For the most part these ruts are unpredictable. They grab front wheels and induce loss of control, wild swerving, and often crashing. "Snow angel" is the common term for bike-shaped holes just off the trail, and these became increasingly more frequent in the early miles of the race.

Skilled snow bikers can to some extent read the tracks and pick the most efficient line — or increase their power output and plow through them.  I expect the frontrunners were able to do this, and also didn't have as many deep ruts to contend with. By the time I pedaled through the mess, there was no hope of powering down a direct line, and yet any attempts to steer around the ruts often resulted in one of the tires washing out. This is the side of snow biking where fat tires become more of a liability, because the smoother tread has poor traction in slippery conditions. I'm already out of practice and tried to make up for my lack of skill by applying as much power as I could, basically trying to cut my own deep track through the sifted powder. This was a strenuous effort, and despite single-digit temperatures I was sweating so much that I had to take my hat off and unzip my softshell, exposing my single base layer to the frigid windchill just to cool down.

The first forty miles of trail traverse rolling foothills, a series of climbs and descents. I tried to take advantage of gravity any time the trail sloped downhill. In the process, I made several of my own snow angels — a humorous experience but also a lot of work to get out from underneath. There was also a lot of effort involved in wrestling the Fatback through ruts at higher speeds. It was like taking an angry bull by the horns and trying to stop it from bucking me into the snow. One guy commented that the downhills were more strenuous than the climbs, and I agreed.

During the long descent into Beaver Creek, I was shadowing another cyclist when he began to coast away from me. Just as I was searching for the courage to release the brakes, his bike bucked violently and tossed him into the air. I watched his rag-doll silhouette arc over the handlebars and lawn-dart into a snow bank. I slowed as I passed to ask if he was okay. He giggled but his laugh sounded a little like a whimper. "That was a good one." The deep snowpack is forgiving in most crashes, but I couldn't help but think about what would happen if I crashed like that in just the wrong spot or the wrong tree. I resolved to take the descents slow.


This was my ongoing obsession during the first forty miles — the condition of the trail. When it was bad I would ride hard just to maintain forward motion, and when it was better I would ride hard to catch up on my perceived loss of progress. Despite my claims otherwise, I did want to improve on my 2011 time, and I was quickly falling behind the pace. The sun emerged from the clouds for a brief few miles and the open hillsides felt as hot as a sandy desert. The air told a different story though, as I sucked it into my lungs. Cold air burns, and this effect is amplified like windchill when I'm breathing hard. My lungs already felt ragged and raw. I was working what I might call my 50K race pace, an effort I can maintain for five to eight hours although not comfortably. I pedaled along that uncomfortable edge for six hours just to reach checkpoint two, a cabin at mile 39 of the loop. My original plan was just to blast through the first two checkpoints and only collect water. But my higher-than-usual effort level made it difficult to take in any calories on the trail. I decided sit down for 15 minutes and eat a baked potato with cheese, then somehow "take it easy" and "recover" during the 2,000-foot, eleven mile climb to the Cache Mountain Divide.


Luckily the first miles of the climb were on good trail. The course entered the deeper woods where less new snow covered trail. A film crew on two snowmachines had been through recently, loosening the powder but at least evening out the ruts. I was able to zone out for a while and just climb, a favorite activity that helped reduce my stress level and brought my heart rate down. The heart of the White Mountains loomed in a distance that I was steadily drawing closer. I hoped to catch glimpse of the peaks shimmering in the sunlight. Instead, the clouds closed in around me, and it started to snow again.

By the time I climbed above the last stands of spruce, the snow squall had strengthened to a white-out and the trail had been completely wiped out by the previous day's storm. I could see the footprints and choppy ski tracks of racers who came through before, but only as faint tints of gray in the disorienting flat light. Even these subtle clues were disappearing fast under new snow. The powder on the trail was about eight inches deep. It was hard work, pushing my bike, and my GPS registered speeds in the range of 1.5 to 1.9 miles per hour. Again my heart was pounding, which made my head feel light and my stomach nauseated. Sometimes overexertion is necessary just to maintain forward progress.

I did spend some time wishing I had trained more mindfully — ran some intervals or something, just to increase my cardiovascular capabilities. I gulped down wind-whipped shards of snow and pulled my balaclava half over my mouth, trying to strike a balance between inevitable sweat from the hard effort, a lack of insulating layers because I was sweating, and the bitter cold. I didn't feel so good. I thought I could feel my heart racing toward overdrive, and this mental image was concerning enough that I stopped often to catch my breath even though doing so let in a frigid chill. Bracing myself against the wind and gasping for air was tough dose of reality for me — a realization that I was doing all I could, but my fitness just wasn't up to snuff. Could be overtraining, could be undertraining, could just be a bad day in the saddle. The reasons don't really matter in the midst of a blizzard fifty miles from nowhere. There was never any drama involved because I was part of the White Mountains 100 and help was always nearby. But when I was a small dot alone in the white intensity of the Cache Mountain Divide, I could let myself believe what I come to these frozen landscapes to believe — that forward progress isn't a choice, it's a necessity. It doesn't matter how bad I feel; my body can keep going indefinitely if it has to. As always, this is an empowering realization.

Still, maintaining requisite forward motion while feeling lousy doesn't exactly put me in a good mood, nor does it motivate me to move fast. I crested the broad pass and tried to remount my bike for the descent. I was determined to ride down the pass, which was a silly delusion when I could barely discern the trail from the deep snow from the mountains from the sky. Still, I continued trying to ride, crashing again and again over unseen ruts. During the heart-rate-pegging efforts to extract myself from snow drifts, frustration finally boiled over. I threw a little temper tantrum and resolved to not just stop trying to ride my bike down the pass, but to stop riding my bike in the race, period. This year's White Mountains 100 had been one hard effort after another and I was exhausted. I felt like I had just barely avoided a physical blow-out and I still had fifty miles in front of me with little evidence that riding my bike wouldn't continue to be just as strenuous as it had been in the first fifty. I missed the "easy" marching of competing in the Susitna 100 on foot (oh, how those rose-colored lenses of memory mask the truth.) "If the trail doesn't improve I'll just walk to the finish." And for weird reasons that are now only known to the irrational whims of fatigue, this plan made me feel so much better. I set off marching down the pass, happily prepared to push my bike for fifty miles.

... to be continued.