Accepting risk

Good times: Keith near the summit of Mount Diablo

I'm about to write about something I haven't discussed openly before, but there was a short period of my life when anxiety nearly took control. It was the summer of 2002, and I was 22 years old. I've never been a generally anxious or high-strung person, but I can recall vivid moments of my childhood that were suddenly, and randomly, overcome by rolling clouds of fear and despair. For example, at age 10, while riding in a car through Anaheim during a family vacation, I saw an old blanket on the street and convinced myself it was the body of a missing girl I saw on the news. The darkness I felt still haunts me.

In 2002, strange moments like these returned. One July afternoon a huge thunderstorm rolled over my house as I sat alone in the front room. The blasts of wind and thunder struck me with a fear so deep that I started shivering, even as I failed to understand why I was so scared — after all, I was in my house, under a roof, and I was safe. There was another incident when I was hiking with my friend near Moab and suddenly felt a sense that we were terribly lost. This irrational fear also had no basis in reality, and yet I felt dizzy and hopeless as I looked out across the sandstone plateau we were traversing. Fear started to affect my decisions. I refused an invitation to a rafting trip on the Green River — not because I truly believed it was dangerous, but because I didn't want to subject myself to the fear. I teetered on the verge of a panic attack for hours during a canyoneering trip in Quandary Canyon. Toward the end of the summer, I began to wonder if I had some kind of psychological misfire, possibly even a mild anxiety disorder — which is why I didn't discuss it with anyone, because I didn't want to be labeled as crazy. But fear was always creeping around the periphery of my life that summer, usually for reasons I did not understand.

The summer of 2002 also was, likely not coincidentally, when I started cycling. I purchased a low-end touring bicycle because I was enamored with the idea of bicycle travel, and practiced (not trained, practiced) by leaving my house in The Avenues of Salt Lake City and pedaling up one of the nearby canyons — City Creek, Emigration, Millcreek, and as I grew more confident, Big and Little Cottonwood canyons. Some of these were day-long rides, on narrow and winding mountain roads, and I was humorously bad at it (yes I did tip over at a stop sign once, with platform pedals, because I forgot to put my foot down until it was too late.) But the act of riding my bicycle never ignited the same anxiety that just sitting around my house sometimes did. I felt safe on my bicycle, inexplicably so, to the extent that I would sometimes find comfort during a random anxious moment by reminding myself that the next day I got off work early enough for a ride up Emigration.

In September 2002, my then-boyfriend and I embarked on our first tour, a life-changing fourteen days through Southeastern Utah and Southwestern Colorado. There were times on the trip when I was legitimately frightened, because it was snowing hard and we only had summer sleeping bags and skinny tires, or because we were crossing a hundred miles of waterless desolation on a remote and lonely Highway 95. But the act of confronting these very real fears, rather than sitting at home or work washed in ambiguous anxiety, was empowering. The final pedal strokes into Moab filled me with a sense of bullet-proof confidence, because I had done it — I had beaten my fear.

Those were the first 600 miles of a journey I've been on ever since, a journey that has been less about bolstering my strengths and more about confronting my weaknesses. One of my largest weaknesses is the fact that I am, in the hidden corners of my heart, a fearful person. It's true. I've confronted this weakness in places I would have never imagined back in 2002 — the icy desolation of the Iditarod Trail, the explosive storms and crushing fatigue of the Great Divide. There have been moments in nearly all of my larger challenges when I was deeply afraid, but had no choice but to be brave — and that, too, creates an empowering shift of emotions.

My involvement in cycling and endurance sports had a direct correlation to decreasing anxiety in my day-to-day life. For example, I used to be afraid of flying. This anxiety held on consistently until I reached a very distinct turning point — the Penn Air flight I boarded after the 2008 Iditarod Invitational, from McGrath to Anchorage. I remember sitting in the window seat, taking off, feeling the small plane bank hard in early turbulence, and I genuinely did not care. I had just crossed a bewildering swath of frozen Alaska under my own power — what could this plane possibly do to me now? Flying hasn't bothered me since.

Of course, nothing I write about here is an rational assessment of risk. I'm writing about emotional responses, and how deeply they can affect the way I approach my life. And I write about it now because of the recent motorcycle collision involving my friend Keith. He's been so upbeat and optimistic through the ordeal, and I joked that I've been more traumatized by the whole thing than he was. But in a way, it's not a joke. While we were still at the hospital in Sonora, Keith went into the bathroom and the emergency room doctor pulled me aside. She was concerned about nerve damage and Keith was showing somewhat alarming signs that this was possible. Nerve damage could lead to longer term, more disabling injury. Although I didn't understand all the details, I think the doctor simply wanted to convey the gravity of the situation and why they were transporting him to another hospital when both Keith and I expressed a desire to just let me take him home.

Keith went by ambulance to a hospital in Modesto and I drove there in a daze. I got a hotel room across the street and sat on the bed awake until after 2 a.m., mowing through an entire box of Lucky Charms (yeah, I can be a bit of a binge eater when I am stressed.) I was trying to wrap my head around the possibility of disabling injury to my vibrant, active friend, and how I felt to be a part of it, and how I'd feel if it happened to me. Keith for his part was never nearly concerned as I was. Maybe because he understood better what was going on with his own body, or maybe because he never saw the same look in the doctor's eyes that I saw when she talked to me. But for both of us, it was a bad night, and I admit it has opened up a new trickle of anxiety.

Beat and I have had discussions about this over the past few days, about risk versus reward in road cycling specifically. One of his good friends was killed in a collision with a drunk driver several years ago, and he knows others who have been injured in bicycle-vehicle collisions. He questions, on a rational level, whether the risks are worth it. I'm still working through my own emotional response, which is to both acknowledge and confront the fear. I recognize that the highway where Keith and I were riding was perhaps more risky than others, but the fact remains that risk is always there, haunting the periphery. How we accept that risk is really the only thing we can control.

The most important thing I learned about myself in the summer of 2002 is that I didn't want to let fear control my life. Death isn't nearly as frightening as the prospect of soft-pedaling through life without really living. Still, life occasionally comes along and doles out harsh realities, no matter how many irrational fears I've defeated.

A harsh end to the holiday

It began where these stories always seem to begin, on a bright and gorgeous morning. Keith and I were pedaling along State Route 120, the high road across Yosemite National Park. We had a big day planned — eighty miles and a long, rolling climb to near 10,000 feet elevation. We were about twenty-five miles in, and I was feeling discomfort from several different directions — yes, remnant undercarriage pains, as well as difficulty breathing in the sustained high altitude. Also, I didn't want to say anything to Keith, but I didn't really like this road. It was a little unnerving — narrow with frequent blind corners, and the kind of traffic and drivers typical of national parks. Sometimes things don't feel right, and I don't know why. Usually when I feel unwarranted negativity, I blame it on physical discomfort.

"I kinda wish we just went hiking in valley again," I joked with Keith. "There are so many awesome trails down there, and oxygen too." But when he asked me, more than once, whether I wanted to cut the ride short because I wasn't feeling well, I held on to my resolve. "No, this is a beautiful route. I can rally."

Keith waited for me at the bottom of a long descent, where I arrived still gasping for air. I admitted I would probably require consistent breath-catching breaks in order to make it up the next climb. Keith offered to ride behind me for a while, and chatted breezily while I turned slow rotations and strained thin air through my sea-level-weakened lungs. I didn't want to say anything to Keith, but after a mile I could hear him speaking to me, but couldn't really understand the words over my own loud breathing. We rounded a corner where the pavement notched into the mountainside just as a pack of four motorcycles roared beside us. I distinctly remember being frightened by the noise of the engines and moving far to the right when, just seconds later, I heard a loud, "Nooooo!"

The scream faded into a sickening crunch, and I felt something punching my left forearm. The force ripped my Garmin watch clean off its band and caused me to teeter violently, but I was able to put my foot down before the bike tipped over. I heard Keith cursing and my immediate thought was that his front wheel bumped my rear and he crashed. But as I swung around, I saw something much worse — an overturned Harley Davidson, a half-exploded road bike, and my friend Keith writhing on the pavement.

"Don't move, Keith, please don't move," I yelled as I darted around him, gathering the pieces of his bike from the road. The motorcyclist quickly stood up and we both flagged down vehicles coming from opposite directions. One man got out of his car and offered to direct traffic while another couple rushed toward us and said they were EMTs. They immediately started asking Keith the right questions before I had even fully processed what had happened. I grabbed my cell phone but it had no reception. No one had reception. We were high on a mountain pass, many miles from the nearest towns. So I dug my SPOT unit out of my pack and hit 911.

More bystanders helped the motorcyclist right his bike so he could wheel it out of the lane. His arm was crimson with road rash and he was bleeding profusely from one of his fingers. I dug out my first aid kit, offered him antibiotic ointment, and introduced myself. He said his name was Joe, from Staten Island. He was here on vacation with his buddies. They all rented Harleys in Oakland and were traveling up the Sierras and onto the Cascades. Joe was ashen faced and shocked himself. His buddies were now far ahead. They didn't know he was missing from the group. I felt for Joe. There was no doubt that his inattentiveness led to the rear-end collision, but the action wasn't malicious. He simply didn't see us until it was too late.

The EMTs  — Dan and his wife from Mono Lake — took charge of the situation, and their assistance helped calm all of us down. They determined Keith had all the good physical indicators to likely rule out a spinal injury, as well as no head injuries. But he was in a lot of pain and it was obvious something was very wrong with his back. Eventually construction workers arrived and took over traffic direction as Keith remained where he landed on the road. It took at least an hour for the ambulance to arrive. The nearest hospital was another hour and a half away.

The next 36 hours were a whirlwind of stress. They carted Keith off in an ambulance and the motorcyclist Joe, his friends, the EMTs, and I waited another half hour for a ranger to arrive. We filled out our reports and Joe's friends helped him build an arm bandage out of a greasy towel and a nylon strap. Hey was still bleeding rather heavily, but the one ambulance that arrived didn't have time to help him treat his wounds. I waited another hour for a ride with both bikes back to my car, and another hour went by before I passed into an area with cell reception. All that time, Beat and Keith's wife Leslie didn't really know what was going on — only that my SPOT sent out a 911 signal, and later that there was a collision with a motorcycle. Leslie told me later that she was surprised her reaction to extreme stress was to stay calm and eat a lot of bagels. I felt some survivor's guilt that day, both for almost inexplicably avoiding being swept up in the collision, as well as instigating the SOS call without being able to convey further information. But I had to hit 911 on the SPOT. It was the right thing to do.

I met Keith at the medical center in the town of Sonora, where a stage of the Tour of California was slated to start on Wednesday. Bicycle fever rippled through the tiny town, but I could only feel sadness, and some anger. The accident was just that — unintentional — but the fact is Joe was able to walk away and Keith could not. Bicyclists never get to walk away. And the number of friends who have been involved in vehicle-bicycle collisions only continues to grow. It can be difficult not to ask "When is it my turn?" and "Why not me?" and sometimes just "Why?" Keith held on to his usual cheery attitude and made optimistic observations about his condition. But as we plodded through the tests and procedures at the hospital, I could see that this was becoming more real to him with each passing hour. He was lucky it wasn't worse, which is something one can always say about any bad incident. But he was beginning to realize that he was in for a long recovery, that he won't be able to ride a bicycle for several months, that he might not even be able to work for a long while.

The final diagnosis: A fractured lumbar vertebrae, muscle tearing, and abrasions. He was transported to a larger hospital in Modesto for a whole second day when the Sonora doctor became concerned about signs of nerve damage, but further tests came up clear. We went through the long process of transporting him to my home, prepping him for his flight, and sending him back to Canada, broken.

Keith has a great support network of friends and he will recover. I of course realize how lucky I am that I was not hit. I think my saving grace was the fact I veered so far to the right seconds before the accident. The noise from the other motorcycle engines startled me, and I remember fluttering the handlebars when I drifted too close to the dirt shoulder. Then Joe slammed directly into Keith's rear wheel before his Harley veered to the left and turned over. The trajectory of the crash pushed Keith's bike forward and up. That's likely what hit my left arm and tore off my watch — the bicycle. Keith flipped backward onto his back, but luckily his body never made direct contact with the motorcycle. Otherwise, the outcome probably would have been much worse.

 There was lots of good in Keith's visit to California, and I wish it didn't have to end this way. I took this photo from Glacier Point the evening before the crash, overlooking the Half Dome and other mountains in Yosemite. This is the hike I talked Keith into as part of my "my butt can't handle every day on a bike" vacation negotiations. We started in the valley and climbed the four-mile trail to Glacier Point, and then I went on to the top of the Sentinel Dome, 8,123 feet. From there I ran all the way down in order to catch up with Keith, losing more than 4,000 feet in direct elevation over six miles. It was without a doubt my best running descent yet. My feet floated over rocks and confidently rounded switchbacks, as though I might actually be learning a technique or two in technical running. And honestly, it was the strongest I've felt in a while.

Keith told me that this accident hasn't changed his feelings about cycling at all. He's still excited to return to road riding when he recovers. I admit I can't say the same right now. I am a cyclist, though, and I'm sure this trepidation won't last long. But right now I'm more excited about trail running than ever, and I am grateful for my health to do so.

Get well soon, Keith. 

And on and on

I will say this: It really is difficult to take recovery down time when it's summer, beautiful outside, and the people you spend time with are all out looking for fun. I finished the Stagecoach 400, took a couple of days completely off, and ventured back into easy running for a few days after that. But despite my first truly bad case of saddle sores and lingering tiredness, I've already slipped back toward possibly bad if enjoyable habits. I know I need to make changes in order to stop this cycle of fatigue. If only I could push my willpower in that direction.
 

My friend Keith is visiting from Banff for a spring road bike vacation that he's been planning for months. I can't blame Keith for the bike binging, as this has always been the plan. It's been so fun to have him here, but we've been putting in some solid miles. Right off the plane we did a hard climb up Monte Bello Road even though it was 92 degrees outside and there's still snow on the ground where he lives. He rocked it of course and is excited about all the warm weather, blue skies, smooth pavement and quintessential California cultural experiences like being passed on a mountain road by a parade of supercars. That kind of enthusiasm is hard not to get wrapped up in, and it's been great. But, yeah ... I'm still not feeling super awesome or even 100-percent healthy right now.

 The saddle sores are my most immediate concern. I'd actually appreciate some input from people with experience in this regard, and I'm trying to think of how I can word this without being too off-putting and graphic. So there are blister-like chaffing sores that have been slow-healing and seem to be irritated, possibly infected. I also have a fair amount of lingering swelling and significant soreness in the, ahem, lady parts. I've never experienced anything like this — even after Tour Divide. I often joke with my friends that I have an "iron butt" and honestly thought I was immune to saddle sores. I think it may be a combination of bad chamois choice, less-than-ideal hygiene (although I did take regular alcohol-based wet-wipe "baths" during the race), and more heat than I'm accustomed to. But, man. Ouch. The pain has been bad enough that I haven't been sleeping well at night, still, which also doesn't help with recovery. I tried plenty of lubing for my rides with Keith, as well as applications of a couple of over-the-counter medications for different kinds of infections. I've seen some improvement, but not as much as I expected after a week. Yesterday for a six-hour ride I decided to forgo the chamois and just wear airy running shorts because I've become convinced that chamois are nothing more than bacteria traps and it would be better for me to wick sweat rather than sit on it for six hours. This actually seemed to help. I already have a regular physical scheduled on May 21 so I will have a chance to see my doctor about this. But any suggestions, especially from women, that might offer me some relief before then would be greatly appreciated.

But, beyond the pall of sometimes excruciating undercarriage pain that makes me never want to ride a bike ever again (I joke, kind of), riding with Keith has been fun. We've done a bunch of climby rides because, around here, all the good road rides involve a ton of climbing. On Wednesday we rode Skyline Drive, 52 miles and 4,600 feet of climbing along the wooded spine of the Santa Cruz Mountains. It was fun to share the road with supercars, whose drivers were all courteous and gave us tons of space as they drove the speed limit past us.
 
Thursday was Bike to Work Day, and Google had a big festival with booths and prizes to encourage all of its employees to participate. There also seemed to be a competition of sorts among the employees to see who could complete the most awesome ride on their way to work. A few of Beat's co-workers also saw an opportunity to ride their bikes as long as possible before finally going into work, and planned a "long way" loop to the ocean and back — 77 miles and more than 7,000 feet of climbing. Of course Keith and I wanted in on the fun.

I wasn't the only non-Google employee to show up, but I was the only woman. I rolled up for the 6:15 a.m. start wearing my short running shorts and fat platform pedals attached to Beat's hand-built carbon Calfee. The reason for the platform pedals was because after my and Keith's four-hour ride, my road shoes started pinching and my frostbite-foot toes were sore. With all of my undercarriage issues, I really didn't need the added grief of toe pain, so I threw on the platforms right before the ride. I almost wished I left my headlamp attached to my helmet for a trifecta of dorkiness, but really the running shorts and platform pedals made me dorky enough, not to mention I was the only girl. I don't think any of these guys took me seriously from the get-go, but I held on to the finish.

The pace was friendly but not slacker. We did the ride in six hours in order to make it to "work" by noon. The route was spectacular, really. I would have never imagined myself enjoying road riding the way I do here in California, but this populated place is threaded with nearly traffic-free ribbons of pavement up steep slopes, beside sweeping vistas, and through thick Redwood Forests dripping with greenery. For locals: Our loop route was Page Mill, Alpine, Stage Road, Highway 1, Tunitas Creek, King Mountain, and valley bike routes to Google and home.

Today I talked Keith into a real day off — we're going to the beach and that's about it. After Keith's bike vacation I'm going to have to reassess, again, just how serious I'm going to be about my training this summer — because I'm not sure exactly what I need to combat this fatigue issue. I don't think it's as simple as taking a week off, but something like that will probably be the first step, after the Ohlone 50K next Saturday. But yeah, if I don't get my health back on track, UTMB is going to a lot more absurd than just the pipe dream that it is right now. I have to be realistic, even if I'm having fun.