Take me higher

Why is elevation so alluring? What is it about a distressing lack of oxygen, cold temperatures, rugged terrain, high winds, and harsh exposure that continually lure me to higher heights? I'm not even a rock climber and likely will never try to become one (too klutzy, oh so klutzy.) But like John Muir who once traveled these same granite mounds, the mountains are calling — and I must go.

Earlier this week, I went in search of ideas for two to three days of trail running possibilities around the Yosemite Valley, and stumbled across an open permit for Mount Whitney — a broad mountain that reigns over a beautiful cathedral of granite spires, and also happens to be the highest point in the Lower 48 United States. It was the sole Whitney opening in the entire month of June, a single day permit for June 19. Too serendipitous to bypass, I grabbed it and began scheming an acclimating/hiking trip instead.

I've been to Mount Whitney, elevation 14,505, once before, way back in 2001. That's also the only time I've been above 14,000 feet in my life — and I remember it being a harsh struggle, back when I lived at 4,500 feet in Salt Lake City. Now I live next to the ocean and know of other sea level dwellers who have developed high altitude pulmonary edema as low as 11,000 feet when ascending too quickly. I wanted to be cautious about the altitude and do a bit of acclimating on the way to the Eastern Sierras. Luckily, Yosemite National Park is right on route. On Sunday afternoon, I took on the climb to Clouds Rest. From the Sunrise trailhead on Highway 120, there's only about 3,500 feet of climbing in 15 rolling miles, and my plan was to run the runnable portions of trail. However, starting my run at 8,000 feet proved to be even tougher than I anticipated. I was sucking wind before the first quarter mile. After pushing hard for two miles I took much-needed "picture break," only to realize that I left the camera's battery plugged into its charger at home, 200 miles away. There was a spare camera in my car, but retrieving it necessitated four bonus miles. I debated it for a while but finally decided it was too beautiful of a day for no picture taking. I ran the two miles back and after that felt pretty deflated. It's interesting how quickly elevation can strip away my delusions of fitness — those four relatively flat miles could have easily done it for me in terms of perceived exertion. I knew I had 15 more miles in me, but it was getting to the point where limited daylight necessitated a continued strong pace.

I continued the attempted running until I surpassed 9,000 feet; then every breath felt like dragging a grater across my lungs. A pace I view as easy-going jogging at sea level just wasn't achievable for me at this elevation. Even hiking was extra tough. What that foretold for 14,000 feet in a day and a half, I tried not to imagine. I plodded to the top of Cloud's Rest, elevation 9,931 feet, and immediately lost all regret I had been feeling about my four-mile bonus camera run. It was a hazy day, but I still had great views of the Yosemite Valley, Glacier Point and Half Dome.

On the left is the area where I started running, Tenaya Lake, and a broad view of the eastern Sierras. As much as I love ascending to the top of mountains, my heart breaks every time I do so. From these heights I can see the true reach of places I will never experience, and realize just how insignificant of a bystander I am in this expansive world.

I ended with 19 miles in 5.5 hours, with about a half hour on the peak. But I had to work hard to average those 15-minute miles. I finished up about an hour before sunset and started driving east and south toward Lone Pine, in a slim valley wedged between the High Sierras and the low basins of Death Valley. I enjoy taking solo drives through scenic places, and the route from Yosemite to Lone Pine was one of the better drives I've had in a long time. This is Tuolume Meadows, a place where several long trails link together. Yosemite National Park is a trail runner's paradise, with an expansive network of runnable, scenic routes that stretch out for dozens and even hundreds of miles (John Muir Trail, Pacific Crest Trail.) I'm developing more interest in linking up these long routes someday.

I stopped for a restroom break at this stream near Tioga Lake. An outhouse with a view.

Ellery Lake.

Highway 120 at Tioga Pass.

Waterfall near Tioga Pass.

Descending Deadman Pass, this was the view from my dash of the Eastern Sierras — the drier and in my opinion more stunning side of this mountain range. My destination for the night was the unspectacular town of Bishop, elevation 4,200, because Lone Pine was still hours away and I wanted a little time at lower elevation to recover from my high-altitude Yosemite run. I had one more day to acclimate and I was almost as excited about the possibilities as I was about my Mount Whitney permit. 

By the numbers

On Friday, Jan and I set out for an afternoon ride through the enchanted woods, also known as Forest of the Nisene Marks. Jan wanted a much-needed break from his job search and was looking for some solid hours on the bike. I'm always game for adventure but in order to agree to a five-hour ride, I needed to disclose my growing list of disclaimers: Hamstrings tight; Calves still cramping; Tired and prone to timidity; May walk the steeper hills. We logged 13 miles and 3,200 feet of climbing on the Aptos Creek Fire Road before launching into the technical singletrack of Soquel Demonstration Forest for an eight-mile loop with 2,000 feet of heart-pounding descents and climbs.

We decided to climb back to Aptos Creek on a trail rather than take the long road around, which nearly proved to be my undoing. Grades that were sphincter-clenching during descents proved to be nearly unclimbable for my weakling legs. I mashed the granny gear until my hammies bunched into tight knots, then used a kind of sidestep to drag my bike up walls of loose dirt. When I arrived at the top Jan was drenched in sweat but had a cool smile on his face, satisfied with the hard effort. "Is running ruining your biking legs?" he joked.

"Well, actually, yes. Yes it is." Recovery from the Laurel Highlands Ultra aside, I really do feel weaker on my bike even as I become progressively stronger on foot. Maybe it's because lately I've been using cycling mainly as a recovery and recreation activity, and haven't been pushing myself as hard. Either way, my legs felt more sore after Jan's and my little mountain bike ride than they did after nineteen hours of pounding in Pennsylvania. I went for short run today in 100-degree heat (okay, okay, I waited until 7:30 p.m. when the fierce sun had drifted behind enough haze to drop temps into the low 90s) in hopes of loosening them up. My hamstrings and calves actually feel better now that they've had a little run time. I'm not sure how I feel about this development of becoming a stronger runner at the expense of having enough power left over to hang with my cycling friends. Honestly, it's a little discouraging.

Yeah, we both went around the jump. Next time. Ha!

But the actual thing I wanted to post about today was the one-anniversary of my book release. "Be Brave, Be Strong: A Journey Across the Great Divide" officially came out on June 15, 2011. This week I worked on tracking down as many numbers as I could in hopes of figuring out how many copies have sold. It's stretched out over a wide string of distribution channels and it's almost impossible for me to track down all of them. But what I found was encouraging. In its first year, this book sold at least 683 paperbacks and 2,840 eBooks for a total of 3,523 sales. Modest numbers for sure, but not bad for a self-published title in which nearly all of the profit goes to me. I wanted to say thanks to anyone who has purchased the book, for making this first year a good one. And if you have any opinion about it, I always appreciate the posting of reviews.

It's understandably a question I get all of the time: What are you working on now? Someday soon I plan to write a post delving into this more, but the quick answer is, "A lot of different things, but not making as much progress on any of them as I'd like." From this blog, it probably seems like I spend all of my time biking, running and traveling. But really there are still plenty of hours in the day to work, and I often don't make the best use of all of them. I'm still working on several book projects. My idea of a small independent publishing group has yet to spark, but interest has resulted in a few editing jobs (and I'm working on landing more of those.) I'm very close to releasing a blog compilation of essays from the past seven years, with added commentary to tie it all together. I still write the occasional short article here and there, and right now am pursuing more copy writing gigs to pass the time while I wallow in bouts of writer's block.

But things are clicking along. My main goal right now is creating more books; even if they're not as successful, ultimately I believe the work will pay off. I have to say, I do love having the salmon wheel that is Amazon.com out scooping up fish and keeping me in grocery funds while I indulge in five-hour bike rides. Life is good right now, even though my bike legs are weak and slow. Beat is in Zurich on business for a week and I'm hoping to head to the Sierras for a couple of days of solid UTMB practice. The main reason I signed up for a crazy race like UTMB is because the training gives me excuse to pursue one of my favorite things in the world ... climbing big mountains. And the best part is, right now, my legs are good at that. 

Because it's beautiful, that's why

Ultrarunning is an eccentric sport, so it makes sense that people have their own eccentric reasons for getting into it. I was exposed to this community for years before I developed any interest in participating. My first glimmer of intrigue sparked about three years ago, when I was traversing Heinzelman Ridge in Juneau. From a high point I could see mountain ridges rippling like waves across the Juneau Ice Field — all of these mountains I wanted to visit but would never be able to reach in a day. For my own reasons — bears, wolves, unpredictable weather, and the potential onset of disorienting fog overnight — I didn't want to attempt solo backpacking trips in the alpine of Southeast Alaska. But if I had the ability to move faster, I realized, the possibilities would be greater. The more efficient my steps became, the more mountains I could visit. Distance — not speed — was my overlying motivation to become "a runner."

Ultra-racing is a fun and challenging way to develop distance skills, and the Laurel Highlands Ultra was an ideal test. The 70.5-mile race traverses the entire distance of the Laurel Highlands Hiking Trail in southwestern Pennsylvania. The race launched in 1979 when two brothers set out to see how far they could get in a day. The following year, seven people showed up for the challenge, and a tradition was born. The current race directors, Iditarod veterans Tim Hewitt and Rick Freeman, invited Beat to come out to Pennsylvania and run their race. Beat in turn convinced me that the Laurel Highlands Ultra would be a good shakedown run for UTMB. I also liked the idea of a point-to-point course — 70 miles is a decent amount of ground to cover in a day, and I expected a scenic tour of one of the more remote regions of the eastern United States. Just a few years ago, seventy miles was well beyond my scope of what I could cover on foot in one day. Laurel Highlands was an opportunity to see how far I've come.

Of course, by race morning, I was less than enthused about all of it. We flew into Pittsburgh in the early morning hours on Friday, slept hardly at all, spent the rest of the day socializing and prepping, finally made our way home around 11 p.m., and then set our alarm for 3 a.m. Saturday so we could travel to the start with the race directors. Still operating in Pacific time, I groaned to Beat, "Why do we have to wake up at midnight to run on rocks and roots?" Beat pointed out that a few days worth of sleep deprivation and jet lag was also good training for UTMB. True, true.

About 130 racers were gathered for the dawn start of the seventy-mile race, which began at the parking lot of a small park and quickly funneled onto the narrow singletrack at mile zero of the Laurel Highlands Hiking Trail. Beat had hurt his hip the weekend before during the Diablo 60K, and the injury was still causing him quite a bit of pain. Before the race, he taped his hip extensively with kinesio tape, but he was noticeably limping in the first mile. I think he only bothered to start the race because we had already made all these arrangements to travel to Pennsylvania, not to mention self-imposed peer pressure from his friends. Beat promised he would drop at the first signs of real trouble, but I doubted this was going to happen. We ran together for the first eight miles, following the racer conga line up the rocky trail. As soon as the pack began to break up, I surged ahead. At the first aid station, mile 11, I waited for five or so minutes before deciding that Beat would likely catch me soon if he didn't drop. And if he was contemplating quitting, he probably didn't want me around to try to talk him into it.

The Laurel Highlands are the remnants of some old and crumbling mountains, leaving behind piles of massive boulders that the trail often wove through like a maze. The mountains themselves are actually the highest in Pennsylvania, and the high point on the trail is close to 3,000 feet. Though the giant rock gardens were my favorite aspect of the route, I'm a vista person at heart, and I was constantly scanning for spots to break out of the forest. I admit I wandered off the trail and onto the rocks once or twice in hopes of catching a glimpse of the Youghiogheny River or even downtown Pittsburgh, which I'm told can be seen across fifty-odd miles of mostly open green space. At one point I broke off from a small group I had been running with to locate the vista in the picture above this one, and then sped up to catch them again. "Stop and smell the roses type?" an older man asked as I passed. "Yup," I replied. "This is my motivation. I wouldn't be out here otherwise."

I passed the 50K mark while running with a friend of my friends Leslie and Keith, Kendra. We never got around to talking about just how small of a world this ultrarunning community is, but we did joke about veering toward the 31-mile finish and pretending we thought we entered the 50K all along. For me these were hollow words, because I was actually feeling pretty good. All the miles beyond 31 were mostly unknown territory for me, but I was consciously working on staying "light as a feather" in order to avoid pounding my feet while still lifting them enough to stay off the rocks. But by mile 40 I was beginning to regularly fail at this goal, stumbling more frequently until I finally took my first crashing blow into the rocks, hitting my left shoulder hard. This made me angry and I got up and started sprinting, trying to race off the pain that was coursing through my arm. I noticed I actually balanced much better when I moved faster, but I could hardly keep up that speed for thirty more miles. I vowed to pull out my trekking poles at the next aid station.

I had been aiming to hit the fifty-mile marker at twelve hours and was convinced I had it as late as mile 40. But the rocky section where I crashed slowed me down substantially, and I actually hit mile 50 closer to thirteen hours into the race. The Laurel Highlands Trail is marked with mile posts for the entire distance. Some runners find these marks of (slow) progress annoying, but I use GPS anyway so they mostly just gave me something to look forward to. At the mile 46 checkpoint, Tim gave me Beat's status — still in the race, about a half hour behind. I grabbed my trekking poles and began the long climb from a lower point on the course back to the 3,000-foot range.

Over the course of the race I had been eating what I might call a "50K diet" — mainly sugar, with salt tabs, and less than a hundred calories per hour on average. This works fine for me for seven hours or so, but by hour twelve I could feel the all-too-familiar onset of a bonk. In luckier situations, bonking simply means an energy hole that is relatively easy to dig out of. But a combination of the intensity of the effort, warm temperatures (mid-80s with high humidity), and mild dehydration sent my stomach into revolt and I couldn't put more calories down without heavy consequences. In less than two miles I went from feeling great to using every ounce of my diminishing willpower to avoid laying down in oh-so-soft-looking beds of ferns. Nausea wracked my stomach until I gave into vomiting, which made my gut feel marginally better but my head about ten times worse. I slowed to a near-crawl. There were definitely some 25-minute miles in that section, even after I finished the climb and re-entered the rolling terrain of the high ridge. I felt horrible, but strangely, I wasn't upset about it. The sun was drifting low in the sky beyond the canopy of trees, casting rich light and stark shadows across the carpets of ferns. Laurel bushes in peak bloom lined the narrow trail, creating purple-and-white walls of blossoms. The earthy sweet aroma probably would have been wonderful if I wasn't so nauseated, but even still it wasn't terrible. I could walk it off, I told myself, and in the meantime I felt entertainingly loopy, almost high.

But beauty can only sustain a poor physical state for so long. I slouched into the 57-mile checkpoint feeling so depleted that if I had been attempting a hundred-miler, I would have given strong consideration to dropping. Even with just a measly half marathon left, I still found it difficult to contemplate the miles ahead. I held onto Beat's sage advice for all similar ultra situations — "It will get better, before it gets worse, but then it gets better again. It always does." I forced down a cup of ramen soup, which proved to be my rapid turning point. Before I even left the aid station I was feeling okay enough to eat a few cookies and several cups of iced ginger ale. Darkness was settling in, so I switched on my headlamp and set into the final stretch a renewed runner — well, at least I was running again.

At mile 61 we hit the sole stretch of road on the course, about three-quarters of a mile of gravel. I was really excited to see this short section of easy travel, as I was becoming weary of stumbling on rocks. But sure enough, it only took about a quarter mile of unrealized tedium before I was struggling with the sleep monster. Funny how that happens. I slowed to a walk and occupied myself by shuffling through the screens on my Garmin eTrex ... smiling at the 14,000 feet of climbing it had registered so far and zooming out on the map to see just how far I had traveled, on a wrinkled line drawn over an impressive swath of southwestern Pennsylvania. At the top of the road was the last aid station, and I had no energy so I ate some more soup and wasted a little more time. Turnaround number two came, along with the resolve to run, the conquering of the rocky descent, and feeling the best that I had felt, arguably, all day long. (The race started so early that I did not feel awake until 9 a.m. Pacific time, which was nearly 25 miles into the race, and by then I had, well, 25 miles under my feet.) I can honestly say I enjoyed every minute of those last eight miles to the mile 70 marker, and finished feeling strong. Which, for my own eccentric reasons, is the ideal way to finish a race. I don't do this kind of thing to empty my tank ... I do it to feel full.

Rick handed me my trophy, an impressive mahogany replica of a trail marker with the number 70 inscribed in the wood. He said they'd mail me a plaque with my finishing time, 19:01. It was well ahead of my goal and good enough to be respectably midpack — 46th of 130 starters and 85 finishers, and 10th of 17 women. Beat limped into the finish at 20:27, having endured his hip pain that entire time. He had an experienced friend help him diagnose the injury today — tightness and strain in several muscles in and around his glutes. It sounded miserable and I think Beat ground it out only because he has so much respect and admiration for Tim that he didn't want to disappoint him ... awww.

My shoulder, which started to feel better after I began using my poles, is still a bit sore. I also have been feeling under the weather, which is more likely a result of travel-induced insomnia than running. Otherwise, I don't feel worse for the wear, and don't think it could have gone a whole lot better given my limited experiences with longer distances.

Plus, the Laurel Highlands are intensely beautiful. Experiencing the entire trail in a day amid the challenges and endorphins of long-distance running was all the more rewarding. For me, those are the best reasons to run the Laurel Highlands Ultra — cool trophies aside.