Nostalgia: A good reason to run 100 miles?

There wasn't a hint of breeze or wisp of fog on the first day of autumn, a rarity in the Marin Headlands at any time of the year. I was having the best day. It started with a sunrise drive across the Golden Gate Bridge, which led to a morning nap on Muir Beach as I listened to ocean sounds (I volunteered at the Coastal 50K, and a delayed start due to late buses meant there was some extra time to kill before the race.) After setting up the aid station I spent three hours filling water bottles, cutting up fruit, and preparing fresh peanut butter sandwiches, which I believe I make extra special by really piling on the peanut butter and jam, but leaving room around the edges to prevent stickiness. In fact, several runners complimented my sandwiches. "Thanks," I replied. "PB&J is my favorite during these races, too."

After coaxing the last runner out of Muir Beach, I set out to sweep up trail markers behind him. Last runner pace was perfect for me, and I marched cheerily up the Coastal Trail, pulling pink ribbons off branches as waves crashed against the cliffs below. My legs still had that strange empty feeling, but I didn't have to think about that, not this day. I reached a crest of the Miwok Trail that I recognized from my own first 50K run, nearly two years ago (and also remarkable, I thought, that it hasn't even been two years yet.) Pausing for a minute, I looked toward the hills of Sausalito and soaked in the intoxicating fusion of immediate happiness and warm nostalgia. It was a good moment. A smile-without-meaning-to-smile moment. A moment that was too quickly washed away by my empty legs' stern reminder of why I was there in the first place, logging some last-minute volunteer work at the Coastal 50K.

Stylin' during the 2010 Bear 100, somewhere much too far above Bear Lake. Not pictured: Hurty feet. 

It's my and Beat's favorite story to tell to anyone who asks how we got together — the story of a boy and a girl who met as a runner and a volunteer at a 100-mile race in Montana, became Internet friends, and proceeded to dare each other into the most convoluted meeting ever. The story of our first date. Boy had just completed the first running of the grueling Tor des Geants less than a week earlier. Girl was a cyclist who could still count her running-days-per-year on one hand. Girl was working long hours in Las Vegas for Interbike, slowing losing her mind amid the chaotic deluge of it all, when boy called her and said, "I'm still going to the Bear 100. You should come out to Utah and pace me."

Girl was not a runner, but she almost never says no to an adventure, especially with a Swiss cutie who appears to genuinely like doing these kinds of things for fun. She found a friend who was driving from Los Angeles to Salt Lake, hitched a ride to her parents' house, stole their truck without their permission while they were on vacation in Germany, borrowed a bunch of halfway workable "running" clothes from their closet, and drove to Logan. She arrived at the mile fifty aid station still wearing jeans and eating a large sandwich for dinner, expecting to wait for boy and then form a plan for much later in the race — only to have him show up less than five minutes later, look at her with his piercing brown eyes and ask, without a hint of sarcasm, "So, are you running?"

It's the story of how I unintentionally ran fifty miles with no training in cotton yoga pants and rhinestone-bedazzled sunglasses. Of how Beat's blistered feet hurt so much that he would occasionally scream Swiss-German swear words without a hint of comedy. Of how we went all through the night talking about bicycle touring and quantum physics, losing the trail, climbing above the trees and turning our headlamps off to look at the stars, collectively willing ourselves to run faster when the temperature dropped to 21 degrees, going until my own feet hurt so bad that every footfall caused me to wince, and then Beat refused to continue at his own pace in a race that was his race, just so he could help me hobble through the last ten excruciatingly slow miles. Afterward, we had several hours to kill before we could catch a bus ride back to the start, so we made out in the grass at a tiny park in Fish Haven, Idaho. It was seriously the best first date ever.

Beat during the 2010 Bear 100. So adorable.

After finishing the shortened version of Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc last month, I wasn't shy about voicing my disappointment that I had missed out on the "full" hundred experience. A hundred hard miles was something I trained for during the summer and arrived in Europe at least mentally ready to tackle the challenge, if not physically as well. But because I was so open about my disappointment, one thing led to another and I ended up registered for the 2012 Bear 100, which starts in Logan on Friday, Sept. 28, at 6 a.m. The Bear 100 sounded like a great idea when I was fast-recovered from UTMB and running mellow trails in Germany, but then I went to Italy and binged and binged on mountains, didn't sleep or eat well, and returned to the U.S. with empty legs and dread renewed.

However, I did recruit my friend Danni to pace me in the Bear 100, so I can't back down now. We had a great time last year during the Slickrock 100, when she was the runner and I was the pacer. So I have that to look forward to. Despite my current fatigue, I do feel I was in good shape for UTMB; not that much can have changed in a month. Also, I was similarly tired right before the Stagecoach 400, and while I can't deny that I felt fairly shattered for much of that 3.5-day mountain bike race, I did finish the thing. After the first twenty (steep!) miles of the Bear 100, my legs would probably feel dead either way. So really, starting with empty legs is just giving up a relatively small head start in a race like this. And the truth is, I'd really love a shot to try to finish a summer 100-mile trail race. Although UTMB was beyond my control, there is this sense of disappointment that I'm now 0-for-2, despite a 2-for-2 record in winter 100-milers. Is there a good chance I'll be 0-for-3 after the Bear? Well, yes, but the most memorable adventures for me are the usually the most outlandish ones. I'm excited.

And it's true I'm a nostalgic person by nature; more than anything, I'm anticipating a visit to the beautiful locations of a few of my favorite memories. During the 2010 Bear 100, Beat stopped me at a high point under the stars and handed me a rock that he found on a high mountain pass in Italy. He carried through the Tor des Geants and now the Bear 100, and gave it to me as he nervously asked whether I was interested in "dating" even though he lived in California and I lived in Montana. I (now famously) replied "sure" with a shrug, and we left it at that for a while. You can bet that I'll be pressing forward on Friday in anticipation of reaching that spot, and also likely carrying that rock with me as well, for good luck.

As Helen Keller wrote — life is a daring adventure, or nothing. 

Jet lagged

 I had this strange dream that I came back to California. Bikes were there, and so were giant cups of soda, and I was somehow outside of myself, watching this familiar world float by as though I both never left and also hadn't yet returned. The pieces of the dream didn't quite fit together because my friend Bill from Montana was there, and really, why would Bill be in California? That part didn't make sense, but the rest of the dream was like my simple, normal life — tinted surreal because I was so fantastically jet-lagged.


I feel like I'm closer to understanding how people manage running hundred-milers, but I doubt I'll ever understand how some people can travel around the world continuously for their livelihoods, and still maintain a grasp on reality. I've traveled across an ocean only three times in my life, and every time I return home, the combination of travel fatigue, deeper-than-normal physical exhaustion, mild reverse culture shock, and significant time change, has knocked me on the floor. I made my way home by Monday evening and have been operating on a semi-conscious, semi-automatic level ever since. Amid the big catch-up game that's inevitable after a month of being away, I've been hanging out with my friend Bill, who actually is visiting from Montana. It's a longish story of cheap plane tickets and girlfriends on business trips, but he arrived in San Francisco four days before I came back from Europe. By Tuesday, he'd had his fill of "solo urban hiking" and was raring to ride.

I felt barely functional enough to drive on Tuesday so I nixed the possibility of any exercise and suggested we go watch a cross race in the city where my friend Leah would be racing. As it just so happened, this was "cross" in multiple definitions of the word, and both men and women were sporting an array of hilarious outfits. It was a rogue cyclocross race, loosely organized, at an undisclosed location to prevent unwanted inquiries. We never did figure out exactly who won, but we had a lot of fun discussing nominations for best dressed.

 By Wednesday, I'd run out of excuses and cross-dressing distractions, so I took Bill on a mountain bike ride. I set him up on my Fatback under the justification that he's a tall guy and it's my largest bike, but I also know that Bill loves fat tires. We rode my "house trail," the Steven's Creek Loop, which is still a hard 30-mile ride with 4,000 feet of climbing. I didn't feel stellar but I tried not to whine because Bill remembers me back when I used to be tough. Eventually, my quads started failing — it's hard to explain, but the muscles were twitching and it just didn't feel like they were firing, like the fuel lines had been blocked. This slowed me down a lot, and was also the point where the excuses started flowing. Bill wouldn't buy "jet lag lots and lots of mountains in Italy" as a real excuse and kept asking me, "What's wrong with you?"

 On Thursday I wanted to show him famous California redwoods and the coast, so I chose a loop around Purisima Redwoods. However, I'd only ridden this loop once before and I was being guided by a friend, so I remembered a lot less about it than I would have liked. At two major intersections with only two choices for turns, I picked the wrong one both times, and we ended up way off course in Half Moon Bay. Rather than pick my way back on circuitous and steep backroads that I didn't know well, I just jumped on Highway 1 and hoped Bill wouldn't ask why our nice mountain bike ride suddenly involved ten miles of busy pavement.

The bright side was I was able to show Bill one of my favorite secret spots in the Bay area, a shaded bluff above the beach where we could sit and listen to waves crash on the sand as vultures soared overhead. I wanted so badly to fall asleep right there. The fact we had a 2,200-foot climb in front of us filled me with dread. I can't say I handled that climb with any kind of athleticism or grace.

Bill is flying out Friday afternoon and my plan for the next week is to sleep. Yes, for a week. I'm volunteering at a 50K race on Saturday, but after that, it's all sleep. I'll expand on that soon, why extreme rest so important to me right now. And to Danni: Yes, I overdid it. Yes, I'm sorry. But no worries. Sleep for a week. I'll be fine. :-)

I will say, it was fun to be back on a bike, broken quads and all. 

Last day in Italy

Goodbye, Valle d'Aosta 

Sunday marked the last full day of a long, sometimes exhausting, but incredibly rewarding trip to Europe. During the last week I had grown particularly attached to Courmayeur, and bid my personal goodbyes to all of the things I was going to miss — the light-hearted and friendly locals, the delicious thin-crust pizzas, and of course all of the mountains. So many mountains, so little time and energy in life to visit them all. But I felt like I had a good run during this trip. 

 On Sunday morning, the Tor des Geants held its final awards ceremony. It seemed like most of the town turned out to spectate. The friendly woman who ran the desk at our hotel even shut down the front office for a couple of hours to stand in the crowd and cheer for runners. All of the finishers gathered to parade down the main street of Courmayeur. This photo is a picture of Beat with his friend Dima and Dima's girlfriend Karen. Dima and Beat traveled together for some time during the 2011 Tor des Geants, which is how they became friends. Dima, whose full first name is Dmitry, is a Russian who lives in the eastern United States. He teased Beat about finding the only other Russian Dmitry to partner with in this year's running of the TDG. After the race we also got to spend a little time with Beat's 2012 Dmitry, a soft-spoken software developer who just moved to New York.

Afterward, Beat and I met Ana for our promised gelato celebration. Ana succeeded in finishing the 2012 Tor des Geants despite multiple setbacks, including her sprained ankle before the event. She stoically kept at it, and arrived at the finish line on Saturday morning. Although Ana and I vowed to each eat a liter of gelato together if she finished the TDG, in the end we both chickened out. I was about to head out for an afternoon hike that 33 ounces of heavy cream and sugar would have likely sidelined, and I think Ana was just too tired to eat more than a normal portion. But the gelato was delicious. I had cherry and Nutella-flavored scoops on a cone. This is another thing I will miss about Courmayeur. 

Because I was still dealing with frequent leg cramps, I told Beat I wanted to do something "short and easy" for my afternoon outing. The problem with climbing mountains in Courmayeur is the complete absence of anything resembling "short and easy." But it was my last day in Italy, and I just had to visit one more mountain. I chose Mont Cormet, an 8,200-foot peak that towers directly over town. I set up this timed photo to illustrate what hiking above the Aosta Valley usually entails — the "trail" shoots straight up the mountain slope on a 50-percent grade. Even at a snail's pace, my leg muscles were on fire. No wonder they've been cramping so much. As I climbed closer to the peak, I encountered some difficult terrain including traverses of extremely steep avalanche gullies, scrambles beside cliff bands, and navigating around a maze of large metal "nets" presumably constructed to prevent rockslides from tumbling all the way into town. During that section I had one mile that my Garmin registered as a 57-minute-mile. So much for short and easy. 

During the climb, I thought about Beat's effort in his two European races. The PTL was 290 kilometers with 22,000 meters of climbing. The Tor des Geants was 303 kilometers with 24,000 meters of climbing. In the context of my 57-minute-mile, the numbers were difficult to fathom. And yet, by grinding away at it one kilometer at a time, he'd managed to accomplish the impossible-seeming big picture. Runners have different agendas. Many are experimenting with how fast they can go, but some of us are genuinely more interested in discovering how far we can go. Beat just took his running farther than he has yet, and it was enlightening to observe the ways in which he became stronger as he went. His body seemed to adapt to his increasing demands, and besides his feet, he had relatively few physical issues. As for his feet, he admits he made a couple of misjudgments in the early miles of the PTL that resulted in him having to work hard to mitigate the damage for the remainder of PTL and all of TDG. But Beat's personal distance experiment went farther toward confirming a theory I've long held about endurance challenges — that beyond the limitations of our own minds, our individual potential is unimaginably extensive.

Perhaps someday I will return to these mountains to test this theory on myself. Until then, I will look back fondly to the striking beauty and the muscle-grinding terrain that necessitates 57-minute miles.

Courmayeur to Mont Cormet, round-trip distance: 9.4 miles
Total climbing: 4,377 feet
Total time: 3:48