Following the heartlines

2012 Bear 100 race report, part one

Darkness enveloped the mountain like a brass mute, subduing a vibrant symphony of colors into a blue and gray requiem. I was in desperate need of a boost, struggling to climb out of a deep (and yes, predictable) mile-fifty bonk while simultaneously climbing a five-mile, 3,000-foot ascent through a narrow canyon. They call this place Blind Hollow. My headlamp beam cast flat light on the trail, adding poor visibility to significantly reduced muscle power. My body was no match for this staircase of camouflaged rocks, and I frequently stubbed my toes, stumbled and swore. It wasn't a good sign that I was hurting and tripping this much while climbing. Descents are my weakness. Climbs I can do, usually — but as my climbing ability diminishes, so goes my chances of finishing the Bear 100.

Music is something I lean on a lot in endurance challenges. I don't even care if people think it's a crutch. My trekking poles are a crutch, and I love those, too. I had the Monsters and Men album "My Head is an Animal" on repeat through long low points during the Stagecoach 400 bike race last April, and it seemed to help, so I flipped through my iPod until I found it. But after three songs of mellow indie folk, I only felt more melancholy. I needed motivating pop music, and remembered that Florence and the Machine boosted me through healthy segments of UTMB training. So I switched to that.

This section of the Bear 100 course was still new to me, the unknown first half. Although I'd never been here before, I felt a connection to this place, a familiar warmth coursing through my veins. When aid station volunteers asked me where I was from, I'd made of habit of noting that while I lived in California, "My dad's family came from here. I have a great-great-and-so-forth grandfather who was a Mormon pioneer and was one of the first settlers in the Cache Valley." My grandmother has always been proud of the family's pioneer heritage and tried to instill in her grandkids a healthy respect for our roots. Our ancestor was so poor that he and his family didn't have shoes to wear in the winter or enough food to eat in the summer. They crossed middle America with almost nothing and went on to build a town that had grown into the large community that was only a few miles from here.

Fifty miles, actually, by Bear 100 trail. I looked at my watch and groaned. I was still so, so far from the finish line. And yet there was so much to look forward to — meeting my friend Danni at the next aid station, having her join me for an overnight slumber-party-on-foot, visiting the spot where I met Beat for our first date, seeing the moonlit mountainsides where he and I first connected. I needed to tap some of my great-great-and-so-forth grandfather's pioneering determination. If a guy with no shoes and no money can cross a thousand miles of empty Plains, I can certainly rally for fifty more miles of a well-supported recreational race.

Florence and the Machine did add some rhythm to my plodding steps. I stuffed fruit snacks in my mouth and started glancing away from the trail since my headlight had no definition anyway. A ethereal silver glow outlined the edges of aspen leaves. I squinted at what I assumed was an optical illusion and realized that the light was reflecting from the full moon, rising over the tips of the trees. A harvest moon. The night was chilly, close to freezing already at 8,000 feet, and I could taste the sweet decay of autumn amid clouds of my own breath. The oxygen-starved air seemed to be filled with tiny ice shards, searing my lungs.

After a seeming lifetime of hunched climbing and sickening-but-necessary fruit snacks, I crested an open meadow illuminated by the moon. Sagebrush sparkled and the distant mountains were rendered with stark silver-and-black definition. It was like a photo negative, an inverted reflection of the eye-popping color that filled these mountains in the daytime — but equally sublime. Even though I was tired and sick, I felt a rush of joy. And because I was tired and sick, the contrasting emotion cut deeper than it ever could in times of comfort and complacency. The trail finally slanted downward, and I felt a strong urge to run.

Running felt amazing. The fruit snacks were working! The chance of face-planting over the flatly lit rocks was still high, but for now I didn't care about that. My legs had a fleeting burst of energy and I was going to milk it for as long as it lasted. I coasted down the singletrack and through a campground as Florence and the Machine provided an apt soundtrack:

Oh the river, oh the river, it's running free 
And I will join in the joy it brings to me 
But I know it'll have to drown me 
Before it can breathe easy 

I am endlessly searching for things I can't even conceptualize until I find them. That in essence is the catalyst of my endurance hobby and wanderlust — journeys with unknown destinations. Yes, finishing the Bear 100 was important to me, but I knew what I was looking for wouldn't be found at the finish line. It was somewhere out here, amid these silver-tinted mountains in northern Utah, where old bloodlines ran deep but the air was sweet and new.

And then I came to a familiar place — strikingly familiar, even when rendered like a photo negative. Granite cliffs encircled the glittering basin of Tony Grove Lake, lined by silver aspen trees. I remembered this place like I had been here just yesterday — the place Beat and I pursued in our own separate but difficult journeys two years ago, coincidentally arriving at Tony Grove just five minutes apart. The place where he looked at me with those eyes that pierced through all remnants of reason and sanity, and asked that simple but profound question: "So, are you running?"

It was ... strange. I knew I wanted to revisit this place, but didn't exactly know why. And then, in an equally abrupt transition, I understood ... although I couldn't explain it with words. It simply hit me like a burst of energy, like a flicker of silver moonlight, and I felt satisfied. It occurred to me that this wasn't the end of the journey or even the middle, but yet another beginning. And Florence and the Machine, in that eerie way that my music sometimes does, provided a voice:

Just keeping following the heartlines on your hand
Just keeping following the heartlines on your hand
Keep it up, I know you can 
Just keep following the heartlines on your hand.

"Cause I am," I repeated out loud, and ran toward my friend Danni at the Tony Grove aid station.

The many years of Arctic Glass

The best of "Arctic Glass"

As blogs go, "Jill Outside" formerly "Up in Alaska" url "Arctic Glass" is beyond ancient. On November 3, it will turn seven years old. With the exception of a few friends, family, and my cat Cady, this blog is the only thing that has been a constant in my life for that long. (Even bodies regenerate an entirely new batch of cells every seven years.) It was a snowy evening in Homer, Alaska, when I first launched my blog on a whim, planning to use it to stay in touch with friends in the Lower 48 (this was 2005, the now-almost-unimaginable-pre-Facebook-era.) I figured I would post pretty Alaska photographs once a week or so, and maybe my mom would read it. Arctic Glass has since amassed 1,548 entries, 19,910 comments, 3,317,930 direct page views, and 2,840 Google subscribers. I couldn't even begin to guess how many words and photos fill this space ... suffice to say it's a whole lot. This blog is quite the obese oldster, so to speak.

I never diverged from my original intention for this blog, which is — and only is — a simple online journal. I don't sell ads. I don't publish how-to articles. I don't comment on politics or current events. I don't do gear reviews. I do consider commercial blogs to be worthy ventures, and while I have received many requests and offers over the years, I decided not to venture down this path. Arctic Glass is really just the story of my life — truncated, for sure, due to the content being largely restricted to my chosen theme (outdoor activity), the blog's public status, and my own time constraints. But even with these limitations, this blog has helped me generate a rich and cathartic record of my day-to-day life, which is why I continue to enthusiastically pour so much time and energy into it (even though its sheer obesity means that not even my mom has read the entire thing.)

Still, I believe that some of the content on this blog is worth revisiting. Which is why, under the urging of a trusted colleague, I worked on putting together a compilation of blog posts — the "Best of Arctic Glass." As with other projects amid my adventure-distracted lifestyle, this one took much too long to come together. And while I've been working on designing a photo-enriched physical book that I can actually afford to publish, more and more time keeps passing. Now what started as a "Six Years of Adventure" project is quickly approaching seven. As such, I decided to release the compilation in eBook form, which can be read on Kindles, iPads, or your home computer.

"Arctic Glass: Six Years of Adventure in Alaska and Beyond" is a collection of 33 essays from this blog, along with short commentary. The main question I get when I tell people about this book is whether any of the content is new. The answer is no. Yes, technically these essays are available for free somewhere on this blog (the key word, of course, being "somewhere." Even I had a hard time finding many of the posts I wanted to include.) What the eBook offers is a succinct timeline, as well as a thorough culling of 1,548 posts to get to the good stuff. Photos are not a prominent part of the eBook, but there are a few. If you're a new reader of this blog and curious about the backstory, or a long-time reader of the blog who missed a few years here and there, I think you would enjoy this book. It's a measly $2.99 on Amazon and iTunes, and your purchase will help me stay gainfully funemployed long enough to finish my other writing projects. Or waste more time pursuing yet more adventures. Hopefully both.

As for the full photo book, I plan to keep working on that. Given all of the adventures I've been trying to cram into the remainder of this year, as well as renewed determination to finish my "A" project before the year is out — it might be a while yet. But for now, you can find "Arctic Glass: Six Years of Adventure in Alaska and Beyond" at these links:

Amazon Kindle
For iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch via iTunes
PDF and other formats via Smashwords

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.