Iditarod, again

Anne and Beat on the Iditarod Trail

I was going to write a personal blog post about arriving in Alaska, the lead-up to the Iditarod Trail Invitational and the race start at 2 p.m. Sunday, but I have to admit I'm a bit emotionally drained right now. More than an hour after the race started, I loaded up my fat bike and pedaled out the Iditarod Trail. It took me longer than I hoped to put my bike together, but I wanted to catch up to Beat and other foot racers as they marched over the rolling hills and frozen swamps of the Susitna River Valley. Temperatures were on the warm side — near freezing — and the trail and melted and churned up to a mashed potato consistency. It took me ten strenuous and maxed-out miles to finally catch Beat, who appeared shaken. He told me, "It's all starting to set in now, what I'm doing here."

It was a warm day, with temperatures in the high 20s to low 30s, and the trail was soft

I pedaled a bit farther and thought about all of the memories and emotions I have wrapped up in this trail, how it's still so intimidating and unpredictable, and yet familiar and comforting, like a small piece of my identity. And I thought about this thing that Beat is setting out to do, this thousand-mile walk to Nome — all of the inevitable hardships, the unnerving dangers, the strong beauty and raw emotions that will no doubt change a piece of his own identity, regardless of whether he makes it or not.

Tim Hewitt, Beat, and me at the start

I passed Beat, who was traveling with our friend Anne Ver Hoef, for the last time at Burma Road. It occurred to me that this was likely the last road he'll cross that's still connected to the North American road system, for a thousand miles. Beyond this he is off the grid and out of reach — and it's hard. It's harder than I even expected. After I had passed the last of the foot racers, I indulged in a few tears. Then, at the top of a long hill, I stopped to catch my breath and unintentionally broke out into a blubbering mess for two or three minutes. I really just had to let it all out. It's a big weight, this churning ball of excitement and pride and fear; and this felt like big place, this birch canopy hill that is only the smooth edge of a vast and uncaring wilderness.

But I love this, too, in a different but still deep and visceral way. I feel strongly that Beat will get through his adventure just fine and emerge with every part of himself, including his emotional health, intact. But life is as fortuitous and ever-changing as this wilderness, and there's no way of knowing or understanding the future until it's already deep in the past. But I have hope, and that's one thing humans can hang onto, the one thing life can never take away unless we let it.

If the weather is good on Monday, my friend Dan and I hope to fly over the Yentna River and see Beat and other foot racers. If it's not, perhaps I'll write a lengthier blog post. For now, I posted some more pictures and a bit of a report at Half Past Done. 

Let's pretend we're in Antarctica

Here I was yet again, T-minus a few days to another winter visit to Alaska, fending off hypothermia in coastal California. When I left the trailhead for a ninety-minute run, it was 42 degrees and raining. I didn't bring a coat because I didn't realize it going to be that cold, but I reasoned I could just run harder. Then I broke out of the emerald protection of the forest and ran straight into a wall of wind as it drove daggers of rain through my soaked shirt. At that elevation, raindrops had the kind of sharp definition they take on just before rain turns to sleet, and the windchill was brutal — I'd place it in the 20s, easily. And I was wet and had no wind protection or gloves.

Ah, California, you always manage to catch me with my guard down just when I need to re-learn a valuable lesson about underestimating the effects of cold — like how frustrating it is when fingers go numb or when my quads are so cold that every pounding downhill step feels like an electric shock. My muscles were too cold to engage the higher gears needed to increase my heat output, so I simply settled into a numb jog knowing I'd be fine but slightly miserable for a while. Dropping off of the exposed ridgeline and back into tree protection improved my mood substantially, even as the rain intensified. Slicked with precipitation, the leaves and grass were intensely green; the trail was covered in fun splashy puddles, and I had the whole normally crowded park all to myself (ask a local what they wear to go outside during a winter storm, and most will probably respond with a confused expression. Go outside?) But spring is in full effect now, and by the time I return from Alaska at the end of March, it will be nearly summer. I admit I will miss this green.

That partially paralyzing anxiety and pre-race jitters are really clamping down now; I'm not sure who's more nervous about Beat's expedition to Nome, him or me. It's impossible to form a concept of the 1,000-mile expedition as a whole, so he's taken to visualizing it in pieces, and thinking out loud about just how horrible each section is going to be. The other day we discussed the Yukon River — a couple hundred miles of a wide and flat river plain plunged into a 40-below freezer and buffeted by gale-force winds. "It will be awesome," I said. "Just pretend you're in Antarctica." Beat looked at me with a raised eyebrow that clearly said, "How is that supposed to be better?"

But deep down he knows he's going to relish the experience and I know I'm going to spend more moments of this month freaking out than I like to admit. I've actually compiled a fairly full calendar for myself, but I'm going to make my best effort to post regular updates about Beat and other news from the Iditarod Trail Invitational when I'm on the grid (and if I'm going to be off the grid, I'll post how long so the lack of updates doesn't worry anyone.) News will be posted at my endurance racing blog, Half Past Done, with more frequent quick updates on Twitter and Facebook. Here's a list of links to follow Beat's progress:

Half Past Done
HPD Twitter page
Jill's Facebook page
ITI Latest News
ITI Leaderboard

We leave for Alaska later this afternoon (Friday) and the race begins at 2 p.m. Alaska time Sunday. I'm headed out for one last quick run in the sunny green hills (60 degrees today) and then it's a month of snow and ice that I plan to live to the fullest. Yesterday one of Beat's friends sent him a video that seemed appropriate — Of Montreal's "Wraith Pinned to the Mist and Other Games." ...

"Let's have bizarre celebrations. 
Let's forget when, forget what, forget how. 
We'll have bizarre celebrations. 
We'll play Tristan and Iseult, but make sure I see white sails. 
Let's pretend we don't exist;
Let's pretend we're in Antarctica." 

 More soon.

The best kind of bonk ride

I sought out Sunny Jim Trail primarily because I despise it so. There were a few seconds of weakness as I wavered at the crossing of Skyline Drive with its smooth and flat pavement, less than a mile to my next connector trail on Russian Ridge. And then there was Sunny Jim with its 600 feet of elevation gain in a half mile followed by a teeth-chattering descent. It's a mean, mean fire road, and to top it off, my blood sugar had plummeted off the edge of pleasantness. I had the h'anger. And even though there wasn't a single viable reason why I should take Sunny Jim over Skyline, I promised myself a fruit snack if I could pedal all the way to the crest without keeling over.

Sunny Jim's grades top 20 percent. It's a leg-buster on a good day, but riding it bonked after several thousand feet of climbing in the midst of a five-hour ride is another experience altogether. My legs filled with hot lead and my lungs seared in the sixty-degree air. My head spun but I couldn't dab, couldn't let my feet touch the dirt of sweet relief, no I would not. Every time I passed a trail sign pointing the way to a friendlier piece of singletrack where bikes are not allowed, I sneered at it. "I hate you Sunny Jim. I hate you so much." And then I couldn't breathe, so I couldn't speak, so I hated Sunny Jim in silence, with the fire of a thousand suns.

I mashed past a family of hikers who regarded me with unveiled concern. I was full-on wheezing at that point and I didn't care who could hear my gasps of desperation. Sunny Jim was destroying me, and I couldn't let that happen. Too steep to stand out of the saddle, almost steep enough to tip backward, I leaned into my handlebars and mashed with all of the sputtering power my h'anger could release. By the crest I was so dizzy I could no longer read the hateful trail sign, but I knew what that fluttering brown square meant. My backpack was tossed on the ground before I even got off the bike, and I ripped into the pack like a wolf, extracting all of its guts for the prize at the bottom. I devoured the small pack of fruit snacks in two bites, and ate another without deciding to, even though that was all the fruit snacks I had. (Whoops on forgetting to restock my backpack.)

Sugar rushed into my blood stream as I plummeted down the steep track — instant energy plus endorphins plus exhilaration exploded into a chemical reaction that is my secret solution for a most sublime level of bliss. All of my endurance experiments have taught me tricks for manipulating my physical reactions and emotions to both push through tough times and squeeze the most joy out of my experiences. I admit I suspected Sunny Jim would be fair payment for an incredible second half for the last trail ride I'll likely be able to squeeze in before I leave for Alaska.

I raced around my favorite Russian Ridge trails, taking in views like this. Somewhere in there my 160 calories of fruit snacks burned out. I was too blissed out to notice, but my head did start to feel fuzzy again, my gut noticeably hollow. No matter; it was time to turn toward home via my favorite descent in all of the region, Alpine Road. Alpine Road is actually a segment of trail that I believe was once a logging road, but in a couple of decades of MPOSD jurisdiction has overgrown and washed out to a fast and flowing singletrack that drops steeply into the Portola Valley. On Sunday, the trail was in hero dirt condition. Fuzzy endurance (or in this case, hungry) brain helps break up some of my more useless inhibitions, and I flew down the descent and hugged the tighter turns with a kind of instinctive confidence I can't easily access in stronger physical condition. Yay for stupid fun.

I don't often ride Alpine Road because it dumps me out near the I-280 corridor about fifteen miles from home. It often seems like too big of a busy pavement price to justify the ride. But on Sunday it seemed totally worth it, and I had just enough time to spin the big ring home before dark. However, I managed to take the wrong right turn off of Alpine and started climbing back into the Los Trancos Hills. It seemed not quite right, but I was certain, somehow, that this road connected back up to where I needed to be. I climbed as the road led up steeper and steeper grades, and still I continued climbing. Eventually I felt not well at all and then I hit a dead end. I switched my GPS screen to check my elevation and saw I had reached 1,400 feet. The freeway corridor is at 100 feet. I called Beat.

"I'm running late," I told him. "But it's because I'm lost. Can you tell me if, um, let's see, if Los Trancos Road connects back up with Page Mill?"

Beat looked up my location and informed me that I was essentially riding into a spiderweb of dead-end roads. "Are you sure this doesn't connect with Page Mill?" I insisted. "I left Alpine Road like a half hour ago and then I climbed a thousand feet. I don't want to go back."

He insisted that even if I found a magical connector trail that was not on the map, Page Mill would eventually lead me to nearly the same spot as Alpine Road, and I'd still have about the same distance to ride home. All of these complex concepts were just confusing me. I didn't have the energy to argue but I wasn't all that disappointed either. I launched into my accidental road descent that was actually a lot of fun. 36 mph.

I had to strap on my headlight and red blinky to pedal home but that was okay, too. The setting sun washed the sky in pink light and I felt peaceful and content, like I could keep pedaling forever, fruit snacks or none.