Easing back in

Alaska, with her enticing siren song of beauty and adventure, never fails to tempt me into the depths of physical exhaustion. For a month she persuaded me to dig deep, and so I dug, and dug, until April came and I was flat on my back in California, deep in an energy hole just in time for the launch of spring training. And so it goes. Winter is for playing until I'm exhausted. Spring is for playing until I recover. 

I can't even complain because I didn't walk a thousand miles to Nome, but March was a big month for me — enough that I feel like I'm well down the backside of the bell curve of fitness. Beat and I returned from Anchorage on Wednesday, and amid the flurry of unpacking and catching up, I attempted two short runs on Thursday and Friday. Both were busts. It was hot, so hot (67 degrees one day, 76 the next!), and my legs weirdly felt frozen — as though I haven't run in more than a month ... which in truth, I haven't (snow "running" is a different sort of motion for me than trail running, and I didn't even do much of that.) But I figured I at least needed a shakeout. Even six miles turned into an exhausting effort. I was nauseated and sweating, feeling like I was attempting a run in a 120-degree desert and not the temperate coastal climate in which I live.


So I'm back in California, happy to be settling back into a routine, but frustrated with my current level of fitness and general blah-ness — much like I was in April 2012. And like last year, I figure the best way to deal with it is to go for long bike rides. What can go wrong with a plan like that? (Stagecoach 400 slow meltdown revisited? Good thing I decided not to ride that this year. I only have two tough ultramarathons in May, which is like, at least a month away.)

 But yes, long bike rides. My friend Leah's spring break was this week. Originally we had been hoping to squeeze in a little tour, but with responsibilities stacking up we only had time for an overnight: Car camping and a nice, long ride on the Arroyo Seco trail in Los Padres National Forest. This is the same segment I rode as part of a 280-mile spring tour last year, and I was excited to go back and experience those beautiful mountains when it had not rained several inches in the days leading up to the ride, and I was not completely bonked and out of food.

True to form, we did not get an even remotely early start, despite a forecast calling for afternoon thunderstorms. I didn't care about snoozing away the morning as I had one of my better nights of sleep in a month, sprawled out in our big REI tent with my air mattress and 32-degree bag draped like a comforter over my body. The outside air temperature that night was warmer than some of our Alaska friends' houses. It felt divine but I knew it also foretold of uncomfortable heat during the day. Despite this knowledge, my memory is filled with frozen fingers and shivering snack breaks in Alaska, with a longer-range memory of fending off the drizzling chill in this same region last year. So I filled up a backpack with enough extra layers to handle subzero cold, and enough food to supply a multiday bike tour. But luckily, since my rational side still expected 80 degrees, I also had a ton of water. That thing must have weighed 15 pounds. And I haven't ridden with a backpack in more than a month. My lower back still hurts from this ride. 

 But we had a ton of fun. Arroyo Seco is an old dirt road that has not been open to vehicle traffic in many years, and is quickly being reclaimed by the Los Padres Mountains. The first four miles of climbing away from the Arroyo Seco Gorge are still road-like, but after that overgrowth and landslides have fostered natural singletrack, along with some wide-open washed-out sections. I think it's super fun riding, in a spectacular natural setting that sees relatively few visitors for a place with close proximity to San Jose and Monterey. And the best part is, there's an intriguing web of hiking trails connecting more old fire roads. This area is ripe for exploration.

 We finished the Arroyo Seco trail after eighteen miles and dropped six more on the road into Fort Hunter-Ligget before deciding to turn around. The region was beautiful, with groves of huge old oak trees, sandstone hills, and a golden eagle soaring directly overhead. By that point the afternoon sun was out in full force, lighting the dusty pavement on fire. Even Leah, who is acclimated to California temperatures, found the heat to be less than bearable. But she motored on ahead as I struggled, feeling dizzy and overheated and sick to my stomach. Even returning to the trail didn't help my condition. At one point I was in front of her and pulled off the trail. "Photo break?" she asked. "No, just regular break," I replied and slumped over the handlebars.

 My physical state began to improve as clouds moved in and the wind picked up, bringing a band of thunderstorms that dropped the temperature at least 15 degrees. Leah was worried about rain and sticky mud, but I was more relieved that it wasn't so hot.

 But it was a fun ride, despite my feeling out of shape and pasty, and the beauty of the region did wonders to ease the sting of having to leave Alaska behind.

 Our ride was 48 miles with 7,900 feet of climbing according to my Garmin — much of that gain accomplished in the ceaseless rolling terrain of the mountain traverse. We finished in just under seven hours, with 6:01 of moving time. Leah remarked that she was surprised by how "slow" the ride was — and I was thinking, "wow, I barely remember what it's like to average 8 mph for a whole six hours."

But even though we didn't squeeze in a full tour, Leah was happy. I was happy as well; it's nice to see firsthand all the ways that California is big and beautiful, too.

In search of deep seas

The morning after Beat finished his journey across Alaska, he took a well-deserved nap and I used the opportunity to steal away for one last outing in Nome. The cold snap was easing but far from broken — it was still 15 below, and the north wind was picking up strength. Phil pointed out a small peak called Anvil Mountain where I could hike, but warned me that the wind could be fierce up there. And as Beat observed after 28 days out in the weather, "Wind is everything."

"Give me 50 below over 10 below with wind," he told me after determining that all of his layers need to be windproof if (and when) he attempts such a journey in the future. When it's calm, cold air hangs like a curtain that can be brushed away. But wind is knife that tears open every tiny crack in the armor and pierces the skin, driving its chill to the core. With this in mind, I geared up substantially ... wind-proof tights, wind-proof shell pants, Beat's primaloft shorts, gaiters, polypro base layer, fleece, Gortex shell, hats, face mask, and goggles. As I pulled on each layer in the comfort of Phil's driftwood-heated front room, I imagined I was suiting up to go deep-sea diving.

I pedaled the purple Pugsley to the base of Anvil; five miles was just long enough for my toes to go numb as I rode up the pavement. It was uphill, but not steep enough to justify how sluggish I felt. I stashed the bike behind a sign propped against four feet of snowpack, warning that the road may be impassable beyond that point. From there, I marched in a direct line up the mountain, postholing in knee-deep drifts. It was a short climb — one mile and about a thousand feet of elevation gain — but the continuous effort was Herculean, about as hard as I'm able to go in a sustained push. On the surface I was gasping and exhausted, but inside I was deeply pleased about how wonderful it felt to be both outside and warm.


And then I crested the ridge, where I met The North Wind. It raced along the broad spine of the mountain and hit my face in a blast of ice shards and breathtaking cold. My instinctual reaction, as it often is, was instant panic. "It's cold, it's cold, run away, run away." It turned my back to the wind to muffle the voices. "Shut up, this wind is not even bad." I reached in my pack to pull out my goggles and face mask, finally completing my full-body wind barrier. When I turned to face The North Wind again, I could hear it gusting in my hood, but felt only hot breath swirling around my face. As I moved into The North Wind, it felt as though I were swimming against a strong current, or taking deliberate steps to slice through deep water pressure. The rolling hills were as barren as the bottom of the ocean. I listened to my own labored breaths echo through my headgear, and imagined I was deep-sea diving.


And sure enough, as soon as it became apparent that the insidious North Wind was not going to kill me, I decided we should be friends. "It is a beautiful thing, what you've done to these hills," I said to The North Wind as I stepped over sparkling sastrugi formations and skittered across granite-like snow crusts. I had heard plenty of stories of how bad the wind can be on the Bering Sea coast, and was grateful the North Wind had granted a relatively workable passage to Beat and Marco, and had been even kinder to me during my three days in Nome. In fact, Alaska had been nothing but kind to me for a whole month. From all the wonderful friends who offered me a warm bed and hot food, to the weather that remained consistently dry and even sunny, to the collision of factors that made it possible to ride the Denali Highway with three busy friends from wildly varying geographic locations, to the two foot races that were timed perfectly to fit my schedule, to the seemingly endless supply of fun bikeable trails and adventure opportunities.


"It's going to be tough to leave all of this behind," I said to The North Wind. I removed a mitten to pull out my camera and shoot photos of the expanse. In the sixty-second interim, The North Wind whisked the blood from my fingers, leaving them pale and rigid. I pulled my mitten back on and shook my arm around to ignite a painful thaw, acknowledging with bemusement how close I was to the hard edge, even now — and wondered how exactly I was going to miss this when we returned to, as Beat put it jokingly, "fake life."

And what is "real life?" During my month of wanderings around Alaska, I felt consistent contentedness, frequently interjected with profound happiness. As Beat and I return to California and our routines, I'm left to ponder the origin of these emotions. It's true I was surrounded by beauty and kindness in Alaska, combined with a satisfying freedom to do as I wanted, when I wanted. But my time there was also filled with physical discomforts — many restless nights with insomnia, fatigue, cold, soreness, acute pains, hunger, and nausea. There were also frequent emotional stresses — anxiety for Beat's situation, loneliness, fear, and a wayward lack of security and routine. But as I've discovered in my endurance pursuits, unrest is not a barrier against happiness ... it may just be an important bridge.

I circled a set of radar towers — eerie relics from the Cold War — and kept walking north. The chill was beginning to find its way into my layers and I found myself running occasionally to send more blood to my extremities. My body protested the pointless discomforts of this walk, and my rational side reminded me that Beat and I had a plane to catch that would take us back to Anchorage in a short four hours. But for now, I was in no hurry to turn away from The North Wind ... not yet.

To paraphrase something Beat told me about his experience of walking to Nome — we find these places that are so beautiful, and so hostile, that they encompass us fully. The farther I walked away from Nome, the deeper I immersed myself in a vast ocean that did not care about my presence. Cold clamped down like a vice on barren tundra that appeared frozen in time; but The North Wind flowed through effortlessly, reminding anyone who dared to listen that nothing is permanent, nothing. We go to these places where our existence does not matter so we can step outside our egos and attachments for brief moments, and look back to see ourselves the way The North Wind sees us — small figures in an unbroken expanse. I block a tiny stream of The North Wind for a few moments, watch my warm breath turn to a cloud and dissipate, and I call this my life.

There's joy in this realization. If life is a goggle-clad figure steeling herself against a sea of cold space, then it's more beautiful and valuable than I ever imagined. 

The finish

 During Beat's final night on the Iditarod Trail, the temperature dropped into the minus thirties. Beat and Marco left the Topkok cabin at 1 a.m. under a bright moon to make the final push through the wind-sharpened cold. I received my final sat phone dispatch from Beat in the late morning, after he and Marco stopped near a ghost town called Safety. They planned a breakfast break there, and while seeking a lee from the wind near a locked cabin, managed to hunker down in a spot that was both in the shade and still brushed with wind. They attempted to hurry through the breakfast-making motions, but the urgent grip of the cold sank in first, until they had no choice but to pack up with numb fingers and keep moving as core heat painfully returned to their extremities. Beat's voice sounded ragged and rough on the phone. They were twenty miles out; but it still seemed so far.


Back in Nome, Phil's 5-year-old daughter Hannah glanced out the window and announced that it was raining. "I don't think it's raining, honey," Phil replied. But as we opened the curtains, we saw a river of water gushing down the street. The stream was gathering in slushy eddies and freezing to the curbs in tiers of ice. A water pipe had burst in the cold and flooded the street. Children were outside splashing through the flood like they were playing in puddles during a summer rainstorm. The temperature was still well into the minus twenties.

 The liquor store opened at 1 p.m., so I walked into town to buy Beat and Marco some celebratory beers. The sun warmed my cheeks and I was glad the temperature had risen so much, as I was planning to bike out to see them on the trail and was still nervous about my inadequate foot gear. On the way back to the house, I saw it was minus 17, at midday. It probably wouldn't get much warmer.

Self portrait from six miles out, lungs a bit raw from breathing the cold wind, after running for five minutes to warm up my toes. I can't say any of my Alaska activities, except perhaps for my daylong ride in subzero temperatures in the White Mountains, fully prepared me for the rigors of these simple rides I did while visiting Nome. I don't know exactly why they felt so hard. Maybe it was the lack of proper footgear, or a psychological reaction to the overwhelming expansiveness of the frozen landscape. Or maybe it was the knowledge that this "good" weather could turn on me at any minute and kick up a gale of ground blizzards, unmanageable winds, and potential whiteouts. If I got caught out with my minimal supplies I would quickly be in trouble, and this realization made every nibble from the cold feel that much sharper. I'm not sure I had a full understanding or respect for Beat's daily life on the trail beyond McGrath until I came here, and pedaled my own laughably minimal miles away from the safety net of Nome. The edge is no longer an abstract concept out here; it's visibly real.

I was pedaling across the crystal blue ice of a slough when I first saw figures moving on the horizon. As they rounded the wide edge of Cape Nome, I quickened my pedal strokes up the hillside in time to meet them at the crest of the hill. This energy burst accompanied a blast of emotions — relief, pride, awe, happiness, and love.

It was the first time I'd seem him in a month, and Beat looked rough — as Phil worded it, like he had been through something "real." His beard was thick and coarse, his nose was swollen and red, and his face was crusted with frost nip scabs. His shoes were nearly in pieces, and he'd fashioned dog booties to the tips of his trekking poles. His pants seemed to hang loosely off his waist even though he said he'd been eating "a ton," but he had a big smile on his face. I met Marco for the first time, too — tall, rail thin, with long legs and a fantastically big nose. "Ciao," we greeted each other with a kiss on the cold cheeks. It was a great moment.

I intended to say hello and see you soon, and then leave, so as to not interfere with their race. But I decided it couldn't hurt to shadow them for a short while and listen to the dispatches, not unlike listening to Beat on his sat phone. He talked excitedly about his adventures and gear adjustments he was already making in his mind. It was tough for me to break away — both because I was so happy to see him, and because walking was a more enjoyable activity for my chilled feet than pedaling. But Beat gently suggested that I was skirting that uncomfortable edge of support, so I bowed out. 

 
Of course I couldn't help but linger long enough to take a few pictures on the way out.

 Marco and Beat and the expanse.

 I pedaled back as quickly as I could muster so I'd have enough time to take a shower, prepare for their arrival, and set up a vigil at the arch on Front Street. This is what Beat and Marco arrived to as they walked the final miles on the shoreline trail — a tiny cluster of buildings lining a frozen sea.

 Just before 7 p.m., they made their appearance on Front Street. A few scattered bystanders gave passing glances to the two ice-encrusted guys dragging their sleds on the pavement. I also think it says much about the general atmosphere of Nome that the random bystander in this photo is a bearded guy wearing a Santa hat and a red puffy coat, walking what appears to be an Irish Wolfhound type of dog.

 The victorious final approach to the burled arch.



Beat and Marco hoisted their sleds and stepped up there together at 7 p.m. on the dot, Sunday, March 24. A full 28 days, and a round calendar month, had passed since they launched from Knik Lake on the cloudy afternoon of February 24. To a few people who stopped on the street to congratulate them, they were "the guys who walked from Anchorage."

I couldn't resist a posed shot with Beat and the arch.

I pulled a couple of Alaskan Ambers out of the cavernous pockets of my down coat, and the two toasted a grand adventure and partnership. I can only imagine the satisfaction of that moment, drinking in was is truly an incredible accomplishment. But it apparently only lasted for a moment for Beat; he's already talking about next year.