Moving forward

I've gotten out for a run most afternoons this week but have yet to bring my camera along, so I'll have to settle for a picture from my last full day in Alaska that I never had a chance to post. Anchorage had just received more than a foot of new snow followed by a cold snap, and it was 8 below zero when I woke up that morning. But the air was calm, and after Nome it felt downright balmy. I had to take the Fatback to the bike shop to be dismantled and crammed into a tiny road bike box, and figured I might as well extend the ride for an hour or two since I was going out anyway.

The Chester Creek Trail was smothered in soft powder that had been stomped up by walkers, but the strenuous 5 mph grind suited me just fine. I didn't see many people out on this cold morning except for a Ukrainian woman who my friend Dan told me walks this trail all the time. He also told me she doesn't like bikers. Sure enough, she waved me down to yell at me for "wrecking" the trail. It was laugh-out-loud humorous, actually, given I was pressing nice, smooth track over the snow as she made shin-deep craters. That's one thing about Anchorage I've noticed ... anti-bike sentiment seems to permeate rational thought, whether it involves commuting or trail use. But it was too beautiful of a morning to get worked up over it:

 And riding the fluff made me sweat. At one point I took off my fleece jacket and was down to a short-sleeved T-shirt from a California trail race. But the windchill was too cold on my exposed skin, so I put the jacket back on. After I dropped off my bike at Speedway and met a friend for lunch at the Middle Way Cafe, I observed, "It's nice and warm here in Southcentral." My friend gave me the side-eye and then pulled out her phone to confirm it was still only 10 degrees outside, which is actually very cold for Anchorage in late March. "Huh," I said. "California heat is probably going to take some adjusting to this week."

Maybe it's the heat. I have been struggling this week to plod back into a routine. But on a positive note, I landed some part-time work while I was in Alaska. When I visited Homer last month, a former boss of mine, Carey, offered me an opportunity to pick up some contract work with her current employer, Report Alaska. The small media company produces weekly newspapers for rural Alaska villages, and Carey needed someone to help lay out and copy edit the Bristol Bay Times (Dillingham) and Arctic Sounder (Barrow.) It seemed like an ideal fit for me — something I can do from my home in California, but stay connected to Alaska journalism.

Work started this week at the bottom of the learning curve, without a lifeline. On Tuesday morning, I made a grave error with the file sharing that resulted in *all* files being deleted from the server. That alone should have gotten me fired on the spot, but luckily they had ready backups in place as I was not the first person to make this mistake ("you're actually the third or fourth," Carey told me.) After that I was chained to my laptop for the better part of fourteen hours, re-teaching myself skills I haven't used in three years, for newspapers I'd never even read before this week. Once I get around the learning curve, my workflow should move faster, and it will be fun to spend two days a week working with people in a "newsroom" of sorts once again (never mind we're spread out from California to Texas to Homer to Anchorage to Kotzebue.) And I have to laugh at the concept of doing virtually the same thing with the same editor I worked for seven years and a veritable lifetime of experiences ago. Life can be cyclical like that.

An image I just found from last month's Homer Epic 100K. There was *some* running involved. Photo by Don Pitcher.

And I'm running again. Or I should say, I'm trying to run again. I want to ride my bike, but my bike won't get me exactly where I want to be in a few weeks and later this summer, so for now I run. I go out with my heavy legs and little bottle of water and feel sick to my stomach, but still I run. I know I've on the tired side of fitness right now, so I don't push it too much, or for too long. But still I run. I thought I had Alaska to blame, but yesterday Beat decided to join me for his first run since he arrived in Nome, and his first time moving faster than 3mph in more than a month. He killed it ... bounding down the trail like a gazelle while I more closely resembled an arthritic elephant flailing to keep up. It seems after a thousand miles of strenuous walking, he has retained decent running form. As for these buckets of goo I call my legs ... I have no one to blame but myself.

So I run. I finally broke the 8-mile barrier today and found that I started to feel much better and move faster in the final miles. Maybe I'm just in ultra-long-distance-endurance shape right now, that level of slow-burn fitness where it takes me an hour just to warm up. If that's the case, I guess it's not a bad place to be.

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.