2013 in photos

It's become a tradition each December to post my favorite photos from the past year, one for each month, with a top favorite photo of the year. Favorite photos often become so because they capture a particularly memorable moment or event during the month, which is why I consider myself more of a "photo documentarian" than a "photographer." My favorite photos always evoke strong emotions, and this one is, from a personal standpoint, one of the most powerful snapshots I've ever taken. I look at it and feel a flood of emotions, questions, longing, and uncertainty, every time. It's a photo of Mont Blanc at sunrise, on the fourth and final morning I spent in the Petite Trotte a Leon, with my race teammates Giorgio (wearing the silly cape) and Ana descending a pass shortly after crossing into Italy. I was so blissed out in this moment; it's one of the few times during that experience that I was able to step outside of my fear and malaise and be purely happy. I'm still trying to parse out what that whole experience meant, but every time I look at this photo, I get a little closer to understanding.

January: Yosemite Falls

During January, we took a couple of trips to Yosemite National Park so Beat and Steve could get some overnight training for the Iditarod. We opted to camp on top of the 8,000-foot Sentinel Dome to ensure as much cold and wind exposure as possible. Those were actually some long nights, but the upside was waking up at dawn to watch the light show that happens when light from the rising sun hits the freezing mist of Yosemite Falls — a spectacular, dynamic rainbow.

February: The Great One 

My awesome Alaskan pilot friend Dan Bailey took me on another flyover of the first 90 miles of the Iditarod Trail on the second day of the Iditarod Trail Invitational. This photo is two cyclists pedaling up the Yentna River with Denali and the Alaska Range looming on the horizon. It was a beautiful, clear day, and we were able to spot Beat and other friends several times on the river, and even landed at Skwentna Roadhouse to chat with a friend who was leading the foot race, Dave Johnston, and a few cyclists. The thing I'm going to miss the most about actually racing the ITI this year: My flyover with Dan.

 March: The Invisible Highway

Three friends and I embarked on an amazing and grueling three-day bike tour of the Denali Highway in early March. I chose this picture of the road sign Maclaren Summit at dawn on the third day because I relish in the idea that we were four women riding a "highway" that in actuality was a barely-there handful of snowmachine tracks at 10 below with the whole sweeping wilderness of the Alaska Range all around us. Wow, I loved that trip. I really loved everything about my month in Alaska. I was so happy there.

April: Back to California

And then, in April, we returned to California. I acknowledge I have a fortunate existence and there are many things I love about my life here, but I have to be honest. I was bummed out for a while. I did not make the transition well, and felt run-down and burnt out, even though Beat — who actually walked a thousand miles across Alaska — had no issues rolling back into the routine. The week after we returned, my friend Leah and I planned a weekend trip to the Santa Lucia Mountains. Temperatures were in the 80s, the roads and trails were dusty, the riding was tough, and Leah and I were hungry and thirsty ... and it was everything I needed. Great trip, and a reminder of why California is pretty amazing, too.

May: Beat's Birthday Run

Ah, the Bryce 100. A bout of what I can only assume was altitude sickness caught up to me at mile ten, and I was pretty miserable without relief for the next ninety miles of slog. As a result, the photos I took during the race were rather uninspired, but it wasn't for lack of trying on the landscape's part. For a hundred-mile ultramarathon, the Bryce 100 has to be one of the most inspired routes in the United States, except for of course those grueling final twenty miles on jeep road (which I heard have been removed for next year's race.) This photo brings back all of the magic — feeling like death in a beautiful place.

June: Tangled

The Laurel Highlands 70-miler. Not my worst idea of the summer ... not quite. But Beat was headed out to Pennsylvania on business and the timing coincided with a race that a friend of ours directs, and that I ran last year and loved. The bad part about the timing was that it was one week after the Bryce 100, which gutted my health. I wasn't nearly recovered by the time we had to get on a plane, fly to the East Coast, and wake up at what amounted to 12:30 a.m. Pacific Time to run a tough, rocky, hilly, rocky, 70-mile trail run. I thought it would be good training for the PTL — relentless forward motion when I wasn't feeling well. I suppose it was realistic training, but I lost enough time to squatting in the woods that I missed a cut-off at mile 46. I like this photo because it depicts the a bit of the misty, ethereal feel that the forest began to take on once I really became depleted. The Laurel Highlands were the leaping point into a summer of injury and disappointment.

July: Bench With a View

Okay, okay, summer was pretty awesome. I certainly can't complain. But a knee injury incurred during a fall in mid-June lingered for weeks and led to much angst and frustration, not to mention limited training at a time when I felt I really needed to be putting in the miles ahead of PTL. At the end of July, Beat and I traveled to Switzerland to celebrate his brother's wedding anniversary. Since we were en route to Iceland, Beat opted to spend the layover week working at the Google office in Zurich, and I had some free time to go exploring. My knee was just starting to come around, so I packed my hiking gear and hopped on a train headed toward the Alps, picking a destination at random. I arrived at a beautiful town on a cerulean lake, Lungern, and started hiking up a mountain right from the train station. After 4,500 vertical feet I arrived at the crest of a ridge to find a rugged jeep road, this bench, and a well-dressed older couple quietly enjoying a sweeping view of the Bernese Alps, which I was seeing for the first time because the clouds had just then started to clear.

August: Iceland

I loved Iceland. It is truly a unique place — a volcanic outcropping on the cusp of the Arctic Circle, stark and colorful, with a culture that is at once modern and lost in time. I loved the moonscapes and the lush valleys, the mineral-rich mountains and the black sand coast. And although I joke about my year of bad races, Racing the Planet Iceleand was one that went quite well for me — almost flawlessly, all things considered. Before this 250-kilometer stage race started, I joked that I hadn't run since May, because I was so sick at Bryce and Laurel Highlands, and then became injured shortly after that. But hoisting a thirty-pound pack and trekking over rough terrain is my kind of thing; I took it conservatively and finished each day feeling strong, relishing in every mile of scenery. The weather was overall horrible, but that was expected; ultimately the 50-mph winds and frigid rain added to the memorability of the experience. Someday, hopefully soon, I will return to Iceland, in the winter, with Snoots in tow.

September: Down the Col, Down the Col

Beat has now raced the Tor des Geants in Italy, with its 80,000 feet of climbing over 200 miles, four times. The route climbs 25 passes — or "cols" — and it's become an expression of ours, when faced with a difficult task, to whimper in a defeated tone, "Up the Col, Up the Col." Beat started this year's race one week after he finished PTL, and I helped crew for him and hauled my own ragged body up and down several of the cols, because regardless of how tired you are, that's really what you should do when you're in the Italian Alps. This is a photo of Beat descending the highest pass on the route, Col Loson, which is where he really started to hit his stride and become stronger after a predictably rough start. I was so amazed at his resilience when I was still reeling through the emotional turmoil of my own experience at PTL — coming down, as they say.

October: Foiled Again

I had a lot of photos from October that I liked, and it was difficult to pick one. I settled on this photo of my dad descending Mount Timpanogos shortly after unpredictable snow and ice conditions turned us around before the saddle. This was the second year in a row that Dad and I attempted a late-season ascent of what can be the most benign of hikes during the summer, but seems to become a real mountaineering challenge when you throw a little snow in the mix — well, enough snow to bury the summer trail. This photo has a formidable look to it that matches my own impression of Mount Timpanogos.

November: A Beautiful Sort of Monotony 

After four years, I think I've finally ridden enough laps around Frog Town. As years go by, I've found myself feeling less and less interested in racing for the sake of racing — such as using turtle strategy to knock out a respectable finish at a 25-hour mountain bike race. Those competitive spirit days are probably gone now if they were ever really there, but in Utah this November I realized that all-day-all-night lap racing no longer has the same fun appeal that it once did. Even though my heart wasn't really in it, the 25 Hours of Frog Hollow was a fun and beautiful diversion, and a chance to visit with friends who I haven't seen in a long while. Crashing out after ten laps wasn't the way I intended to finish, of course, but it's probably a fitting way for someone like me to exit mountain bike racing (at least of the non-winter and non-multiday-bikepacking variety), maybe forever.

December: Golden Hour

I'm pulling out a December photo early this year because Beat and I are headed to Alaska for the holidays, and I'm not sure how much time I'll have for blogging between now and January 1. This is a photo of Marshall Beach near the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, were I went for a quick training run. One of the best aspects of setting big, possibly unattainable goals is that they force me out of complacency and provide a defensible reason to go out and have little adventures, whenever I can. With only about an hour and a half to burn before a meeting in the city, I set out on an unknown beach, crawling over rocks, skirting foamy waves, discovering hidden coves and scaling old military structures, all in the name of "training." I admit that I'm an adult who simply wants to go out and play, because that's how I view life — a passage of an infinitesimally small allotment of time on a swiftly changing planet, meaningful only as far as you believe it to be. I find moving through the world to be endlessly purposeful, even as I struggle to define that meaning in the absence of tangible products. I spent hours of 2013 taking photos, and probably days of time writing in this blog, if only to make a record. But the meaning is still out there, written in simple footprints in the sand for a moment before the ocean sweeps them away.

Photo posts from years past:
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010 part one, part two
2011
2012

Week 5, Dec. 9 to 16

Monday: Run, 1:18, 4.6 miles, 768 feet climbing. I was in the city for a meeting so I grabbed a quick run at Marshall Beach. I had no prior experience with the area and didn't know where I was going, so I also spent time scrambling on rocks and clawing up a sand ladder, but there was some beach running thrown in during my short but hard workout. Running on sand is great for ankle and calf strengthening, and I wish I had better beach access. If anyone has suggestions for exercises that mimic the conditioning of sand running, I'd love to hear them.

Tuesday: Run, 0:53, 5.7 miles, 607 feet climbing. Monta Vista loop.

Wednesday: Zero. Had lots to do, and I do need more rest days in the mix.

Thursday: Mountain bike, 4:36, 41.1 miles, 4,081 feet climbing. For the most part, this was just under four hours of mellow riding with about 45 minutes of being maxed out while mashing pedals up the Limekiln Trail in Sierra Azul. I was genuinely tapped out after this ride, which is usually what happens after redline efforts, and this is exactly why I don't like to peg it very often. One can go many happy hours at 75 percent, but turn the dial up to 90 and suddenly you're overcooked after 45 minutes. I know, I know. It's good for me.

Friday: Road bike, 1:33, 17.5 miles, 2,719 feet climbing. Heart rate felt high and legs felt dull after Thursday's effort. I should get my heart rate monitor up and running again so I can track the patterns versus how I feel. By this point I already knew I had a big weekend planned, so I should have just rested ... but I already used up my zero day, on Wednesday. Ha. I'm so terrible at self-coaching. Luckily, the goals I focus on depend much more on mental endurance than physical fine-tuning. Although, as I told Beat on Sunday, I think this quasi-focused training is good for me. I genuinely feel stronger now than I did over the summer.

Saturday: Trail run, 7:30, 35 miles, 6,448 feet climbing. I felt great all day. There were no problems keeping up with the group until they started pushing the pace toward the end, and I opted to hang back rather than risk an effort that would leave me with nagging pains on Sunday. I'm starting to gain a better sense of how "hard" I can run without blowing up.

Sunday: Trail run, 6:40, 31 miles, 6,432 feet climbing. Can't lie, I was tired. I'm apt to blame glycogen depletion and sleep deprivation as much as the long run on Saturday, because overall there were few pains and a decent enough spark to my climbing legs as soon as I got enough Shot Bloks in my system. There was some minor sharp pain in the right knee cap, and some cramping in my glutes on and off, especially in the first six miles of the race (I find this interesting, because usually the only times I experience muscle cramps are a result of prolonged steep climbing, mostly while hiking, and always in my calves. Butt cramping is a new one, probably more related to repetitive motions in my running stride.) Walking with an exaggerated marching motion seemed to help a lot in this regard; the cramps would go away and wouldn't return for miles after stretching. I'll have to remember techniques like that for the ITI. Repetitive motion is the worst, and there's lots of it in sled dragging.

Total: 22:30, 58.6 miles ride, 76.3 miles run, 21,055 feet climbing

I know these weekly training logs are the most boring of all, but it is helping me to keep a record of the numbers and physical responses. I'm pleased that I was able to run a 76-mile week with no lingering issues. This coming week will be fairly quiet, a recovery week of sorts, as Beat and I get ready to travel to Fairbanks for the holidays. Lots of quality training will happen the following week.

And I know I can Google such things, but if anyone out there has recommendations for their own favorite ankle-strengthening exercises, I'd love to hear them. I'm determined not to place so much dependency on snowshoes as I have in the past; the ITI will be difficult enough without anchors on my feet, but I'll need strong ankles to cope with the variable surfaces of the trail.

I need to work on my hips as well. Hip flexor pain was one of my larger issues last year during the relatively easy Chena River 25-mile / Homer Epic 100K combo that I ran last spring.

Really, trail running is sort of a lousy excuse for training for an effort like the Iditarod, but it's what I have. My friend Anne in Anchorage, who will be aiming for Nome this year, often puts in 8-plus hours of sled dragging every day that she doesn't work, and gets up at 4 a.m. on work days to hit the gym and the pool and tow her sled through the morning darkness on the trails behind her house. Anne is dedicated. I am just making up excuses to have adventures. I loved running 14 hours this weekend; I should do double runs and/or long rides more often. 

Going long

This week is my third anniversary of ultrarunning; my first long run was the Rodeo Beach 50K on Dec. 18, 2010. Three years ... time does fly. I think back to what running was like for me then; I can say with confidence that it hurts a whole lot less than it used to. I never got much faster, but then again speed is never something I've sought. Naturally awkward non-runners forcing their bodies into loping movements can only lope faster with lots of focus and specific work. And the risks of speed are — in my opinion — too high. In cycling, there's a popular mantra for choosing a bicycle: Light, Strong, and Cheap — Pick Two. When deciding what kind of runner to be, I'm pretty sure it's: Fast, Long, and Forever — Pick Two. Fast, of course, meaning fast relative to your individual ability. It must be obvious that I'd choose long and forever. My ultimate goal would be to develop an efficient "forever" pace, a pace that maximized distance and minimized body breakdown, and was still challenging and enjoyable. I'll probably search for this ability as long as I'm a runner without finding it, but the process itself is fun. 

On Saturday, Ann invited me to join her and a few of her friends on an adventure run from Point Reyes to the Golden Gate Bridge, essentially traversing the length of the Marin Headlands in one 30-ish-mile, point-to-point run. I was signed up for a 50K trail race on Sunday, but thought, "Two back-to-back ultras — every single day of the Iditarod is going to be harder than any 50K, so I could use the training."

It was a beautifully frosty morning as we started out in the lowlands along Olema Creek. Ann has all of these memories from these trails that are a decade or more old; she hasn't run since then, pretty much at all, and it's so interesting to watch her slide back into it so naturally. She commented that these pastures are usually a huge mud bog. We lucked out with that ice.

We started out with two guys who form the core of her Wednesday Night Run group, which has been meeting every week nonstop since 1983. Old-school trail runners. They have plenty of fun stories for a new-school interloper such as myself.

Near the Bolinas Ridge we met up with three others to become a group of seven, and even though they all wanted a mellow-paced run, I was starting to feel outnumbered by fast people. I was having real performance anxiety.

Ann complains about being out of shape and slow (she's not), but she does have an amazing forever pace. She holds it on the downhills, she holds it on the climbs, she just holds it unceasingly until someone else in the group decides it's time for a snack break. I brought a big pack full of snacks and supplies ("It's a hold-over from my Alaska days," I explained. "Up there if you get hurt on a trail, no one is going to find you for hours, so you have to be prepared for all contingencies." They laughed at me, but after several hours of eating Gu, my Sweet and Salty M&Ms trail mix was a big hit with the fast runners.

Overlook into Stinson Beach from the Coastal Trail on Mount Tam.

There were still plenty of climbs and valleys before we reached our final ridge on the SCA Trail, dropping toward the Golden Gate Bridge. A bit of competitive drive sparked toward the end, and the group started running all of the long climbs. Runnable they were, but after thirty miles my legs were begging for a different gear, a slower one. I practiced that mantra I'm going to have to get much better at using, which is "Shut up, legs."

We ended at the bridge right at sunset with 35 miles and 6,448 feet of climbing. Big day. I felt relatively good with only a small amount of lingering stiffness in my hamstrings, but arrived at home somewhat late and didn't eat much for dinner, then didn't sleep well overnight, which had more of an effect on the following day than the run itself.

 The Woodside Ramble 50K — a fun jaunt through the redwoods along Skyline Ridge. Beat is still in Germany, and it occurred to me that this is the first 50K event I've run without him. I didn't know anyone at the start, so this felt like a lonely outing despite the large turnout. One guy asked me, "Is this your first 50K?" "No," I answered. "When was you're last one?" he asked. I wanted to say "Yesterday," but that seemed braggy or stupid, so instead I said, "Oh, about two months ago."

I had a rough go in the early miles with glute cramping and low energy. Not enough glycogen in my system, I think. At the first aid station I ate six shot blocks and three Oreos and started to feel better, but there still wasn't much oomph to the legs. Since I was under no self-obligation to run "fast" in any sense of the term, I just kicked back and enjoyed the mellow pace on a beautiful day. But I was tired, and the way I was feeling brought back reminiscences from PTL. I had a new revelation about that experience today. In the months before the race, I had a reoccurring dream about PTL involving a raging thunderstorm, lightning and rain, and a scenario where my two teammates and I were all crouched in different places on a jagged ridge, shouting things that the others couldn't hear. I remembered this dream, and then realized that it effectively came true, on the second night of the race when we climbed a mudslide during a heavy rainstorm.

There wasn't any lightning, but there was sleet and ice. We scrambled up this steep slope while the ground oozed out from underneath us, only to arrive at a shale headwall near the top of the pass. We split off to search for a viable way to climb the cliffs. At one point Ana was near the bottom of a small sub-ridge, Giorgio was at the top, and I was clinging to a wall off to the side screaming that there was no way to climb up to the pass from there, but my teammates couldn't hear me and kept looking for a way to climb toward me. Finally I gestured enough that they continued climbing the ridge, and I ended up leaping a veritable slide of smooth, wet shale, and then tried to scramble up the grassy side of the gully. The gully steepened and narrowed until I was back on rock, and I was nearly to a ledge on the ridge when I realized that my feet were balancing on tiny pebbles atop wet shale — like wearing roller skates while climbing a slide. My handholds were not secure; if I moved at all I would probably slip and who knows how far I'd go careening down that chute before I stopped? I was filled with such a deep, impenetrable dread that my vision went black for a moment. Just then, a guy from another team came scooting along the ledge, and I reached out my right hand toward his feet and said, "Please, please help me."

I don't think he understood English, but he reached down and grabbed my wrist, and as soon as he did my shoes slipped and all of my weight shifted to the arm he held as my body lurched backward. He kept the grip; he didn't let me fall. I'm still not sure what would have happened if he did lose his grip or if he wasn't there. After he pulled me up, I had a strong sense that this guy saved me from grave injury. I placed my hands on his shoulders and said "Thank you. Thank you so much." I wanted to hug him and start bawling, but I did not want to be revealed as the hysterical chick in the PTL, and it was still early enough in the race that I was capable of controlling my emotions. I never found out who he was, never properly thanked him. I'm not sure I've told this part of the Col de l'Oulettaz story yet, because I was very traumatized by that particular moment in a way that I actively tried to shut it out of my mind. But it all came flooding back in vivid detail today. Damn, I hated the PTL. But at least, because of it, nothing else seems so hard anymore. Except, of course, the Iditarod.

Ah ... where was I? Oh yes, Woodside. Easy peasy. I had some minor but sharp knee pain, so I opted to run all the downhills slowly. I don't want to do anything to risk injury right now, and refuse to run through any pain. Slowing the downhills made the knee pain go away, and I was still able to run many of the climbs at what felt like a strong pace. Another runner late in the race even told me I looked "fresh" when I passed him on a climb. Still, I finished the event in 6:40, which is about a half hour slower than any of my prior Woodside/Crystal Springs times. Despite this, I still got third place in my age group. This is, of course, a fluke of there not being that many 30-something women on the course that day despite a sold-out field. Still, I actually collected my medal this time, so I had to take the obligatory tired-eyes selfie.

But it was a fun weekend, and not too depleting. A little too fast for any "forever pace" approximations, but close enough to to feel a bit more confidence for the ITI.