A whole new town with a whole new way

On Thursday, Beat and I returned to Boulder for three and a half days — whirlwind days, just enough time to take a few more steps in the next direction. A half foot of fresh snow blanketed the plains surrounding the Denver airport and the temperature was bitter cold, 10 degrees. I dropped Beat off at the Google office in Boulder and pointed the rental car up Flagstaff Road. Winding up the cliffy hillside, I thought of all the ways Flagstaff reminds me of my hometown mountain road, Montebello. Nearly everywhere reminds me of somewhere else. This is how I am — a vast ship full of past experiences, with only a small rudder plunged in the present. I like it this way — living as though my life can only grow larger and richer as time passes.

The car crawled up the icy road as I reminisced about recent bike rides up my favorite oak-shaded street in California, then slapped myself back into the present and the precarious road conditions. I pulled into a snow-covered parking lot and strapped on my snowshoes, breathing in fiery cold wind and an air temperature that, judging by the stinging sensation in my nose, had plunged to something around zero. Low clouds were just beginning to lift, letting in a stream of golden sunlight. A beautiful day for a slog.

One trail wasn't yet broken, and I chose that one, wrapping around Flagstaff Mountain before continuing across the road and up a steep gulch toward Green Mountain. These are some of the most popular trails in Boulder, but with a foot of fresh snow and a subzero chill, almost nobody was out. I had to break a wider trail over the one post-holing track in front of me. On top of the peak, the wind was fierce. The half liter of Diet Dr. Pepper I'd poured in my Camelbak — because I forgot to stop for water — had long since frozen, and the one jacket I brought with me — because the Front Range isn't so cold — barely staved off a menacing chill. I looked across the white plain that didn't quite remind me of anywhere I've ever been, and slipped into a barrage of imaginary scenarios that nonetheless felt real, because they represented the future.

Over the past six weeks, Beat has moved toward transferring to the Google office in Boulder. While nothing in life is a hundred percent certain, we've taken a number of big steps toward this move, and this weekend we flew out to Colorado to look at potential houses. Beat has begun the transfer process, and it's looking very likely that we will move to Boulder after we return from the Iditarod Trail, probably in April.

It's an exciting prospect that's been a long time coming. We've been talking about leaving the Bay Area for a few years now, and while we'd both prefer to live somewhere in Alaska, realistically, until Beat reaches a point where he wants to retire, Alaska isn't our best option. There aren't many tech jobs up there, and my own earning potential in the journalism field doesn't begin to make up for the gap. We still consider Alaska a "someday" destination, but as a compromise, Boulder is pretty fantastic. Everything about it fits our lifestyle well, and the cost of living, while not cheap by any stretch, is still less expensive than the Bay Area.

When chatting with friends about this potential move, I've heard the expected reaction about — "Oh, Boulder, so snooty, and everyone there is an Olympic athlete or professional cyclist and it's difficult to fit in." I don't necessarily doubt this, but it's also not terribly important to me that I "fit in." I'm sure I'll find my way to my people if they're here, probably in the same ways I've made a handful of friendships almost by accident in the Bay Area, which — news flash — is also full of cliques.

Leaving the Bay Area, though — the thought does have a hint of melancholy. I will miss it. If you asked me ten years ago, I would have never, never expected to end up living anywhere in California. When Beat and I started dating in 2010, shortly after I moved to Montana, one of my prominent thoughts was that I liked this guy, a lot, but I wasn't sure that I could do life in urban California. Now I'm going on five years as a Californian. The end of December means I have lived in California longer than I lived in Alaska, which is a sobering thought. I can no longer claim Alaska as my predominant storyline — it was just a few chapters — and it keeps fading further into the stern of my life. I've come to accept that reality, and also all of the aspects of California that I love — the redwoods, the trail running community, the flowy mountain bike trails, Rancho San Antonio with its pet deer and familiar views, Montebello, riding my bike to the coast, San Francisco even though I hate the parking and other big-city inconveniences, the Marin Headlands, and the boring weather, yes even the boring weather. Because even as much as I come alive in the frost-tinged air of real winter, who wouldn't miss it being 70 degrees and sunny seemingly every day? (Disclosure: 95 degrees and parched is probably how California will be burned into my long-term memory.)

Five years is a healthy chunk of life, and I'm going to miss it. But winter and mountains is what I value most, and I'm lucky that Beat agrees. Some of the houses we looked at this weekend were alarmingly fantastic — almost surreal. Neither of us have ever been homeowners. Home ownership is another place I hadn't pictured myself, because I prefer to remain unanchored. But there are many appealing aspects to this, and I also see it as a journey, in its own way. It's a lot to swallow right now, when a part of me would love to have nothing more to think about than Iditarod planning and book projects. Still, when opportunities rise to the surface you have to jump in — life's taught me that much. 

ITI training, week nine

 Monday: mountain bike, 2:38, 25.1 miles, 2,987 feet climbing. I am considering using Beat's MootoX YBB fat bike in the Iditarod. This is the bike I rode in the 2014 White Mountains 100. Its set-up resembles my mountain bike, which I rode long distances in the Freedom Challenge and Tour Divide, so there's already a comfortable familiarity. The other bike is Snoots, the expedition fat bike. We've had some good, difficult times together. But she's a beefy bike, and I am concerned about the heavier front end given all of my struggles with pushing through deeper snow drifts. It feels like sacrilege not to use Snoots for the reason we acquired her, but as I've said before, I just want to take my best chance of making it to Nome. Even if I anticipate hundred of miles of pushing (I always do), I believe a bike is the best mode, but I'll take a sled if trail conditions or weather reports look especially discouraging (i.e. an ongoing El Nino warm snowpocalypse.) Snoots can go with me to Baffin Island, when I finally make that trip happen.

That all said ... I'm riding the Fat YBB on my training rides now. Beat outfitted the bike with skinny 29" tires and rims for the time being, so I can't call it fat biking. But trail riding is a breeze on this bike — it's unquestionably more responsive than Snoots. I think the handling might be an advantage if snow coverage is again low when the Iditarod starts, as it has been the past two years.

Tuesday: Morning, weight lifting at gym. Afternoon, trail run, 0:50, 5.6 miles, 675 feet climbing. This was a great gym session. Same weights as last week, but it felt almost too easy. This was almost disappointing, as I usually have to go into "high intensity" puffing zone to get through my reps. Did two sets this session, since I was planning to run in the afternoon. My usual "Tuesday Monta Vista" loop went okay. As expected, I am no longer becoming effortlessly faster, but I'm still fighting to hold this run under 9-minute pace. It's a hilly trail run, and the paces for each mile are pretty close to 8 minutes or 10 minutes.

Wednesday: Road bike, 2:43, 33.3 miles, 3,624 feet climbing. Rode Highway 9 to Page Mill, and I felt sluggish for most of the ride. It was quite warm — a record high, 72 degrees — and I've flipped over to the other side of winter complacency, so I had a puffy pullover in a backpack but not nearly enough water (Page Mill is often a complete freezer. I kinda like it. But it wasn't on this day.)

 Thursday: Trail run, 0:54, 5.1 miles, 341 feet climbing. I drove down to Pacific Grove for a couple of interviews. After we finished, I still had about 25 minutes of daylight left to go exploring, so I decided to embark on sunset run to find the beach. Once I reached the coast, I returned in what turned into full darkness on unfamiliar trails. Early in this run, a large German Shepherd aggressively and repeatedly shoved me by jumping against my shoulder and chest while growling and barking, as I yelled and backed up slowly. The dogs' owner, who was more than 100 yards back and not approaching quickly, did nothing besides call to his dog, who finally ran toward him when he reached us about six shoves later. Seriously. This is why I make a point to avoid off-leash areas, but I wasn't aware of the rules in this park. Between the dog attack and the darkness, it was an adrenaline-filled outing for a 54-minute run.

Friday: Weight lifting at gym. Did three sets — definitely harder than Tuesday, but I upped the weights by five pounds on six of the 12 exercises. I still struggle mightily with arm curls. It's like my biceps are their own dead weights, and they're just never going to get stronger. Biceps are an important muscle group when wrestling a fat bike out of a snow drift, so this may be a partial influencer in my desire for a lighter front end.

Saturday: Mountain bike, 4:07, 35.9 miles, 4,715 feet climbing. Beat, Liehann and I set out on a brisk, beautiful Saturday morning to ride up Grizzly Flat, along Skyline Ridge, and down the John Nichols Trail. A front moved through on Thursday and Friday that dropped temperatures into the 40s and a lot of rain on the trails, but they drained nicely for our sunny ride. I kept my pace well on the mellow side, anticipating a long run we had planned on Sunday. Still, I felt guilty about not putting in a better effort on Saturday. When I was training for the 2014 ITI, on this same weekend in December, I ran back-to-back 35-mile and 31-mile trail runs. I am basically in competition with my 2014 self, and feel I should at least be up for anything I did back then.

Beat excitedly anticipates running in the cold rain.

Sunday: Trail run, 6:17, 30.6 miles, 6,815 feet climbing. Beat and I signed up for the winter Woodside Ramble 50K — a great course through the redwood forests along Skyline Ridge. An atmospheric river was moving in on the Bay Area, and I couldn't have been more excited about the weather. They were calling for a possible chance of snow — snow! — above 3,000 feet, but it wasn't quite cold enough. Temperatures started out in the low 50s but dipped into the low 40s as the front moved through, dropping nearly an inch of rain, hail, 40 mph wind gusts, and much fun on the singletrack trails above Woodside. My hamstrings were very tight from the start — much tighter than usual. It felt like the tension level had been set to rigid, and I couldn't open my stride to save my life. It was perhaps a blessing in disguise, and the muddy trails were very slippery at times, and I become highly imbalanced (even more so than usual) when I try to place a foot anywhere but directly below the rest of my body. I took especially small steps on the descents, because otherwise my feet slid all over the place. This was disappointing, because the descents at Woodside are winding and gradual — perfect for a timid descender like me to really let go — and I usually do. Besides tight hamstrings, I felt great, and enjoyed the rainy day run: Splashing in puddles, punching at the wind, and keeping my pace just hard enough to stave off the convective chill. Beat was feeling rough today, but he won't let me get in front of him if he can help it, and finished the race a few minutes before me.

Total: 17:31, 94.3 miles ride, 41.3 miles run, 19,155 feet climbing. 

On gears around an uncaring sun

Even though it was only six months ago, I don't spend much time thinking about the Tour Divide. This is uncharacteristic for me, as memories of adventures are the background of my mental landscape — the colorful screen savers that pop into view during idle moments. Sometimes, while wheeling a cart around a grocery store, I still hear the crunch of footsteps on ice-crusted snow atop some Susitna 100 course that melted away a lifetime ago. But the Tour Divide ... that faded too soon.

When I try to think about the Tour Divide, what often pops into my mind is a flickering series of moments along the highway to Togwotee Pass, in Wyoming, one of those evenings that now sprawl like wispy clouds across an evanescing sky. I was pedaling my bike; it's funny because that's not what I remember. I remember stopping at intervals to put a foot down, slumping forward as my hands dangled over my red handlebar bag, and gasping until I caught my breath. As I looked around at pink-tinted pine trees and silhouetted road signs, these became moments of lucidity amid what is now little more than a wash of gray.

I was battling toward the top of the pass, where I knew I'd find a picnic area with an outhouse to stash my aromatic bike now that I was back in grizzly country. The decision to camp in this picnic area was one I'd made earlier in the day, and beyond that, the destination didn't hold meaning for me. I didn't care that there was already frost on the ground and my seven-year-old sleeping bag was proving less than toasty. I didn't care that I didn't really have a meal to eat beyond this bag of nuts I'd been carrying since Canada. I didn't care if rednecks came and stole my bike because I was sleeping right next to the highway, or if a bear came and gnawed on my leg. All I could feel at this end of this particularly difficult day was profound detachment. I'd been gasping all afternoon, taking longer breaks to force more oxygen into my blood while getting mauled by more mosquitoes, and I'd finally slipped into autopilot. It's endlessly interesting to me that profoundly detached autopilot, with what seems like almost no emotional investment or motivation, still generates forward motion. I'd be in Colorado before I defaulted to collapse.

The sun began to set, which only registered on an instinctive level. "The light is fading. It will be cold soon." I stopped again to cough up a glob of something thick and metallic-tasting. Coughing usually opened airways and helped me feel better briefly, but on this evening I experienced surges of fear. "The light is fading. It will be cold soon." It was almost refreshing, this fear, but it didn't stay. I fished through my seat bag to find my mittens, and while doing so, gazed back at the crimson light spreading across the sky. A tiny lake absorbed a perfect reflection, surrounded by glowing peaks of the Tetons. "This is perfect," a quiet voice whispered. "This is what you came for."

But the voice was just static on a television screen turned low and dim in the corner of a dark room, and I was an old woman staring blankly at the void. The depth of my detachment became startlingly apparent as I put on extra layers and looked away from the horizon. I did not care. My ability to care seemed to be slipping farther away. But what could I do? At some point after dusk, lyrics from an Modest Mouse song entered my flickering consciousness — "Talking Shit About a Pretty Sunset" —which, incidentally, is a song about battling indifference.

A few days later, I sought medical attention in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, for shortness of breath and congestion. At the time it was measured at the clinic, my blood oxygen level was 90 percent. It's not a particularly alarming level of hypoxemia, but this was after six hours of resting while awaiting my appointment, and after my outlook had become a good deal more lucid and optimistic. In all likelihood, I'd been starving for oxygen for days. While the muscle weakness and physical distress I'd experienced was minimal given I could still ride my bike a hundred-plus miles a day (until I couldn't), it's interesting and disquieting to contemplate what this did to my mind. "Milder forms of hypoxia can impair thinking, alter levels of consciousness, cause depression and stir up anxiety." — NYT, 2006

Is it possible I experienced temporary bouts of low-level depression? I don't think this theory is entirely unfounded.

Now, facing the 1,000-mile journey to Nome and all of the physical and mental difficulties I am sure to encounter every day, I'm spending more time reflecting on what I learned from the Tour Divide. I never again want to care that little about myself or the world around me, especially in an environment as immediate and severe as Alaska. But what will I do if I again struggle with breathing? Will an inhaler be enough to restore oxygen supply? Will I know where to draw lines? I didn't always make the best decisions during the Tour Divide, where I was simply lucky to have a wider margin for error.
 I may be somewhat of a paradox in that I relish physical challenges because of the intellectual and emotional stimulation they provide, but crumble to pieces when my mental faculties are truly compromised. Another negative life experience — trying to complete the 2013 Petite Trotte à Léon in the Alps while extremely sleep-deprived — brought this to light. I was hallucinating, I was paranoid, my eyesight was failing. I lost control; I had anxiety attacks. I'll never go back to that metal space if I can avoid it.

So what makes me believe I can handle the rigors of the entire Iditarod Trail? I'll be honest — I've never felt more uncertain about anything. Even now that I've gained considerably more confidence in my physical health, I understand that physical health is only a small part of the equation. If nothing else, the 2015 Tour Divide reinforced this belief.

This isn't to say I would back out of the ITI because I'm concerned, only that mental health is something I've been pondering. The mind-body connection is both nebulous and unwavering, easy to tamper with but difficult to control. This is the most pressing challenge I'm considering, moving forward.