Art in motion

 This past week of training went well. With 18 more days until the Bryce 100, I'm feeling strong and reasonably well conditioned for marching over rocks and sand for the better part of a hundred miles. Several nagging issues, such as a tight Achilles tendon and sore hamstrings, are now largely ironed out, and I can manage a difficult run and be ready to run again the next day. This isn't my usual state, as I usually spend so much time cycling that I'm not as well conditioned for the continuous impact of running. But I've spent precious little time on my bike this month, and I have to admit it shows. This week I filled my goal of twenty hours with 65 miles on foot and 16,000 feet of climbing — almost entirely on trail —and two tough weight-lifting sessions. My legs are feeling snappy, even if laced with the fatigue of these hard efforts.

 Despite zooming the focus on motion for the sake of training, rather than the other way around, I still managed a couple of adventures. On Wednesday I had to drive to Longmont for a windshield replacement. Since I was heading out there anyway, I looked into potential running routes nearby. I planned the standard loop at Hall Ranch, but in scrolling through the map, I noticed a blank-looking patch of green to the west between the popular tourism destinations of Lyons and Estes Park. A quick Internet search revealed the existence of semi-secret trails generally used by mountain bikers, but they were legal and public on National Forest land. I left the auto glass place with a plan to find my way to a knoll called Button Rock Mountain.

I felt extremely nervous about this run. I couldn't even say why, exactly, but I was so physically anxious while driving through Lyons that I asked myself whether this sick feeling might be intuition picking up the radar of unknown dangers, and perhaps I should just run at Hall Ranch as planned. But no, I thought, exploring the unknown is more rewarding than comfortable routine. Why, though? To this I also had no answer.

There was nowhere to leave my car in the small neighborhood of Pinewood Springs, so I parked two miles outside of town on a forest road where I hoped to close my loop, and jogged along busy Highway 36. The trailhead was delightfully nondescript — just a faded driveway across an empty lot in the middle of a neighborhood. For a secret trail, the first few miles were surprisingly well-defined. For a while I was convinced it would be fun to return at some point with my mountain bike. That is, until the secret trail did the usual Front Range Colorado thing of cutting across steep side slopes in and out of drainages, passing directly over sharp rock outcroppings and through a barely-shoulder-wide gauntlet of tree trunks. It was a little nerve wracking even without a bike, I admit, and I took to the exaggerated knee bends that I sometimes engage when I'm terrified of tripping.

The trail climbed to the top of a ridge, where it faded into rock outcroppings and vaguely branched off in multiple directions. I took wrong turns, picked my way up loose slopes, backtracked, and gave up on any semblance of running motions as I bashed through brush and checked my arms and legs for ticks. I felt like a small child, wandering through the woods for the sake of wandering, letting curiosity overpower a vague sense of fear. A patchwork of dark clouds billowed overhead, releasing a persistent drizzle. All the while, sunlight filtered through the falling rain, as it does here in Colorado. The air tasted like sweet grass and cedar. Spring.

Eventually I found my way to the top of Button Rock Mountain, with its dramatic views of the Divide and Longs Peak. From there was an established trail (at least, a trail drawn out on the map) that snaked down to a jeep road, where I met the only other humans I'd encounter in five hours — two older men, wearing big leather boots, flannel jackets and canvas pants, out for their own explorations. They asked me whether I was "one of those crazy 200-milers," as they'd already met an ultrarunner training for a 200-mile race. To this I could honestly reply "no." I told them I was "exploring" and gave a vague description of my route from Pinewood Springs, as the specifics were already lost to me. But I think they were more impressed with this than they would have been if I were a crazy 200-miler.

"Lots to explore," one said. "I've lived here most of my life." He followed with a speculation about a direct route to the top of the mountain, as he hadn't yet found one. I looked up at Button Rock, which from that stance loomed as a vertical wall rising out of the forested slope.

"I see what you mean. Looks very steep," I replied. They did seem disappointed that I hadn't descended directly from the mountain, but rather taken the same established trail as them — given I was "exploring" and all.

I imagined living my entire life among these foothills, and how even a lifetime of such explorations wouldn't begin to scratch the surface of the place. We become so hung up on ever-expanding horizons, but true intimacy with even our most familiar surroundings is almost impossible to achieve.


Beat and I set Sunday aside for our long run. A popular route in Boulder is the "Skyline Traverse," spanning the five most prominent peaks over the city: Santias, Flagstaff, Green, Bear and South Boulder mountains. We've long wanted to run all of these peaks starting and finishing at home, so Beat mapped out the shortest way to do so, which was still 23 miles with 8,000 feet of climbing. I planned to take full rest days on both Saturday and Monday, so I could confidently give my best effort to this outing. A winter storm was forecast to move in on Monday, so Sunday's weather was volatile: Strong gusting winds and thunderheads interspersed with blue skies and sunshine.

 Green was our first mountain, followed by Flag, where Beat located the random boulder that is (most likely) the actual geographical high point on this flat mesa of a "summit." He was feeling off with stomach issues and cramping, but didn't want to back down on our goal. If we were just out for a typical long run, I imagine he'd have been more likely to cut it short, but the "Skyline Traverse" gave the outing some intrigue.

We jogged over to Santias for Beat's first ascent of Boulder's most popular mountain, after three years of residency here. I climb Sanitas fairly often, as it makes for a good "lunch run" when I need to spend the day in town, and features my favorite aspects of hiking and running all condensed into a perfect five-mile loop: A steep and rocky ascent gaining 1,300 feet in 1.2 miles, followed by a four-mile descent on a gently graded singletrack winding through the woods. Here we planned to climb the South Ridge and drop down the steep East Ridge, so no swooping descent. Also, it was a beautiful spring Sunday afternoon, so as predicted there was a veritable Conga line all the way to the summit. My description of the climb up Sanitas as "short" may have thrown Beat off a bit, and he charged up the spine well ahead of me. We were sand-blasted by strong gusts of wind as we nudged around huge groups of hikers. At the peak, Beat appeared slightly shattered. As this was the furthest point on our route, we were both in for the long haul now.

 Our route back followed the always interminable Mesa Trail to Fern Canyon, our Stairway to Heaven. With 2,000 feet of climbing in a mile, Fern is always going to hurt no matter how fresh your legs might be, or how slow you take it. To me, Fern always hurts about the same whether I'm pushing hard or backing off, whether it's raining or blowing or there's several feet of snow burying the trail. Apparently Fern always meets my limit regardless. Beat has actually accomplished *five* Fern ascents and descents in one effort, during a self-styled "InFERNo Half Marathon" that has more than 10,000 feet of climbing. After all that, he still said this one was one of his hardest days in the canyon.

 I had a comparatively effortless run — started out feeling good, and as a downtrodden Beat set what for me was a stout but comfortable pace, I only felt better as we went. By the time we were trundling up Fern, I was thinking about how I need to attempt five of these someday, which is *never* how I envision my future in this canyon when I'm relatively fresh. Something about well-managed fatigue takes a soft brush to my thoughts and emotions, adding depth to the little discoveries along the way and scope to the memories and dreams on the horizons.

After my last blog post, friends weighed in with perspectives on "why spend so much time trying to be a runner?" Since then, I've thought about the ways that running is a creative act. Unlike most outdoor sports where one relies on equipment and therefore turns a lot of focus toward it — my first love, cycling, being the one of the most egregious among them — running is largely self-contained. Sure, there's still a ton of gear in running and runners can talk all day about the merits of different shoes and backpacks ... but by choice this gear can still be an afterthought rather than a necessity. Shock-absorbing shoes aside, every motion in running must come from within, and every body part must flow in harmony to prevent the pitfalls of injuries and mistakes such as trail splats. This flow is something I find only occasionally and with great difficulty, but when it happens, it's nothing short of magical. My body feels perfectly tuned and the miles unroll behind me, beautiful new brush strokes on the canvas of my life.

I could ramble on about "running as art" and probably will at some point, but that has become my current best explanation for the "why." Having fun is a nice perk but it's not my motivation. I need the difficulties to give weight to the magic — shadows contrasting color and light. When I think back to the most beautiful moments I've experienced, one of the first that comes to mind are the Northern Lights — ethereal and fleeting waves of light flowing across the expansive darkness of a winter night. I've endured much physical discomfort for never-certain opportunities to experience a few seconds of such beauty. Running, for me, is a similar pursuit.

This week I hope to put in two more longer efforts. After that I intend to respect the taper, as I'm still full of doubt about Bryce 100 and want to give myself the best chance there is. But I am pleased with how this particular "work" is shaping up so far. 

Once a runner

"Why am I still trying to be a runner?"

This incredulous question pops into my mind with some frequency, still, as I near the decade mark of my running journey. I don't have a definitive moment when I decided to become a runner, but the first spark of genuine interest developed shortly after I finished the Tour Divide in the summer of 2009. I  wondered "what's next?" and gazed up at the mountains towering over Juneau. Everything beyond the jagged ridges was a mystery — fingers of rock stretching across the Juneau Icefield and beyond. I dreamed about the expanses I could explore in my limited free time, if only I were fast enough to cover the ground.

Unlike most adults who run on a regular basis, I have no running background. I was such an awkward ambler as a child that I failed the Presidential Fitness Test in seventh grade. When you're a striving tween who is given your first "F" because you couldn't break a 12-minute-mile, you're bound to take that failure to heart. Through my teens and twenties, I aggressively despised running. Then I entered a relationship with a man who was a collegiate cross-country star. Burnout led him to drop out of college, and by the time I met him a couple of years later, he was emphatically a non-runner. Several years after that, he picked up snowshoe racing on a lark. This progressed to mountain running after we moved to Alaska, followed by a meteoric rise in the ultrarunning world. I watched his progression to the top of the sport with some bemusement, because to me he was not a great athlete. He was the dude who went hiking and bike touring with me, and I could usually keep up. Maybe, I reasoned, running was not so hard.

He broke up with me before I ever gave running a go, so I can't credit him with much more than making the endeavor look entirely too doable. The Tour Divide led to some burnout with cycling, so after I returned to Juneau, I recruited my friend Abby to show me the ropes of trail running. We'd go out for slow jogs on the Treadwell Ditch Trail and other root-choked but flattish trails around town. Then I signed up for my first real foot race (at least the first one I intended to take seriously), the Mount Roberts Tram Run. The course was four miles up a muddy trail, gaining 1,800 feet. Abby and I lined up, and I asked her if we were going to race together. "Maybe," she replied, then disappeared into the crowd as the race launched. I'd go on to finish, red-lined and on the verge of vomiting, somewhere in the mid-pack, only to learn that Abby had won the race outright. As it turns out, Abby was a former elite cross-country skier. She'd been on track to compete in the Olympics before the pressure got to her and she walked away. She never shared this with me, her rank-beginner yet regular running partner. You might understand how spending all this time with elite athletes when I was young and naive might have skewed my perspective.

My enthusiasm for both running and racing faltered over the next year as I moved from Juneau to Anchorage to Missoula, but the following summer I fell in with another crowd of bad influences. A mutual friend introduced me to a Montana runner named Danni. She and I spent a weekend hiking in Glacier National Park, where I learned she was co-directing an ultra called the Swan Crest 100, slated the following weekend. On a whim I volunteered to help out with Danni's race. At the finish line, I met an enthusiastic Swiss runner named Beat. The rest, as one might say, is history. It becomes a long story to tell, but less than five months later I was in a new relationship and officially an ultrarunner myself, having completed my first 50K, en route to my "ultimate" challenge of finishing the Susitna 100 on foot.

That was early 2011, the start of my own meteoric rise. Although I would never venture anywhere near the top of the sport like Geoff or Abby, I enjoyed a fair amount of personal success early and often, and followed Beat's track of racing a lot. I finished 14 ultras in 2012, including another Susitna 100, UTMB (a shortened 110K course, still hard), and the Bear 100. I knew I would never be anything close to great, but I was still fairly certain I could go anywhere I wanted in this sport. My hubris hit fever pitch in 2013 when I enthusiastically signed up for and attempted La Petite Trotte à Léon. This spectacular DNF was the beginning of a slap-down that I might argue has continued, on some level, ever since.

"Why am I still trying to be a runner?" The angry voice echoed as I pulled myself up off the rocks and brushed dust and blood from my shin. It's @$%* 2019 and I'm still slapping the @$*! ground with some regularity. My crashes only seem to become more frequent as time goes by. I feel like I'm locked in a steady state of impact injuries, compounded by the embarrassment of being a middle-aged woman with scabbed knees and bruised arms. If tripping and hurting myself were the only indignities I had to endure, I could probably accept them. But I continue to rack up emotional failures as well. The reason I was out here on a rainy Wednesday afternoon, pushing my legs up the Betasso Link as fast as they'd climb until I lost control, is because I simply want to finish the Bryce 100 in three weeks. If I can manage this, it will be the first non-winter "A" race I'll have completed since I last finished the same race in 2013. In six years, my only breakthrough successes came from Alaska. And there were a lot of failures to fill in the gaps.

I write this as a confessional toward the deep emotional investment I've made in just finishing the Bryce 100, while simultaneously considering the endeavor to be foolhardy and a waste of time. Bryce is a beautiful course, and sure to be a memorable adventure regardless of the outcome. But I'm approaching the race with too much resentment and too little love. I've had ten years to become a runner, and feel the indignation of still being the same awkward ambler that I was in seventh grade, striving for a bare minimum that I might not meet.

It's been a tough week of training. I've posted about how my breathing has been good and overall I'm feeling strong, and that's still true. This week I pushed the volume; I wanted to log 20 hours of moving time, as I did in each of the two main training weeks leading up to the White Mountains 100. I managed 20 hours and then some with two weight-lifting sessions, 61 foot miles with 11,000 feet of gain mainly on dirt and technical trails, and a 53-mile road ride that had 5,300 feet of gain but actually was all enjoyment and no punishment, and did lead me to again ask myself why am I spending all this time trying to be a runner??

Beat and I logged our weekly long run in Golden Gate State Park on Saturday. Twenty-five miles with 6,000 feet of climbing, much of that on technical and rocky terrain. It turned out to be a bit early in the season for these trails. Most of the shady and north-facing areas were packed with snow and ice, with varying degrees of slipping and post holing. After my fall on Wednesday, I developed a little bit of what I call "trail vertigo," for lack of an official term. I was feeling wobbly, uneven, and vaguely dizzy for much of the run. To be fair I'd felt this way even before I took that hit. I think it's just something that comes on when I'm more fatigued. In the past couple of years I've associated my proprioception issues with poor breathing and low blood oxygen, but I had no breathing difficulties this week. I felt strong on the climbs, but weak and lightheaded on the descents. A friend visiting from North Dakota joined us for the final eight miles, and it was a nice distraction — slogging through shin-deep snow while talking about sled-dragging and layering for 30 below. These challenges are all well within my comfort zone. Trail running, on the other hand ...

So I ponder what, exactly, I'm trying to achieve. Way back in 2013, when I was arguably near the peak of my running success, I decided I didn't really love bike racing. Unless it was some sweeping adventure, such as the Race Across South Africa, the Tour Divide or the Iditarod Trail, I just didn't have the fire to focus on competitive cycling. Instead I wanted to ride bikes for fun, and test my limits in a way that was consistently difficult and enlightening — running. It is difficult to reconcile this zeal with the reality that there's absolutely nothing about running that comes naturally to me, and experience has arguably worsened my abilities as confidence continues to erode, and things actually could just keep getting worse, until I finally quit.

A hundred miles is a long way, and there's a lot of time for any number of issues to crop up that I might not be able to fix. It's silly and foolhardy to place so much pressure on my performance in this one race with which I already don't have a great history. Still, a success at Bryce, even the bare minimum, would be enough to justify positive answers to that nagging question ... why am I still trying to be a runner?

I have one more week of focused training before the taper. Hopefully I can get through it without meeting the ground yet again. 

Clinging to winter

April is a gift that keeps on giving. That is, with the exception of tax day, when most of my disposable cash is set to be removed from my bank account. (I know; I could budget for this better. I just prefer to have some sort of excessive adventure like living in Nome for a month, then pay the piper when the time comes.) Beyond the small bout of pain that is April 15, this brief but blissful season of effortless PRs and snowy spring adventures continues.

The weather this week was volatile, with high winds, then rain, then snow, then more strong wind. Conditions weren't conducive to (fun) cycling, so I stacked the week with quality foot training. I'm recommitting to weight training and trying to hit the gym twice a week, but on Monday I managed to squeeze in a quick jaunt to Sanitas before the errands and iron pumping and allergy shots that usually leave me couch-bound (or wishing I was) for the remainder of the day. 

Mount Sanitas has become one of those routes that I hit about once a month, so I always try to climb as fast as I can, as a sort of "fitness test." The last time I ran Sanitas was Feb. 20, a couple of days before we left for Alaska. That effort went so poorly, with rough breathing and my slowest time since the "sick days" of 2017, that I actually became a bit weepy on the peak. I blamed these tears on "slump hormones," because my slumps dredge up as many overwrought emotions as they do breathing difficulties. Since I have nothing tangible on which to blame a multitude of symptoms (rash, insomnia, anxiety ... the list extends far beyond slow running) — hormones it is. 

Anyway, my April 8 Sanitas climb was fantastic. I spent three years trying to ascend the little mountain in under 30 minutes, and finally did it this past December in 29:55. Then, like clockwork, four months later I tagged the summit with 28:48 on my watch! 

On Wednesday, everyone along the Front Range was anticipating the second "bomb cyclone" of 2019. I missed Colorado's first round of explosive cyclogenesis while I was in Alaska, but gleaned much entertainment from reading breathless media reports and underwhelmed Twitter commentary while I cowered indoors amid a violent whiteout/windstorm that's just a typical Wednesday in Nome. I was glad to be around for this storm. Still, after the Santias PR and a solid sprint during my routine Tuesday run, I was more interested in putting in another fast effort than slogging around in wet snow à la Alaska. So I timed my run three hours ahead of the forecasted snow, setting out when the weather was still a friendly 35 degrees with wind and rain.

I did manage a good push for my four-mile route along the west ridge of Green Mountain, missing my December (2017) PR by less than a minute. The rain switched over to snow just as I was nearing the peak. Less than 15 minutes later, there was a solid half inch covering the trail. Snow continued to accumulate rapidly as I worked my way down my loop, soaked to the skin but warm enough as blissfully hard running continued to pump out heat. Within an hour there were nearly two inches of heavy snow blanketing the ground, and my motions had become much more slog-like. But no matter. I was still pretty stoked on the blizzard.

Thursday dawned cold and gorgeous, with six to eight inches of new snow. I had hoped to take my fat bike for a spin, but wet snow falling onto warm ground made for such a sloppy mess that I couldn't stomach the notion of pedaling through mud-swirled Slurpee. Beat was working from home that day, so we set out for my usual Tuesday run in the afternoon. He promised to coach me to a PR, and in doing so set a hard pace on the climbs and easy-going pace on the descents. I nearly maxed out while shadowing him through the sloppy mud, but surprised myself by keeping pace.

"When my breathing's good, nothing feels all that hard; it's strange," I panted when the pace became remotely conversational during a mile-long descent. Minutes earlier, I was running my heart rate near 175, on the verge of puking, and that was not remotely easy. But it is eas-ier than anything I attempt when I'm feeling wheezy, including and especially that sad Feb. 20 slog up Sanitas.

As promised, Beat did coach me to a PR — nearly a minute faster than my previous best, which isn't trivial for a run I do on a near-weekly basis. The PRs were stacking up, and I was feeling mighty.

Since I'd done all of this hard running during the week, I convinced Beat we should go for a fun outing on Saturday — snowshoeing at Brainard Lake. We'd aim for Mount Audubon if conditions were conducive, but otherwise just happily tromp along in the snow for five or six hours. Both of us had more or less put "winter" behind us when we came home from Alaska. My gear needed to be excavated from the boxes where I'd stashed it for summer storage. But we came prepared for full winter conditions — the Continental Divide had also been slammed with new snow this week, and Saturday's high temperature at the trailhead was forecast to be 25 degrees.

We wiled away the morning hoping for clearing skies that never quite materialized. It was 1:30 p.m. and still snowing heavily when we finally set out from the winter trailhead. Beyond Brainard Lake the route became tricky, with erratic and windblown ski tracks that didn't seem to head toward Audubon. We decided to trace the summer route as well as we could, which forced us to break virgin trail in heavy snow as we wound through the woods. It was hard, thirsty work, and the weather was January fearsome with temperatures in the teens and winds gusting to 35 mph. Low clouds and blowing snow streamed along the ridge.

An Audubon summit was not going to happen on this day. Such an attempt would have been high on the epic scale, with hours of full exposure to the fierce wind and cold, and a slow and difficult pace that would have kept us hiking well after dark. Perhaps we would have motivated if we were here before our trip to Alaska ... but Beat had already had more than his share of high wind adventure during his night and day in the Solomon Blowhole, and I spent nearly a month on the wind-swept Bering Sea coast, so ... we're wintered out, I suppose. We were happy to climb to a nice viewpoint, take a look, and turn around.

The formidable Mount Audubon. Perhaps we'll motivate for another snowshoe adventure with more time to spare next week. Or perhaps we'll settle into the speedy ease of the season and find somewhere warm and dry to run.

Wind and blowing snow continued to batter us on the way down. Beat was having trouble with his snowshoes that required several stops to fix, and I had to bundle up in most of my extra layers. I was, perhaps, willing to admit that I'm ready for spring.

I continue to place excess emotional importance on my ability to finish the upcoming Bryce 100. As such, I was resolved to put in at least a four-hour run on Sunday, and actually convinced Beat to do the same (he'll perform well at the race no matter how much or little he trains between now and then, and he and I both know it.) In order to avoid mud and slush conditions, we settled on a double loop around Walker Ranch — clockwise to start, then doubling back and running counter-clockwise for the return.

I just assumed I'd continue to feel great as I had earlier in the week, but the difficulty of the snowshoe slog weighed heavily on my legs. I was off to a slower start, and then we hit the fearsome West Wind. Wind gusts were hitting 50 miles an hour (as recorded by our weather station at home.) We crossed an open area running due west, and I couldn't breathe. The wind seemed to rip the air away from my mouth before I could draw it into my lungs. Meanwhile, the headwind pushed back so forcefully that I could barely walk, let alone run, and continued to stagger forward with my nose pointed at the ground so the wind wouldn't blow the hat off my head (but it did anyway, multiple times.) I felt a little despondent, as I do whenever I have difficulty breathing. But Beat told me that the wind made him feel exactly the same, and he struggled with breathing just as much.

This first Walker loop was much more difficult than last week, and then we had to do another. My legs felt heavy but my breathing remained manageable, and I had a fair amount of energy thanks to a bottle full of Beat's hummingbird food. (After my difficulties taking in food during the White Mountains 100, I've committed to using liquid nutrition during the Bryce 100 — even though I strongly dislike most drink mixes that I've tried. Beat's solution, a flavorless mix called Maurten, is pretty much straight-up sugar water, but with a magical gel that infuses long-lasting energy without gut distress. It made me wince when I first started using it, but now I appreciate its non-offensive non-taste.)

We completed our run with 17.5 miles and 4,000 feet of climbing. These are rocky trails — not my strength — and I took the downhills slowly to keep my no-tripping streak in tact. The wind continued to kick my ass, and I finished the four hours feeling pretty wrecked. But it's a good thing — if I didn't push a few boundaries, I wouldn't have as much mental strength to apply to my upcoming race.

A successful week of training, all around.