Still an incredible ditch

It's my favorite tradition — and a strong indicator of where my priorities fall. I've failed to go home for Christmas for six of the past seven years, but I never miss the annual autumn Grand Canyon rim-to-rim hike with my dad. 

This year was my seventh trip into the "big ditch," as my friend Dave calls the Colorado River gorge. My first rim-to-rim hike, back in October 2004, was such a daunting prospect that I was awake all night before the hike, nervous that I wouldn't find the strength to climb all the way out of the canyon. I'd done 6,000-foot climbs before that, but never at the end of a long day. My dad and I joined a large group at North Kaibab trailhead in predawn darkness. I remember thinking it was such an incredibly long way down; after fifteen miles, my legs were aching and we were still at the bottom of the canyon. Temperatures climbed over a hundred degrees as we plodded up the Bright Angel Trail. Some of our companions developed bloody nipples and heat exhaustion, and had to submerge themselves in tiny trickles of streams. When we finally reached the South Rim, I plopped down with a Pepsi my mom brought for me, convinced I couldn't possibly take another step. Now, eight years later, a rim-to-rim hike has become something I've convinced myself I can squeeze in less than a week after a hundred-mile mountain run. Even my dad has started talking about doing a double-crossing next year, calling it "the new rim-to-rim." But where some of the challenge has faded, the unbelievable beauty and quality time with my dad has remained. 

 This year we started on the South Rim and worked our way to the north. We were joined by my dad's friends Chad and Ophie, who recently moved from San Francisco to Utah. Chad is a fun guy to spend time with. He and my dad were hiking companions in the 1990s, before Chad moved from Salt Lake City to the Bay Area. Chad was a 2:48 marathoner and a mountaineer aspiring toward Mount Everest (the tragic death of his climbing partner on Mount Whitney put this dream on hold indefinitely.) But Chad is an obvious bad-ass who recently had knee surgery and gained a little weight, so his self-depreciating humor is a continuous source of entertainment. Chad is looking to get into trail running and was actually asking me for advice about training for ultras. Coming from a 2:48 marathoner, I have to say, the notion that I had anything useful to offer was pretty hilarious. But he is a great guy. His wife, Ophie, was quiet but steady. She was nervous about the scope of a rim-to-rim, too, but only seemed to gain strength as she climbed.

 I still had a few lingering physical issues after the Bear 100, including tired climbing legs, extremely sore pinkie toes and a few open blisters. On Thursday night, I spent an hour giving myself a specialized pedicure, filing down my more problematic calluses, moisturizing, and carefully taping my blisters and four toes. This seemed to help a lot. My feet had been my largest concern for getting through the canyon, but they proved to be a minor inconvenience — if you count excruciating pinkie toe pressure pain as a minor inconvenience. I guess I really am developing an ultrarunner mentality.

 We started down the South Kaibab Trail just minutes before the first wave of shuttle bus hikers and runners (we actually saw the bus pull into the parking lot.) Even still, we managed to stay ahead of all but a handful of runners, so we largely had the canyon to ourselves in the morning.

 Although I've considered taking on the popular runner tradition of running across the canyon and back in one day, I'm torn about the notion of a R2R2R. Honestly, I think it would be a fun challenge, but the Grand Canyon is really the type of place where it's even better to take it slow.

 There were, of course, many picture stops along the way.

 Friday was a hot day in the canyon — barely cool before sunrise on the South Rim, and well into the 90s at the river. Having lost all of my heat acclimation since I haven't been in real heat since August, the early afternoon climb in the box canyon was a tough grind for me. Ophie, who is Filipino, continued to wear long pants and long sleeves all day long.

 The bridge across the river.

 The "Black Bridge" was constructed in the 1920s for mule traffic, and remains one of only two bridges across the Colorado River in the entire Grand Canyon. The other is the Silver Bridge, on the Bright Angel Trail less than a mile away. Both are foot- and mule-access only, so shuttle drivers for any rim-to-rim crossing still have to drive more than two hundred miles around the big ditch.

 Climbing out of Bright Angel Canyon. It was really hot here.

So I was stoked to arrive at this place for lunch — Ribbon Falls, my favorite spot on the North Kaibab Trail. (Actually about a half mile off the main trail. So you even get a bonus mile.)

 I spent as much time as I could lingering near this misty alcove. But not too close, unwilling to get my taped-up feet even remotely wet.

 Yay Ribbon Falls

 This was the first time I carried a GPS on a south-to-north crossing, so I never before realized that despite the long, hot grind out of the box canyon, the North Kaibab Trail actually only gains about 2,000 feet total in the first ten miles after Phantom Ranch. The Artist's House below Roaring Springs sits at about 4,500 feet altitude, and from there it's a big grunt to gain another 4,000 feet in five miles. I knew those last five miles were mean! It's not just tired legs that make it seem so.

 We really motored up those last five miles. I was struggling enough to keep the pace that I didn't even stop to take many pictures, for fear my weak legs wouldn't muster the oomph to catch back up to my dad, who can hike really fast. (He may be nearing 60, but I still have to jog sometimes to keep his pace.) We were about a half mile from the top when my dad and I finally stopped at the Coconino Overlook. Chad joined us about three minutes later and staged a comic meltdown, staggering about and dramatically declaring "I got nothing left. I'm seeing stars, cherubs, there's a monkey on a pogo stick!" A lady sitting nearby turned around with a horrified look on her face, believing that Chad was serious. "You're almost there," she sputtered. "Really, you only have about twenty more minutes." Chad's a funny guy.

My mom, our ever-gracious shuttle driver, was waiting for us at the North Kaibab Trailhead. This is such a great tradition and I hope it continues, even if most of my family would probably prefer I come home for Christmas. Thanks, Mom and Dad. 

Recovery week

I had the opportunity to spend the week after the Bear 100 in Salt Lake City with my family, visiting my sister and her two-week-old baby girl, and trying to coax my legs back to life in time for my favorite annual tradition, hiking rim-to-rim in the Grand Canyon with my dad. It was enjoyable to spend time with my family and catch up with a few friends. But as usual, physically recovering from a hard effort is seriously unfun. 

After I finished the Bear 100, I was up for most of the night drinking lots of water and struggling to breathe. I was extremely dehydrated, probably the result of a gradual failure to take in enough fluids during and also after the race. So that was two nights without sleep, and the next few were also limited thanks to sore feet and "the jimmy legs," in which involuntary muscle contractions and cramping kept me awake. By Tuesday I had to start testing whether my legs still worked since our rim-to-rim hike was Friday, so I set out for a two-hour easy hike on the Jacob's Ladder Trail in Corner Canyon. My feet, which were still covered in raw blisters, felt surprisingly okay, but my legs were mostly dead. Starting something like the Bear 100 with tired legs means — like post-Stagecoach 400 rebuilding during the spring — I'll probably spend the rest of the fall operating at reduced capacity. Honestly, that's fine with me. As long as I'm healthy, I'd rather have a steady trickle of adventure at 60 or 70 percent power, than take long breaks coupled with big training bursts in hopes of achieving that elusive 100 percent. That's one of the advantages of being a mediocre athlete no matter what, in my humble opinion — the fun doesn't have to stop.

I certainly do wish I could have been a little healthier during the four days I spent in Salt Lake, because it would have been nice to really get out and enjoy fall in the Wasatch Mountains. The day after my Jacob's Ladder hike, I had lunch with my sister and then had two hours of free time before I planned to go visit my grandmother. I told my sister I was going to get a pedicure for some help with my mangled feet, but instead I ended up in Big Cottonwood Canyon, hiking up the Broads Fork Trail. Whoops. It was worth it, though — trading some foot relief for ninety minutes of bliss. I was even able to run most of the descent, as my running muscles are actually less achey and tired than my uphill hiking muscles right now.

Another thing that happened this week is I found out my standing in the White Mountains 100 lottery, which is a disappointing number 42 on the wait list. I thought I'd be okay with not getting into the WM100 after three years of successful rides around the hundred-mile loop north of Fairbanks. But I'll be honest — I was slightly devastated that I didn't get in for a fourth year. One of the reasons is that the Susitna 100 has been cancelled in 2013, and I didn't put in for any other winter races. I've mulled it over and decided I'm not willing to put up with the extended travel or expense it would take to race the Yukon Arctic Ultra, and the Arrowhead 135 is already full even if I did decide I wanted to make a trip to Minnesota. So, for the first time since 2005, I find myself without any kind of winter goal. Winter is my season. I could be perfectly content hiking mountains and going on leisurely bike tours all summer long, but I really do like to be "on" and training with purpose during the winter. So the lack of direction is disappointing. I'm still not sure what to do.

Beat joked that since my blog reports have been getting so few comments recently, I should poll readers to see what training efforts or trips might make my blog less boring. Ha ha. But then creating a poll helped me think about what I might want to do to compensate for my lack of races this winter. It's on the left in the sidebar of this blog. Please weigh in!

Other than that, it's time to start training for the 25 Hours of Frog Hollow, which is less than a month away. I've spent so little time on a bike in the past two months that even my sit bones have gone soft — also for the first time since 2005, I've lost my one superpower: my "iron butt." That coupled with my dead legs should make for an interesting training block indeed. But I don't even really care because I'm so excited to get back on my Moots and crank out long rides in the Santa Cruz Mountains. It is good to be home again. 

I'm waking up

2012 Bear 100 race report, part three

Photo by Danni Coffman

When I was a pre-teen in suburban Salt Lake City, I lived for "sleepovers." Between school, church, and home life, I generally operated within a strict routine of expectations and rules, but sleepovers were a free pass to completely let loose. My friends and I would huddle in sleeping bags in my back yard playhouse, taunt each other with truth-or-dare challenges, and gorge on salty snacks and sugar. As soon as all lights in the house went dark, we'd climb the fence and run wild through the neighborhood streets, decorating other friends' yards with toilet paper and prowling the empty aisles of the local 24-hour grocery store. We'd vow to stay awake long enough to watch the sunrise, and would to resort to silly games just to keep ourselves awake. Some of my favorite childhood memories emerged during these unruly hours when the whole world was ours and it felt like absolutely anything could happen. I could never come up with an adult excuse for slumber party fun — until I discovered hundred-mile ultramarathons. Guiltless sugar binging, giggling, and exhaustion-triggered silliness ... these may have been a few of my ulterior motives when I coaxed my friend Danni to travel all the way from Montana just to run with me through the northern Utah mountains all night and well into the following day.

 

Danni is a great sport. I tried to warn her that forty-eight miles of the Bear 100 was going to take at least sixteen hours, that she might have to witness a temper tantrum or two, and because it was a point-to-point race, there was no easy way for her to cut out once she started running with me. She was basically committing to a slow, sleep-deprived fifty-miler. But Danni is my ideal pacer — she tells great stories, never complains, and doesn't make me get out of the chair at the aid stations. In fact, she'll sit down right next to me with a handful of quesadillas and remind me that she's tired too, and I'll have to do my own butt-kicking if I want to get out of there, because she has no incentive to leave. I love Danni. She's the best. 

As soon as Danni joined me at Tony Grove, the race almost instantly turned from tough to almost a breeze, at least for a while. Shortly after we left the aid station, I got wrapped up in what she later termed "lovey dovey feelings," and went on and on about my memories of 2010 and running with Beat. As we worked our way up a thousand-foot climb out of Tony Grove, I kept repeating, "I don't remember this climb. I could have sworn this entire section was downhill. In fact, I remember the rest of the race being downhill. When did they put these climbs in here?" When the descent finally did begin, we started flying. Danni and I passed about two dozen people in the next ten miles while we were moving effortlessly, giggling and chatting. "Beat made me run this whole section in 2010, too," I said. "I didn't even know how to run at all back then and I was all freaked out that we were going to have to run like this for the rest of the race."

As the night wore on, temperatures plummeted to freezing or even a couple of degrees lower. Frost coated the grass and ice started to form in my water valve. Danni's stories got progressively better, including high school hijinks that would blow any of my sleepover stories out of the water. The laughs helped buffer the deteriorating condition of my feet and quads, which had effectively started falling apart. At mile seventy, we plopped down next to the fire and enjoyed the hospitality of the best aid station of the race, Logan River. Someone kept handing me grilled cheese sandwiches as I muttered about being sucked in by "the evils of the chair." Danni just looked at me and said something to the effect of, "I know I'm your pacer, but it's like 3 a.m. and really cold and we've only done twenty of the fifty miles I signed up to do and I'm already really tired. You're on your own." See what I mean? Danni's the best. I'd rather run alone than try to keep up with someone who makes it look too easy. 

During the climb up Peterson Hollow, my lungs gave out. I'd been having some trouble with breathing since the first pass, but by mile seventy-one I sincerely believed that there was no longer enough oxygen in the air. I blamed altitude, but in hindsight, my breathing difficulties were more likely an combined effect of exhaustion and dehydration. Still, I was short of breath, gasping, and generally unable to speak in full sentences whenever we were climbing. Danni and I both felt good after our long rest at Logan River and she encouraged me to step it up a notch, which sounded like a great idea to me. But it only took about five minutes of determined running before the world started spinning and I felt the blackout effects of hypoxia. It took minutes of much slower walking to recover enough to even respond to Danni. I felt frustrated because my legs were regaining strength and I'd taped up my more troublesome blisters, so my feet were feeling better, too. But I couldn't breathe. What could I do about that?

As we neared Peterson Pass, a strong sense of familiarity cut through my flickering consciousness. The full moonlight sparkled on frosty sagebrush bushes, and in a far distances I could see the lights of Highway 89. "This ... is it!" I gasped at Danni. "This ... is the ... place where ... Beat ... gave me ... the rock!" I was certain of it. In 2010, Beat gave me a marble-veined stone that he picked up in Italy as he asked me whether I was interested in dating. I returned to the Bear 100 with this golfball-sized rock and carried it in my backpack through the entire race just so I could pull it out at this exact point, take a photograph, and bring the moment full circle. Danni had even joked that I might get a kiss if I was lucky (I didn't get a kiss from Beat in 2010 either, because, he confessed later, he felt sweaty and wretched.) But now, at this point in the night, with my lungs screaming for air and my exhausted mind frustrated by the diminished capabilities of my body, I just kept marching without stopping. I guess it's just as well. The moment was still beautiful, all the same.

At Beaver Lodge, I pulled off my shoes to assess the condition of my feet, and became distressed with the multitude of blisters. I know blisters are just blisters, but there were still twenty-four miles to go and I stressed about how much pain they were going to cause me in that distance. I again took much too long of a break as I carefully taped my feet, taking my time so I didn't just make things worse. As the second dawn emerged, Danni and I began the long slump of a climb to Beaver Creek Summit, with me still gasping for air and now griping about my hurty feet. The fun hours of the sleepover had ended. We were entering the grumpy consequences of a sleepless morning.

Danni, of course, kept a great attitude. She randomly broke out into song and invented lyrics about Advil, causing me to smile despite my sour mood. She joked that she had no doubt I was going to finish this thing because "my people" (the Mormons) were so good at suffering and hardship. The sun climbed higher and the day grew warmer. There still wasn't enough oxygen in the air; the only difference was now it was hot again.

I thought we'd never reach the final aid station, Ranger Dip, at mile 92. When we finally got there, I noticed a large white sheet of paper with instructions to mark down any racers who dropped from the race at that aid station. While I'd seen many names on previous sheets, this one had none. "I should drop out here," I remarked to Danni. "I'd be the first one!" I was joking, sort of. But the truth is, I almost would have rather taken a DNF in the Bear 100 than run the last eight miles. I knew what lied ahead, and I was sure those miles promised only hardship and pain. Of course, you can't drop out at mile 92 of a hundred-miler, pretty much no matter what. That's the rub of committing to these things and then dragging your friend into the madness.

We launched up a climb called "Lift-Off," by far the steepest ascent of the course on a near-vertical jeep track. As we trudged up to "Gates of Paradise" — the final pass — I expressed my trepidation. "I could climb like this all day," I lamented. "But that descent on the other side is soul-crushing."

Once we reached 9,500 feet, we had less than seven miles to descend to 5,900 feet with just enough little climbs thrown in to keep the thing steep and painful. I knew my feet and quads were going to burn no matter what, so I vowed that I would run, for as long as I could, just to shorten the time it would take. The problem is I don't even run that kind of terrain when I'm fresh and strong. It was a rocky, steep jeep road, and loose enough that any misplaced step would send me into a full butt slide. When I ran the Bear with Beat in 2010, I suffered so much through that last descent that I actually walked parts of it backward. I told Danni I would need to tap "the magic of iPod" and scanned my Shuffle for the angriest music possible. When I channeled all of that anger toward my throbbing feet and legs, I found I was able to run.

Photo by Danni Coffman

It worked, albeit slowly, for nearly four miles. The road was even flattening out, and the descent was becoming less steep as we approached Bear Lake. But suddenly and unexpectedly, like a taser shock to my legs, everything came to a crashing halt. I put my foot down into one last jolt of electric pain, and my body finally rebelled. My willpower crumbled. So much anger coursed through my blood that I was seeing white, and had Danni not been there, I likely would have collapsed on the dirt in a tantrum fit for a toddler. As it was, I could scarcely contain my rage. I muttered something about having to pee and darted into the bushes, holding my head in my hands and trying to quell the inner screaming. Since I was back there, I figured I should pee anyway. In hindsight, it must have been a most hilarious scene — a 33-year-old woman squatting behind a tree with her pants down, rocking back and forth, clutching her forehead, and biting her own arm to prevent a real, screaming, crying temper tantrum.

I emerged from the bushes and informed Danni I wouldn't be running any more. "It's just that I hate this road so much," I moaned. She was very sweet about it; I think she could tell I was dangling on the precarious edge of emotional meltdown. We walked, very slowly, the final three miles, even as we crossed through town and Fish Haven residents started cheering, "you're almost there!" With the finish line in sight, we passed clapping spectators. "That must be the best feeling," one said of my inevitable finish of the hundred-mile race. "My feet hurt!" was all I could say in response. Yes, the screaming toddler hadn't left my system yet. But I have to admit that it did feel good to see the word "Finish" in big red letters.

I finished the Bear 100 in 33 hours and 27 minutes, logging my first finish in a "summer" hundred-miler, and my third hundred miler on foot. I owe the lion's share of the credit to Danni for the laughs and the unflaggingly upbeat company, and also to Beat for the inspiration and mentoring. And of course a little credit goes to Great-Great-Grandpa Ira, not for the so-called "suffering genes," but for the example that, really, everyone has what it takes to persevere through hardships as long as they keep moving forward.