2010 in photos, part 1

Each December I have a tradition of picking my 12 favorite photos of the year, one for each month, as a year-in-review exercise. This year was particularly difficult because 2010 has been such a dynamic year that simply picking pretty photos to summarize each month doesn't really achieve the reflection I'm looking for. So I'm doing a two-part series. Part one is simply my favorite photos of each month. This doesn't mean these photos are technically or aesthetically the best (as I begin to dabble with better equipment, I'm finally starting to understand just how limited my scratched-lens Olympus Stylus camera really was.) No, these photos are simply my favorite for various reasons. For part 2, I picked photos that I believe best represent the events of the month — the photos that capture my thoughts and impressions now that the year is done. Look for that post soon.

January, "Hell Storm:" A fierce winter gale whips a fury of snow near the wooden cross on Mount Roberts in Juneau. I like this photo because it reminds me of the incredible windstorms I often experienced during my mountain excursions in Southeast Alaska.

February, "Summer in February:" My friends mull whether to ascend West Peak again or drop over the cornice to the right while hiking on Juneau's Hawthorne Ridge during a warm 50-degree afternoon in late February. I like the snowshoe prints down the face of the peak, as well as the highlights on the snow that betray the balmy nature of the day despite the wintry landscape.

March, "My Back Yard:" My last residence in Juneau was perched near the shoreline of Fritz Cove, so this scene was literally the view from my back yard. I took this photo in the late morning just as the fog started to lift over Auke Bay, revealing this floating dock and the tip of an island ridge.

April, "Moving North:" While driving from Skagway to Anchorage, I made a spontaneous stop to hike Gunsight Mountain. I took this photo from a saddle below the peak, overlooking the Chugach Mountains and a frozen river to the south.

May, "Bold Ptarmigan:" My stay in Southcentral Alaska was brief but rich with experiences. By May I was already grappling with the prospect of moving away from Alaska and often went on long solo excursions to process my thoughts. I took this photo of a curious ptarmigan on Bold Ridge near Eklutna Lake during a long afternoon of mountain biking and ridge hiking.

June, "Cordova:" I took this photo of a stream near the Copper River during a solo bike trip to Cordova. I like the textures in this photo as well as the dramatic sky (in fact, most of these photos I picked for the skies.)

July, "St. Mary Fire Lookout:" Evening descends over St. Mary Peak during a quick after-work hike with Dave. This photo represents everything I loved about my early days in Montana: the truly big skies, dry trails, rich light and warm summer nights.

August, "TransRockies:" Keith rolls over the Continental Divide, crossing from British Columbia into Alberta during stage three of the 2010 TransRockies bicycle race. Again, fun mixture of shadows and light on the alpine tundra, in a truly incredible place to ride a bicycle.

September, "Glacier Traverse:" Danni is dwarfed by the Rocky Mountains in Glacier National Park during a huge 25-mile, 12,600-feet-of-climbing, cross-country traverse of a ridge in the southeastern corner of the park. This hike with my Kalispell friends (Danni, Dave and Brad) ranks as one of my top five favorite excursions of the year, with the 50 miles of the Bear 100, bike trip to Cordova, 140-mile Denali Highway Classic and White Mountains 100.

October, "The Last Day of Summer:" Beat descends Lolo Peak into a blaze of autumn-gold larch trees on an unseasonably warm day in early October.

November, "Golden Hour in Frog Hollow:" One of the best things about participating in a 25-hour race is that you get to see the dynamic ways light and shadows change the landscape over the course of a day. This is the sunset lap during the 25 Hours in Frog Hollow, near Hurricane, Utah.

December, "Dressed in White:" Beat hikes down the frost-coated University Mountain during an afternoon run. Missoula, like Alaska, doesn't see all that much sunlight in the winter, so any rare appearance of the sun has a tendency to bring on a blissful sort of outdoor mania.

Home for Christmas

The last time I spent Christmas with my family was 2004. Six years ago. Distance in Alaska and jobs in the newspaper industry created an insurmountable barrier to traveling home for the holidays ever since, so I was extra excited for the opportunity to head back to Utah for a long weekend this year — even though it meant coaxing Geo on yet another thousand-mile I-15 trip through intermittent whiteouts and nearly getting stranded on an onramp near the Continental Divide during my late-night trip south.

A lot has changed in my life in six years. But as it turns out, nothing has changed about Christmas. My large extended family still gathers in the primary room of an LDS church to eat Fourth-of-July picnic food (fried chicken, potato salad and ice cream), play silly games and sing off-key. My immediate family still exchanges the same gifts (Old Spice and Twizzlers for my dad, "normal" (non-outdoor) clothing for me), eats individual game hens for dinner even though no one, not even me, can finish one, and pops "A Christmas Story" in the DVD player even if it's already after midnight because all of the other Christmas Eve activities took so long. Ah, tradition.

This year I also conned Beat into flying into Utah for the holiday by telling him the running was great in Salt Lake County. Actually, he seemed genuinely excited to meet my family, and the meeting went well. We did get out for a couple runs in the Corner Canyon area even though family visits dominated the weekend by a large margin. The weather was warm and dry although foggy on Christmas Eve. We ran for three hours only to have clouds cut us off from the viewpoints on the south side of the Lone Peak ridgeline.

Christmas Day I only had an hour to spare for a run before heading to Ogden for more family stuff. It only seemed fair to give Beat a break or at least spare him from full submersion into my very large Mormon family right out of the gate, so he planned a longer run with snowshoeing in the higher elevations. Temperatures were in the low 40s with full sunshine. We ran fast up the dry trails, soaking in the most summer-like weather I have felt since September. After a half hour Beat continued up the Ghost Falls loop and I turned around, dropping to the Bonneville Shoreline Trail so I could run a wee bit longer in the full-sun exposure of the open mountainside. My legs moved with rare fluidity down the hard-packed singletrack. I was dripping sweat and completely blissed out. I wouldn't have minded having eight hours to spend in that perfect space, moving with purpose among the dirt and snow and sunlight. But I was happy to have a chance to see my fam before returning to the great white northland.

Beat continued up to 8,000 feet through heavy breakable crust (should have warned him about that south-facing slope) but for his hard efforts he did get to enjoy all the views of the Wasatch Mountains and Utah Valley that we missed on Friday.

Beat and I drove together back to Missoula, and the first thing we did after stumbling in from yet another 10-hour stomach-clenching Geo epic was put his Fatback together. It's a truly beautiful bike — aluminum with a nickel finish, fat carbon fork, Speedway rims, one Larry and one Endomorph tire, and pogies from Dogwood Designs. I can't help but be filled with envy even though this bike currently lives with me. We're planning to take Pugsley and the Fatback on a night ride tonight, and I'm filled with excitement. One great thing about diversifying my outdoor activities is that the cycling excursions have become truly special, almost indulgent. Yeah for bikes.

P.S. Beat wrote a sweet commentary about my first 50K on his blog. Link here.

The picture just keeps getting bigger

(Photo from my lunch run on Tuesday, during the only spare 90 minutes I could find to get outside so far this week.)

“You’re leaving again Wednesday?” an acquaintance asked in an incredulous tone.

“I’m driving to Utah to spend Christmas with my family,” I said. “I haven’t been home for Christmas since 2004.”

“Didn’t you just get back from California?”

“On Monday afternoon,” I said. “I went to San Francisco to run in a race, and to see my boyfriend.”

She gave me the same raised-eyebrow stare that I’ve seen frequently lately. I got it from co-workers when I told them I had to make an early exit from the office Christmas party — the one I helped plan — so I could grab a little sleep before it was time to fly to California to run 50 kilometers in a trail race. I got it from members of the local bike club during my Tour Divide talk, when a friend in the audience forced me to admit I was training to run a winter 100-mile ultramarathon in Alaska. I got it from casual friends when I told them I would have to miss a weekend gathering because I was flying to Seattle — why Seattle? Well, because it’s … there. It was too difficult to explain that we wanted to check out trails in the surrounding area, and visit friends, and also chose Seattle because it’s a simpler destination for Beat than Missoula.

Much of it is difficult to explain. I’ve boarded a lot of planes in the past three months. I’ve limped around with various running injuries. My weeks are all but full with packing, unpacking, working, cleaning, errands, shoving whatever random food is on hand in my mouth, and — less frequently than I’d prefer — getting outside for exercise, usually running. My bikes hang from my wall rack like limp rags, gathering dust. An editor gave my Divide book a full read and recently returned it with all kinds of valuable criticism and suggestions, but I can’t fathom where I’ll find the time to return to that project. Even my blog, my last refuge, looks neglected these days. There’s a brand new Fatback in my front room that I haven’t even bothered to put together yet. That last sentence makes the least sense of all. But I can’t help it. Life is happening much to fast.

But how can I explain it succinctly? Yes, I am dating a man who lives 1,100 miles away. Yes, our relationship is quite serious. And yes, it’s complicated. Serendipity and the staggering reach of modern life brought us together despite incalculable odds. Really, what were the chances of us meeting — a Swiss ultrarunner from California and a new-to-Montana cyclist, neither of whom were looking to get into a relationship at the time?

Neither of us took it seriously until suddenly we did. I think the potential hit us both at the same time, in mid-September, about a week before our first official “date.” Beat was running a six-day, 200-mile epic in Italy called the Tor des Geants, and I was in Montana, obsessively refreshing the race update Web site. We were completely out of contact for the first time since we met at the Swan Crest 100 in July, and that step back gave us both a lot of time to consider how we felt about each other. When we converged in northern Utah to run the last half of the Bear 100 together, all of those thoughts and emotions were perfectly aligned, although neither of us knew that about the other quite yet.

We still laugh about the moment we figured it out, as we jogged along a high mountain ridge as the moon cast rich blue light across the grassy slope. After hours of regaling me with stories about the Tor des Geants and the structure of quantum physics, Beat handed me the rock he carried for me a the TDG and finally asked, “Are you interested in going out?”

“Sure, that would be great,” I said in a deeply fatigued monotone that struck Beat as humorous. “But, um, the Montana-California thing is a little complicated.”

“It’s a minor complication,” Beat said, and we let the words soak in amid the stark mountain silence.

And it is just a minor complication. How to you place value on a relationship with a person who, less than one week after a 200-mile soul-crushing race, flies halfway around the world to a remote outpost in northern Utah to run another 100 miles, just to meet up with you? And then, when you crack 40 miles in to your own 50-mile run, gives up finishing well in his own just to help you hobble to the finish? How do you quantify a person’s willingness to fly out to far-away Montana nearly every weekend just to spend time with you, and put in long hours during the workweek so he can afford it. How do you express appreciation for a person who not only shares your passions for the outdoors, but who relishes in big challenges and distances, with emotional and intellectual goals that align perfectly with yours. And it’s not just about short-term adventures and long-term goals — this person is funny and sexy and smart and has enough fantastic ideas and outlandish ambitions to fill a couple lifetimes. How do you not fight for that with every ounce of energy, every resource you have?

So my lifestyle is a bit complicated right now. And there probably will be more plane trips, more packing, more running. For Beat and I, the little annoyances, the details of it all, are already fading into the bigger picture — drawing widening circles around that moment of perfect serendipity, in ink.

Rodeo Beach 50K

I wasn't a runner.

My first foot race was part of a spring triathlon called the Homer Sea to Ski, in 2006. I put in a just-shy-of-30-minutes 5K, crushed the mountain bike climb and then proceeded to stagger around on cross-country-skis for a 45-minute 5K ski. My next race was the Veterans Day 8K in 2007, when I came in at 43:26 after a 7-year-old boy breezed by me in the final mile. If I am honest with myself, I really didn't run any of the 4 miles of the Mount Roberts Tram Run in 2008 or 2009. I knew I liked hiking but had more than one hiking companion tell me I "walk kind of funny." I knew I was strong on climbs but clumsy everywhere else. As I stumbled my way down Thunder Mountain in Juneau earlier this year, one friend finally told me, only half jokingly, that "you know, some people just aren't good on their feet. Maybe you should stick to wheels."

I wasn't a runner, but I don't like to be told what I can and can't do.

This spring, during my short-lived tenure in Anchorage, I decided to aspire to be a mountain runner. I trained briefly, maxing out my heart rate up 40-degree slopes and slumping back down them, physically spent after a mile. In Montana I met runners who helped me realize that I should aim where my strengths lie — endurance. After my big summer bike race (TransRockies), I began to dabble in run base building. Very soon after my training began, I kicked a rock into my foot and had to stay off it for two weeks. Then came the ill-advised (but extremely well-motivated) 50-mile pacing effort at the Bear 100, which I finished with something similar to plantar faciitis. After a few more weeks of no running, I completed another bike race (25 Hours of Frog Hollow) and during my first training run back, sprained my ankle. Different variations of "Hurty Foot" continued to crop up until about three weeks ago, when I became painfully aware that I was going to have to complete the December 18 50K I had signed up for as a still-almost-complete non-runner. I got some advice and coaching from Beat, did a few training runs in the snow and Seattle rain, and hoped for the best.

The Rodeo Beach 50K is a trail run in the Marin Headlands north of San Francisco. It was to be my first ultra-marathon — and, who am I kidding, my first foot race over 8 kilometers long. My goal was run it at my endurance pace, which is what I'd consider my "hold forever" pace, and try to finish under the nine-hour cutoff without contracting Hurty Foot yet again. It was a bold goal, and the conditions did not cut me any slack. Thick fog and light rain greeted us at the race start. The forecast called for temperatures in the low 50s and heavy rain — tough love for California. Only 57 people showed up to run the 50K, quite a few less than had originally signed up for the race. Of course the only people who would show up to race on a cold, rainy day in December where all "real runners" — thin and tan Californians with sinewy legs and tiny hydration packs. I felt the person holding the proverbial knife at a gun fight, waiting to be laughed at. But then again, racing wouldn't be nearly as fun for me if I wasn't always in completely over my head.

I got tangled up in the mid-pack and went out too hard at the beginning. The course climbs 1,000 feet in the first three kilometers, so the pack's fast-hike uphill felt like the perfect pace for me. Beat, having decided to stick with me rather than run his own race, followed behind and warned me about bonking after I announced my heart rate had bounced to 186. But I felt great. Even though I know I can't sustain that kind of heart rate all that long, I do know I could climb and climb and climb almost indefinitely if ever given the opportunity. Of course, that doesn't mean I can run.

And, inevitably, the downhills came with a vengeance. I handled the first couple OK and even put in an eight-minute mile at one point, but the mud became deeper and more slippery, and my confidence began to erode alongside the deteriorating conditions. I started to tense up and slowed to a walk, but the tension wouldn't let up. On the big descent into Tennessee Valley, I was gripped by a sudden, sharp cramp in my right side. It wasn't a side-stitch, it was more akin to a stress cramp, a single abdominal muscle below my ribs that tightened with such strain that I could scarcely breathe.

I tried a lot of different things. I took salt tablets and drank more water. I ate some gummy snacks. Beat theorized it cropped up because I went out too hard, but the cramp didn't seem at all effected by my breathing. In fact, the lower my heart rate, the worse it felt, as long as I kept running. Pretty soon I was walking a good portion of the downhills, or gingerly jogging at a slower rate of speed than my climbs. If I tried to run, the sharp pain would rip into my side like a large knife.

Meanwhile, fog masked Headlands, obstructing the views and casting an eerie tint over the lush green ground cover and occasional yellow flowers. I couldn't help but be a little frustrated. I knew I felt strong and energetic otherwise, but that cramp was really irking me, because I couldn't get at it to rub it away with my hands, and it wouldn't ever completely leave me alone. It lingered as low-level pain on the hard climbs, and became somewhat debilitating pain on the descents. Beat tried to help me by rubbing my side and reasoning through it — after all, it was just a cramp, not an injury. If I could push through that pain, maybe I stood a chance of coming out the other side. I knew he was probably right, but I struggled, because it constricted my breathing so much when it flared up that I felt like I wasn't getting any air. I also still don't feel much confidence on my feet, so I had the added stress of finding the right footing on top of the cramp that was probably caused by stress. Other runners started passing us. They made comments about the steep climbs. "Are you kidding?" I said. "The climbing is the easy part."

During the second loop into Tennessee Valley, I had finally had it. "Screw this cramp!" I snarled under my breath and increased my stride down the muddy trail. Beat followed close behind and shouted a few encouraging words as I wrestled through the pain, with inhibitions faded just enough to allow myself to gasp and gulp and groan like a dying animal. I can't say the cramp exactly went away, but I made enough noise that Beat insisted I take a few Advil pills at the aid station at the bottom of the hill. We started up the last long climb and low-level dull pain began to dissolve. My energy spiked again and I could feel a new resolve seeping into my admittedly sore legs. Rain fell harder and I finally began to come out of my funk. Twenty-six miles in, already an official marathon even without the steep climbs and mud and narrow trails, and I was finally starting to feel like a runner.

The last five miles were a breeze, literally. I realize there are ups and downs in any endurance effort, and many ups and downs in truly long one, but I felt like I had surmounted a major hump — the "sophomore slump" that creeps into many of my larger efforts, like the fourth lap of a 24-hour race. I got through it and finally felt like I could go forever, at least in theory. I looked at my watch and did a bit of math, and realized that we actually stood a chance of finishing in less than 7 hours. I increased my speed to comfortable 10-minute miles and coasted into the finish in 6 hours, 58 minutes, feeling strong and wondering how possible it would be for me to do another 50K right there.

Which is how I actually like to finish endurance events. I like to find that stride; I don't necessarily like to leave it all out on the trail. But I do appreciate challenges and the battle to overcome them. In that way, the Rodeo Beach 50K was the perfect first ultramarathon, and despite the strange cramping issue, it went considerably better than I thought it would. I'm still not really a runner, but I can't wait to tackle the next one with actual experience in my arsenal.

Garmin stats here.
Race results here.

Tour Divide presentation

Tonight I gave a presentation for our local bike club, Missoulians on Bicycles, at their annual holiday party. My photo presentation highlighted my experiences in the 2009 Tour Divide. I rarely deal in public speaking, so I stumbled through the introduction but loosened up after that.

There was a really good turnout, which was surprising. I was told to take about an hour and ended up blabbing on and telling stories about the photos in my slideshow for nearly two, but no one left and a lot of people complimented me afterward. I had a lot of fun. My Tour Divide presentation and I are available for bicycle club meetings, corporate retreats, motivational conferences and other events as long as travel expenses are covered. :)

I brought a section of the book I am working on but didn't even have a chance to read it. As for that long-standing book project, an independent editor is currently reading through it in order to give me feedback about it. I want to go forward with publishing but not yet sure how I want to go about it. I don't have a lot of time to devote to publishing a book. I'd really just like to jump straight to the book tour part where I could travel around and give slideshow presentations. I should probably cull down the blabbing first. But it's hard to condense a lifetime-in-24-days' worth of experiences into a single hour.

Seattle deluge

Over the weekend, Beat planned to visit his friends in Seattle and invited me along since Seattle is just a puddle jump from Missoula (Missoula is significantly closer to Seattle than Juneau is, even though Juneauites cheer for the Seahawks and consider themselves a distant suburb of the Puget Sound metropolis.) We planned snowy adventures on Snoqualmie Pass so I packed a huge bag full of snowshoes, poles, extra shoes and winter clothing. At the last minute I thought to throw in a Gortex jacket. It was a good thing, because unbeknowst to me, I was flying right into the front end of the "wettest storm to hit Western Washington in more than two years."

Beat's friend, Roger, is a race planner for endurance mountain bike races and trail runs all over Western Washington. Since the storm meant the mountain roads were too sketchy for driving on Saturday, he took us on a run near Issaquah, on a ridge called Tiger Mountain. I packed my Gortex coat but also failed to ask any questions before the run. As we accelerated on the powerline access road, and I finally asked, "So how long is this loop?" Roger just shrugged. "16 or 19 miles depending on where we go." Wait, what? Since when is 16 or 19 miles a mellow little afternoon on foot? The wind and rain picked up velocity, my feet felt slow and heavy, and I hunkered down for the worst.

The run turned out to be not that big of a deal, after all. The trails were soft but solid, and even mud is a faster surface to run on than snow. We climbed up three of the Tiger Mountains and dropped down a sideslope along the ridge. Roger lost the way once and we ended up on the long course. Nineteen miles and 3,750 feet of climbing in just under four hours. It boosted my confidence about my chances of surviving the 50K race next week. I also realized that my ideal foot course would involve crazy steep climbs with long gradual descents, but a lot of climbing overall. Basically the opposite of a good mountain biking course. Anyone know of a trail race like that?

By Sunday nearly 4 inches of rain had already fallen on the Seattle area in the storm, and warm temperatures pushed the rain level above 7,000 feet, which meant avalanche danger would be extreme in the mountains. The group settled on another run in the lowlands. I was feeling a whole lot weaker than I had on Saturday, and balked at the slow-passing miles. We climbed the ridge on Cougar Mountain and dropped into the gushing streams and flooded valleys below. The deluge of rain had turned the whole trail system into a chocolate-colored stream. Even though Cougar Mountain is located in the middle of a high-population density area, the trails were nearly deserted on a Sunday afternoon. Roger and his wife Yumay were giggling about the complete transformation of an area they know well, and I was lost in daydreams about its strong resemblance to my faraway former home in Southeast Alaska.

I dragged and dragged until I heard a deafening clap from a large tree that cracked in the strong wind just as I passed it. My heart rate surged and I began sprinting toward my friends, who had been waiting for me to bring up the rear all morning long. When Beat asked me if I was finally getting warmed up (because I train for endurance, I tend to feel like crap for an hour or two and manage to perk up only after most people are ready to stop.) I admitted that my newly acquired speed was all adrenaline and it was probably going to wear off quickly, but I did manage to mostly keep up for the rest of the 2-hour, 15-minute run.

In all we ran about 30 miles over the weekend, with about 5,000 feet of climbing overall, in the midst of a storm that dumped 4 to 5 inches of rain. Yumay admitted they would have never gone out if it weren't for the combined peer pressure that flowed between the four of us. "Thanks for getting us accustomed to Northwest weather again," she said. They pointed out the run was even more fun than it would have been if it had been sunny, thanks to the puddle splashing and muddy descents, and I fully agreed. It's funny how that's usually the case.

I also tested a heart rate monitor this weekend; nearly the first time I have ever used one. On Saturday I had a max heart rate of 175 and an average of about 135. I forgot to look at Sunday's final numbers but based on observations I'm guessing an average in the 120s with a max of 215, thanks to that tree. I also tested my VO2 max at 59 according to the watch.

I think I've lived in small towns and tiny cities for far too long, and now have a digestive system that can no longer handle urban food. We refueled with sushi and Korean meals that were both delicious, but I had stomach issues all weekend. Either I have a high-functioning version of that stomach flu that is going around, or I've been seriously limited by years of bland Alaska and Montana food. Either way, I'm telling myself that it's a good thing to run a few 10s of miles, clear out the system, then charge full-speed into the super busy week in front of me that just so happens to end in a 31-mile race. Eeeeek.

P.S. If you are in the Missoula area, you should come see my presentation at the Missoula Bike Club holiday party on Tuesday evening. I will be giving an hour-long slideshow presentation about my experiences in the 2009 Tour Divide. Drop by! More information here.

Forget running ...

Look what showed up in the mail today!

Ok, Ok, so it doesn't actually belong to me, but still.

Eeeeeeee!

The art of slog

Teeth-grating pop music blared through the radio as I crept through rush-hour traffic on Brooks Street. I switched through the four stations I can pick up on my ancient car stereo and settled on the only song I didn’t recognize. I crept through one traffic light, then another, trickling ever-so-slowly toward Blue Mountain.

I admit it was a strange route to drive across town for. The Blue Mountain Road is just an nondescript strip of gravel snaking through the woods up a nondescript mountain. In the winter it’s gated, which means it sees little to no motorized use and therefore doesn’t offer much of a base for cycling or running. I parked next the summer trailhead. Ignoring the tracks that led to a network of ski trails I knew would be fast but short, I donned my microspikes, switched on my flashlight, and started running down the pavement. After a mile or so I turned left onto frozen gravel, which soon became packed snow. I paralleled wooden fences and open meadows before I crossed the gate, pressing deeper into the woods.

The steep canyon blotted out the moon, which was thin that night, anyway. City lights reflected off the clouds and cast a dull orange glow on the snow. My legs kept an even speed, not necessarily feeling strong, but not bad, either. I followed a well-packed foot path for a mile, until it became a loose foot path, and then just a single set of footprints that paralleled a set of ski tracks. Minutes passed even though miles really didn’t. I moved slow and steady, breathing large gulps of the moist, chilled air. I let my mind wander to the tracks, creating small stories and entire universes around them. The runner had a smaller stride than mine, probably because he was walking. I saw the faint tread of boots and imagined a hiker marching blissfully upward in the weekend’s sunlight. The skier had a dog, punching deep postholes into the ski track. But those tracks faded before the ski tracks did, so I imagined several skiers, shuffling single file beside the phantom hiker. Why did we move up this mountain, with such an unclear destination? Obviously, for all of us, that reason was exercise — the art of becoming fit. But what does fitness really mean? These are the things I ponder when I am alone, running up the mindlessly steady grade of a snow-covered mountain road.

Soon the footprints petered out, and I ran through the powder next to the ski tracks. Just before the road’s mile marker four, even the ski tracks cut a lollipop loop and ended. I looked around for a sign of a destination, but saw nothing remarkable. This just happened to be the place the last person on the road decided to quit. It occurred to me that I was now traveling farther than anyone had since the last snowstorm. I saw deer tracks in the snow and followed those. I ran a mostly straight path as the deer wove in and away from the hillside. But after mile marker five, even the deer moved permanently off the road. The snow was eerily smooth. I was alone. Completely alone.

I continued running through snow that was becoming ever deeper. I was shuffling, struggling, wheezing deeply now, and moving ever slower. Powder clung to my pants as high as my knees where I wandered into drifts. I kept up my shuffle, watching the shapes of snow-covered pine trees creep beside me, half-willing myself to believe in monsters, to believe in the exciting prospect of sinister forces lurking in the shadows. I looked up at the opaque sky. It’s orange glow was gone; the city lights had been blotted out. There was no more sign of life.

The dark outline of the mountain hovered above me. I passed mile marker six. I had no memory of just how far this road really went. Several other bits of information lingered just outside of my limited realm of comprehension — the fact that seven miles up means seven miles back, the fact that I was now working quite hard to move at walking speed or slower, the fact that it was getting late, that I had other things to do tonight, that people would worry. I only understood one thing and that was that I wanted to follow this road, as far as it would take me, as far as I could go.

Fatigue settled over me like a warm blanket. Within the fatigue, the montone shadows, the monotony of the climb, was a peace that I only find when I am in the midst of a good slog. It is difficult for me to describe — slog isn’t exactly an goal to seek out, like climbing mountains or winning races. Slog has no reward in sight, no concept of an end. Slog only begets more slog, the depletion of energy, the wearing of muscles, the creep of exhaustion and seep of intellectual capacity until it seems the only thing left in the world is slog. It’s difficult to describe, impossible to understand, but I find peace in this feeling. There is joy in the slog, just as there is joy in hardships and pain. In experiencing both the world and myself in their most basic forms, I find I can truly appreciate the beauty and complexities that lie in both the world and myself on the other side of the slog.

I find it equally impossible to explain to people why I’m training to run the Susitna 100. I’ve braced myself for criticism because no one, and I mean pretty much no one, shifts from no running at all to running a winter 100-miler in a matter of months. I expected others, especially my more experienced runner friends, to question my delusion, lack of understanding or hubris. I wish there was a way I could explain that the Susitna 100 is really not like other races. That in it’s own way, it’s no more like a 100-mile ultramarathon than it is like a 100-mile mountain bike race. Of course, in many ways it’s much more difficult than either, but how do you define difficult? Maybe, I want to expain, a “real” ultramarathon like the Western States 100 would be impossibly difficult for me compared to the Susitna 100. That the “real” ultramarathon is hard precisely because it doesn’t contain enough hardships, enough mental challenges, enough slog.

My ultrarunning friends have yet to openly step forward with questioning or criticism. But I did receive one bit of encouragement from a friend who understands both sides:

“You're doing the perfect types of runs to get ready for something like Susitna. There are so many people who try to become ultra runners who just don't understand what it really means to slog along for hours on end. You obviously understand that part better than almost anyone and I think that will be a huge benefit for you.”

More than 20 minutes went by and I hadn’t passed another mile marker on the Blue Mountain Road. I knew I was moving too slow. There would be calls and texts waiting for me back in the world cell reception. I had to go to work tomorrow. It was late. I took one last lingering glance at the ridge above me and turned around to run, slowly but with increasing speed and confidence, the seven miles back to my car.

Today on my run

Sunday morning arrived beneath a smear of fog. It was a typical morning-after-a-hard-workout type of morning. I hadn't slept all that well from the recovery process of the six-hour run/power-hike the day before. The sky was gray, the temperature in the low teens, and I just wanted to do December stuff like curl up with my cat, shop online for Christmas presents and make peppermint hot chocolate (this last statement is just a jab at Beat, who thinks that the mint chocolate flavor is an American abomination.) Really, I was somewhat excited to get out for another run, but Beat suggested we do a route with a much higher ratio of running to postholing than Saturday, and I knew our only real option with the time we had available was a similar route. So I agreed to return to Mount Sentinel, rather reluctantly, because it was the weekend and it was time for adventure and what the heck were we doing with this training thing?

We decided to mix it up by taking a new trail, the Hellgate Trail. We ran 4.5 miles from my house on the bike path, then started up the mountain. We were immediately surrounded by tall, snow-crusted pines that nearly blocked out the groan of I-90 traffic, directly below us. It's a starkly different view of Mount Sentinel than you get from the wind-blasted west face, and a reminder that sometimes you can see the same places in completely new ways. I tend to think in terms of travel, not trails, which is why I have a lower tolerance for mountain-bike trail systems ("but we're just doing loops around the same five square miles. We're not actually going anywhere.") So the Hellgate Trail, which was indeed a new landscape, was a nice surprise.

It was also longer trail than we expected. We climbed 1,600 feet in 2.5 miles on fairly soft snow. It was slow-going and tough. The weight of Saturday's effort started to weigh on my legs. I was also startlingly low on energy. I did my whole six-hour Saturday run in the cold on a 390-calorie bag of gummy snacks and a smallish dinner afterward. You can get away with that for one day, but by day two the glycogen stores are low and they're tough to recover if you're already going at 60-80 percent max effort. I tried to hide it from Beat, especially since he already knows much about my long history of bonking, but I was struggling a little.

When I was a winter cyclist observing runners, they always seemed impervious to the cold. But I am learning that runners too are in a constant battle with the frigid air. Legs sting where the wind cuts through tights even as sweat pours from your forehead. Fingers go numb and then return constantly. You put on mittens and then realize you can no longer feed yourself. Your Camelback hose clogs with ice and you have to bite at the chunks to access water. Your butt goes numb and never comes back, because women's butts just weren't designed to keep themselves warm.

We climbed the peak and then dropped down the backside of Sentinel on a soft but better-packed trail, for another ~5 miles. As we descended, I felt worse and worse. Finally, I noticed I was actually staggering in and out of the rutted trail. I dug a Ginger Snap Lara Bar out of my pack and gulped it down in two bites. Just like that, I perked up. As we started up the South Summit, I suddenly felt good again. I power hiked up the steep snow with renewed purpose, making a mental note that Lara Bars work for running.

We traversed over and back up Sentinel. I was actually a little surprised when I saw red light on the Rattlesnake mountains and realized the sun was setting. We had been out for nearly four hours already and still had at least another 8 miles to run. I charged up the peak in an effort to race the disappearing sun for a photograph, and was rewarded with the most spectacular sunset. "I wasn't excited about this run but it's turning out fantastic," I exclaimed. Beat pulled out the secret stash, the Haribo Fruity Pasta gummies, and we chowed down half of a bag. These candies are oh-so-delicious, but highly acidic. They were the exact same snack that turned on me angrily during the 24 Hours of Frog Hollow, and halfway down the Hellgate Trail, I experienced similar distress.

Oh, running with a sour stomach. All runners do it, which is one of the big reasons I never wanted to be a runner. (That and blisters. Oh, and because it's really hard.) I was practically groaning by the time we returned to town, and we still had four miles before home. As I staggered down the icy path, I cycled through all of the things I had learned. "This is fantastic training," I told myself. Meanwhile, the bonk monster crept back in and left me feeling woozy and silly, which is almost like being drunk and therefore slightly euphoric, in a painful way. "This is nothing like yesterday," I told Beat. "I. Feel. Spent."

In the end the run took us just over five hours, with 4,000 feet of climbing and something in the range of 20-22 miles. (A lot like Saturday's run, actually, because it was pretty close to the same run.) In my typical fashion, I ate dinner and perked right back up, and felt raring to go again. I took a semi-forced recovery day with a bike commute and easy spin after work today, which in its own way was a small disaster and still involved a ~2-mile jog. (During my hour-long ride/run, I had singlespeed chain issues and took one hard fall the bike path after my studded tires skidded out on the rutted ice. The jog happened after my fingers went too numb to replace the chain on the cogs after it popped off a third time, despite my efforts to tension it.) I know I am ramping up the foot mileage fast but I still feel good, and snow is very forgiving (and extremely SLOW.) I am being mindful of muscle and joint stress and creeping injury, but learned a lot this weekend - mostly that I still have much to learn.

Good day run shine

Upon arriving in Missoula this weekend, Beat reminded me ever-so-gently that I had signed up for a 50K trail run in Rodeo Beach, California, on Dec. 18, which is (gulp) two weeks away. The point of the 50K is to see whether I have a snowball's chance of surviving the Susitna 100 on foot. But before I survive the Susitna 100, I kinda have to get through this 50K. Better get out for a training run.

Beat caught a nasty stomach flu the last time he traveled to the frigid north, and was sick for the entire past week. Saturday was his first attempt to exercise in many days, so we decided to keep it "close" to home. We planned a couple loops in the vicinity of Mount Sentinel. My goal was to stay out for at least 5 hours, but assumed Beat would cut out pretty early in the run.

The temperature was in the mid-20s, but was accompanied by the first direct sunlight Missoula has seen in what feels like many weeks (at least from my perspective. I had to travel 700 miles south and later 400 miles north to find the sun in November.) So today's weather felt like a simulation of California (at least from my perspective. Even a single layer of black polypro was too much for mid-day.) We climbed the south and north summits of Mount Sentinel.

The Rodeo Beach 50K also has something like 6,000 feet of climbing, so I advocated for more climbing even though there weren't any good climbing routes nearby. The problem with trail running in the winter, at least in the Missoula vicinity, is that you can go for a run or you can play in the mountains, but you can't do both. There just aren't enough packed trails around here, at least ones that haven't already been commandeered by skiers, so you're forced to break trail - which is much more strenuous than running, but doesn't exactly build the same muscles.

Still, it was a beautiful day to slog up University Mountain in knee- to thigh-deep powder ... beautiful enough that I didn't once ask myself how this particular slog was going to help me survive 31 miles of pounding on concrete-like trails in the Marin Headlands. I just sipped my icy water and soaked it all in.

The top of University Mountain was washed in ice. I feel a special affinity for trees perched on mountain tops - the "ghost trees" - for their ability to thrive in the worst conditions.

We powder-kicked back down the mountain and descended the Gut of Sentinel at sunset.

Beat cut off near the Hidden Treasure trail intersection, having survived four hours of run/slogging despite his ongoing battle with stomach flu.

He dropped back to town and I headed out for a solo run back up the Mount Sentinel Ridge. I turned on my iPod and climbed to reflective music by Sufjan Stevens as the winter light faded behind me.

The temperature plummeted rapidly and beads of ice formed along strands of sweat-soaked hair. I was completely content, feeling better and better as the hours fell behind me, wishing there was a way to just keep climbing, to some far-away mountain I'd never imagined I could reach at all, let alone on foot. In a direct line, the mileage I had run that day would have taken me far; the effort without the added strain of snow even farther. And the best thing about Saturday's run was its trajectory. I convinced myself that with the passing miles I could only become stronger, not weaker. I felt the surge of strength in places that had never before felt strong during a run - my feet and my knees. My legs carried me up the South Summit and back across the ridge as ice built on my head and a grin seemingly froze to my face.

I ran down the North Summit ridge into a blaze of city lights, striving to let go of my inhibitions and let my legs surrender to steep gravity. I couldn't quite give in completely, but tonight I came as close as I ever have to flying on my feet.

I jogged toward home just in time to catch the tail end of a holiday parade on Higgins Avenue. I stood on the sidewalk, taking photos and large gulps of frigid air until I could no longer feel my toes, then turned toward home. I finished my run just after 6:30, for a total time of six hours. My GPS cut out early and I'm not sure of the mileage, but probably in the vicinity of 20 miles with 5,000 feet of climbing. A good day to be out in world.

Back to the learning curve

The loose snow churned under my tires as I ground up a nondescript logging road that’s steep in the summer, and practically vertical when smothered in winter powder. Temperatures dropped to eyelash-freezing levels as Bill pedaled behind me. We didn’t say much. I was breathing hard and concentrating harder, and both activities seemed to strain my sore muscles that weren’t exactly making the most of this “rest day.” All I wanted was a relaxing Tuesday night ride, but that was before we pushed our bikes through shin-deep powder on the Kim Williams Trail, pedaled over snow and ice-crusted railroad tracks and then climbed the packed snow on Deer Creek Road, all on a 37-pound Pugsley with a mere 8 psi of air in the wide tires. Finally at our intended destination — the logging road — we discovered the snow was deeper than we anticipated. Bill was struggling to hold my line with his skinny tires. I stopped to catch a breath amid a swirl of frosted air. “Everything is so much harder in the winter, everything,” I said.

The tables turned when we flipped around and worked our way back to the paved Pattee Canyon Road. Bill’s studded tires gripped the thick layer of ice but Pugsley skidded with a terrifying lack of restraint as my numb fingers pumped the brakes and numb butt cheeks clenched into a frozen knot. Halfway down the canyon, we saw Norm out for a hike and agreed to meet for a slice of pizza. We met up at the Bridge, where I shivered until my toes and ears went numb as well, then rode stiffly home. Bill has this habit of GPS’ing rides to gauge his effort, although his Garmin doesn’t measure the impact of snow and ice, which in my opinion makes a much bigger difference than distance and elevation. In three hours we rode 21.4 miles and climbed 2,136 feet in temperatures around 23 degrees. When I was training for the 2006 Sustina 100, a three- or four-hour ride was about the most I ever got myself into, except for a select few "long" weekend efforts. “Since when did three hours of sustained hard effort become a rest day for me?” I wondered.

I think about the 2006 Susitna 100 often these days, probably because I’ve recently been struck through the heart with similar fear, excitement and newness. Racing, for me, is a simple metaphor for life — it’s about living through a seeming lifetime’s worth of pain, joy, frustration, despair, exhilaration, beauty and happiness in the span of a day, or sometimes a week, or sometimes three weeks. Training is practice for life, and it’s a beautiful way to live. There is much to “train” for, because so much in my life is beautiful and rich right now — from these cold white winter days in the snow-drenched mountains of Montana, to spending time with Beat and rediscovering that passion really is amplified when it’s shared. Beat, like me, likes to drink life by the gallon and won’t apologize when others tell him that’s an excessive amount. We don’t waste much time worrying about the broad future that we can’t control anyway, but we do like to scheme and dream about future adventures — and in 2011, for both us, there’s a lot of untread ground.

Wednesday wasn’t a rest day. I penciled in a three-hour run, which seemed a reasonable increase given my base fitness and minimal time I have left to “practice” running before February. I invited Bill, who hasn’t even started his 2011 race training yet and thus can still tag along for strange, slow adventures. We jogged through town and clawed our way up the face of Mount Sentinel, where the snow really became deep. We ran down the other side through the thick powder, sometimes staggering as though we were mired in a bottomless pit of sand. If I shifted my stride to a walk I was able to hold about the same speed as I could running, but the point of the excursion was to run, so I lifted my legs out of the snow with all of the effort my jagged muscles would allow. “If the conditions are like this in the Su, I won’t finish,” I said. “At the same time, I’d be perfectly happy to average 3 mph in the Su.”

Still, Wednesday’s run amounted to 10 miles, not 100. According to Bill’s Garmin, we moved 10.22 miles and climbed 2,262 feet in three hours. Again, Garmin knew nothing of the deep, loose snow, which after the stacked efforts of this week made it my hardest run yet, even compared to the longer runs in Banff. I walked stiffly into my warm house and remembered exactly what it used to feel like, coming home after my 2006 training rides: fatigued, terrified, partially frozen ... and strangely — almost blissfully — content. Whereas Tuesday contained familiar hardships, on Wednesday I was back to new territory. I realize, come what may, this is exactly where I want to be. It’s all a beautiful, grand experiment, just like life.

I see a darkness

Feathers of sunlight escaped a quilt of clouds in the early afternoon. I used my usual half-hour lunch break to wander the streets of downtown Missoula, soaking in a bit of daylight before the clouds closed in and it was time to return to the desk, until 5 p.m., when the sun sets. That's when I planned to go back out for my two-hour run.

"The winter darkness is hitting me harder this year than it did last year," I confessed to a co-worker later in the afternoon.

"How is that?" he asked. "Last year, you lived in Alaska. It's lighter and warmer in Missoula."

"Actually, it's not either," I replied. "Well, I guess there's technically more daylight here. But I don't often see any of it. I go to work just after the sun rises and leave just before it sets. When I lived in Juneau, the sun set at 2:30, which was also about the time I went to work. So I had all of the daylight hours to myself, every single day. I miss that schedule. Whoever decided 9-to-5 should be standard work hours is not a friend of mine."

And the more I think about it, the more I realize how much this work schedule has affected me. At first, going out after sunset had a novelty to it. The trees carved spooky silhouettes, and darkness and moonlight cast familiar trails in new ways. I acquired a fancy new bicycle headlight, a new headlamp, a slew of batteries and red blinkies, and resolved to make the most of my new, dark world. But then the novelty wore off, replaced by a discouraging sameness. I realized there was little more to see than the narrow island of my headlamp beam, and blinking red lights from distant towers on the mountains. I started leaving my camera at home, because there was nothing to photograph. This was a telling gauge of my enthusiasm. Biking — and running — isn't necessarily about exercise or fitness for me, it's my way of exploring the world. When my camera stays at home, so does my motivation. I feel less excited and more fatigued. I look for excuses to turn around. It doesn't bother me that it's 10 degrees out as I run through wafting snow. I genuinely don't mind going out in the cold. What I'm discovering about myself is that I don't necessarily enjoy going out in the dark.

This is actually a big reason I decided to take up running, which involves less prep time, and less overall time for similar fitness benefits. Then I picked an impossible goal like the Susitna 100 to serve as my main motivator. I know I have a long winter in front of me. Perhaps I will grow to love the night, appreciating the tiny details — the mounds of snow, the flecks of ice — as much as I used to relish expansive views and blaze blue sky. Somehow, I doubt it. But I am thankful for healthy legs to carry me through the snow, for an iPod to stave off the creeping boredom, for my boyfriend and Missoula friends who are often willing to keep me company in the dark cold, and for a camera with a self-timer for those occasional creative impulses that allow me replace actual photo opportunities with personal experimentation.

It's all biking and running, and it's all good, even in the winter.