The waiting game

We arrived in San Diego on Friday morning and immediately launched into the pre-race rituals of eating, buying more supplies that are likely unnecessary, eating, fretting, driving around, going to a pre-race meeting, eating, staring blankly out the window, and eating. I'm here with four friends who are actually running the San Diego 100, so despite my crew status, I've been going through the motions as well, including the eating. It's 10 a.m. and I've already had two breakfasts, with a third on a plate just waiting for my stomach to clear a little space. I may or may not end up pacing 50 miles starting this evening. For now, all I can do is wait, and kill a little time. I actually enjoy having mandatory time to kill, allowing for guiltless reading of blogs, napping, reading magazines, and eating ... it may not seem like I have too many responsibilities, but true boredom is not something I indulge in very often.

I grabbed a quick picture of my friends Martina, Steve and Beat just minutes before the 7 a.m. start of the race. This photo nicely captures the mood of the morning. Martina is the woman I'm supposed to pace starting at mile 51.3, sometime this evening. The outlook that I'll have an opportunity to do this is not overwhelmingly positive right now, as you can probably discern from the look on her face. She's not feeling too much optimism about the prospect of her first 100-mile finish here. As for Steve, this will be his third 100-mile run this year, and I think he has a kind of "wait ... why am I here again?" look on his face. Beat's in for his fourth 100-miler of 2011, his fifth at the San Diego 100, and I think 30th or more over his ultrarunning career. So Beat is geared up for the simple pleasures of a known challenge - emerging from coastal fog, high ridgeline views, the desert at midnight and Haribo Fizzy Colas. If Martina drops out early I'd like to catch up to Beat somewhere farther down the trail and join in on the fun.

I'm thrilled just to be here, on a high ridge of the Laguna Mountains just a few miles north of the Mexican border. It's an impressively gorgeous region, where cool coastal fog creeps around the rugged slopes of desert mountains. I want to run here; I want to run 100 miles here, but it's not my time for that. For now all I can do is wait, and sit on this bench overlooking the Anza-Borrego Desert in the pleasantly warm June sunshine, and be happy that today, I get to wait here.

100-mile stare

I still vividly remember the first time I interacted with a runner in the midst of a 100-mile trail run. It was July 2007, on a rock-strewn trail just below Resurrection Pass on the Kenai Peninsula in Alaska. My ex, Geoff, was running the 50-mile version of the Resurrection Pass 100. I borrowed a mountain bike from a friend and planned to shadow Geoff's trail and cheer him on when I passed. Of course, I made the mistake of leaving about a 45 miles after the race started, so of course I never caught up to him (this is before I realized that I on a mountain bike had no chance of moving faster than Geoff Roes on foot, even in a self-supported 50-mile run.) It rained buckets all day long, until the muddy, rocky singletrack wore the borrowed bike's rim brakes to metal and I had to walk most of the descents. I was walking my bike down one of the last steep sections of trail when I passed a woman bathed in chocolate-colored mud and walking with a pronounced limp.

The organizers of the unofficial race started the 100-miler at about 3 p.m. the afternoon before in an effort to wrap up the 100-mile and 50-mile race at about the same time. This woman had been racing for nearly 24 hours and still had about 16 or 17 more miles to go. She wasn't moving much faster than 3 mph, maybe 2, downhill, and her stilted body language spoke to an intense difficulty in each step. At the time, that kind of effort was nearly impossible for me to comprehend.

The Resurrection Pass 100 had only two aid stations, one at mile 44 and another at 88. The cruelest part of the 88-mile checkpoint was that it was also the finish. Racers had to leave from that checkpoint and run another six miles uphill on a steep gravel road, and then turn around to wrap up the 100. More than a few competitors, unable to face the psychological Everest of the spur, have called it quits at mile 88. I would even meet another woman a couple more miles down the trail who swore it was her plan to do exactly that. I just assumed that was the fate that awaited this obviously suffering runner.

"Wow, this is a full-on mud trap," I said as I passed, trying to inject just a bit of humor into the situation since I was walking a mountain bike downhill and we were both caked in grime. And even though I already knew the answer, I asked, "Are you in the 50-mile race or the 100?"

"The 100," she said in a raspy voice.

"How are you feeling?"

"My calves are shot," she replied. "Feet are painful. I'm wiping out a lot."

My brakes are shot," I said. "I'll probably have to walk most of the way back to Hope."

She looked at me with this bloodshot, memorably intense look of determination in her eyes. "Rather be you than me," she said. "But I'm going to finish this. Even if it takes me all night."

I nodded. "Great race. Good luck."

"Good luck," she replied.

I never did learn whether or not the woman finished the race. But I believe she did, and even though I never learned her name, she lingers in my memory as the kind of "hard woman" that I admire and seek to emulate. I still think of the look in her eyes when I encounter moments of weakness and pain, and it really has made a difference in my outlook over the years.

I've since had a few of my own "100-mile-stare" experiences, both on the outside and inside-looking-in. Few "single-day" endurance efforts fascinate me more than a 100-mile run. I'm really looking forward to traveling to San Diego this weekend, meeting some of the 150 runners signed up for this endeavor, and shadowing the race myself as a pacer. Despite recent injuries, my friend Martina has decided to start the race after all. The original plan was for me to pace her, and I still hope to do so if she pushes beyond mile 50. Whereas for Beat the SD100 is almost a longer "training run," it's a truly unique experience for Martina, and pacing her — if the opportunity arises — may just provide a wholly new education in determination.

The Tour Divide also starts this weekend, Friday morning to be exact. I won't really have a chance to follow the progress of the race at all until Monday, but it will be interesting to see where the starting field of 70 southbound and 15 northbound riders are strung along the course three days into the race. It's a unique year because of flooding and record snowpack in the Rockies. Significant sections of the course have been rerouted, but the riders are still likely to encounter plenty of swollen streams and snow fields. And despite the re-route, there's still a good chance my overall women's course record will fall this year. Cricket Butler, now a two-time veteran of the Tour Divide, delayed her start to June 30 and as far as I understand it, plans to ride the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route in its entirety. Cricket beat me handily in every single stage of TransRockies last summer, so I know she's a better mountain biker than me. I'll be cheering her on especially starting June 30, but I wish all of riders the best of luck and an amazing experience.

I'm just wrapping up the final proof on my own Tour Divide story and hope to have the paperback ready to distribute by next week. I've received some interesting feedback from readers so far, several of whom either know me personally or are directly involved with Tour Divide racing. To make a sweeping generalization, the women I've heard from have been almost overwhelmingly positive, while men seem to have a more reserved viewpoint on the book, using terms such as "brutally honest" and sometimes an outright "too personal." This book is quite personal, and I admit probably more than a little uncomfortable at times. It's a book about coping with what emotionally amounted to a divorce as much as it's a book about racing a mountain bike 2,700 miles.

In the name of full disclosure, I probably should have titled the book "How to Ride the Tour Divide When You're Kind of an Emotional Wreck." After I wrote up the first draft, I went through a range of outlooks about this book, from deciding I would never publish it to trying to re-write the entire thing so I could gloss over the personal stuff. In the end, I decided it was important to my integrity as an artist to maintain a raw kind of honesty, because ultimately that was the truth of the experience. The 2009 Tour Divide happened during an unsettled and upsetting chapter in my life, and my reactions, and the way I interacted with others — including my ex-boyfriend and fellow racers — weren't always admirable or fair. I've since adjusted my outlook and have an amicable relationship with Geoff — in fact, I'm really, really excited for this year's Western States 100 — but the period of time I captured in my book is, amid scenes of overwhelming beauty, sometimes ugly.

So there you have it. I hope you'll still read the book and share your honest opinions with me. Writing, just like endurance racing, is an endless learning process.

Also, for kicks, I recently distributed a few "lender" copies at a bibliophile Web site called LibraryThing to get reactions from readers who had never heard of the Tour Divide and probably had little interest in endurance racing. So far I've already received a few short reviews. You can read them here.

If you want to read along during the Tour Divide but don't have an e-Reader, you can purchase a PDF of the book that will work on any computer with Adobe Reader or other PDF viewer program at a 20-percent discount — $7.16 — for the duration of the race at this link. You can click on the "preview" link below the book cover to preview the first 20 pages. Signed paperbacks will be available for $15.95 plus shipping within the next week or two.

Slow and steady

The day after the Canyon Meadow 50K, Beat and I went out for a long mountain bike ride. I call it long because, to most people, a 26-mile mountain bike ride with 3,300 feet of climbing is on the moderate to long side. When just went out for the fun of it; Beat wanted to ride the Fatback because it's been a while since the Fatback's been out, and also because we expected to run into mud from the weekend's heavy rain.

I was feeling slightly sluggish and had some residual tightness in my hamstrings from the race, but my Garmin stats showed a similar heart rate and speed, proving that, for the most part, a 31-mile run doesn't even force me to skip a beat these days. I like that about my fitness and also my general pacing. A 50K doesn't shut me down because, to put it simply, I don't run fast. Of course, "fast" is all relative, even when I just compare myself against myself. I do run fast compared to what I could do a year ago, but slow compared to what I'm likely capable of.

There's an age-old dynamic in there that I still struggle with. Of course a side of me wants to be "fast." That side will be thrilled if I start to get my 50K finishing times under six hours or collect a few mugs at more competitive local races. That side of me might even be tempted to sign up for a road marathon just so I can see where I fit in with the grand scheme of "running." But as I become more entrenched in my outdoor-seeking lifestyle, I become less interested in seeking the outer limits of my speed abilities. Why? Because, in my experience, the pursuit of speed skirts an edge that can easily lead to injury, burnout, and a frightening lack of outside time. But the pursuit of consistency has led to a condition where I can go for a fun six-hour run in the mud one day, and an exhilarating three-hour mountain bike ride the next, without issue. Who knows what kind of couch-bound pain I might frequently find myself in if I tried to run as fast as I could, all of the time?

We all have our rewards. But it's true, for someone who claims not to really care about results, I participate in a lot of races. Both of my memoirs are about racing. And I've structured the entire first half of my summer around a race, the Tahoe Rim Trail 100. The contradictions I see in myself have sparked a new nonfiction project idea that I'm starting to research — an article about the ways racing, specifically endurance racing, has become synonymous with adventure, and vice versa.

This project started when I began looking into the history of the Alaska Wilderness Classic, arguably the original "adventure race" and still one of the most difficult races you've never heard of. For the people who organized this race back in the early 1980s, it wasn't enough to cross 200 miles of undeveloped, sometimes uncharted Alaska wilderness using any human-powered means they could. They wanted to do it as fast as they possibly could, and to record who could do it the fastest. Why? What drives them? And how do they compare to the motivations of those lining up for the Tahoe Rim Trail 100, or the Tour Divide, or the Canyon Meadow 50K in monsoon rains for that matter? It's a rather vague question to ask but I think researching it could reveal more than a few interesting profiles and stories, and maybe even larger insight into the modern condition. That's always the hope. But this is just one project I've started to outline, among several.

Meanwhile, Beat and I are gearing up to head down to San Diego for the San Diego 100 this weekend. Beat is entered in the race and I'm planning to pace either him or our friend Martina for the last 50 miles, hopefully. The San Diego 100 is considered to be more of a "runner's race," which means even as half of a 100-miler, I'll still likely have to cover this distance considerably faster than I have yet, during the last half of the Bear 100 and the whole Susitna 100. And honestly, my role is actually less of a "pacer" and more of a "protegee" trying to learn about the ins and outs of a trail 100-miler. So my goal is just to keep up, learn tons, and go into Tahoe Rim Trail that much stronger, mentally. Because, ultimately, when it comes to my racing, mental strength is what I'm seeking. That's my motivation, and reward.

Slip, slide, sprint

The rain was hitting the window so hard that I could hear it over my 5:45 a.m. alarm. I slid out of bed and slumped through that sick feeling I get when I only sleep for four hours and rise before proper sunrise. Only there was no sunrise this morning, at least not in the Bay area. I asked for rain, and I got it. Record rain.

I gathered up my unusual race equipment — unusual for June in Oakland, at least: Soft shell jacket, tights, arm warmers, hat, gloves, and Brooks Cascadia shoes with Drymax socks. I do about 90 percent of my running in Hoka One Ones. But in sticky mud, the Hokas have about as much traction as a pair of skis. And today was going to be a mud day if ever there was a mud day.

We were halfway to Oakland when Beat asked, "Did you remember your poles?" And I realized with a tinge of dread that I had forgotten my hiking poles. The night before the Canyon Meadow 50K, Beat and I discussed the weather forecast and the typical condition of Redwood Regional Park trails when wet. We both agreed I would probably need stabilizing devices to help prevent me from breaking my clumsy bones. Then the record rains came and I managed to forget my main safety net. Shoot.

Despite the dismal weather, a fair number of people showed up for the multi-distance trail race. At the start, Beat and I agreed to go solo. Both of us assumed I'd be quite slow in these conditions. I promised to be careful and watched him quickly pull away from me.

The initial climb was steep and slick — the kind of trail conditions where every step forward resulted in a half step back. The mud was like wet glue — my shoe would slip and the resulting friction would nearly pull it off my foot. I'll be honest and admit I felt a thick sort of dread churning around in my stomach. Thirty-one miles of this? No way.

Rather than taper off as one might expect, the rain only picked up velocity and volume with each passing mile. It was difficult to take photographs because my camera lens became instantly soaked. The thick fog closed in and the slippery trail demanded unwavering attention. The already monotone shades of the surrounding landscape faded into an all-encompassing tunnel of focus. I fell into a meditative, quiet mind sort of rhythm. Step, slide, catch, step step catch, step slide catch.

The only thing that seemed to break my trance were the aid stations. During 50K races, I've developed a habit of choosing a single, seemingly random aid station offering and consuming only that for the duration of the race. Once it was PB&J sandwich quarters, another time peanut-butter-filled pretzels, and another time brownies (bad choice, that one.) Today it was Clif Shot Bloks and Coke.

At the mile 18 aid station, I caught up to Beat. He was surprised to see me, and possible even more surprised to see that I wasn't completely covered in mud. "I've had some slips but I've managed to catch them all," I said. This sudden awareness of myself broke my quiet-mind rhythm and I felt a lot more herky jerky as I tried to keep up with Beat. He disappeared down the trail but I managed to catch up to him again several more times. After a few more miles, we just naturally settled into running together.

The Canyon Meadow 50K consisted of two half-marathon-legnth loops with a five mile third loop for the 50K runners at the end. This meant we had to climb the same horrible 1,000-foot mud slide three times. Overall I felt good, but the constant negotiating of spasmodic terrain was slow murder on my IT bands and hamstrings. By the third loop I was hurting and slogging a bit, but still felt fairly strong.

About a mile from the finish, I heard the loud sloshing of footsteps from behind, moving faster than mine. As the runner overtook me, I noticed she was another woman with a 50K bib. Beat nudged me and pointed to her. I just shrugged my shoulders as if to say, "So what?" Beat and I had joked about winning Coastal Trail Run races so I could hold my lead in the Ultra Trail Blazers awards, but I seriously doubted I was in front of the women's race. So what if I got fifth place instead of fourth? But as I watched her pull away, a more primal sort of rhythm settled in. I quickened my stride and surged toward her. I caught up to the woman and accelerated past her, legs pounding the pavement, jagged breaths searing my throat, sprinting for all my little legs could sprint at mile 30.5 of a 31-mile race.

"Wow," I thought. "I'm actually racing! This is what it feels like to race!" Honestly, during all of the competitive events I've ever participated in, I've never had to face an outside competitor so directly (since I'm usually mainly "racing" myself and there's no one else around for miles.) I fluctuated between worrying that this woman thought I was an deluded aggro type, and strategizing my attack if she managed to pass me again. But the sprinting itself felt amazing. All of the soreness in my legs drained away and a warm rush of adrenaline filled my blood. This must be the beauty of a sprint finish — all of the fun of running fast without having to pay for it later.

I never looked back. I crossed the finish line and turned around to watch Beat, followed closely by my competition, 45 seconds later.

As it turns out, I actually was leading the women's 50K race thanks to a few faster gals dropping out at the 30K mark due to the heinous trail conditions. Perseverance pays off. So I earned my third win from Coastal Trail Runs. Three for three. Thanks to the sprint finish, I also set my own 50K PR, 6:10 (my old one was 6:12.) And I got all of the rain I could possibly wish for, another confidence-blostering training run and another cool coffee mug. Good Saturday. Garmin stats here.

Chasing the rain

After three months of living in California, one thing I hadn't yet witnessed was a change in the weather. Oh, most Californians still talk about weather. Their senses are so refined that they can detect the difference between 68 degrees and sunny and 72 degrees and partly cloudy. They tell me this has been, similar to much of western North America, the coldest spring in a long time. There was that one day I rode the Fatback to the top of Black Mountain in a cold, windy downpour (March.) And then, mere days after we flew home from Alaska, the temperature nearly hit 90 degrees (also March.) And then there was that 50-degree evening in late May when I complacently climbed a mountain on my road bike without any warm clothing and suffered the worst chill I've experienced since February in Alaska. But for the most part, I'm almost starting to forget what it's like to be uncomfortable outside.

I admit that sometimes I miss the rain. After four years in Southeast Alaska, my memory still clings to those gray months when every single pair of shoes I owned would be propped up against the wall in line for the shoe dryer, every single jacket hung on doors and dripping gritty water on the floor, every single bike ride an exercise in blinking away sharp raindrops while slowly accumulating water weight through many layers of sopping clothing. It's not that I really want to go back to that kind of saturated, honestly dreary lifestyle. But back in those days of extreme weather changeability, there was true, ecstatic magic in every sunny day. Sometimes I feel like coastal California is the weather equivalent of eating lobster every day. Sure, the California suns casts remarkably brilliant light. But will it eventually stop tasting so sweet?

On Tuesday, it was sunny in the valley, but when I looked toward the mountains, I saw a thick crown of clouds streaked with rain. While I lived in Juneau, I often went to the mountains to escape the fog-shrouded channel in search of sun. Interestingly, now, I feel a strong desire to seek out the rain. I drove to the Saratoga Gap trailhead, where a steady stream of precipitation was soaking the parking lot. I pulled on my arm warmers, jacket and hat. Through the cold wind, I practically sprinted toward the singletrack, lost in a rush of anticipation and memories. Raindrops slipped through the thick canopy and hit the trail with a jazzy sort of rhythm. Bright green moss glistened with moisture and curtains of silver clouds draped the mountainside. Wet brush and grass instantly soaked my pants and shoes, but I felt more energetic than I had in a week. I bounded down the trail as far as I could muster and still make it back in time to celebrate Beat's birthday — about three and a half miles — and ran back as the clouds rolled west and the first hints of sunshine reached the ridgeline.

Recently, there's been a mass exodus of my friends from Juneau. Last weekend, as another one packed up to leave on a beautiful warm summer day in Southeast Alaska, he questioned his sanity in an online update. Our mutual friend Will replied, "No one leaves Juneau for good; it's like your prom date, or the car you learned to drive in — nostalgia brings em back."

It was cold and cloudy again on Wednesday. Beat and I went for an evening mountain bike ride on the Black Mountain/Stevens Creek Canyon loop. The sun came out, only once, for a gorgeous mock sunset right at the top of the climb. Stevens Creek Canyon is a fantastic ride. It starts from home, in the suburbs of San Jose — the third largest city in California. We ride amid thick rush-hour traffic beside Interstate 280 and veer into the road cycling haven along Stevens Creek Reservoir. We climb up Monte Bello amid gurgling creeks, idyllic wineries and wide-ranging views of the San Francisco Bay. Atop Black Mountain, the views open up to the green ridges of the Santa Cruz Mountains and the shimmering Pacific Ocean in the distance. Coyotes, deer, rabbits and crazy suicidal squirrels dart across the grassy fields as we veer onto singletrack and descend the dusty, swooping trail into Stevens Creek Canyon. The canyon itself is a different world, lush and shrouded with towering redwoods. The trail rejoins the road in a strange, rural-Montana-like residential area with rustic buildings halfway hidden in the trees. Then it's back to Cupertino, upscale apartments and children playing soccer in the park. It's like a tour of four distinctly different environments, in 26 miles.

But the rain never did make an appearance. It was just as well. Beat and I were looking for something to do this weekend before we head down to San Diego so he can run the San Diego 100. Beat is for some reason philosophically against tapering, so he suggested entering the Canyon Meadow 50K as a training run for me and easy "taper" run for him. It has also become a joke between us that I need to enter as many Coastal Trail Run events as I can because I have a title to uphold. Thanks to the fluke of winning two smaller CTR races due to a dearth of competition, I'm actually leading the women's 50K group in the Trail Blazer Awards. "Now you have to defend it," Beat said. I just laughed because there are already about a dozen other women registered for that race. It's extremely unlikely my inexperienced beginner/strategic-100-miler pace can win me another 50K. But then I asked Beat what the weather was going to be like.

"Hmmm, 61 degrees in Oakland," he said. "90 percent chance of rain."

A smile spread across my face. "Let's do it."

On Thursday, we went for a one-hour taper run. The sky was almost clear again, and the evening light so rich that the landscape glowed in iridescent colors. Beat joked about sore legs but then motored up the steep incline as I gasped and dug deeper to keep up with him. We stopped at the top for a brief, sweat-drenched kiss and watched the pink light wash over San Jose. Sometimes I think I miss the rain, but then I remember why I came here.

Be Brave, Be Strong eBook release

Note: Thanks to everyone who bought eBook and paperback copies of "Ghost Trails." It's now officially past June 1, the day I was hoping to release of my new book. Thanks to last-minute proofing and printing needs, it will be a couple more weeks before the paperback is available. But the digital eBook of "Be Brave, Be Strong: A Journey Across the Great Divide" is available now for $8.95. You can purchase it in many different formats from this Smashwords link: ePub works best for iPads, iPhones, the Kobo eReader and the Barnes and Noble Nook; LRF for Sony Reader; PDB for palm devices; and RTF or plain text for reading directly on your computer screen. You can also purchase the Kindle file directly from Amazon at this link. A fully formatted eBook that includes black and white photos and a couple other extra features can be downloaded as a PDF file here.

For now, here's an excerpt from Chapter 15, "The Great Divide Basin"

A layer of frost coated my bicycle as I packed up my stale pastries and Spam and pedaled out of Atlantic City. A chill hung in the pre-dawn air, which was thick with frozen vapor. My right knee was still slightly swollen and stiff, and protested loudly after just a few strokes up the hill out of town.

“Lucky for you, the Basin’s pretty flat,” I said as I hopped off the saddle and started pushing. The gravel road cut steeply up the bluff, gaining 600 feet in just over a mile. Cold oxygen burned my lungs as I labored around the switchbacks, trying not to think about my knee or the remote miles that lay in front of me.

As I rounded the last switchback onto a plateau, my shoulders relaxed and my jaw dropped. The Great Divide Basin yawned over an unbroken horizon, as vast and open as an ocean. Rolling drainages rippled like waves, clusters of sagebrush appeared as islands, and tall grass shimmered like seawater as it swayed in the breeze. The warm light of sunrise saturated the surface in iridescent colors. Greens took on a florescent glow, browns became bronze, yellow turned to gold. I pulled out my camera to take a few photos, but understood the images would always be a disappointment. Such is the price of great beauty, because while eyes can see and cameras can mimic, only experience and presence can reflect the sublime.

Of all of the regions along the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route, the Great Divide Basin has perhaps the most notorious reputation, at least among racers. Veterans speak of it in dismissive tones and warnings: “There’s no trees, there’s no water, there’s no people, and there’s nowhere to get food. There’s only wind and heat.” It was hard for me to believe that a lack of crowds could be a bad thing on a cold, calm morning, with a pack full of food and water, and the absence of trees to open up a spectacular view. It’s on these open plains where the true shape of the world becomes apparent, with its scoured surface and arching horizon. For all of its jagged contours and conventions, from a distance the globe is just that — plain and round.

I felt deeply drawn to the Basin for personal reasons as well. My family on my Dad’s side comes from a long line of Mormon pioneers, hearty stock who immigrated to Utah in the 1850s after traveling through this region with a human-powered handcart company. The Great Divide Mountain Bike Route closely parallels the old Mormon Pioneer Trail, crossing historic sites where my ancestors and their families and friends toiled, struggled, and sometimes perished in a harsh, high desert that hasn’t changed all that much in 150 years.

Of course I had modern gravel roads to follow, the modern wonder that is a bicycle to propel me forward, and modern knowledge and technology to help guide me. But on some levels, my struggle was not entirely different from the struggles of my pioneer ancestors. Like many of them, I carried my whole life on a contraption that I had to move with my own power. I had to cope with similar isolation and uncertainty. I had to battle a primal sort of pain and fatigue that even 150 years of progress hasn’t stripped away. As I gazed out across the prairie, I liked to believe that I was seeing the same things that my great-great-and-so-forth grandparents saw, that I was feeling the same things they felt. Their blood pumped through my veins, their sacrifices inspired me, and their faith drove me forward.

As I pedaled into the rising daylight, a small group of antelope grazing next to the road became startled and sprinted beside me, loping through the brush with enviable grace. I passed the cutoff marker for Willie’s Handcart. Marjane had told me this was the site of a Mormon tragedy, where sixty-seven pioneers became trapped in a severe October snowstorm and died. I asked Marjane why they were traveling through Wyoming so late in the year. She told me the pioneers had difficulty with their handcarts. They had built their wheels in the humid east, and when they reached the west, the wooden hubs cracked and broke. The collapsed wheels and required repairs slowed them considerably until winter caught up to them. It was a quiet reminder of that precipice everybody straddles; that sometimes all it takes is one thing going wrong for entire lives to spiral out of control.

The first thirty miles of the day passed in dreams about the distant past, until the present was all but lost to me. Grass shimmered in the sun and breeze, antelope darted beside me, and my imagination didn’t have to stretch too far before it was 1854 again. I was still floating through the time machine in my mind when I started up a hill and my crank suddenly stopped working. The bike slowed to a stop. I spun the pedals frantically but the back wheel stayed planted in place until I nearly tipped over. I jumped off the bike. “What the hell?” I said out loud.

I lifted the back end off the ground and spun the crank with my hand. Even as I turned it as fast as I could, the rings did nothing to engage the wheel into motion. I checked to see if the chain was broken somewhere, but it was still intact and the rear cassette still turned with the cranks. I thought with sinking dread that the problem must be my freehub — one bicycle part I definitely did not have the capacity to fix.

A freehub is an internal part of the wheel hub that allows a cyclist to coast. When the cyclist spins the crank forward, the pawls inside the freehub engage and catch the hub, turning the wheel. Then, when a cyclist stops pedaling, the pawls release, which allows the wheel to spin free even if the crank and pedals are not moving. It seemed my freehub was stuck open, which caused the pawls to disengage even when the pedals were being turned. My bike was locked in “coast” mode, a mode that only works if you have gravity working for you. Without a working hub, my bicycle was as useless as a laundry cart.

“Crap! Crap! Crap!” I called out to the still air. I threw my bicycle onto the road and paced around. What were my options? It was a thirty-mile walk back to Atlantic City. Doable in a day, but what exactly could I do when I got there? I needed a new hub — and probably an entirely new wheel. As lucky as I had been in Atlantic City, expecting that town to contain an available 29-inch rear mountain bike wheel was pushing that luck more than a little. There was no way I could walk forward on the route. It was 110 miles to Rawlins with no towns or even houses along the way. I didn’t have enough food or water to make such a trek on foot, and hitching a ride forward on the route was a race-ending infraction, although I didn’t expect the temptation to arise because I doubted that much vehicular traffic ever ventured out this way.

I remembered from my Iditarod days a trick racers used when their freehubs froze in the extreme cold. They would zip-tie their cassettes to the spokes of the wheel, converting their drivetrain to a fixed gear and bypassing the need for a hub. But I had only heard about this repair in theory. I had never seen it in practice. I carried a few emergency zip-ties, but I only had about five of them. The expectation that five thin strips of plastic could handle all of the thrust and force of 110 miles of gravel-road pedaling seemed dubious at best. If I didn’t break the zip ties, I’d break the spokes, I felt certain. And if I broke the spokes, then my wheel would collapse, and I’d really be screwed.

Slightly off camber

Have you ever experienced a string of days that were just a little off-tilt? Call it getting up on the wrong side of the bed, for a weekend. A good weekend nonetheless, but, you know ...

Beat and I went out for a mountain bike ride on Friday evening. I have a favorite mountain bike loop from home, over Black Mountain and down Stevens Creek Canyon, that's 26 miles with 3,400 feet of climbing. I recently introduced Beat to this loop and he was excited to go back on Friday, but I just wasn't feeling it. I was weak, sluggish and struggling with the climb a lot more than normal. I self-prescribed "slight overtraining" and admitted I was glad I had a mellow weekend planned. My baby sister, Sara, was visiting from Huntington Beach, Calif., for Memorial Day. She's not what you'd call an outdoor type, so I figured our weekend activities wouldn't be all too active. But that didn't make the ten-mile climb any easier.

Finally at the top, Beat and I bundled up in several layers of warmers, hats and jackets as a cold wind blew along the ridge. We launched into the singletrack, and the rush of gravity and wind pumped new life into my tired legs. The feeling of well-being was extremely short-lived, however. I rounded the first curve at high speed and washed out both tires on the gravelly trail. I've rounded this same corner in this same way more than a dozen times, and it caught me so off guard that I didn't even put my arm out to catch myself. I just full-body slammed into a garden of small but pointy rocks and skidded several inches, slightly ripping my shorts as well as a decent amount of skin across my right leg. If I hadn't been wearing so many layers, I would have surely sustained more trail rash, but as it was, I was dust-covered and bleeding. Beat stopped just before the curve to find me staggering around in an effort to walk it off. When he asked what happened, all I could say was, "Crash ... hurts ... not hurt ... just impact ... hurts."

With an elbow, leg and confidence all badly bruised, I rode the brakes the rest of the way home.

My little sister is what you might call Bizarro Jill — on the outside, we share several common traits, but as far as personalities go we're the opposite in nearly every way. Sara is fashionable and outgoing, picky and a little high-strung. She dislikes seafood and actually most foods that I consider amazing. She also doesn't really like doing stuff outside, unless that stuff is shopping, going to the beach, or watching a concert.

I am on a constant if low-key crusade to get Sara hooked on cycling. Last spring I helped coerce her into buying a beach cruiser, which she sadly stopped riding after it got a flat tire. For her first visit to the South Bay area, I convinced her and her boyfriend to join me on a "mellow" bike path ride to Google headquarters and back, about 16 miles round trip. I set up Sara and Spencer on my and Beat's mountain bikes, and joined them on my fixie commuter. I adjusted the mountain bike's seat post for Sara but failed to shift the bike out of the gear it was in, which just happened to be the highest gear. See, when you ride a bike as much as I do, it stops occurring to you that functions like shifting and braking a bicycle aren't simply second nature to everyone. Sara's entire bike experiences basically amount to short rides on single-speed cruisers with coaster brakes. She mastered the mountain bike's brakes just fine, but she never shifted out of high gear.

Leading from the front, I didn't notice Sara mashing the pedals to get up the steeply inclined pedestrian bridges along Highway 85. About two miles from Google, she tweaked a muscle in her back, in a way that stopped her in her tracks. But Sara, being a Homer, only mentioned in passing that her back hurt and insisted she wanted to keep pedaling to Google. It wasn't until we were halfway up the viewpoint hill that I noticed Sara walking her bike, with a distinctly pain-stricken, arched-back chicken stride. I discovered the high-gear faux pas too late. She was in considerable pain. We called Beat for a rescue ride and Spencer and I raced the rain home — a hard effort that put him on the floor, too. Bad older sister, bad.

Luckily Sara's back injury didn't turn out to be too debilitating. Despite the stiff chicken walk, Sara still rallied for their planned trip to the city. Beat and I had a friend's wedding reception to attend in San Francisco. In my effort to purge belongings before I moved away from Alaska, I managed to unload nearly all of my formal clothing, and I don't own a single pair of stockings. (Somewhere in Utah, my mother is cringing right now.) I ended up wearing a business suit with a knee-length skirt, and below that was my lower-leg mountain bike trail rash in all of its scabbed glory. Beat said the wedding would be full of ultrarunners, so most of the guests would laugh it off, but I had to explain myself to more than a few commenters.

The wedding reception was held on a small "floating island" in San Francisco Bay called Forbes Island. It was a fun place and a beautiful reception, but I have a penchant for sea-sickness and Sunday was a particularly windy day in the harbor. I had a few moments early on where I was truly worried I might have to "feed the fishes" at my friends' wedding reception, but luckily a couple of glasses of ginger ale from the bar and a retreat to the lower deck set me straight.

On Monday, Sara and Spencer headed home. Beat and I joined Steve for a "short, mellow" run in the East Bay area that turned into 12 miles up to Mission Peak, along the ridge to Monument Peak, and back. I felt much better after a relatively restful weekend, but once we started downhill my leg bruises started to bother me with increasing sensitivity, and I mostly limped down.

It was still a great weekend if slightly off camber. I'm hoping I can right myself this coming week.

Also, in anticipation of the new book release in a couple weeks, I'm still offering copies of my first book, "Ghost Trails" at a discounted price. I have a few signed paperback copies available for $12.95.

The digital eBook for your Kindle, Nook, Sony Reader, smart phone or computer is available for the discounted price of $2.99 at this link.

Purchase the eBook direct from Amazon at this link.

Signed paperback copies of "Ghost Trails" are currently available for $12.95 plus shipping. Click the gold button for checkout.

Signed copy of "Ghost Trails"

I posted an excerpt from "Ghost Trails" below. This is all of Chapter 9, "Rainy Pass"