Recovery in Zion

My earliest memories of the outdoors — well, beyond a kiddie pool in the grass and Texas fire ants — take place in Zion National Park. There is something about evening light on towering cliffs in the Court of the Patriarchs that inspires a bewildered and lasting kind of awe, even in a six-year-old. I love this place. I sought it out frequently as a teenager and once crossed the entire park from north to south as a twenty-year-old backpacker. I still get back as often as I can, preferably in the late fall, after the crowds have gone and the canyon has erupted in a palette of primary colors — red rocks, yellow leaves and blue sky.

Bill had never visited Zion before, so I convinced him to take a couple of days after the 25 hours of Frog Hollow to explore the park. "Call it active recovery," I said with a wry grin. The three of us hadn't slept at all on Saturday night, I rode a mountain bike 169 miles and Bill cranked out an unfathomable 260. Really, what we should have done was found the nearest bed and collapsed for three days, but we convinced ourselves that five hours of leisurely hiking would work just as well.

Our first active recovery adventure was the Angel's Landing trail, where a blaze of fall colors lined the cliffs. Bill brought his big DSLR camera and the hikes involved a stop every three minutes or so to capture the moment. As evidenced by this blog post, I was pretty camera happy myself. And if you've ever been on a hike with three camera-crazed people, you'll understand how slow, stop-and-go hiking can sometimes be even more exhausting than running. But the scenery was incredible.

Angel's Landing is an impressive example of extreme trail engineering. These are the "switchbacks" that allow people to amble up what used to be a cliff.

Then come the chains that aid people across a narrow sandstone fin and actual cliffs. Bill and I were both struggling quite a bit on this section — blame sore quads, numb fingers and weakened legs. At one point I got down in a squat and wasn't sure I could lift myself back up. Bill also wasn't a huge fan of the exposure. But wow, what a view.

There was a dusting of new snow in the higher elevations. That and the diminishing clouds made for a dramatic skyline.

Gazing over the 1,500-foot sheer drop to the valley below, while feeling proud of ourselves for managing a 1,500-foot climb one day after a 25-hour race.

Bill learns how Angel's Landing earned its name.

Bill, Mo and I gather for a group portrait at the top.

Somebody built a snowman with the last of the melting snow at the top. His face seems to convey a kind of existential crisis.

Working our way back down the chains. Again, the sore quads were not happy.

We arrived at the bottom of the canyon and started up the Emerald Pools trail. I haven't even been there since I was a child (if you've ever visited Zion's during the peak tourism months, you'll understand why.) But it was a treat to go in the fall.

Surprising how difficult four miles with about 400 feet of climbing can feel. But wow, worth it.

We spent the night at the national park campground, trying to use our still-somewhat-wet Frog Hollow gear to stay warm. We built a fire and sipped chili-pepper-laced hot chocolate, then retreated to our tents as overnight temperatures dropped into the low 20s. I woke up several times in the night thanks to restless leg syndrome, and went for moonlight walks to calm down my twitching muscles as I sipped water to quell a ragged cough.

The silver moonlight on the cliffs was stunning. But by 7 a.m. I felt fully spent rather than rested, and still had to make my way through the morning as Bill and Mo got a slow start. Keeping yourself warm can be surprisingly strenuous if you don't have much energy to begin with. I walked and packed up and ate breakfast and walked some more as my core temperature just continued to dip lower and lower. In its own way, my shivering morning at the campground felt like as much of an endurance test as Frog Hollow itself.

But most of that was forgotten as the bluebird day revealed itself. We vehicle-toured the eastern side of the park and managed one hike on the Canyon Overlook Trail — two miles round trip with a short nap on the ledge. Still wrapped in my down coat, wool socks and mittens at 50 degrees, I pulled my hat over my face and basked in the sun as the chill finally started to melt away from my core.

It was a beautiful, if not perfect, way to recover from Frog Hollow.

Twenty two hours

Why would you want to ride your bike around in circles for 25 hours? I mean really, why is that fun? Or satisfying?

The truth is, I adore 24-hour mountain bike racing, because the experience can be anything you want it to be. If you want to get a bunch of your friends together and knock out some laps while you eat pizza and drink beer, you're welcome. If you want to don fairy wings and a tutu and race solo on a 37-pound fat bike, you're welcome. If you're a numbers geek who wants to test a well-crafted strategy, you're welcome. If you simply want to ride your bike a lot and feed your endorphine addiction, you're welcome. And if you want to race until your eyes bleed, you're welcome. I appreciate this democratic, free-spirited approach. The 24-hour race entices a full spectrum of enjoyable characters in a bike binging festival complete with live music, fire jumping and baked goods. Really, what's not to like?

The 25 Hours of Frog Hollow is touted as "the world's longest one-day mountain bike race," because it takes place over the fall-back portion of Daylight Savings Time, when there actually are 25 hours in a day. The race is held on a rolling desert mesa just outside Zion National Park on a 13-mile loop consisting of jeep roads, swooping singletrack, and a few miles of mildly technical chunk just to keep everybody honest. Now in its third year, the late-season race boasted more than 200 sign-ups, with an impressive 50-plus people in the solo category. The list included a few friends and several more people who I've wanted to meet for a while. And the course is fantastic, with jaw-dropping scenery around every corner and an amusement park-worthy descent that I could ride a hundred times and never grow tired of that trail.

Still, I didn't plan to sign up for the race this year for several reasons. First and foremost, my big event of the year — Racing the Planet Nepal — fell only two weeks later, and I was concerned about recovery. Not only that, but training for a self-sufficient stage race on foot really couldn't be more different than training for a 25-hour mountain bike race, and I wasn't about to cut into my Nepal preparations. Third, I felt my base was precarious at best, thanks to severe reduction in my bike mileage this year, the result of an uptick in running, travel and injuries. Fourth, if I crashed my bike or otherwise injured myself in a way that prevented me from participating in Racing the Planet Nepal, I would never, never forgive myself.

But my good friend from Montana, Bill Martin, was planning to return to Frog Hollow and never gave up on trying to convince me to join him. As began to plan logistics for traveling to Utah for my sister's wedding, I realized I wouldn't even have to necessarily go out of my way to make the trip. Then, to complicate matters, Beat — who has finished a couple of Racing the Planet events and knows exactly how tough they are — encouraged this inadvisable mountain bike diversion and even went so far as to sign me up in the solo women's category without my direct consent. Perhaps it was meant to be.

Photo by Dave Nice

But I have never been one to take the most reasonable route, even within my own questionable endeavor. I showed up in Utah with a single duffle bag of supplies, including a day's worth of "nutrition" that I scavenged from the scraps in my cupboard. Most of the rest of the gear was warm clothing, which I brought because the forecast was calling for overnight temperatures in the low 20s, about 50 degrees colder than anything I've become accustomed too since I moved to California. Because bike transport is so spendy, I rented a race bike from Over the Edge Sports, a Niner R.I.P. 9 with loads of travel — and a lot weight. What kind of idiot rides a completely untested bike in a 25-hour solo race? Yeah, that was me. I didn't even remember to bring my own saddle. But I have to say, the Niner was a sweet ride. I like the big bikes.

Bill and his girlfriend, Mo, picked me up at my parents' house in Draper, and the three of us made our way to the southwestern corner of the state. Bill, who was sponsored in this race, set up an elaborate staging area in the cold rain. My staging area is that backpacker tent in the background. Happily for me, Bill said I could huddle under his canopy and even ask his pit crew, Mo, for favors. But I resolved to be as self-sufficient as possible.

The weather did not improve on Saturday morning, when we awoke to cold rain that became a driving sleet during the pre-race meeting. I felt nervous about the conditions but tried to improve my outlook by telling myself that horrible weather was a good thing, and might even give me a competitive edge I might not otherwise have. But despite my confidence that I could gut out the horrors of a cold, wet morass — deep down I was not looking forward to the suffering that entailed.

Luckily, the weather broke and the sky started to clear just before the 10 a.m. start of the race. In Frog Hollow tradition, the clock instantly set back to 9 a.m. and the group set out for 25 hours desert bliss.

There was fresh snow on the surrounding bluffs, almost down to the higher elevations on the trail. A stiff, frigid headwind greeted us on the climb, which I purposely started off the very back so I could stop and shoot photos without causing a disruption. I'm always most enthusiastic about taking pictures at the beginning of races, and I never regret taking the time to do so. Sure, it causes me to put in my slowest times when I have the most energy, but usually by hour twelve I am so steeped in a schizophrenic wave of bliss, self-loathing and apathy that I don't even bother to shoot glazed-eye self portraits in the dark. And yet after the pain has ended and the glory subsides, these images remain, and they bring back memories of the good hours.

Ah, the good hours. Thanks to that cold wind, it never felt particularly warm, even though temperatures probably climbed all the way into the mid-40s. I slowly moved up through the pack and chatted with fellow characters at the back, the guys wearing tutus and other last-minute, in-over-their-heads entrants such as myself.

I genuinely enjoyed the initial jeep road ascent — after all, steady climbing is something I am good at. The climb was also the only part of the course where I was even remotely "fast." I was riding for "Team Self Preservation," which meant I was so overcautious about injuring myself that I didn't take even the slightest chances, and purposefully walked around several obstacles that I could normally ride, but didn't want to test the consequences of my slim margin of error. So the rockier parts of the course became a tedious chore, and the climb was physically taxing, but there was always a reward on the horizon — the Jem Trail.

The Jem Trail is actually the first piece of singletrack I ever rode on a mountain bike, on a borrowed Cannondale 12-speed way back in 2002. The trail is still every bit as thrilling and fun to me as it was back then. It flows across the plateau like a ribbon in the sand, contouring the rolling landscape with banked turns and a smooth surface that promotes high speeds. I could ride it fifteen times in a row happily, and ambitiously hoped to log this many descents.

In juxtaposition to the fast and flowing Jem Trail was several miles along the rim of the Virgin River, a trail that Bill refers to in a hushed and hateful tone as "those rocks." I would add "soul-destroying" as an adjective. The problem with the rocks was that there wasn't anything terribly difficult about them — most were broad and flat, and piled in such a way that the magic line wasn't hard to find. But unless you were fully alert and paying attention, it was all too easy to slide off a ledge and slam into the side of another rock or overcorrect and veer off the trail. I had two near misses on the rocks before I decided I would add them to my list of walking sections. This earned me more slowness and also a mounting frustration with the section, because the rocks weren't that easy to push, either.

Meanwhile Bill was motoring along, lapping me once every three or so laps, which means I had plenty of chances to say hello. He told me he had broken himself in an effort to hold off a guy who went out fast and ended up burning out anyway. Every time he passed, he looked like he was nearing that bleeding edge, and still he stopped to ask me how I was doing. "Bill, I'm fine," I said as though that answer should be obvious. After all, I'm me. Thanks to my mindset and the way I train, I really only have one speed, and it's not usually that painful to hold it indefinitely — surely not in as little as 25 hours. At the same time, my cruise control mentality can and has put me on top of several races. Slow and steady. The tortoise and the hare.

Slow and steady. Soak in the scenery. Get unexpectedly blissed out on the random inclusion of a Lady Gaga song in my iPod playlist. Climb hard until my head spins and heart vibrates with raw energy. Launch into the Jem Trail with the cold air burning my cheeks. Sprint down the fireroad. Curse and stumble on the rocks. Vow to quit early. Obsess about the peanut butter sandwich I'm going to make after this lap. Plan a strategy for quicker pit stops. Forget it. Stumble some more on the rocks. Curse some more. Bribe myself with the promise of a nap. Arrive at rocking timing tent to fresh banana bread. Forget why I was so mad. Repeat.

The problem with an all-day race in November is that it includes a lot of night riding— more than 13 hours worth. Added to the extended darkness was the already cool weather and clearing skies that turned the desert to an icebox. It didn't take long for the temperature to drop below freezing. My Camelback valve froze, and I had to chew on the hose to loosen the ice. I got caught out on my first night lap underdressed, and shivered in my pit as I pulled on extra layers, mittens and vapor barrier socks. Racers with thermometers told me it was 25 degrees, possible as low as 20 degrees in the lower washes. But my winter layers allowed me to pedal in equilibrium. I made significantly fewer stops and continued to crank out laps in the frost-tinted darkness.

I had finished my first lap in last place in the solo women's category, and slowly worked my way up to fourth place by evening. After soon as darkness fell, Mo informed me that I had moved up to third place, and then second. By early morning I was in first position, ahead of several sponsored racers who I assumed were unable or unwilling to deal with the cold. I knew if I just kept motoring along, I could likely hold on to the lead to the end. I was well on pace for fifteen laps, which had been my no-freaking-way outside goal. I had weird mixed feelings about possibly winning this race, one I didn't feel I deserved to win. "No one races to be the best at cold tolerance, except for me," I thought.

It's possible this strange psychological reaction contributed to what happened next, although I'll never really know. But during lap thirteen, my race went from nearly effortless to unbelievably painful, in a single heartbeat. What happened is that I had been severely craving salt for a while, but didn't really have anything salty to eat (I know, poor race nutrition planning, I know.) I did have a can of tuna in my after-race camp food, so I pried it open and started gulping it down. The tuna was quite possibly the driest substance I have ever ingested, like eating chunks of sand. I'm not sure what about my body chemistry made the tuna taste so dry, but I guzzled at least a liter of water and some Diet Pepsi to get it down.

I felt a huge burst of energy afterward and motored up the climb at full intensity, which was in all fairness about the same intensity I was holding at the beginning of the race. But by the time I hit the top of the final steep climb, I had become incredibly dizzy, to the point where I had to put my foot down and force deep breaths to collect my senses. I launched into the Jem Trail as nausea took over. I stopped pedaling and tried to coast but the bike seemed to slow to a stop, forcing me to pedal, as though the Jem Trail suddenly became a climb. A gradually downhill fireroad also forced what felt like maximum effort. By the time I reached the trailhead to the soul-crushing rocks, I was vomiting tuna and water everywhere. Instead of feeling better afterward, vomiting made me feel even worse. I relented to walking the three-mile rock section extremely slowly as most of the field passed me, asking me if I was okay. I said yes, but I was a mess.

I stumbled back to the pit at 7 a.m. and collapsed in Bill's camp chair while crying to Mo that I was so sick and couldn't even muster the wherewithal to stand up. She told me she had a bad feeling about the tuna and I acknowledged that her judgement was probably sounder than my own after 22 hours of riding. But regardless of any poor decisions I had made, it was too late to do anything about it now. I knew I had plenty of time for one more lap, but I was convinced I felt so bad that I would probably have to walk anything that wasn't solidly downhill, and there wasn't much of that on the entire course. Thirteen miles of slow pushing was going to take me ... well, it was going to take me a long time. And I unfortunately possess the mindset that 24-hour racing is supposed to be fun. When it stops being fun, my motivation withers entirely, even with a potential win on the horizon.

I went to lay down in my tent to see if that made me feel any better. Mo informed me when my chaser had passed through the timing tent and went out for lap fourteen. I felt this wave of relief, because even though it meant I had a real decision to make, it also signaled to me that any potential undeserved win had become impossible, because there was no way I was going to successfully chase down anyone. Not in my condition. Still, I was disappointed in myself, because I had encountered a real test, an extreme low point. Challenges like these are fundamental in my "me against me" racing motivation, and overcoming these challenges has proven to be my largest personal reward. This time, I chose not to battle my low point. Instead, I writhed in my tent and waited for 10 a.m.

After 10 a.m. came and went, my thirteen laps at 22:00 put me in second place behind Bec Bale, who won with fourteen laps and the new women's solo course record at 24:55. If I had gone out again, it's likely she still would have beat me; I was moving that slow at the time. After four hours of fasting I was able to take in some Nuun (electrolyte-laced water), and after another hour or so I started on the simple carb route to recovery. Based on the way I was feeling the following day, I concluded my severe nausea was a result of poor food planning that created an electrolyte imbalance. But who really knows? Maybe I had a bad can of tuna and genuine food poisoning. There can really be so many reasons for this type of reaction. All that really matters is how we confront the challenges that come our way.

Still, I am happy with the overall result of the race. I didn't think I'd actually get on the podium, let alone have a real shot at the win. And except for that last hour, I had so much fun. Bill ended up winning the men's solo race, in a rather incredible come-from-behind effort against fellow snow bike racer Dave Byers, who is one of the competitors I was looking forward to meeting. There's a good story there if Bill ever finds the time to blog about it.

Thank you to race director Cimarron and all the volunteers — an awesome group that included Fixie Dave Nice and Bill and Kathi Merchant — for sitting out all night in the icebox to make Frog Hollow the fantastic event that it is.

Six years

Pack training on Black Mountain, descending into the Silicon Valley.

That's how old this blog becomes today. Six years — that's about, what, 72 in Internet years? Arcticglass has become that old woman you see taking her little dog on a morning walk around the neighborhood. She has a bit of a limp and usually wears way more warm clothing than she needs, but at least she's still getting out there. She's the one who still remembers what it was like when you actually had to know some code to post any graphics in your layout, and recalls the days when most of the Blogger templates looked like a mixture of creepy wallpaper and Powerpoint slides. And yet, she misses those good old days, the days before Facebook and Twitter, when the kids had longer attention spans. Back then, she could still impress people with photos taken with a 2.1 megapixel pocket camera and posted as 112x200-pixel graphics, and people would actually read the story behind the photos (yeah, Flickr annoys her, too.) All the kids these days want to read is 140 characters of nothing, or stock images plastered with some kind of vague inspirational quote that will get you unfriended my your more discerning friends. At least those more discerning people still read blogs. Well, at least she hopes they do. She suspects maybe no one reads blogs anymore. But even if she's just sitting alone in her rocking chair, ranting to herself, she doesn't mind. You can do that kind of thing when you're old.

Yes, Arcticglass came on the scene in the heyday of blogs, and has gleaned much enjoyment out of her many prodigious years. Her progeny includes 1,413 posts, 18,293 comments, and beloved photos — almost too many to count. She sometimes wonders what her twilight years will bring, but she's not ready to wind down yet. There's still much blogging to be done, and many adventures to be had, even though November 3, 2005, was a long, long time ago.

Happy sixth blogiversary, Arcticglass.

I spent the evening packing my gear for the 25 Hours of Frog Hollow. I won't be indulging in any of my past lighthearted smack talk because I am starting to feel timid and nervous about the race. Although I rode a snow bike in the White Mountains 100 in March, I haven't raced a mountain bike since last year's Frog Hollow, which I raced duo with Beat. Training for a 100-mile foot race followed by months of injury and travel effectively cut mountain biking out of my summer activities. Adding to my feelings of inadequacy and underpreparation is the current weather forecast for Hurricane, which is calling for temperatures as low as 23 degrees. Jumping from 80 degrees straight into a full day and night of that is probably going to be a decent shock to my system. I can only hope I have some lingering muscle memory to help me cope with a long, frosty night. I did pack a lot of warm gear. To my sister, Sara: I hope you don't mind if I wear a bike jersey and tights to your wedding. I simply don't have room in my duffle for anything else. (I kid, I kid.)

Why is it that every time I visit the desert, I bring a deep freeze with me? I don't even live in Alaska anymore. Ah, well. It's nearly time to stop whining and start riding. I can't wait! Wish me luck.

Actually, I don't like packing ...

... but when I have a big adventure in the works, the kind where much of my enjoyment and perhaps even my survival hinges on being well-prepared, I like to be, well, prepared. I am trying to finalize all of my equipment for my weeklong trek in Nepal, because once I leave for Utah on Thursday I will effectively be in transit for the rest of the month. Today I gathered up everything that I intend to haul during the 155-mile stage race. It was quite the haul; the little things sure do add up.

I haven't yet weighed the food but I'm guessing it's close to half the total weight. If I have time I'd like to weigh and then calculate the actual calorie numbers. I have seven dinners (700-800 calories each), three breakfasts (Beat and I will split the breakfasts, so 300-400 calories), four bars per day (about 800 calories), and supplemental peanut butter and jam (about 450 calories per day.) I threw in three small bags of gummy candy as a treat. This gave me the idea to replace my own stash of food bars with strategic candy bars, which I can later trade with other competitors for food bars at a three-to-one or four-to-one ratio. I mean, after four days of Builder Bars, what wouldn't you trade for a Snickers? It's really not a terrible idea. If I was going to cut weight from my pack, the food supply would be the place to do it. Anything else would be minimal. I'm already bringing only just enough clothing to stay warm if we have weather in the 30s or 40s and rain (this is possible, even likely.) If we have that kind of weather and I'm already soaking wet, well, I better hope those gummy candies help stoke the core furnace, and accept that I won't be feeling my fingers and toes for a while.

Some of this stuff is required race gear but not a terrible idea — blister/first aid kit, emergency bivy, compass/whistle, two headlamps, flashing red light, multitool, hat with neck cover, extra socks, gloves, fleece hat, rainproof jacket, sunscreen, sunglasses tights, shorts, two shirts, sleeping bag (not pictured here) and electrolyte caps. I added a few more drugs, toothbrush, wet wipes, soap, tablet towels, iodine, knee braces, sleeves, buff, gaiters, underwear, rain pants, mitten shells, insect repellent, titanium spoon and a more extensive foot kit. My pad is a RidgeRest Solite, and yes it is my preferred sleeping pad and yes I want every square inch of it (sleeping pads seem to be one of the larger points of contention when it comes to backpacking and bikepacking.) I will bring the tyvek suit and flip flops for camp. We're going to spend plenty of time sitting around and I expect to be fully soaked with hamburger feet; for about 8 ounces total, they will at least be a worthy experiment in warmth and comfort. I snuck in a pair of fleece socks for sleeping. I'm also going to bring an iPod shuffle and a charger that uses two AA batteries. Totally worth it IMO. I'm bringing my "big" camera, also worth it. There's a chance I will sneak in a back-up-camera, just in case. I think the only thing I have left to acquire are packets of Via from Starbucks.

Altogether, the pack weighed in at 21.2 pounds without water (or the camera, which I forgot to put in before I weighed it, but including the sleeping bag.) I could probably agonize and shave another two pounds off my optional gear, or give up my comfort items, or decide to put myself on a diet, or I could just woman up and carry a 25-to-30-pound pack. This is, after all, a vacation, and I think being hungry and cold sucks worse than having sore shoulders and moving slow. The knee braces and poles are a crucial part of my kit, but my knees have been feeling progressively stronger during my recent training runs with the loaded pack. I think I am *nearly* ready; as ready as I can be.

Other than that, I am tapering. Beat and I enjoyed a quiet weekend of running with the packs and Halloween dinner with friends. Today after a productive morning of writing and afternoon of packing, I didn't get out the door for my ride until 5:20 p.m. I was a little shocked when it started to get dark thirty minutes later. It's still 80 degrees during the day here, so I almost forget that the winter months are upon us.

I am having a weird sort of taper. I feel strong during my hard-effort pack runs but weakish during my mellow, short bicycle rides. How this bodes for the 25 Hours of Frog Hollow, it's tough to say. At least I don't have phantom pains or an imaginary cold quite yet. Currently the weather forecast for Hurricane, Utah, calls for showers on Friday, and clear on Saturday with a high of 45 degrees and low of 27. I used to be a decent cold-weather rider, but now I live in a place where it's 80 degrees pretty much all the time, at least into November. I'm going to be one of the least acclimated people out there, so yes, I am a little concerned about the cold.

But I am excited! Only five more days. I guess this means I should really start to think about what food and gear I'm going to use during Frog Hollow. I haven't even begun to pack for that one.

Feeling the 24-hour stoke

Looking a little shell-shocked after the 2006 24 Hours of Kincaid.

In my last blog post, I mentioned that I've been working on a book that is partially exploring my unlikely path into endurance sports during the winter of 2006. I'm specifically writing about snow biking, but there's an epilogue to the story that's directly related to my race this coming weekend. As winter melted into spring and dirt started to emerge from beneath the snow, I shifted my newfound passion to mountain biking. Before I moved to Alaska, I was not a mountain biker. I owned a mountain bike (a 2003 Gary Fisher Sugar), but I only used it occasionally and considered myself a complete beginner. Riding a bike on snow required a mountain bike, and it only made sense to continue using it during the summertime.

Lacking experience and thus any sense of propriety, I chose for my first mountain bike race (and second race ever) what was then and probably still is considered the pinnacle of endurance mountain bike racing, the 24-hour-solo. I signed up for the 24 Hours of Kincaid, a now-defunct race in Anchorage, Alaska, held the first weekend after the summer solstice. The dirt and minimal trails around my home in Homer didn't melt out until mid-May. So I had about five weeks to train, and even then most of my accessible terrain were gravel roads. But I wasn't all that worried about Kincaid. It had taken me 25 hours to complete the 2006 Susitna 100; how different could this be?

Le Mans start. This may technically count as my first foot race.

My plan for the race was simple. My then-boyfriend Geoff agreed to serve as my pit crew. After every lap, he would make me a half of a peanut butter sandwich and a bottle of whatever horrible electrolyte drink we were experimenting with in those days, and remain "on call" in case I needed bike repairs. My job was simply to continue riding my bike for 24 hours straight. Easy peasy.

Only, discouragingly, it was not easy. I forgot where I left my bicycle before the Le Mans start and waited until nearly every other bike had been collected before I started way off the back. I lost the course markings within the first mile of singletrack and backtracked, twice. After about three miles the course became technical, with thick roots braided across the singletrack and steep, muddy drops laced with wet rocks. I slid and laid the bike down at mile four, and did a slow endo into some devil's club less than a mile later. After six miles of struggling, I decided I had no choice but to walk — walk — my bike along the more rugged sections. It was humiliating.

This is how I once raced a world-class elite ultrarunner.

I finished the first 10.5-mile, 1,100-feet-of-climbing lap in one hour and sixteen minutes. Geoff assured me this was not terrible as he dutifully recorded my time in his training notebook, fed me a half a sandwich and a swig of horrible awful sport drink, and ushered me into lap two. My riding and my outlook continued to improve until lap four, when my stomach randomly decided it no longer wanted to remain in my gut and started jostling all over the place. I only just made it to an outhouse and stumbled into my pit utterly strung out. "I'm sick," I gasped to Geoff and proceeded to lay on my back on the grass for nearly half an hour. Geoff plied me with food and drink but I couldn't ingest anything. "My stomach is churning," I whined. "And my back hurts. And my arms hurt."

Geoff, who was looking to get a run in anyway, tried to coax me back out by offering to "race" me for a lap — with him on foot and me on my bike. That sounded like an awfully unfair race to me, so after he suited up and headed out I continued to lay in the grass for another five minutes or so before reluctantly remounting my bike. I passed Geoff shortly before the technical section, and he passed me again as I was walking my bike through the roots (He snapped the picture above.) That was the last I saw of him. He beat me solidly; he wouldn't even tell me by how much.

I was completely demoralized. How was I so bad at mountain biking that even my stupid trail runner of a boyfriend was faster than me, on foot? (*note: Now that there's more evidence about just how fast he really is, I don't feel nearly as bad about that defeat. Still, would it have been so bad for him to let me win?) Twenty-four-hour racing was stupid. I just wanted to crawl into my tent and go to sleep even though it was only 7 or 8 p.m. But the northern summer sun was still high in the sky, and I knew it was too early to give up.

One of the things I love about 24-hour racing is the way familiar landscapes develop a surreal quality, as though everything was happening in a dream. As midnight approached and the sun sank below the horizon, the sky filled with iridescent pink light. Spruce needles turned purple and the roots and rocks disappeared beneath the deepening shadows. As my fatigue grew, so did my confidence, and I found myself riding more of the technical sections I had previously walked. I bounced over roots, leaned into tight corners and steamrolled up the steeps with previously untapped bursts of power. In my memory, I was fully awesome, a mountain biker without limits. Who knows, maybe I was. I was a still a beginner. I didn't yet know what I couldn't do.

Porcupines sauntered through my peripheral vision. Just before sunrise (which happens about four hours after sunset in Anchorage in June), a bull moose decided to bed down near a blind curve in the trail. The first time I came across his massive brown haunch, I nearly laid the bike down out of a knee-jerk conviction that I was about to launch off a grizzly bear. But a bull moose is nearly as scary, and I slammed on the brakes before I passed him. I froze in fear as he regarded me with droopy-eyed disinterest, completely bored and yet undeterred by my or the other 75-plus cyclists' presence on the trail. He remained in that exact spot for another two hours, until the morning sun was high in the sky.

That was about the time I lost nearly all fear. Instead of slowing down to appraise the current mood of the moose, I accelerated around corners occupied by him and other unpredictable animals (porcupines). I launched into root-clogged descents at blind speed — according to my odometer upwards of 30 miles per hour — just so I wouldn't have to pedal as much when the trail shot back up the equally steep other side. Riding the same trails over and over again made me almost proficient at their specific obstacles, and I began to feel invincible. My lap times were becoming steadily faster instead of slower, although my pit times were much longer. Geoff was snoozing at this point and I felt justified in taking ten or fifteen minutes to nibble on one of the sandwiches he left in the cooler as I laid down in the cool grass and watched the wheels of team racers zoom by.

My second big low point came during lap sixteen. After more than 160 miles of body-jarring roots, my arms and hands hurt so badly that I could no longer grip the handlebars. During one super-steep root descent, my finger joints locked up and I actually had roll the bike to a stop on the ascent so I could pry them slowly, painfully off the grips. I haven't admitted this before, but I was so discouraged by thoughts of even having to use my hands to push my bike back to the finish that I cried a little bit, making sure to adjust my sunglasses so the team racers couldn't see my tears. I stumbled into the pit just before 11 a.m., cheeks still stained with tears, as Geoff urged me to go out for another lap. "You can get third place!" he said. "Third place! You just need one more."

As it turned out, this wasn't true. Another guy was already out for his 17th lap and the best I could have done was fourth. But it didn't matter. I was done, so done. I laid back down in the grass, and stayed that way through the awards where the guy with 17 laps stood on the podium. I finished with 16 laps in fifth place. I was the first solo woman. I had ridden my mountain bike 168 miles with 17,600 feet of climbing. That 168 miles remains the longest distance I have ridden in a single 24-hour period to this day. Even laying horizontal in the grass with my hands frozen in a painful hook, nothing could wipe the smile off my face. I was irrevocably hooked.

After I wrote about it on my blog, a guy named Brian left this comment. His final sentence sums up the sensation perfectly — the reason I'm so excited to return to 24 (well, 25)-hour solo mountain bike racing five years and a seeming lifetime of changes and new experiences later:

"Congratulations, Jill! I attended the last 3/4ths of the event in support capacity for a group of my friends and co-workers who were participating, and saw how amazingly well you did! Not only the fact that you kept rolling, nearly non-stop, the entire 24 hours, but also in that you seemed to be genuinely enjoying yourself and the challenge of the event! Each time I happened to see you go through the gate, you had a grin on your face that only certain endurance-junkies can appreciate — a mix of satisfaction, amazement and a pinch of wry incredulity. ;)"

Making progress

Today I headed out to the city to visit Jen, another long-time friend, former housemate and partner-in-crazy-adventures, who was staying with our mutual friend Monika and only in town for a day. I fought rush-hour traffic so I could squeeze in a morning run with Monika, who is training for a couple of half marathons. Her training plan called for six miles today, which sounded easy, but then we hit the streets of San Francisco. Our mainly road run (this photo shows trail but it was all of a half mile through a park) fluctuated between quad-crushing steep climbs and ouch-my-knees concrete descents, literally rippling through city blocks. On top of that it was 80 degrees and neither of us brought any water. So much for "easy." Nothing a slice of Indian curry pizza and three hours of reminiscing can't cure.

Driving home, I felt more than a little guilty about all of the hours of "work" I've been cutting recently. The readers of this blog (and most of my family and friends) probably think I spend all day running and riding my bike, posting photos on the Web, and traveling to other places where I can run and ride my bike. Okay, this is sometimes true, but it is not *always* true. I wrapped up most of my pre-assigned freelance work early this month, so my latest efforts have involved (admittedly half-hearted) attempts to seek more freelance work, shopping out editing and design services to other independent authors (while acknowledging I really can't take on any big projects until after the holidays), outlining a few nonfiction book concepts, and working on one memoir.

The memoir is what I consider the big project right now, and also the most frustrating. Just to make a clarification — a memoir isn't necessarily a life story. Usually the genre describes a piece of one's life, written as an autobiography. I've written two already, but these fell more into the genre of adventure journalism. This one is a true memoir, and that's what makes it so challenging.

Basically, I am writing about the first winter I lived in Alaska. The project allows me to: a) share funny stories about a cheechako (that's an Alaska-ism for newbie) living in the quirky town of Homer, Alaska; b) share funny stories about life as a small-town journalist; c) explore in greater depth how and why someone who was essentially an occasional recreational weekend warrior suddenly decided to become an aspiring athlete in an extreme endurance sport, randomly and almost overnight; and d) delve into a concept I once scraped the broad surface of in my "Modern Romance" posts during winter 2009-2010: falling in love with a place, and the effects of these unexpectedly strong emotions.

If this all sounds convoluted and/or uninteresting, I guess that's my challenge, to prove that snapshots of my early experiences in Alaska can fit together in a unique and engaging story. It could also be a huge disaster and a waste of time. I have good days in which I'll work a solid six hours without even coming up for air, and emerge on the other side of the tunnel mentally exhausted, more spent than I would be after a six-hour run. Then I'll have days like Monday, when, after realizing that I had veered in a wrong direction, I decided to scrap nearly 10,000 words that I had worked so hard to mine from the depths of that tunnel. Bad days.

And I realize that the hope of making something like this actually become financially viable is almost laughable. Book sales and freelance projects have kept me in the positive thus far, but that will dry up if I don't generate new work soon. And regardless of what blog readers (and probably friends and family) might believe, I do want and need to maintain some level of financial independence. Thus I maintain more realistic side projects. But it's been a struggle to put real time into these efforts, because I've gotten my heart invested in this memoir. Some days — okay, many days — it's easier to just put the computer away and go out for a ride.

This post certainly isn't meant as any kind of complaint – just an explanation about what I've been doing. I'm thrilled I have the opportunity to do this right now, and I love all the time I have to "work," (as opposed to the days when I was working 50 hours a week at the Juneau Empire and writing "Be Brave, Be Strong" on the side. There was much too little actual fun in those days.) I just need to accept that, for me, writing is incredibly rewarding but genuinely difficult work, and if I want to make real progress, I need to invest more sweat equity. It isn't all going to fall into place just because I have more time and freedom.

Sometimes I feel frustrated, but it's nothing a two-and-a-half-hour evening mountain bike ride can't cure. (Maybe I do get out too much.)

Peak training ride

I wanted to do one last long ride ahead of the 25 Hours of Frog Hollow, so I picked Tuesday as a good day to forgo "work" in favor of riding my bike all day long. I know, I have it tough. With my sights set on something around eight hours, I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to try something I have wanted to do ever since I moved here — ride a mountain bike from my house, up and over the Santa Cruz Mountains, to (near) the sea. While playing with Google Maps last night, I realized that I could make a loop out of such a ride, and it could still feature a lot of dirt and trail. Google Maps set the route at 85 miles, which seemed a little too ambitious, but I decided to set out with my set of printed cues and see what happened.

Of course, I slept late and didn't get out the door until 10:30 a.m. I started up the steep Montebello Road feeling downtrodden. Even a couple of hits from my bag of Sour Gummy Lifesavers couldn't perk me up. I was feeling the effects of my recent heavy exercise loading — my heart felt like it was racing even though it was beating at a slower rate than normal, and my legs felt like I had lead blocks strapped to my calves. Plus, I received a flu shot yesterday, so my immune system was probably running full throttle, fighting off dead flu bugs (and then I did a 31-mile, 3,400-feet-of-climbing road ride on Monday evening.) But I reasoned that feeling rough was a good thing; getting right on the verge of overtraining and then resting usually boosts my endurance, and it's always good mental training to ride while feeling less than strong. But it didn't bode well for the 7.5 hours still in front of me.

I rode an always-fun network of singletrack off the backside of Black Mountain — Bella Vista, White Oak, Skid Trail and Alt Ridge. Rolling fun singletrack put a little spark back in my legs, and I launched down Alpine Road hungry for adventure.

Camp Pomponio Road — one of the many roads in the Santa Cruz Mountains that was once paved, decades ago, but has since been then left to deteriorate in the (admittedly mild) elements. The section shown in this picture is nice and smooth, but below the gate this "road" became a minefield of broken pavement and massive craters that actually made for somewhat technical mountain biking, or at least required focused maneuvering. I bet roadies ride these "roads" and they are crazy.

Further down in Pescadero Creek County Park — the deep, dark, disconcertingly remote redwood forest. I made a couple of wrong turns in here, and then made other turns I wasn't sure about. I began to feel nervous about committing myself to a loop that I had no real maps for, only a set of Google cues that were already off in mileage because of my trail diversions on Black Mountain. I thought of a mantra I used to repeat to myself when I felt bewildered and lost on mountains in Juneau, which is, "if all else fails, I'll just find a creek and follow it to the sea." Of course it's a ridiculous plan, especially with a bike in California, and yet it still makes me feel better.

I popped out in Loma Mar, thrilled because I knew where I was and because I was on a real adventure. I'd never been down this way before. It was mostly rolling farmland. I went by one store, which was closed. It was the only commercial business I passed on my entire route. Good thing I packed plenty of water and Sour Gummy Lifesavers.

I came within about two miles from the coast at 100 feet elevation, and I regret that I didn't turn right at the junction just for a quick view of the sea. But at the time I knew I was facing a huge climb on more potentially difficult to navigate fireroads, and it was becoming a matter of "I don't want to have to do any of that in the dark." My adventure ride was becoming a race with daylight.

And sure enough, the Gazos Creek Road, on the edge of Big Basin State Park, was devoid of signs of any kind and threaded through a bewildering network of logging roads. After the initial steep climb, the "main" road (indistinguishable as such) started rolling along a broad ridge, and the endless side roads caused me to stop at every intersection and scrutinize the one map I brought, which was a rather poorly detailed mountain bike map. Yes, next time I go adventure riding, I will buy a real topo map. But for now, I knew I had about two hours of daylight, and if I got lost on logging roads outside Big Basin, I was going to be really lost. If this wasn't bad enough, I passed a sign that said "Warning: Controlled Burn." It didn't say anything about the road being closed, so I continued climbing. I started to see small fires smoldering in the undergrowth near the road. A few still crackled with flames, smoke was billowing up everywhere, there were freakin' gas cans left unattended along the side of the road, and there wasn't a soul around. No firefighters, no trucks, no hoses hooked up to water containers, nothing. Hailing from Utah as I do, I know how dangerous it is to approach a wildfire, even if it is a "controlled" burn. However, retreating back to the coast was an extremely inconvenient option at this point, and the smoldering fires did look fairly benign among all that green. I decided to continue climbing in the direction I *guessed* I should go, promising myself that I would retreat to the sea (always my solution) at the first sign of trouble.

The burn, which was in fact contained to piles of mulch on the forest floor, actually smelled quite wonderful, like piney incense. And when I popped out on top of the ridge (again elated because the cratered but downhill China Grade Road was a place at least heard of and it wasn't yet dark), the smoke created a beautiful mist over the mountains, turned golden by the waning sunlight.

Sunset over the Santa Cruz Mountains as seen from Saratoga Gap. I switched on my powerful headlight and blinkie lights, pulled on a light jacket and pedaled home in the growing darkness. Amid my stress about route-finding, I didn't even really notice the physical demands of my ride. So I was almost surprised when I rounded Steven's Creek Reservoir and thought "You know, I feel more tired than I normally do at this reservoir." As it turned out my adventure route covered 75 miles with nearly 10,000 feet of climbing, in 8 hours and 15 minutes. Perfect. After the first hour I actually felt healthy and strong the entire time. I consumed one 5-ounce bag of Sour Gummy Lifesavers and two Nature Valley granola bars — about 900 calories — and just under three liters of water. These numbers may seem low but they're pretty typical for me for "only" eight hours on a cool day. It was a great time. Now I just need to triple it. Eeeep! (Ride map here.)