The race of life

I often ask myself why I race. Why have I devoted so much time and energy over the last five years to racing? I'm not particularly skilled, nor do I have much natural athletic talent. I don't possess competitive fire and my biggest adversary in any race I have ever competed in has been myself. And yet I keep going back out there. I shadow others on the dusty trail. I press deep into the lifeless tundra. I sweat and bleed and cry out in pain so I can find what lies at the finish line. What lies at the finish line? I never find out. It's just out of my grasp. And thus, the pursuit continues.

I have been thinking about the next race. Thinking it's time to really start training. So on Tuesday, I officially kicked off the winter training season by going for an eight-mile run on the smooth, wide, slightly inclined Rattlesnake River corridor. For the first four miles, I marveled at how great my legs were feeling despite the 130 miles of bike racing on Saturday-Sunday. The frosty night air swirled in my headlamp beam, and when the light started to dim, I decided it was time to turn around. I kicked up the pace because I was feeling great, and because my light was dying. Then suddenly, without provocation or reason, my left ankle twisted violently and my body slammed into the dirt. A shock of pain rippled through my feet and legs. I tried to get up, but an overwhelming wave of nausea forced me to lay back down. I rolled onto my back. The pain gripped my ankle like a vice, and I tried to remove myself from it by focusing on the stars. The night was deathly quiet, and cold. The sky was deep with stars, like a bowl of diamonds. I smiled, in spite of myself, because it was so beautiful. The pain dissipated a bit. I stood up and the electric shock returned. I sat back down and focused on the ice threads weaving together in puddle near my feet. I smile again, in spite of myself, because they were so beautiful, too. I stood back up and started to hobble. The stars shimmered. The cold air needled into my thin running shirt and tights. It was going to be a long walk back to the trailhead with a sprained ankle.

I didn't know how bad the injury actually was, but initially I assumed the worst. I lost my focus on the stars and ice. I thought only about cold and pain. I thought I had ruined my entire season, right there, on the very first day. What had I done wrong? Did I go out too soon after the 25-hour race? Did I wear the wrong shoes? Did I need a better light? I didn't even trip over anything. There was nothing to trip on. It was a smooth, wide trail. Did I just not know how to run? Was I ever going to learn? After all, I have yet to get through a real run this fall without injuring myself. What in the world was wrong with me? Why did I even want to run in the first place?

My mood was dark this morning. I can't help it. I don't like being hurt. I received a message from my friend Bill, the friend who won the solo division of the 25 Hours of Frog Hollow. It was November 10, a significant date for him, a difficult date, a date that represented loss. My heart ached for him, and everything he's going through right now, and I started to tap out a message of support, when I received a prompting that I had another message.

It was from Ben, the man who took second place in the weekend's race. For 25 hours, Ben and Bill had been engaged in a dance unlike any I had ever witnessed - mirroring each other's moves, surging and attacking, pulsing pain and fire for an entire day and an hour. Just to be the first to find out what lies at the finish line. It was both inspiring and astonishing, to watch two people dig so deep for so long. On the sidelines were me, Bill's often-absent co-racing friend, and Amy, Ben's wife and hardworking support crew. Amy was so sweet to Ben, preparing his bottles, fetching him snacks, catching naps but dutifully waking up every hour to see Ben through the pit. Amy was also five or so months pregnant with her first child, a son. She talked excitedly about the future. They would name him Bodhi Finn, she told me. I told her a friend of mine also just had a son named Finn, and that he too was likely to become a little bike-racing epic adventurer. Ben's determination and athleticism were inspiring, but Amy's love and devotion were even more so. Amy brought the big picture to it all, the reason for it all, that even as we struggle mightily to reach the finish line, there's nothing at the end but each other.

"Jill, I just wanted to say nice blog write up," Ben wrote to me. "I almost lost it with your line about racing and life. We went in for our regular check up yesterday morning and found out that our little boy's heart was no longer beating."

Sometime in the last couple of weeks, Ben and Amy's active little boy managed to kick and move enough to twist his umbilical cord. The hospital induced labor. Bodhi Finn Welnak was born at 2:25 a.m. Wednesday, November 10, at 1 lb. 5.8 oz. He put up a fantastic fight but in the end, he did not make it. Bodhi died November 10, too.

"It's these times when life and racing really do mirror themselves and why I gravitate to long adventures," Ben wrote. "It's like the 15th hour of a 24 hour ... you just don't know how you'll get through it. But, you bear down, jump back on, and keep going. That's just what we will do."

It's these times when my life falls into perspective. I have seen Ben and Amy's strength and love and know it will carry them through this difficult time, but my heart aches for them, and for Bill, and for the unexpected falls in this race of life.

25 Hours of Frog Hollow

This is not my story, although my story is the really only one I can tell. My story is of no real consequence; I was just the person on the periphery, riding a bicycle through my childhood playground, punctuating the warm air of the day and deep chill of the night with yelps of glee and occasional cries of frustration. The real story lies with the mountain bike veteran and the mountain bike virgin, converging at a 25-hour endurance race that neither of them wanted or expected to compete in, until it came time to compete. And when the time came, both dug deep and emerged with performances both surprising and inspiring. This is their story, as told from my limited perspective.

The mountain bike veteran is my friend Bill, a Missoula resident who has been racing mountain bikes since the early 90s. He's always been a top performer, often placing high even when stacked up against heavily sponsored pros. When he mapped out his 2010 season, the 25 Hours of Frog Hollow was never a part of it. Frog Hollow was the idea of a new friend of his, and Bill agreed to it because he wanted the opportunity to get to know her better. They registered as a coed duo team, but at the last minute, the entire plan fell through. Instead of feeling devastated and giving up, he re-registered as a solo racer. "Now I start the process of tucking all my feelings back into racing and morphing back into a solo machine," he wrote before the race. It was symbolic, but only to Bill. To the rest of the field, he was just a random guy from Montana who signed up at the last minute.

The mountain bike virgin is my boyfriend, Beat - and yes, we have bestowed on each other that kind of title now. Beat has a deep base of ultraendurance but has almost literally never ridden a mountain bike. His mountain biking hours in his entire adult life still number in the low double digits, and nearly half of those have been on my bikes. The 25 Hours of Frog Hollow came about because we're still in the stage where we're still testing the water, dipping our toes in each other's lives and almost daring the other to take the full plunge. We wanted to participate in a race together. For the rather unconventional weekend of Nov. 4-5, it came down to a 50K running race in California, or a 25-hour mountain bike race in Hurricane, Utah. We picked the mountain bike race, almost like tossing a coin, and signed up as a duo coed team. We called our team "Swiss Miss." To Beat it was meaningful, a journey of discovery in our quest to merge two different worlds. But to the rest of the field, he was the random guy from California who signed up at the last minute.

We met in Salt Lake City and drove together to the eerily warm, alien landscape of southwestern Utah. We didn't have much of a race plan - only that we would loosely trade off laps with plenty of easy-going breaks in between. I didn't know how Beat would fare on the rocky desert terrain, and secretly assumed he would only get in one or two good laps before back pain or saddle sores or a crash forced him into the pain cave, followed by one or two agonizing laps that he would only force himself through because he is stubborn like that. He was buzzing with nervous excitement as we purchased food and prepped for the long (extra long thanks to the time change) day ahead. I agreed to take the first lap. When he found out about the Le Mans start, he was disappointed.

"You mean there's running in this race?" he said with a tinge of envy.

"Yes, but it's only about a quarter mile," I replied. "Still," he said. "That part, I understand."

We set up our support pit next to Bill's, because part of my job as an only part-time racer was to man Bill's pit and do my best to ensure he had an adequate supply of Carborocket, lube his chain, warm up coffee and soup, and do anything I could to make his solo journey of pain just a little more comfortable. Bill came to Utah reluctantly prepared for fierce competition, but openly expressed hope that no one would challenge him, so he could coast to a win and get on with his life. Bill's pit was next to the pit of solo racer Ben Welnak, an accountant from Denver with a baby on the way, who recently joined a sponsored team. Ben was a young go-getter with something to prove. Bill was a seasoned veteran with nothing to lose. To each other, they provided a formidable adversary that was all but invisible in the smiling, Halloween candy-saturated boundary of the race pit.

My first lap was rather uneventful. I purposely jogged the first half mile in order to start off the back and ended up passing a lot of people on the initial 900-foot climb. I stopped and let a few pass me near the top so I could ride the Jem Trail singletrack at my own pace. The Jem Trail was essentially my own first-ever mountain bike ride, back in 2002 when I borrowed a 1980s rigid Cannondale 12-speed mountain bike to "ride Saint George" with friends. When I returned to the same spot in 2010, I instantly remembered the rush of joy and exhilaration that swept over me the first time I guided a bicycle down the swooping trail. The feeling hadn't changed one bit even after eight years of firmly establishing myself as a cyclist. For a few blissful moments, I was a mountain bike virgin again, filled with all the energy and wonder of my first ride.

Despite the joyful descent, I managed to really botch the second half of the 13-mile course. I was unfamiliar with the obstacles and sometimes technical rocky terrain that filled the later trails, and caught in the midst of a large pack that forced me forward even when I couldn't really see the best line. I dropped too hard off small ledges and caught unintentional air off unexpected dips. I stopped hard on rocks and smashed my shins against the pedals. I tried to veer off the trail to let racers pass and nearly took a tumble over a sagebrush bush. I was riding like the worst kind of mountain bike novice, one who thought they could do things even when they couldn't. But thanks to my strong start, I still finished the lap in 1:14, which I was satisfied enough with. An insistent volunteer in the timing tent sent Beat rushing off before I could say "Good luck."

I expected a decent break. I lounged around the pit, ate a bagel sandwich and talked with Ben's pregnant wife. She planned to stay up all night to support Ben, and I admired her devotion. After a half hour, Bill came through the pit, having already put in a couple of sub-hour laps. He was pouring sweat and merely threw an empty bottle toward me before holding up his hand. I handed him a full bottle of Carborocket, and he continued on his way without even taking his feet off the pedals. Ben rolled in mere seconds later, equally in a hurry.

I sauntered over to the timing tent to watch more racers come in. I was shocked when Beat came through after an hour and 13 minutes, having taken one less minute to complete the loop than I did. "How did it go?" I asked as he checked in. "How much of it did you have to run?"

"I didn't run any of it," he said. "I rode most of it, and only walked a few places." He had a wide grin and a large patch of red dust on his face. He was pouring sweat where I wrapped my arm around him to walk back to the pit. "Holy cow, you rocked it," I said.

"I was way out of my comfort zone, but I survived!" he replied excitedly.

My second lap went much better, and I cleaned a lot more of the obstacles that I had botched before. By my third lap I only had to dab a few times, and even managed to ride the entire Virgin River Rim rock-garden by simply following the vague line of a guy right in front of me. I was coursing adrenaline and satisfaction with myself by the time I returned. "Holy cow, mountain biking is the funnest thing ever!" I gushed as Beat slowly gathered up his helmet and backpack, and took even more time readying his bike for another lap. His bib shorts were ripped and he had numerous cuts and bruises from phantom sources. "Am I going to die now?" he asked in his way that only partially sounds like joking.

"Doubtful," I said, "but you really don't have to ride if you don't want to. This race is just for fun, remember?"

"It's OK," he said. "I can do at least one more lap."

As I waited, I watched Bill come through again. I couldn't even really track how many laps he had completed, although I knew it was at least eight compared to my and Beat's five. He stopped briefly and inhaled a banana before I even saw him ingest it. (Bill races solely on Carborocket, and tries to minimize his intake of solid food.) His face was pale and he said he felt sun-baked. I dug up my Endurolytes and gave him four. He later told me that exchange was an uncharacteristic admission of weakness within sight of his adversary's pit crew. He asked me how far back Ben was. I had no idea, but Amy was gracious enough to share that information - about 45 minutes. "Great. Gotta go," he said, and took off before I could hand him another bottle of Carborocket. I'd hoped he grabbed his own.

The sun went down on my fourth lap. I was absolutely wrapped up in the beauty of it, snapping photos and soaking up scenery with no regard to my time - not that I really minded what my time was either way. Fifty-one miles is a long way to ride a mountain bike, but in the scope of my surroundings it already felt trivial. Bill was already pounding out triple digits, and Beat was keeping up with me without the benefit of experience. But what really mattered is that we were all out there, generating our own experiences in this beautiful region, and racing alone, racing each other, in a paradoxical quest for togetherness.

Darkness fell early, before 6 p.m., and I found my world narrowed to the tiny range of my headlight. The trail that was already familiar turned alien again. Mice darted in and out of the beam. Later I would see many of these mice flattened dead on the course, casualties of the unnatural act of racing mountain bikes through the night. I never hit one myself, but in the somber atmosphere of the moonless sky, I found myself mourning for every one of them.

Beat excitedly embarked on his first night lap at 5:54 p.m., but returned with new bruises and a somber look on his face. "I was really uncomfortable," he admitted. "You don't have to ride everything," I said. "You can walk what you don't feel comfortable with. Or you can walk all of it. I think you'd be surprised how many obstacles I end up skipping because I'm just not feeling it."

"I'll think about it," he said of doing another night lap. I didn't know whether to break it to him that night was going to last another 12 hours.

Beat did go for one more night lap, right around the 12-hour mark. I cooked up a thermos full of coffee, and then heated up Carrot Ginger soup for Bill, who rolled in with a sallow look on his face. "What time is it?" he asked.

"About 10:30," I said.

"How much longer will it be dark?"

"Kind of a long time," I replied. "How many laps have you done?"

He shook his head. "Kind of a lot. I don't know. Do I have to go back out there?"

"No," I said. "Well, you can, but only if you're having fun."

A strange smile swept over his face. "You know, I am," he said, and with that sprinted off into the strange night. Ben came in a few minutes later. He had been officially lapped, and then some. "Did Bill already leave?" he asked.

"Yes," Amy and I both replied at the same time. He let out a long, probably unintended sigh. Later, Bill told me that Ben caught up to him and attacked throughout the night, launching up hills and sprinting the singletrack. It was all Bill could do to keep up, but Bill did keep up because that is what Bill does. Bill races, even when it hurts so bad that every other good thing in life is sucked into a vacuum of pain. Bill races, even when it the meaning of it all is completely hidden from view. Bill races, and often Bill wins. To me, it was symbolic. The race as a metaphor for life. They usually are, and that's why we do it.

Beat returned from his second night lap, his fifth total, with a similarly struck look in his eyes. He didn't have many words to describe how he was feeling. But neither of us did. We had both ridden a lot of miles, on little specific training (him startlingly little.) We had stamina and willpower, but not necessarily the complete motivation to see it through. After all, we were already getting to know each other well, and this race that we conceived as a fun co-adventure was doing little more than keeping us apart. We couldn't ride together because we were on a relay team and doing so would be a waste of effort. Beat was risking a bad crash for little gain, and I didn't blame him for not wanting to ride his rental bike, although I admitted that I really did enjoy the riding. I agreed to take a double lap and let him sleep. I blazed through the pit without stopping on the second lap and quietly stopped for water and a peanut butter cup on the third. The dark night grew long, and I felt great, exploring my tiny headlamp-beam-sized world from every angle. I secretly hoped I could just keep riding without stopping, to the end of the race, but Beat caught me at the end of the third lap and said he wanted to go out again. I wasn't really sure if he actually wanted to ride or simply thought I needed a break, but I didn't want to deny him a lap. After all, we were a team.

Beat did promise the lap was going to take him quite a while. I ate a snack, chatted with Amy, and fell into a bit of a sugar coma. I decided to bundle up in the warmth of the tent and send Facebook updates on Beat's phone, which led to me unintentionally dozing off. I try not to nap during single-day races, no matter what, because napping always backfires on me, and I wake up feeling much worse than I did before I went to sleep. Forty five minutes later, Beat roused me. I felt extremely nauseated and almost had to rush from the tent to vomit. I composed myself, though, and lingered for a long time, debating whether to go back out or go back to sleep. A pressing urge to either stand up or throw up coaxed me out of the tent, and I decided as long as I was out there, I might as well ride.

I left at 5:30 a.m., embarking on what turned out to be the sunrise lap. I did not regain my stamina. The nausea stayed, and sucked away my formerly vast reserves of energy. I struggled up the climbs and opted to walk nearly everything I had managed to finally master just a lap earlier. As the sun came up, I stopped - at the bottom of a long descent - to take what felt like a necessary break. I looked back toward the emerging sun and saw a long line of headlights making their way down the Jem Trail, like a procession of fireflies into the golden light. The scene was so beautiful, and the fatigue so overwhelming, that I actually teared up. I couldn't look away. I didn't even want to face the rest of the lap, but I knew I had to.

I didn't even pick my way through the mile-long rock-garden. I just walked it, and grumbled about my heavy awkward bike. As the sun fully emerged over a distant plateau, I pulled off the trail to take a picture. I heard a faint grunt and turned to see a hunched figure making his way up a line of chunky stones. His posture betrayed an epic struggle, even amid the relatively easy climb. As he approached, I realized it was Bill. In all of the times Bill had lapped my team, he only passed me on the course twice - once during the sunset lap, and again right at sunrise. Both times were in the midst of a rock garden drenched in pink light. I snapped his photo and said, "Wow, Bill, you're doing awesome."

He squinted as though he couldn't see me, even though it was almost completely light. "Jill?"

"Hey," I said. "So what lap is this now? 19?" Bill just shrugged. Nineteen laps meant he had already ridden 240 miles. Comparing my nine laps and 117 miles to that seemed startlingly trivial.

"Man, biking sucks," he said. I grinned. Then Bill cracked his own small smile. "What are you doing on Wednesday?" he asked.

I shook my head. "What do you mean, what am I doing on Wednesday?"

"Do you want to go for a ride?" he asked. I broke out laughing. Only Bill, the Bill I know, the Bill who enjoys five-hour rides through the snow after work, would say something like that 240 miles into a race. The Bill that Bill seems to know, the cold, calculating racer, would not only not say that during a race, but wouldn't even stop long enough to say it.

As we chatted, Ben rode up from behind. He looked startled, then replaced that look with a mixture of suspicion and confusion. "What's up?" he asked in a long, drawn breath. "What's going on?"

"We're watching the sunrise," Bill said, and then giggled.

"Oh," Ben said, with an unbroken tone of confusion. "Man, I feel like crap," he added, and without another word, pedaled around us and over the hill. Bill just continued to stand with me, watching Ben ride away.

"There goes my lap," Bill said without a hint of emotion.

"He doesn't have enough time to catch you," I said, without really doing the mental math to determine whether or not that was true. "As long as you keep riding, he won't catch you."

"Yeah," Bill said, with more of a resigned sigh. We continued to stand in place and stare off into the eastern horizon. After a long pause, Bill said, "Hey, do you want to ride the last lap with me?"

I didn't have the heart to tell Bill that not only was I plodding extremely slowly, even for me, but that he probably had time to ride two more laps, and that if he rode only one more, there was a small chance that Ben could really kick up the gas and pass him again. And if Ben passed Bill again, Bill would have to chase him to the painful end of a sprint finish. I was sure Bill knew that, but he probably also could see how much Ben was struggling at this point in the race. Their sub-hour laps had turned to 1:30 and even 1:40 laps, and Ben seemed even less inclined than Bill to sprint to the finish. Plus, Ben didn't know about Bill's fire, stoked from years of pain-soaked racing. Bill would chase him to the bitter end, until they both resembled the flattened mice on the trail, and even then he would go farther and faster. But racers with Bill's fire wouldn't stop mid-race and giggle at the sunrise, and I wondered if Ben would attack all the same.

I agreed to ride with him the last lap, my 10th and his 20th. My nausea faded a bit but I still had no power; even still, I put unintentional gaps on Bill during most of the climbs - the same Bill I had watched float up headwalls that I felt I could barely walk up. He was cooked, but still smiling, and we finished just after 9 a.m. with a 1:37 lap. The race was set to end at 10 a.m., which meant we both could still do another lap, since rules only required a lap to start before 10 a.m. Beat was waiting for us at the timing tent, raring to go again, but had a provision - he wanted someone to ride with him. I considered it, but I was grumpy from two laps of feeling like crap. Bill collapsed in his camp chair. We knew it was over.

Ben never passed Bill again. Bill won the solo division with 20 laps and 256 miles at 9:04 a.m. Ben rolled into the finish with 20 laps about an hour and 15 minutes later to take second place. Team Swiss Miss finished second of three teams in the duo coed division with 16 laps and 206 miles. Beat rode six laps and 77 miles; I rode 10 laps and 129 miles. The winning team rode 20 laps, the third-place team nine, so there was never any contest. The winner of the solo female division only rode 12 laps, which led me to make assuming declarations that "I could have won!" Not that it mattered. It was so much more fun to witness Beat push his boundaries and challenge his fears through his impressive performance in his first mountain bike race, and also to add a small amount of support to Bill's solo vision quest in the desert. The 25 Hours of Frog Hollow organizers and volunteers put on an amazing race, and the stories it generated are only the beginning.

Dangerous duo

(Day of the Dead festivities on November 2 in Missoula)

When I first met Beat, after he ran across the finish line during the Swan Crest 100 on July 31, I had no idea he was nearly shattered from 34 hours of crawling over avalanche debris, climbing up and then tumbling down steep mountainsides, leaping over deadfall and bushwhacking through weeds for 100 miles of primitive Montana trails. No, he just had this huge smile on his face, and we immediately gravitated toward each other in the way that two people sometimes do. Through the haze of sleep deprivation, I admitted that my motives for serving as a race volunteer weren't completely pure - that indeed I was interested in easing into ultrarunning (*someday*) and I wanted to check out the scene in Montana.

He had just found out about my Tour Divide ride and replied, without hesitation, "Running 100 miles is easy. You could do it next week, no problem. You should come to the Headlands 100."

It didn't matter that it was a completely ridiculous lie. The way he said it, in his matter-of-fact Swiss-German way, filled me with new confidence and excitement about the possibilities of ultraendurance sports — something I hadn't felt in a long time. I went home and started scheming for the future, fueled by continuing over-encouragement from Beat, which eventually led me to saying "what the Hell" about pacing 50 miles of the Bear 100, which led to these regular weekend adventures we've been having ever since.

To our friends, we look like we're punishing each other. I took him on terrifying low-light night rides through the woods and made him carry my bike up a steep mountain; he dragged me through Yosemite in a 35-degree torrential rainstorm; I made him strap on snowshoes for the first time and then made him march up a couple thousand feet of deep crusty powder. It seems harsh, but we know that beneath the cold fingers and blistered feet, it's the most rewarding kind of fun. We daydream about future adventures that are even more ridiculous and punishing, and with calculated craziness, start scheming to make them a reality.

Such was our tract on an innocent night in late October, chatting online about possible options for Nov. 5-7:

9:34 PM me :I'm just reading your e-mail re:Weekend after Halloween. My friend Bill is actually driving down to that race you mentioned, the 25 Hours of Frog Hollow. So I could theoretically get a ride down with him.

You know, if you were interested. ;)

9:35 PM Beat: It's way too long for me, but if you want to do it, I could come down. Or, since it's a timed event, I can just really really really suck

9:36 PM me: Ha! I was thinking we could be a duo team. But, yeah, perhaps not the best idea for either of us. If I did it solo, it would really set back my Susitna training. At least, in the past I have tended to take a while to recover from these sorts of things.

Unlike you, who could do it off the couch.

And still run a 50K the next day.

9:37 PM Beat: I could do what off the couch? Susitna? Ha! That scares even me ;)

me: Well yeah, that too, but I was talking about the 25-hour race.

Beat: Well, duo huh. I am a bit worried about the technical stuff, but I guess I would learn on the go. It would be pretty crazy, but no crazier than you doing the bear :)

9:38 PM me: I'm actually fairly unskilled on desert terrain. I could probably pick my way through this race, but it would really beat me up.

9:39 PM Beat: How does the duo work?

me: You ride at separate times and tag each other. You don't even have to alternate laps. One person could ride three laps, the other one, and then the first could do three more, etc. It's up to the team.

9:40 PM Beat: Uh, I could get us both google jerseys hahahaha

poor google

(bc of me, not of you)

9:41 PM me: Ha! Matching google jerseys would look cool.

Problem with duo is that the two people really never see each other. It's really more like half of a solo event.

Beat: Yeah I see what you mean

9:42 PM Beat :Uh Daniel is going for the UTMB+TDG idea

Not sure if he's bluffing ;)

me: Yikes. You are really spreading the crazy around with astonishing success.

Last sunset ride of the year: The Hidden Treasure trail in the warm 50-degree sunshine on Wednesday, my last after-work ride before the time change takes the last of the evening daylight with it.

That was how Beat and I signed up as a duo team for the 25 Hours of Frog Hollow, a 25-hour mountain bike race this Saturday and Sunday in Hurricane, Utah. He's almost a complete novice on a mountain bike. I haven't actively trained for anything since early August. There's going to be 13 hours of darkness during the race. Hurricane is in the hot dry desert that neither of us are adapted too, and requires enough travel during a three-day "weekend" to make anyone's head spin. It's nuts. And yet ... I'm excited.

Wish us luck. We're going to need it.

Five years

(Photo of my backyard in Homer, Alaska, on November 2, 2005)

Wednesday, November 2, 2005. The hum of mountain bike tires on wet pavement lulled me into gray daydreams — flickers of my cold concrete office, the puzzle pieces of newspaper design, an interview with an artist — set against a backdrop of a steep hillside dotted with log cabins and Tyvek-coated shacks. My commute. Behind me, Kachemak Bay was shrouded in clouds, but still sparkling beneath a far-reaching finger of pink sunshine. I turned off West Hill and continued churning up the gravel of Diamond Ridge. It was only 4:30 p.m. and already daylight was fading. I rose above snow line and watched my front tire carve treaded tracks through a dusting of powder, which became deeper as I climbed. I had never ridden a bicycle through snow before. I was struck by the sudden silence; the snow muffled my tires and resisted my pedal strokes, until the entire world seemed to dissolve in a slow-motion dream. I exhaled. My frozen breath swirled in front of my face like silk curtains. I turned onto my side street and sliced through the powder, past the moose tracks, past the horse whose long hair was speckled in snowflakes, toward my own large single-room cabin in the woods, high on the bluff above Homer, Alaska.

I had lived there just over seven weeks, and was still completely awed by my surroundings: the sparkling bay, the snow-capped Kenai Mountains, the ash-belching volcanoes, the quirky downtown buildings and cobbled-together cabins. I pulled my bike up the porch and looked out over my backyard. The view was absolutely jaw-dropping — rolling hillsides of spruce trees and alder blanketed in snow, all framed by the white mountains. I went inside and fished through several drawers until I found my camera, a cheap 2.1-megapixel Fuji digital that I acquired when I decided to move to Alaska. After all, you really shouldn't move to Alaska without a camera. I had only taken a handful of pictures so far — mostly of the amusingly vintage furniture we purchased at local garage sales to fill the spacious single room and loft, of my cat stalking voles in the tall fireweed, and the crumbling outhouse in the front yard. But the wintry scene demanded photography, even low-tech amateur photography. I snapped one or two shots and went inside to warm my numb fingers and toes.

Later that night, I sat down to send a few e-mails to my family and friends. I muddled for words to describe everything that was happening — new job, new partnership, new life in a place that in nearly every way was worlds away from the life I knew before. “Today I rode my bike in the snow,” I typed in the subject line, and fired off my picture to the people I loved and missed.

“I really need to start a blog,” I said to my then-partner. “It’s hard to keep up with e-mails.”

“You mean Bike to Shine?” he asked, referring to the blog I kept to document our Alaska road trip and cross-country bicycle tour in 2003.

“No,” I said. “I already shut that site down. I need an Alaska blog. One where I can keep in touch with everyone and post pictures at the same time.”

I returned to the computer and set up a new account with Blogger.com. I scrolled through the templates and picked the cool blue hues that reflected my snowy location. I chose the url “Arctic Glass” because the phrase evoked sheets of ice on the ocean and the glistening silence of frozen tundra. It was also how I once misinterpreted a line from the Modest Mouse song “Grey Ice Water.” From the lyrics of that song, I also chose the name of my blog: “You got a job … Up in Alaska … It’s easy to save what the cannery pays cause there ain’t no way to spend it.”

The next day, I typed up my introductory post and announced my new blog’s existence to all of my family and friends. “I’m going to update it in lieu of the mass e-mails I’ve been sending,” I wrote. “Expect lots more pretty pictures of Alaska, which I hope will convince you all to come visit me in Homer.” I didn’t know if anyone would read it. I didn’t know that a scattering of early comments from strangers would ease me into Alaska’s widely dispersed winter cycling community. I didn’t know I would discover a race called the Sustina 100 and decide to use my blog as a training log. I didn’t know that readers’ financial support and encouragement would boost me through the completion of my first race ever — ultra or otherwise. I didn’t know that readership would continue to grow as I documented my ongoing discoveries in Alaska. I didn’t know that support would stay when I made the difficult decision to move to Juneau. I didn’t know my interest in photography would expand from nearly nonexistent to a daily habit. I didn’t know that I would continue to turn to the blog as a cathartic and creative outlet. I couldn’t anticipate the way my relationships with friends and family would enrich and grow in the way they did, because I had never before found such an effective way to communicate what was going on with me. I had no concept of the way tracking my training in a public forum would propel me to get out even when training was the last thing I wanted to do. I couldn’t foresee the way this self-fulfilling cycle would propel me to success in undertakings such as the 350-mile Iditarod race and the 2,700-mile Tour Divide — endeavors that on November 2, 2005, would have seemed wholly ridiculous and impossible to me. I didn’t know this public forum would introduce me to an array of new people, several of whom became some of my closest friends. I didn’t know I would generate 1,276 posts over five years, an extensive record of a half decade of my life. I didn’t know the blog would see the dissolution of everything that sparked it — living in a quirky cabin in Homer, my training logs, my partnership, and even my life in Alaska — and still continue to develop and grow. I didn’t know that ~2,000 people would click into it daily, drawing a small but substantial pool of like-minded people from all around the world.

(Photo of my current "backyard" - Missoula as seen from the top of Mount Sentinel at 7:33 p.m. November 1, 2010)

I didn’t know that this blog would change my life. But I’m grateful for every facet of it. Happy fifth anniversary, Arctic Glass, and thanks to everyone who’s joined me for any part of the journey.

Halloween

Recently, there haven't been nearly enough hours in the day to catch up on sleep, let alone the blog. There are entire essays I'd love to write about the swirl of activity and plans in the past few weeks, but for now a scattered photo post will have to suffice.

This weekend Beat came out to visit me in Montana. On Friday night we headed out for a "quick" mountain bike ride to try out brand-new super-high-beam headlights (possible review to come, if I have time, but not in this post.) Compared to my former usage of various combinations of low-end headlamps, these lights made night-riding seem as natural and easy as riding during the day, although they do remove some of the mystery and excitement of riding with limited visibility. It was one of those situations where we frittered away an entire evening and didn't even go out until after 10:30 at night. I said "OK, we'll ride 10 miles," which turned into the whole Kim Williams trail, which was passively extended to the Deer Creek Sneak, which the lead to necessary singletrack explorations on the Sam Braxton Trail, and before we knew it we had a two-and-a-half hour, ~25-mile ride ending at 1 a.m. This seems to be an early sign that Beat and I make a uniquely dangerous combination — alone, I usually talk myself out of my own unreasonable ideas. But when someone else comes along and adds a voice convincing enough to make these ideas appear reasonable, there's really nothing to stop the cycle of sleep deprivation, outlandish endeavors, and taking already overreaching steps just one step farther.

Anyway, that's why we overslept on Saturday and headed up to Kalispell later than hoped. My friend Dave recently moved to these northern climes, and we met up in the late morning with the express purpose of searching for snow. None of us thought we'd find much. I even left my snowboard at home, because I decided that I didn't want to ride it through bushes and rocks. We headed up to Big Mountain ski resort in Whitefish, and discovered a few fresh inches right at the base.

A couple thousand feet higher, there were dozens of inches of fresh heavy powder, and stunning views to go with it. Was I disappointed that I left my snowboard at home? A little, but the truth is I don't really care. I relish the climbing more anyway, and I actually really enjoy trying to run down 30-degree slopes of bottomless powder, possibly more than I enjoy carving clunky turns on my board. Last winter I was all about learning how to ski (with only limited success.) This winter I have more ambitious athletic goals, but I do plan to work toward becoming more avy-savvy, and also to continue to boost my beginner mountaineer skills by hiking/running snowy mountains.

It was a beautiful October day at Big Mountain, with intermittent fog and glaring sun, and lots of skiers, jump-building snowboarders and not a small number of snowshoers. It really warms my heart to see so many people out enjoying the early-season snow on snowshoes. When I was younger, cultural obsessions with gear and technical skills essentially drove me away from winter sports and all of the beauty and rewards outdoor winter travel has to offer. I fall into a rare group that really just wants to be outside, without the pressure of shredding mad pow with truck-fulls of shiny expensive gear. Snowshoes open up a much wider world to people with limited skills and resources. Of course, you can argue that winter cycling is just as, if not more, gear-intensive as skiing. That may be true, but I think we all find our niche, and I'm no longer ashamed to face the all-encompassing ski culture that surrounds me and declare my love of snowshoeing, even as nearly all of my friends complain that it's boring and slow.

Beat had also never tried snowshoeing before ... or really any winter sport to much extent. (Beat: "I grew up in Switzerland and never skied." Me: "I grew up in Utah and never skied!" Aw, so much in common.) He found snowshoeing to be marginally fun when marching up steep inclines through knee-deep powder off trail, but not tolerable on the boot-packed trail. He eventually took them off and ran full-speed downhill, carrying the snowshoes like lunch trays in both hands.

Dave, on the other had, looked like he was having a fantastic time on skis. Here he is, apparently posing for a Patagonia ad circa 1992.

Here's my imaginary ad pose. Deuter backpacks: Go-to gear for the extreme snowshoer. (Oh yeah, I forgot that snowshoeing is supposed to be super lame. Oh well. The dangling fleece jacket would preclude use of this photo as a product placement anyway.)

There Dave goes again, ripping it up on skis, making the rest of us look bad.

The real reason for heading up north was Danni's annual Halloween extravaganza. At the bottom of my enormously overstuffed list of duties was finding a Halloween costume, and I hadn't completed it yet as of Friday night. While Dave and his wife, Meredith, came up with brilliant adaptations of characters from the Rollergirl movie "Whip It," I could only dig up a pair of mega-short shorts, cut up a T-shirt, pull on a couple of wrist sweatbands and call myself an "'80s jogger." I talked Beat into wearing his Google kit (Ha ha, I'm a runner and he's a cyclist, get it? No? Oh well.) Beat couldn't quite settle for that lame excuse for a couple's costume, so he donned a blaze orange cap and explained to everyone that he was a "Trail scout for Google Maps, trying to blend in with the Montana hunting community." Then, people would look inquisitively at me, waiting for my extensive story. "Um, I'm a jogger," I'd say, and then bend my elbows and knees in a jogging pose. They'd politely nod and look away, waiting for the conversation to return to Danni's "Sexy Ewok" costume.

Snow, costumes and candy. Could you really ask for a better holiday?

Riding to snow

"22 degrees!" Bill called out, as though a temperature rise of 1 degree was the best news of the night. His headlight beam cast a streaming glow on the whitewashed forest, starkly framed against the black sky. Trees wore new snow like children in oversized dresses, bewildered by the heavy formality of winter. I clenched my numb fingers inside my mittens and pressed my palms against the handlebars. A fountain of fine powder streamed from Bill's rear wheel. I shifted my shoulders in an attempt to follow his line. Once powder is six inches deep or more, you don't so much ride a bike as surf with it, feathering the handlebars and gently shifting your weight as the wheels slice through the swift current. The rear wheel was swept sideways and my mountain bike fishtailed wildly through the snow. I pressed the brakes and righted it, then veered away from Bill, who was fishtailing himself. I blinked against the weight of ice frozen to my eyelashes. City lights sparkled in a distance far below.

"What are you doing tonight?" Bill wrote to me eight hours earlier.

"I brought my mountain bike to work, so probably a bike ride," I wrote back.

"Where to?" he asked.

"I don't know. I kind of want to ride to the snow."

Snow had fallen in the mountains just outside Missoula over the weekend. It was the first significant snow cover of the year, and snow line looked like it was up around 5,500 feet. I was trying to think of how I could access it the fastest when Bill sent me a list of possibilities. And for some strange reason, I read through them and picked the destination that was both the longest and highest of all.

Bill met me at my office at 5:20. Our pace was too fast right off the bat. Whenever I feel cruddy while riding with others, I'm never sure if they're pushing it more than we usually do together, or if I'm just having a bad day. Either way, my heart rate was severely elevated and I was breathing hard enough I had to deliberately enunciate each word in response to Bill's questions. We veered up Grant Creek canyon and my responses nearly trickled out altogether.

The larch trees were in the peak of fall splendor - golden towers tinted with scarlet light at sunset. My throat started to burn from breathing excessive quantities of cool air. Bill let up on his pace a bit when I stopped chasing him. More than an hour and 15 miles had passed and we still hadn't reached the base of Snowbowl. My mind still hadn't registered that this was likely going to turn into a long ride.

But it was one of those evenings where time didn't really matter. The crisp air, the color, the sunlight - it was all so idyllic that nothing else really mattered. The pressures of our day-to-day lives and our routines and our obligations didn't matter. Even the fact that my body was feeling cruddy and I was perhaps riding too hard didn't matter.

Bill and I rode toward the alpenglow and the one thing that did matter in that moment - the mountains with their inaugural snowfall, and the white silent world we were seeking.

We climbed and climbed. The dirt road turned to mud, and then frozen mud, and then ice. The first dusting of snow came into the beam of our headlamps. Then the snow grew deeper, the forest more saturated, until we found ourselves in a frozen world entirely different from the city's bright autumn hues. Bill watched his thermometer and announced the status of the rapidly plummeting temperature. "28 degrees ... 27 ... 26." Because I had come straight from work, and didn't anticipate riding in temperatures lower than the mid- to high-30s when I left in the morning, I didn't have all the gear I normally would for temperatures in the 20s. I was a bit underdressed, especially on my feet, so I occasionally jumped off the bike to run beside it. I ran until my throat burned, then jumped back on until my toes tingled. When I became too exhausted to run, I just walked, but by then the snow was so thick that I could easily keep up with Bill, even as he pedaled and I pushed.

The snow started to become too deep to ride at all. Our wildly ambitious destination, Point 6, still loomed 1,000 feet above us. It was late. We were both cold, shedding heat and dreading the descent as it was. We pulled off at the top of Snowbowl - the ski resort we had been riding the perimeter of - and pushed toward an A-frame on the tenuous hope that the door would be unlocked. It was. We ducked inside and put on our remaining layers. It was time to stop seeking the snow, and start facing it.

Before we left, Bill pulled out his special surprise - curry lentil soup in a thermos. It was halfway cold - a result of a ride that ended up being much colder and longer than planned. Bill's thermometer read 21 degrees. There was more frost than snow on the windblown building. I sucked at my Camelbak hose, but it had long since frozen solid. "Let's do this thing," I said.

We surfed the steep downhill powder and picked up speed in a single truck track pressed into the road. The wind hit my face like sharp ice so I pulled up my face mask, which quickly started to fill with ice. 21 degrees with a 20 mph windchill equals a stinging slap of reality this early in the season. Eventually bodies acclimate and winter gear is figured out all over again and the biting edge of winter finally dulls. But right at the beginning, the cold is as sharp and forceful as a razor blade, and Bill and I cried out with equal amounts of exhilaration and pain, right at that center point where bodies feel the entire scope of what it is to be alive.

More strategic running got us back to town with hands, torsos and feet that had reached a workable equilibrium. I felt more tired than I had after a post-work ride in a long time, so I asked Bill what the numbers were. 45 miles. 4,524 feet of climbing. Max elevation 6,933 feet. Time 5:35. Moving time 4:51. But GPS knew nothing of the high-friction snow, of the battles with the cold, of the silence and beauty and peace. That's because GPS isn't alive, and we are, which is why we seek these high places, steeped in the wonder of life.

California streaming

I'm consistently amazed by the almost metaphysical transition of a mundane plane ride. There's something strangely enticing about entering a small metal cylinder that essentially serves as a sensory deprivation chamber, sipping a tiny cup of Diet Coke and reading a guilty pleasure magazine like Outside while the world disappears below me, and emerging hours later in another place entirely. Car and bicycle travel just doesn't have the same sudden impact. I find myself stepping out of the airport and grappling to take in the rush of new sensations — the warm moist air, the rich urban smells, the city lights stretching over the horizon. I'm in awe. How did I get here?

I flew out to California this weekend to visit Beat. I landed in San Jose, which is not really the kind of city I ever envisioned as a destination, but that's just part of the surprising way life works out sometimes. Beat took me to see his place of employment, which is the world headquarters of Google. I work at the world headquarters of Adventure Cycling — about two dozen employees housed in a former Christian Science church with historic bicycles mounted on the walls. Google is a jaw-dropping contrast to that — a vast manicured campus where many thousands of employees from all over the world zip around on tiny primary-color bicycles, eat frozen yogurt from on-site soft-serve machines and gather in sprawling cafeterias. The weather was California perfect when we visited. The lawns were too green to be real. There were outdoor tables made out of cruiser bikes and 12-foot-tall statues of donuts. I stumbled as I tried to take it all in. How did I get here?

Before all that, we traveled to Yosemite National Park. Our planned early start Saturday morning turned into a very late start, and it was well into Saturday afternoon by the time we wended through the Sierra foothills into the fog-shrouded Yosemite Valley. We didn't really have a plan for what we would do when we got there, but we did have a campsite reserved near the Yosemite Village. We followed a stream of cars into a parking lot and fought wandering crowds of people to find the visitor center. We looked at maps but didn't find any solid ideas. The weather was dreary. I found myself feeling more and more distressed. I was crammed into a crowded national park without a plan. How did I get here?

Beat sensed my distress and was also uncomfortable with the atmosphere of Yosemite — although necessary, national park infrastructure just feels so contrived. Gift stores amid towering cliffs are a part of my culture, and well ingrained in my childhood recollections — but that doesn't change the scar they seem to carve into places so beautiful they defy memory. We walked into the wilderness office and requested a backcountry permit. They made us pick a region so we arbitrarily pointed out the John Muir Trail on the map. We returned to the car and organized our gear. I stuffed the backpack that has long since become mainly airport luggage with everything I hoped would make us comfortable — my minus-40-degree sleeping bag, tent, pad, tons of warm and dry clothing, food, lights, water. Beat's pack had even more weight, with a bear-proof food canister and stove. We hoisted our packs and he immediately breathed out a few words of distress.

Try to convince an ultrarunner that backpacking is a good idea, when they know that they can just leave the crap at home, run all through the night and cover 10 times the distance as a waddling backpacker. It's not easy. "We're not going hiking, we're going camping," I reasoned as we passed the overstuffed campground where we had planned to spend the night. The rain started just as we began to make our way up the smooth paved trail. The weight of my pack pressed down like an oppressive hand. Hoards of people returning from their day hikes regarded us with a mixture of pity and derision. "Where are you guys going this late in the day?" "You do realize it's going to rain tonight." "What will you do about bears?" We were happy to see the pavement end.

We climbed into the fog and growing twilight. Darkness descended, and beams of light from our headlamps revealed the swirling mist and thick, chunky precipitation that fell somewhere between rain and snow. After about four hours, we had walked about 11 miles and climbed 4,200 feet. Beat found this to be a pitiably small distance, but we agreed that since the point of the excursion was camping, it was a good time to camp. I set up my tent and unrolled my Arctic bag next to his 40-degree ultralight bag (I referred to them as Mama Marmot and Mini Marmot.) We hoped the combination of the two would somehow carry us through the wet cold night. The rain fell harder. We wandered down canyon until we found water, then fired up the stove to add moisture to a couple packets of freeze-dried food. We found the expired meals were too bitter to choke down very easily, so for dinner we ate a mixture of energy bars and Haribo candies. We forgot to bring tea or instant coffee, so for a hot drink I melted a Snickers Bar in a cup of water. We sipped the sweet drink with its soft boiled peanuts, savoring it like it was the best cappuccino from the fanciest cafe in all of San Francisco. There's something to be said about the virtue of camping — it does make all the simple things matter.

It rained all through the night. Sometimes it rained very hard, and sometimes so softly it almost sounded like snow. The temperature was in the mid-30s at best, and we had a very difficult time motivating to hoist ourselves out of the Arctic gear and into the damp morning. Any inclinations we had to press deeper into the wilderness disintegrated with the passing hours. We finally rousted in the late morning to deal with damp everything — damp tent, damp shoes, damp (more like drenched) packs, damp energy bars for breakfast. I rung out my shirt before stuffing it in my pack rather than endure the pain of putting it on my body. "Sorry I forgot to warn you how much camping sucks," I apologized to Beat. "Next time, I promise, we can run all through the night." He just laughed.

We waddled a few miles down the trail to an intersection for a high point called Cloud's Rest. We dropped the packs and the oppressive hand finally released its grip. We comparatively flew up the trail through a chilling curtain of wind-driven rain. Sometimes, the swirling clouds would shift just enough to reveal our spectacular surroundings — sheer granite walls and the shrouded monolith of the Half Dome. I'd never been to Yosemite before, and the slivers of clarity were a startling reminder of the grandeur that existed just beyond my own ghostly world. How did I get here?

We rose into the clouds and climbed onto the appropriately named peak, elevation 9,930 feet — about 3,000 feet higher than the point where we dropped our packs. Wind blew the rain sideways and we were both drenched through and frozen, with nothing to see beyond the thick gray mass surrounding us. "This is all worth it because we have the entire place to ourselves," Beat said, and I grinned because I agreed. I appreciate spectacular scenery and the adventure of the outdoors and am glad that plenty of other people do, too. At the same time, the experiences I value even more are the ones that pull me just a little bit farther, closer to the edges of the unknown, closer to the margins of my own personal boundaries, closer to others who not only feel the same way I do, but imagine the same things as we gaze into the invisible distance.

On the way back, we saw a benign-looking sign pointing out the junction of the Mist Trail, which we took mainly because it was 1.5 miles shorter than the trail we were on. The trail tumbled down a rock fall alongside a spectacularly sheer waterfall, swollen and streaked with brown hues from the runoff. The veil of water seemed to engulf us fully, until even the rain was little more than a memory from above. We worked our way down Nevada Falls and stood on the edge of Vernal Falls — both places only a couple of miles from the main trailhead, probably visited by hundreds of thousands of people every year, but in the cold October rain we were nearly the only people on the Mist Trail, lost in the mystical beauty of a world so far from our own.

In a way, it really doesn't matter where your wilderness exists. What matters is where it takes you, to those quiet and contemplative places where the deep past and distant future collide, and where two people with remarkably different environments and backgrounds can find startling quantities of common ground. My trip to California was short but provided me with a lot of insight into myself and my own values, what matters, and what I have yet to discover. When I look back on a weekend that passed through my life like a streaming cloud, I can only smile and reflect. How did I get here?