Slow and steady

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

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

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

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

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

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

Slip, slide, sprint

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chasing the rain

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Be Brave, Be Strong eBook release

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Slightly off camber

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Purchase the eBook direct from Amazon at this link.

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

Signed copy of "Ghost Trails"

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

Excerpt from "Ghost Trails"

Rainy Pass, Alaska
February 26, 2008

The Puntilla Lake Lodge was little more than a roof and a stove pipe sticking out of a small mountain of drifted snow.

Its elevation was about 2,000 feet, an unlikely altitude for human inhabitants in that part of the world. Weather that would be considered extreme anywhere else — 20 below temperatures, 40 mph wind gusts, white-out blizzards — was normal weather outside the Puntilla Lake Lodge.

Around its wind-scoured walls, the last strands of spruce before alpine tree line, with scraggly branches all blown to one side, provided little protection. The wood stove blasted out dry heat as the lodge’s manager — a teenage boy — handed me a can of clam chowder that had been boiling on a camp stove, and a thin paper napkin to hold it with. I took a plastic spoon and stirred the off-white glop around the blackened can. The soup burned my fingers and charred my throat, but I finally had some of my appetite back and did not want to waste it. I began to nibble on discs of pilot bread, a quintessential Alaska Bush emergency food that supposedly never goes soggy or stale. It tasted exactly like a soggy, stale saltine cracker.

Beds had been stacked together side by side in the tiny, single-room building. They were mostly empty now with the exception of Brij, who was sleeping soundly on a bottom bunk, and the teenager, who seemed grumpy about the necessity of staying awake past 4 a.m. He did not seem to want to chat with me. I tried to ply information about the trail ahead and he told me simply that two guys had been up to the pass on their snowmobiles the day before, but he had no idea if the trail was broken beyond there. I asked him if any of the other cyclists had opted to go over Hell’s Gate, a long-way around that veers around Rainy Pass but tacks on 33 extra miles. He just shrugged. “I think they all went over the pass,” he said.

For someone who lived so close to the edge of civilization, he didn’t seem to have much interest in what existed beyond. I asked him if he stayed at the lodge year round. He said he only spent the winters there, helping out his family, who operated the lodge for hunters, snowmobilers and sled dog mushers. I smiled at the thought of a winter destination resort in Alaska. The wind outside rattled the cabin’s log walls, and frost was forming near the inside corners despite the wood stove. Puntilla was a strange place to spend a winter when most Alaskans were retreating to California and Hawaii, but such is the nature of the Iditarod Trail.

I sat down on one of the beds and began to strip off my soggy clothing. I examined my problem areas and became alarmed when I saw my right knee was extremely swollen, but then again, my entire leg was swollen. I was probably just retaining water. My right big toe was surrounded in an enormous blister, which I decided I would believe was simply a blister, and not frostbite. I took three aspirin, two Tums and two glucosamine pills, covered my knees in menthol patches, popped a cough drop in my mouth and laid down on the hard mattress.

I never expected the accommodations in this race to be luxurious, but I was a bit surprised just how Spartan they actually were. People actually lived like this for entire winters. There were probably others who lived like this their entire lives, in tiny cabins set against the continent’s largest mountains, with only mortared logs and wood stoves to hold back the constant needling of the fingers of death.

The unwelcome light of dawn hit my face at about 8:30 a.m. Brij was shuffling around the cabin, packing up his gear. The teenage lodge manager was still awake, and still staring blankly out the window. No one had come in behind us yet. Not Ted, and not the last straggling Euro cyclists. I half expected to see Geoff catch up to me by now, as slow as I had been moving. I looked around the room, but all the other beds were empty. I asked Brij if I could head out with him. He nodded, but we both knew I would only be able to hold his wheel for a few miles. I opted instead to take off early, let him catch me, and that way keep at least one racer in my time zone for as long as I could.

My gut was still empty when I walked into the glare of the heatless sun. I could not stomach the thought of more pilot bread and can-flavored soup. I still had a frame bag full of nuts and Clif Bars, so I certainly wasn’t going to starve. The cold air wrapped around me, but its grip had been softened since the morning before. I tried to tally how many hours of sleep I had logged overnight and couldn’t decide if it was three or 27. It was Tuesday now, 9 a.m., and I was already losing track of time to the relentless pull of the trail. The morning was clear and cold and bathed in a kind of intense beauty that was nearly incapacitating, as delirious and exhausted as I was. All I could do was keep my feet on the pedals as my eyes darted around in awe. In the blindness of the night before, I had climbed all the way into the sister peaks of Denali. After 165 miles of watching them from a distance, I was finally carving my way into their direct shadows.

The trail, only shallowly tracked by the two snowmobiles the lodge manager had mentioned, softened quickly in the sun. After three miles, I gave up the hard pedaling and resumed walking with my bike. A red fox darted down the trail beside me, stopping briefly to look back before it raced ahead, much faster than I could ever hope to move.

Brij soon followed, wishing me good morning as he swerved through the soft snow in his strongman effort to ride as much of the trail as possible. Sunrise climbed over the barren peaks, and the last strands of spruce gave way to thin alder branches and huge, open meadows that in the summer would be covered in tundra. In February, they were simply expanses of snow, blank sheets of paper scribbled with bare branches and the deep tracks of a dozen riders who walked through here before me.

Footprints were always a discouraging sign. Having watched them appear occasionally on the trail since the second day of the race, I had ascertained that I was one of the least skilled snow bikers out there. Most of the cyclists proved able to ride in places where I could not, and their footprints were a mark of the trail’s deterioration. When there were a single set of footprints, I could often ride, but not always. When there were three or four, mine were nearly always behind them, walking. When there were eight or more, I didn’t stand a chance of mounting my bike and coaxing the wheels to turn. The snow was just too soft, the incline too steep, the effort too difficult.

Still, the long bike push up into the Alaska Range was something I had expected, and nothing could sour my mood in the midst of such sweeping beauty. I pulled out my camera and shot a self-portrait against the chiseled white peaks. I looked at the digital display, an image of my black hat coated in frost, a swirl of frozen hair, a bright red face and a huge smile. I looked so happy. It made me smile again.

I pulled out a celebratory peanut butter cup and stuck it in my mouth. I was becoming more used to the culinary experience of frozen food — tasteless, dry and repulsive at first bite, it would slowly dissolve into warm and creamy sustenance. It was still hard to coax much of it down. If I had a hundred peanut butter cups, I probably would have eaten them all, but I didn’t, so I forced down two crunchy granola bars and called my 400-calorie breakfast good.

The wind picked up more force as the afternoon approached. I crossed the last long, open meadow and turned right into a narrow canyon, the final ascent to Rainy Pass — at 3,300 feet, the highest point on the Iditarod Trail. The trail took a turn for the very steep; the pushing became backbreaking work. I dug my boots into the snow, and with my hands clenched around the brakes, pushed the bike forward with all of my strength just so I could take another step. My shoulders ached and my biceps burned. I cursed the fact I had not spent at least some of my training time in the gym lifting big weights, but in the heatless sun of that third day, all of my physical training seemed to hardly matter anyway.

Sure, I was fit, but I had probably been nearly as fit for such an effort six months before. I really should have spent more time researching light gear, learning to ride a bike on top of soft snow, and buying peanut butter cups. It didn’t even seem odd to me that, in the midst of a terribly difficult bike race, my physical fitness suddenly seemed meaningless. Not all humans are equipped to win races, but everyone comes preprogrammed with the will to survive.

My mood swung wildly all day long. In the morning, I had experienced peaks of elation so extreme I could hardly breathe. But as I clawed my way up Rainy Pass, I found myself dipping into new depths of despair. A few times, I stopped walking because I could not visualize another step up the mountain. And then, just as it had so faithfully on Dismal Swamp in 2006, my will to survive pushed the autopilot button, and the mundane miles kept coming. After a few of those deep lows, it was hard to even pull my emotions back to normal levels. The beauty of Rainy Pass, which surrounded me like a fortress, was already slipping behind a curtain of indifference. I did not even mind the impending darkness as I crested the pass at sunset. If anything, no longer being able to see all the miles in front of me might do my emotional health some good, I thought.

I dropped down the pass several hundred yards to get out of the wind. I ducked into a rocky outcropping that was just unusual enough to have possibly been built by hands. Sure enough, I found a sign, weather faded and coated in ice, with simple black letters spelling out “Rainy Pass.” I took a lot of comfort in that simple marker of civilization — proof that humans had come through there before me, and proof that I was still on the right track.

I thought wistfully of hiking with my dad as a teenager. At all of our destinations, a scenic overlook or a peak, there always seemed to be a sign or a register. We would mark our accomplishment with a phone call home and a big lunch. But there, on the wind-swept ice of Rainy Pass, there was no cell phone reception for miles. I rifled through my frame bag to look for something to eat for lunch and realized that the setting sun meant it was nearly 6 p.m. I had eaten nearly nothing since my granola bar and peanut butter cup breakfast— a few nuts here and there, a few dried cranberries and fruit leathers. I was probably lucky if I had a thousand calories in me for the entire day, and still I did not feel hungry. I settled on two more peanut butter cups — even though I already had eaten my daily allotment — half of a five-ounce chocolate bar, and a Clif Bar that I had been thawing in my coat pocket. It was a meager dinner and it tasted like frozen mud, but it was my duty as a survivor to put it down.

As I started down the pass, the footprints grew more deep and even more numerous. In fact, all I could see were footprints. There were no longer any snowmobile tracks, no evidence of any trail at all. There were simply the racers who came before me, stomping through knee-deep snow down the steep slope, laying the only path I had to follow as night descended. After three more miles of slow downhill walking and no evidence of any trail at all, it became apparent that not only did I have to walk up Rainy Pass, I was going to have to walk down it as well.

Downhill pushing was an effort I never anticipated. With big tires, bicycle riding in the snow is nearly always possible downhill, even when the trail is soft. But without a tracked trail, weight just sinks into the powder and wheels become useless. A set of skis or snowshoes could have at least offered my body some float, but I had none.

I waded through the knee-deep snow and wondered aloud, to the peaks disappearing into the night above me, how much farther it was to the next checkpoint, Rohn. I guessed it was at least 20 miles. At my most hopeful walking speed, 2 mph, I still had 10 more hours to push. In the midst of a powder slog, my pace was probably closer to 1 mph. The need for sleep was surrounding me like a smothering cocoon. I did not know if I could handle another all-nighter, but did not believe I could survive a night out.

So I walked, because walking meant life, and stopping meant death, and in that state of extremes, there is actually little to fear. I knew I had to keep moving, so I did. All of the surrounding threats — the cold, the moose and wolves, the open streams, the looming darkness, the remote location — faded behind a primal drive to stay in motion. Although I was quickly succumbing to exhaustion and becoming more aware of just how far I had still to go, I did not despair. I did not even hit the same level of lows that I had experienced mere hours earlier, when my toughest challenge was pushing my bike up a steep hill. I felt good, actually, because I was still moving. And as long as I was moving, I was alive.

Several hours passed into oblivion, not quite awake but not yet asleep, as my bobbing light cast a sickly yellow glow on the endless march of footprints. I followed them, down steep hills, beside the twisting branches of spruce trees, across thin ice over a rushing stream and into the heart of the night’s darkness. I was lucky to have those footprints. If it had been up to me to navigate myself in that state of mind, I might have walked right off a cliff or into open water. But it’s hard to say how inept I would have been if I had been completely on my own. The will to survive is strong, and it drives as effectively as it can, but only as much as it has to.

In countless hours of post-race reflection, I have tried to piece together the sequence of “what went wrong” in those final hours awake on the backside of Rainy Pass. My memories are dim at best, obscured by physical overload and mounting indifference. But I remember stopping, the way I had dozens of times that day, turning off my headlamp and looking up at the sky. A dim ribbon of green light wavered in the narrow strip of sky above the mountains, peaks so white they glowed against the moonless night. Stars glistened behind the northern lights, and I groped for the elation I deserved, the appropriate response to unspeakable beauty. I felt nothing. I turned on my light and moved to take a step, but my legs wouldn’t move. They simply refused to move. I knelt into the snow and let out a long, almost relieved sigh.

My will to survive was firing just enough to alert my retreated intelligence that I was in the midst of a serious bonk. I had run out of fuel, finally and completely. The will to survive would have let me continue if I had no other choice, but what little intelligence I had left reminded me that I did have other choices. I had pushed my body to a state of inescapable exhaustion, but I had come prepared for the possibility of motionlessness.

My bike still held survival sleeping gear — stuff I had only used and tested a handful of times. So it was strange that like clockwork, like a routine I had practiced a hundred times, I unhooked my bivy bundle, dug a deep trench in the snow, threw a few spruce branches in the hole, unrolled my bivy and crawled inside.

My body warmth filled the sack and I took several deep breaths while comforting myself with out-loud exclamations that “this isn’t that bad.” I reached out to pull my CamelBak, my only source of water, inside with me, and cuddled with the frigid bladder of half-frozen water.

Knowing I was in the midst of a bonk mandated as much food as I could stomach, but I was only able to put down the other half of my chocolate bar from dinner. At least I was warm, warm enough to let the fear encompass me again, and the quick glance at my thermometer, still bottomed out at 20 below after two minutes inside my bag, was enough to reignite my smoldering fear. What if the warm cocoon surrounding me failed? How would I possibly crawl 10 or more miles into Rohn? I heard a low, dull howl in the distance that was either a wolf or the wind. I could not remember the last time I felt so alone.

Purchase a copy of "Ghost Trails" today:

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

Purchase the eBook direct from Amazon at this link.

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

Signed copy of "Ghost Trails"

Friday roundup

In the midst of a lot of nervous energy about finishing up my book, and the tedious promotional work that's gone along with it, I've been grateful for my opportunities to get outside this week. Unfortunately, after the Banff/North Dakota/Ohlone 50K whirlwind of travel and activity, my body hasn't quite been able to keep up. I've been more sluggish than usual, and these days I actually have a GPS/heart rate monitor to show me the ways in which I haven't quite snapped back from recovery yet. Of course there was the 25-mile mountain bike ride with Beat, the seven-mile run along Skyline, and the Mission Peak hill mountain repeats (Beat's idea ... steep terrain practice) that together amounted to about 8,500 feet of climbing since the race. It's all just a continuation of the last two weeks and potentially the next two weeks. Barring injury or burnout, I actually think it's a good idea for me to "train tired" from time to time so I become will accustomed to carrying on when my body feels less than awesome. Then of course rest to fully recover before the big event. I'm not claiming this is a sound training strategy. Mostly, I'm just shoring up mental stamina to carry me through my next fun slog. Plus, I needed excuses to play outside despite admittedly sore quads and weaker heart rate. That's all training really is to me anyway ... an excuse to play outside.

This brings me to my new favorite energy food. You thought I was going to say Honey Stinger Waffles, weren't you? Wrong! These are exactly like Honey Stinger Waffles, at about one tenth the price:

Caramel Bites or "Stroopwafels" from Trader Joe's. Yes, these are the exact same thing. Ok, maybe Honey Stinger uses organic ingredients and packages them in neat individual wrappers. But nutritionally and taste-wise, they're identical. The nutritional indistinguishability is the part that gets to me. I can't tell you how many aquaintances have praised Honey Stinger Waffles only to balk when I reply, "I know. They're awesome. They're cookies." Not only are they just cookies, but they're unapologetically overpriced cookies. I saw Honey Stinger Waffles at a store in Canada for $3 each. Given the current exchange rate, that's like $147 in U.S. dollars. For a small cookie. Yes, a delicious cookie. Still just a cookie.

But because Honey Stinger markets them, they've developed a reputation as a nutritious energy food. Nope. Cookies. Not that I'm against using cookies as energy food. In fact, I'm a big advocate of the taste, convenience and calorie-loading benefits of subsisting on candy and cookies. Which brings me to the next segment of my blog post. Occasionally during the next few weeks, until my book release next month, I'm going to post short excerpts from "Be Brave, Be Strong: A Journey Across the Great Divide" so readers can get a feel for the content. I will offer book pre-ordering soon.

This is an excerpt from Chapter 18: "Untouchable"

I had become an expert on small-town convenience stores. Even independently owned service stations, buried in the most remote regions of the west, all had a near-identical selection of products laid out in a nearly identical way. Their organization was both simple and highly effective, designed for the maximum obtainment of junk food.

I walked into the Salida 7-Eleven with single-minded purpose, knowing I would not pass another significantly populated town on the route for more than 150 miles. I strolled down the first aisle, also known as the candy bar aisle, and selected four king-sized Snickers bars — which not only boasted 500 calories each, but were also usually the most popular and therefore freshest items on the shelf. I then grabbed four pairs of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, prone to melting but probably okay in the high mountain air. The next aisle, the salty snack aisle, held my Corn Nuts, regular nuts, and packages of crackers. The next aisle, the specialty candy aisle, was my favorite. It was here that I was treated to the widest and most thrilling range of selection that can only be found in gummy snacks. I was partial to Sour Patch Kids, but I liked to mix it up with gummy bears and sour worms and sometimes something florescent and obnoxious and full of artificially flavored and chemically colored high-fructose corn syrup. 7-Eleven also carried chocolate-covered espresso beans, a special treat for the mornings I anticipated waking up in a sleeping bag. In the “regular food” aisle, I usually picked up tuna packets and the occasional energy bar. The refrigerated shelves along the outer edge of the store held my orange juice, liters of Pepsi, yogurt, and the hopeful rewards in my never-ending search for wax-coated balls of cheese. I finished with an extra-large cup of coffee and a quick browse of the gourmet cases in front of the store, where I could obtain 600-calorie “homemade” brownies and the cinnamon roll I planned to eat for breakfast before heading out the following morning. After less than five minutes of "shopping," I’d walk to the counter and dump 10,000 calories — about two days’ worth of food — in front of the startled clerk.

“Um, did you find everything you needed?” she asked.

“Oh yes,” I said.

The clerk in Salida was more bold than most, and she smiled wryly. “Having a little celebration are we?” she asked.

I smiled back. If I was more bold, or a better actress, I would have launched into a long sob story about how my husband just cheated on me and I didn’t want to be in the world any more so I was just going to eat my way into a sugar coma. If I had been even bolder than that, I might have just told her the truth, but instead I said, “Ah, I’m just stocking up.”

“Okay then,” she said as she slid a heart attack’s worth of survival food into a plastic bag. “Have a nice day.”

Finally, in anticipation of the book launch, I am offering digital files of "Ghost Trails" for the low, low price of $2.99. You can upload an eBook for your Kindle, Nook, Sony Reader, or laptop at http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/62341. "Ghost Trails," my first memoir that I released in November 2008, details the pivotal life experiences that led to my participation in the 2008 Iditarod Trail Invitational — which remains perhaps the most intense and perspective-altering experience of my life. It also provides an entertaining backstory to "Be Brave, Be Strong."

Have a great weekend!