Book excerpt: Independence Day

From Chapter 22 of "Be Brave, Be Strong: A Journey Across the Great Divide."

On July Fourth, I woke up to brilliant sunlight and crisp air. It tasted like morning in the early fall, with hints of seltzer and wood smoke. I stocked up at the last gas station in town and checked my maps for the phone number to the Pie-O-Neer café in Pie Town. I had already accepted that clinging to the hope it would be open on a national holiday was a futile at best, but I had heard entire legends formed around the pie in Pie Town. That one stop was likely my only shot at human interaction in the next 300 miles, so even a miniscule chance was certainly worth a try. Plus, I would need to restock my drinking water somehow.

At 8:30 a.m., an answering machine informed me that the café was open Wednesday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. They said nothing about July Fourth specifically, but at least there was a chance they were open that day. Still, even my best-case scenarios made reaching it seem impossible. Pie Town was eighty miles away. Even if there was no mud on the road, an impossible-sounding prospect in itself, my chances of pedaling that far in just over seven hours were unlikely at best. The answering machine beeped, and without planning to, I suddenly launched into a pleading message:

“Hi, my name is Jill. I’m traveling through town on a bicycle with the Tour Divide. Perhaps you’ve seen other bikers come through. Anyway, I’m calling from Grants. It’s 8:30 a.m. Saturday. I’m going to try to make it there by four, but it’s eighty miles and with the mud, well, it’s not very likely I’ll be there before you close. I was wondering if you could leave out some kind of lunch, maybe a sandwich or something, and a piece of pie, and a gallon of water, along with a check, and I’ll leave cash. I don’t even care what it is. I pretty much just need calories at this point, calories and water. Please. I’m good for it. I have a lot of cash. My name is Jill Homer.”

I set out with determination to make the 4 p.m. deadline, come what may. As the derelict highway buildings of Grants faded behind me, a bubble of emotion expanded inside my gut. I felt a strong mixture of gratitude and love, as well as loneliness, fear, and despair. I couldn’t discern where this flood of feelings was coming from. My situation was positive, even pleasant. I was rested, well-fed, and riding on pavement within sight of a town full of people. Despite these comforts, tears started to trickle down my cheeks, which erupted into streams, which erupted into open sobbing, complete with flowing snot and phlegmy gulps of air.

Whenever endurance cyclists embark on long races, people often ask us afterward about the specific moment when we first realized we could actually finish what we had set out to do. I always dismissed this question as unanswerable and misleading. To some, I would say that I knew I would eventually finish the Tour Divide when I was all the way back in Montana. To others, I admitted that I wasn’t even sure when I made the final right turn sixty-five miles from the border. But if I am truly honest with myself, those minutes I spent sobbing on my way out of Grants stand apart as a defining moment of clarity.

As my tears began to slow and my gasps became softer, I pleaded an open prayer to entities I also felt were indefinable — to my inner strength, to my resolve, the desert, the open road and the powers that be. “Please be with me. Please stay with me. Please help me get through this.” Something about leaving Grants told me that, barring breakdown or disaster, I was going to finish the Tour Divide. Since I had no control over breakdown or disaster, I pleaded for help from anything that might.

The powers that be nodded benevolently and swept me along the smooth corridor of Highway 117. The rugged but sheer cliffs of El Malpais National Monument cast the pavement in cool shadow. After thirty-eight miles, the route joined the washboard ruts of a wide county road. The jittery corduroy soon faded into smooth but soft clay. The area had indeed been pummeled by thunderstorms the night before; blood-colored puddles glistened in the road’s many dips and potholes. As I rode, my wheels kicked up large clumps of red mud. Still, beneath the late morning sunlight, the mud had hardened just enough to roll into balls and fling away rather than stick to my bike.

“Think light, be light,” I chanted, as though sheer force of will could reduce my weight and keep my wheels floating over the jelly-like layers of mud. Atop a paper-thin veneer of solidified clay, I pedaled apprehensively but quickly, coming close to sinking into the soft mud that undulated beneath my tires, but never quite breaking through the dry layer. I smiled at the knowledge that if I had passed through the same area just a few hours earlier, I would have been mired in wet sludge. Every once in a while, the universe rewards late risers.


Just after 2 p.m., after covering nearly eighty miles in five and a half hours, I strode triumphantly into the open doors of the Pie-O-Neer café. The single-room restaurant was set up modestly with modern tables and old Western art. A guitarist and bassist strummed acoustic country ballads as couples chatted softly over heaping plates of pie. A woman wearing a ruffled apron rushed out from behind the counter and threw her arms around me in an enthusiastic hug. “You made it!” she exclaimed. “I can’t believe you made it!”

“I made it,” I said, smiling widely.

The guitarist had just finished a cover of Johnny Cash’s “Long Black Veil.” “So you’re Jill?” he asked. I nodded. “We did not think you’d make it here until late tonight,” he continued. “It rained all through the night last night, just poured. I knew that road was gone. I sometimes take my horses out there and I know how bad it can get. Even they can’t get through the mud sometimes. We thought you’d be stuck in it.”

“I thought so, too,” I said. “But it had hardened up in the sun. I got really lucky.”
“Well, anyway, congratulations on getting here from Grants in just a few hours. That’s some incredible riding.”

The woman in the apron nodded. “You should have seen Matt Lee when he came through. It was late but I let him in the door. It had been raining hard and Matt was covered in mud. He had this crazy look in his eyes and he just fell in the door mumbling, ‘I need food.’ I said, ‘I know you need food but you’re not coming in here until you clean off that mud.’ I practically had to push him back out the door. I thought, ‘This can’t be healthy.’”

I laughed. I was about to launch into my “Here in mid-pack, we have more fun” speech when she grabbed my shoulders and rushed me to a nearby table. “But you must be starving, riding all the way from Grants,” she said. “What do you want to eat?”

“Um, what do you have?” I asked.

“Well, we don’t have much. The menu’s over there on the wall.”

Before I even looked at it, I asked, “Do you have salad?”

“Well, I don’t have salad, but I have some spinach and tomatoes and other veggies in the fridge. Tell you what, I’ll make you one.”

“That would be awesome,” I said.

“And our special today is spinach quesadilla with fresh salsa. We also have a tomato vegetable soup.”

“Those sound amazing, too,” I interrupted. “I’ll have them both. And salad.”

“Do you want something to drink?”

“Um …” I wavered. I had already ordered three meals.

“Come on, the other Tour Divide guys were just knocking pops back faster than I could replenish them. What do you want?”

“Do you have Pepsi?” I asked.

“Of course,” she said.

“And you can’t leave here without trying a slice of pie,” she said.

“Of course I can’t.” I took a lingering look at the back wall, lined from end to end with towering desserts. “Um, I’ll try the coconut cream,” I finally said.

“Good choice,” she said. “That one won an award last month from a national magazine.”

As I waited for my mountain of fresh food, the guitarist asked me if I had any requests. I couldn’t think of many country tunes I even knew, so I requested more Johnny Cash —“Ring of Fire.” I imagined riding south toward the desert regions of the Great Divide as he sang, “I fell in to a burning ring of fire; I fell down, down, down and the flames went higher.”

As promised, the woman served up cans of Pepsi faster than I could knock them back, and brought me plate after plate of food, hot and fresh and brimming with all the real nutrition I had scarcely known in three weeks of a diet heavy on junk food from gas stations and greasy spoon diners. The woman asked me how my lunch was. “You have no idea how replenishing it is to eat healthy for a change,” I said. “If all Americans could feel this way after eating a spinach salad, McDonalds would go out of business. Which would be awesome, because then people like me could actually find healthy food to eat on the Great Divide.”

The woman laughed. She asked me about the trail prior to Grants and I told her about how surprisingly remote New Mexico had been. A man wearing a trucker’s cap turned from the next table over and launched into a stern warning about the dangers of New Mexico’s backcountry. “There are cougars out there that hunt people,” he said ominously. “I hope you have protection.”

I pointed to the can of bear spray I had been carrying since Canada and had never even come close to discharging, unless I counted the time I pointed it at the vicious dogs of Vallecitos. “I’m from Alaska,” I said. “So I’m well versed in the defense against predators thing.” I wanted to tell him that I was far more afraid of mud and lightning, of fatigue and bad judgment, of loneliness and fear itself, but it seemed pointless to argue about the most pressing dangers of the Divide.

I spent much longer in Pie Town than I had intended, basking in the warmth of small-town friendliness and scraping up the last remnants of whipped cream from my pie plate. I was so full that I had difficulty breathing normally, but couldn’t remember ever feeling more satisfied. I sat back in my wooden chair and listened to the country band croon about an unhurried life I had all but forgotten.

In the late afternoon, the woman in the apron and guys in the band walked outside to see me off. “It’s just about closing time and we’re all headed to the lake,” she said. “But you have a great ride, and don’t hesitate to come back when you’re through these parts again. Happy Independence Day!”

“You too,” I said, shaking all of their hands. “Thanks for making the best lunch in the entire span of the Rocky Mountains.”

I left Pie Town at 4 p.m. into a brand new day. I felt like I was just waking up from a restful sleep, even though I had already pedaled eighty miles that day. “Someday,” I thought, “I’m going to be a veteran of this race and people will ask me the secret to success. I’m going to answer, ‘human kindness.’"

The roller-coaster terrain crossed the Continental Divide twice. I pedaled past ranches until the valley narrowed into a canyon. Large, triangle-shaped mountains loomed over me once again. The remote road intersected with an abandoned town site, a centuries-old Spanish mission. I got off my bike and explored the eerie remnants of a slab and mortar church, peering into the cracks of boarded windows and gazing up at a hollow bell tower.

Just beyond the town site, I entered Gila National Forest. My maps informed me: “Camping OK next 14 miles.” I pedaled beneath gnarled and grand juniper trees, rose back into the ponderosa forest, and crested the Continental Divide once again at a spectacular overlook of the San Agustin Plains below. I could see thunderstorms building over the distant mountains beyond the valley. It was still early in the evening.

“If I don’t stop near here,” I thought, “I’ll have to pedal all the way through that valley before I’m back in a spot where I can camp.” But I was feeling too incredible to stop. I launched into a gleeful descent toward the darkening sky.

The Forest Service road bisected a remote state highway and crossed onto a country road sparsely lined with private ranches. An occasional ranch house broke the monotony of the sagebrush plains, but for the most part I was wholly alone in sweepingly open space. The wind blew briskly at my side, whipping around and changing directions intermittently as booms of thunder clattered across the desert.

The thunderstorm I had seen hanging over the horizon began to close in. The bulk of the storm seemed to be moving the same direction I was, but I was approaching the dark clouds faster than they were streaming away. I glanced over my shoulder and noticed another storm approaching from behind. Sheets of rain hung like curtains beneath the black ceiling, and frequent flashes of lightning tore through the darkness.

A primal sense of entrapment gripped my core. My heart pounded. I was pedaling in a tiny window of calm, chasing one violent storm even as another chased me. If I pedaled too quickly, I would catch the first storm. If I pedaled too slowly, I would be caught by the second storm. I shivered at the prospect of both scenarios, and vowed to do everything in my cycling power to hover in the hurricane’s eye.

Shortly after I made this decision, I heard a sickeningly loud zipping sound shoot out from the back of my bike. The rear tire became more and more bouncy and sluggish until I had no choice but to stop and deal with the flat. I had been using “Slime” inner tubes, which were filled with green sealant intended to block any punctures in the tube. They had worked beautifully for the duration of the Divide, and I had yet to spring a leak that wasn’t quickly blocked, requiring only a few refresher hits from my air pump. This was the first time a tire had gone completely flat. It was my rear tire, which required the loosening of the brake caliper before I could remove the wheel. A rear flat usually took me at least ten minutes to change when I was fresh, and as many as twenty when I was hurried and frustrated. I knew I did not have twenty minutes to spare before I would be caught directly beneath a barrage of lightning and rain. I did not even have five minutes.

“Be brave,” I chanted through gulping breaths as I hopped off the bike. “Be strong.”

A thick streak of green slime coated the down tube of the frame. I was sure all the sealant had leaked out and there was nothing left to fill the hole. But it was possible that I had just sprung a larger leak that took a while to clog. It seemed worth a try to pump up the tire rather than change the tube right away. The extra time it would take if it didn’t work wasn’t going to save me from the storm either way, but if that’s all it took, there was still a chance I could outrun the air strike.

I breathed in and out with every stroke of the air pump, continuing to chant, “Be brave. Be strong.” As I pumped, the sun slipped beneath the nearest mountains. The sky, already under siege, burst open in an explosion of crimson and gold light. The sudden blast of color reflected off the dark clouds in a contrast so bright that the entire sky shimmered. Where sunset’s saturated light met the sheets of rain, broad rainbows swept over the desert. I counted five rainbows at one point, arched in wide spans that framed the phosphorescent clouds. And beneath the rainbow stage, steaks of lightning performed a violent ballet.

The scene did nothing to reduce the panic gurgling in my gut. But from where I sat in my shrinking window of calm, trying my best to breathe to the rhythm of my air pump, I knew that I was witnessing a moment of powerful beauty — beauty that was more even powerful than fear. I briefly closed my eyes and tried to absorb the gaping awe, primal wonder and sheer terror that nature was unleashing before me. I felt like I was clinging to the precipice between heaven and hell, and if I happened to fall, no matter which direction I went, I would be wholly absorbed forever.

I snapped my eyes back open and injected a few last shots of air into the tire. It was still fairly soft, about eighteen pounds per square inch. But I didn’t hear any more of that terrible zipping sound, and I thought there was a decent change that it would hold the air. I hopped back on the saddle and spun wildly, trying to regain the distance I had lost on the second storm. I pedaled right into the heart of the largest, brightest rainbow and its undulating electric dangers. I was still fully aware that I was the tallest object for miles, on an open plain without even a sagebrush bush large enough to huddle behind. I briefly thought about veering off on a ranch road and sprinting one or two miles to the nearest structure in search of shelter, but I fought the urge. “Be brave,” I chanted. “Be strong.”

The spectacular light of the sunset lingered much longer than I even thought possible, as though it, like me, was afraid to fade into the darker regions of eternity. It didn’t take long to catch the aftermath of the first storm. The road was coated in wet mud and two-inch-deep puddles, but the sky overhead remained mercifully dry. The second storm slowed its advance and started to veer toward the east. As it changed its course, the front storm followed. My own route turned west and began climbing back into the mountains. When I reached the mouth of a canyon, I stopped one last time to look out over the plains of San Agustin. Sunset’s crimson and orange flames were almost snuffed out, except for thin, blood-colored streaks that still bordered the horizon. Lightning continued to pierce the purple twilight, followed closely by booms of thunder. As I watched the storm march east, I noticed tiny blue flashes of light erupting from the northern horizon. They confused me at first — they were too low to be lightning, but too large and sporadic to be light from a ranch house. I squinted and realized they were fireworks, exploding over a ranch at least twenty miles distant.

“Oh yeah,” I said out loud. “It’s the Fourth of July.” I paused to focus on the fireworks as tiny streams of blue light sparkled and then faded, over and over. All the while, flashes of lightning and booms of thunder nearly overwhelmed the tiny celebration.

“Why don’t they just look up and realize that the most spectacular show is going on in nature?” I wondered. Their efforts seemed so small and pathetic in a world that was so vast and so powerful. Humans were nothing out here, nothing at all.

Darkness encompassed me with the rising canyon. For a while I could still hear the thunder from a growing distance, and then only the wind and stillness. Rainwater coated the road and the air was moist and cool. The last tailing clouds from the storms were starting to break apart. A nearly full moon rose overhead, casting a ghostly glow on an assemblage of sandstone hoodoos that bent like petrified zombies in front of craggy cliffs. I rolled out my sleeping bag on the bare dirt beneath a cluster of ponderosa pines. Moonlight filtered through a canopy of needles. With what felt like a paltry sprinkling of effort and a heavy dose of grace, I had knocked out 140 miles in the fourteen hours behind me, with only 250 more to go.

“Thank you,” I said in continuation of my morning prayer. “That was a good day.”

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Into July

I wrapped up a good training block of trail-running on Wednesday with my standard eight-mile loop around Rancho. I think the run was an encouraging indicator of thestate of my endurance. Why? Because the first two miles were awful. Honestly. I felt like warmed-over road kill. I could barely crawl up the first steep climb and involuntarily had to cut back to a walk on the next. But at mile three, my endurance burner finally kicked on and I found increasingly stronger surges of power. By mile four, I was flying* (*relative to my usual pace) up the remaining hills and pounding the downhills, logging sub-nine and even sub-eight-minute miles. (I know. But for me, on a trail run, this is fast.) I finished up the loop ten minutes faster than usual and felt like I could easily go for eight more. In the past, when I've worked to build up cycling endurance, I usually have to push through several miles of sluggishness before I reach cruise control. Feeling like crap for the first twenty minutes to an hour is just part of being a slow burner. It takes a while to get the pilot light going, but once it's on, it's on for the long haul.

Beat and I indulged in a "rest day" Thursday with our favorite evening sojourn — taking Fatty Fatback and Singlespeed Kim for a jaunt up and over Black Mountain. Given how many bicycles Beat and I have at home, it's pretty humorous that we regularly grab our most difficult and admittedly ridiculous bikes for a ride that features a steep, mostly paved, 2,800-foot climb and a long rolling descent on singletrack, loose-gravel doubletrack and more pavement. Even though rusty ol' Singlespeed Kim is getting up there in terms of miles (she was my Divide bike), Beat seems to like the physical challenge and simplicity of singlespeeding. I like the Fatback because, come on, how can anyone not love riding a fat bike? I challenge any cyclist of any persuasion to power those big wheels up a monster hill and not arrive at the top with a huge grin on their face.

Sitting high on Fatty Fatback makes me feel like I'm riding a horse, and always draws comments from the roadies who pass me on the climb. Today I went back to paved part of the climb for a quick 80-minute ride on my road bike (I can do the same 2,600-foot climb to the gate a full 20 minutes faster on the skinny tires.) I actually passed a couple of guys who I'm pretty sure passed me yesterday when I was on Fatty Fatback. I thought I recognized them, and they both did a quick doubletake and gave me a bit of a surprised look as I smiled, nodded and motored on by.

I have one more weekend to do a couple more longish trail runs, and then it's all taper until the Tahoe Rim Trail 100 on July 16. I'm feeling pretty apprehensive about the TRT100 right now. I think I may be even more nervous about it than I was about the Susitna 100 two weeks out. It's strange, because given that the Su100 is considerably more remote, in Alaska, in the winter, on snow, dragging a sled — it would seem the Su should be the scarier race. But before I ran it, the Susitna 100 was more of a known challenge. I mean, I had already completed the course twice on a bike. And I figured, I've already pushed a fat bike long distances through snow. How much harder could dragging a sled be? (As it turns out, it's significantly harder. But it was easy to delude myself before the race.)

TRT, however, is much newer territory. I've never attempted to travel 100 miles over rocks and dirt, in the heat and the overnight chill, up and down steep mountains, at elevations significantly higher than the one I live at. I'm afraid of hurty-foot and epic blisters and the sensation of a thousand needles tearing at my quads. I mean, I've seen these ultrarunners after 100-milers. Their feet look like ground beef and they walk as though they lost use of most of their major joints. These people are crazy. What made me think I could join them? Yesterday, a woman who is a much faster mountain biker than me commented that she'd like to try trail running but she "resembles a dying moose when I try to move at any faster than a dawdle." I thought "Yes! Yes! Me too!"

But can I take the dying moose 100 miles? In my own uniquely convoluted sense of the term, I think it will be kind of fun to try.

On a quick note, I wanted to thank everyone who purchased my book in June. Despite my late/rolling release, I sold 323 eBooks and 127 paperbacks during the month, which at 450 books is close to my stretch goal for the first month. So thanks to all. I am awaiting a new shipment of paperbacks on Tuesday, so you can still purchase signed copies at this link.

These little adventures

Like most people who exercise outside on a regular basis, I have standard routes. I'm beginning to learn the nuances of these routes, such as which off-camber corners force me to apply my bike's brakes, and which ones I can really let rip. I know which rocks to hopscotch on my usual eight-mile run and where to look out for deer. Standard routes are comfortable, convenient, and help boost me through tough days with their familiar challenges. They provide a great base for training, because I can compare times and how I felt and how I improved. Still, I find myself craving something different. Even if it means venturing just a few miles off that beaten path, to places where I have to brake on all the corners or purposefully operate below maximum effort because I have no idea where the hill I'm climbing ends.

Beat and I have been trying out new running routes. My recent run-loading has made it tougher to digest the idea of a daily trips to Rancho, so we've been testing out lesser-known home trails with encouraging results. On Monday, we finally connected the "Steven's Reservoir Loop," a quiet 6.2-mile jaunt up the crest of Coyote Ridge, down a winding piece of delicious singletrack and along the steep shoreline of the reservoir. Rocky cliffs, golden light and turquoise water — like a little piece of Hawaii close to home.

Today Beat was going to rest to try to stave off his cold, but then it rained. I mean, it really rained. The temperature dropped to 58 degrees and gray mist tumbled down the canyons. On the way to the post office, I heard a host on the radio complaining about taking out her rain jacket "for the seventh time since March." She said it without a hint of irony. I knew this signaled a rare summer event indeed. When I returned home Beat was just as thrilled as I was about the rain. We decided to take our evening run to the rainforest, otherwise known as Windy Hill.

The trails were mired in a strange combination of mud — sometimes slimy and slick, other times shoe-grabbing sludge, and still others as solid as concrete, but all basically the same texture and color and all unpredictable. It made for really challenging running — more about survival than a solid workout. But the landscape reminded me of Southeast Alaska in the summer, and this made me feel blissfully content.

Who says you can't have a little outdoor adventure in metro California?

Sure, I move slower through the unknowns, and yes, it is more risky to go trail running in the rain. But really, the ability to explore the greater outdoors is the entire reason for fitness, at least in my own personal application of fitness. Sometimes that means an enjoyable interaction with the familiar, and other times it's a blind leap to something surprising and new. But in every case it's what I enjoy most about day-to-day life, these little adventures.

Training through the off season

I can always tell when I'm having a bit of an "off" week, because I don't blog much. Busyness and heavy involvement in activities don't curtail my blogging habit; in fact, I tend to blog even more frequently when lots of good things are going on. But this week has been a tough one. Good, but tough. I am trying to delve into a new writing project that has been slow to launch. Meanwhile, I've decided to let any marketing efforts for my latest book simmer for a while, so during the days this week, I've found myself staring bewildered at a blank document on my computer screen with no justifiable distractions for my writer's block. And then there's the running. I put in a big (for me) week of trail running, with 17.5 miles on Monday, eight on Tuesday, 32-mile road bicycle ride on Wednesday, eight more on Thursday, rest day Friday, eight on Saturday and 23 miles today. That's a 64-mile run week, with about 15,000 feet of climbing (including the ride). It only included one day of cycling in seven. Honestly, that's a lot of running for me.

But that's not what made it tough. What made this week tough was its direct correlation with a big high pressure system that brought overwhelming sunshine and temperatures in the 80s and 90s all week long. Just a typical summer week, but I took it hard. After my literal heat meltdown on Monday, it took me three solid days to recover. I felt similarly run-down, weak and pukey on Tuesday and even during my road ride on Wednesday, and it took a 10-degree drop in temperatures for me to feel closer to normal on Thursday. The rest day on Friday was a good idea and by Saturday I was back to feeling mostly like my old self, even in the same heat the crushed me earlier in the week. But it's a bit frightening to me just how awful I felt on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. This is a whole new battle for me. Dealing with extreme cold is easy; you just put on more clothing. But heat can only be fully combated with proper acclimation, which, as far as I'm concerned, means too many outdoor outings that are no fun at all. Give me extreme cold over that any day. Good thing this is my "off season" and I only have a measly 100-mile foot race that I'm training for right now.

But the weekend ended on bright notes. Beat and I finally broke down and bought the Subaru Outback that we've been fantasizing about since we drove my 1996 Geo Prism from Missoula to Kalispell in November through a blizzard, a white-knuckle experience that neither of us ever want to have to repeat. Most of my friends, my parents, and even my former employers have been razzing me to get rid of my car for years now. It's tough because I'm extremely attached to that old car, possibly as much as I am to any of my bikes, even Pugsley. Geo and I have just been through so much together. I was barely 21 years old when I bought that car, and it followed me through all the major adventures and changes in my life since then. But I accept that it's an inanimate object and a mechanically challenged one at that. And of course, a brand new Subaru can help an adventurous person get over her old-and-weak sedan real fast. I mostly bike commute around town, but we needed a good "adventure" vehicle for road trips — the kind that can handle mountains and snow once winter comes around and we're back to the "on" season.

Today I set out with Beat and our friends Harry and Martina for the week's longest run. It was actually a rather pleasant day, still sunny and warm but at least never close to the 90s. We started at the bottom of Windy Hill and climbed to Skyline. Beat recently caught a cold and Harry and Martina were suffering from various injuries, so they decided to turn back at mile 5.5. I actually felt better than I had all week long, even at the end of a heavy-loaded running week, which leads me to believe that heat really is my kryptonite and without it I can run as much as want. Ha. A woman can dream.

Of course I took today's run fairly slow and drank a whole lot of water. I filled up my water bladder twice over the 23 miles and was nearly out by the time I got home, meaning I drank nearly 200 ounces of water in five hours. I felt good the whole time, though, except for one severe side-stitch that caused me to basically walk downhill for three miles while I tried to work it out. I still have to figure out why I so often manage to get these side-stitches, regardless of temperature or distance or hydration levels or trail surface conditions, but only during steep descents.

What I really loved about today's run was traveling from Windy Hill to within a mile of my house and, with the exception of a half mile on Skyline Drive, running on trail that entire time. The San Francisco Bay area really does have an amazing open space plan. I ran along open ridgelines, wended down tight singletrack into deep canyons, jogged through intensely green redwood forests and across golden grass meadows. I felt like I was out for a quiet, rolling, 23-mile run in the mountains despite the fact that this huge metro area was merely a few miles away. It's certainly not wilderness but it's beautiful and enjoyable all the same. Now, if only the temperature would drop a few dozen degrees ...

GPS track of Sunday's run here. It's a fantastic route that I highly recommend.

Signed copies available

This has been one of those "waiting and waiting" UPS deals, but I'm expecting my first shipment of my new book on Monday. So I'll be able to send out signed copies of "Be Brave, Be Strong: A Journey Across the Great Divide" starting next week. You can order signed copies for $15 plus $4.95 shipping at this link.

Here is one more excerpt from the book. This is from chapter twelve, "Savage Side."


I woke up draped in the silky sheets of a luxury bed, deeply sore.

General muscle and joint soreness is always accompanied by wide-ranging emotions. There is comforting soreness, the kind that comes in the midst of hard training, because it signals sought-after muscle growth. There is satisfying soreness, that post-race glow when a person knows they have met their goals and can finally rest. There is debilitating soreness, the kind that follows injuries, lapses in judgment or an insistence on pushing oneself too hard.

And then there is Divide soreness. Divide soreness is not so easily pinpointed, because it descends in waves over days and weeks. It starts as a sharp tinge in the larger muscles on day two or three. Then it slowly cuts into smaller fibers. Then it seeps into the blood, working its way into the recesses of long-forgotten and little-used regions of the body, such as pinky toes. Just when you find yourself wondering why your pinky toe hurts, soreness has found its way into your brain, casting a pain-soaked pall over even the simplest thoughts and decisions. Finally, Divide soreness needles through to the soul, full of bile and perpetual fatigue, convincing the unfortunate individual that Hell is not death’s purgatory but a state of being on Earth, and nothing will ever look or feel good ever again.

Of course, the mercy of Divide soreness is that it doesn’t last forever, and comes and goes frequently during the course of the same race, and even the same day. But, leaving Butte, I felt none of the euphoria I had experienced while descending into town. The city looked gray and bland in the light of day, a scattershot of concrete in a wide, barren basin.

“I checked the SPOT standings before we left town,” I said to John as we pedaled toward yet another wall of mountains. “I was actually surprised. We really are right in the middle of the pack, right in the thick of it. In fact, the leaders haven’t even left Montana yet, but I think Matt Lee will cross into Idaho today.”

“See, and you’re not even trying yet,” John said.

“Oh believe me, I’m trying,” I said. “It just doesn’t seem like it to you because you’re on a joy ride. You only notice how slow we’re going when you get cold.”

John had taken me up on my recommendation of Idaho Falls as a good place to leave the Divide, and decided to follow me to southern Montana, which meant we would be riding together for at least two more days. I was glad he hadn’t decided to abandon the race in Butte, but grumpy enough that morning that I really felt like asking him to press ahead so I could indulge in a few hours of tuned-out solitude. John, on the other hand, had slept great the night before and was able to slam down a huge breakfast even though he insisted on going to the grocery store rather than Denny’s, which had been my preference. I had only managed to consume a yogurt and a pound of strawberries before I started to feel ill, and the only thing competing with muscle soreness for my attention was a discouragingly low energy level.

John chatted amicably while I nodded and grunted. It was rude to acknowledge, but secretly I wished he would ride ahead so I could nurse my malaise. Near the top of the first pass of the day, a swift thunderstorm dropped over the mountains and John sprinted away from me. By the time the rain tapered off and I caught up to John on the other side of the pass, my sore muscles were finally starting to warm up and the Sour Patch Kids I had forced down my throat were kicking in. John pointed across a large valley bathed in sunlight but ringed by dark clouds.

“That mountain over there, the pointy one, that’s Fleecer Ridge,” he said. “Hard to believe, huh? That’s still nearly thirty miles from here.”

“So that’s Fleecer, eh?” I said. Fleecer was yet another notorious section of the Divide, a difficult-to-locate intersection with a treacherous, technical descent on the downside. The reputation of these places tended to fill me with a dread that was quickly replaced with glee upon arriving there. I found I preferred the somewhat ridiculous challenges presented by unrideable obstacle courses to the usual physical strain of simply riding long and hard. In fact, all of the places I had been warned about — Red Meadow Lake, Richmond Pass and Lava Mountain — were all the places I already regarded most fondly. At that point, I expected nothing less from Fleecer.

As John put on his warm jacket and leg warmers for the descent, I pulled a little wax-coated cheese wheel from my feedbag, unwrapped it and popped it in my mouth. As I chewed, the creamy cheese oozed down my throat and lined my stomach with the most incredible sense of health and well-being.

“Oh my God, John, you have to try these things,” I said as I fished another cheese wheel out of my bag and handed it to him. “I bought them at the store in Butte. They’re like pure happiness wrapped in a ball of wax.”

John laughed and popped it in his mouth. “Pretty good,” he said. “You need to remember these things. I’m serious. Make a mental note. When you find something that works for you, you don’t want to forget it.”

We dropped into the valley and crossed beneath the interstate. As we started climbing anew, I looked wistfully down the pavement as it snaked along the basin in a comforting, familiar way. “There’s the road of my childhood,” I said to John.

“Growing up in Salt Lake City, that was the road we used to get anywhere. When I was a surly teenager, I dreamed of moving to California and I-15 was my escape route. It feels so close. Now, if I headed south on I-15, it would take me home.”

“How far do you think it is to Salt Lake City?” John asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “That’s the weirdest thing about paying so much attention to these Divide maps. I could tell you the name of every stream we cross, every valley we pass through, exactly how far it is to the next notable cattle guard, but I have no idea where we are in relation to the rest of the world.”

“The Divide is an all-encompassing existence,” John agreed.

Order the book at this link.

Ick run

I wanted to embark on a good long run today to kick off a big training week ahead of the TRT100. I was ambitiously thinking about something in the range of 20 miles at a solid running pace. I spent the morning inside my apartment completely absorbed in a project, and found it especially difficult to emerge from my tunnel when my planned 2:30 p.m. departure time arrived. I packed and prepped to leave, and vaguely decided to check the weather before setting out. It was 95 degrees in Los Altos. Wait ... what? I had yet to run in any real heat this summer. It's been in the 60s and 70s, at most the high 70s, during most of my outings since I moved here this spring. Well, I reasoned, it's as good of a time as any to get in some heat training. I decided it might be prudent to fill my 70-ounce water bladder to the top this time.

I decided to hit the Skyline-to-the-Sea Trail because it's generally well shaded, and the overall mellow grade would allow me to run most of the 20 miles. I started off on the wrong foot by gulping down about 12 ounces of water before I even started running (my car has no air conditioning and I was already overheated after the 20-minute drive to the trailhead.) I then proceeded to launch into the gentle downhill grade entirely too fast. Less than a half mile in, a horrible cramp gripped my left side. "Gotta learn to run through this," I told myself, and pressed on.

Three miles down the apparently little-used Saratoga Gap Toll Road connector singletrack, I ran through an overgrown drainage only to realize too late that the trail was lined with stinging nettle. I am really sensitive to stinging nettle; it causes my skin to break out in huge white welts that burn with the rage of a thousand suns. Halfway across the grassy gap, waves of fire began to crash against my legs. I screamed and ran faster but it was too late. My legs and left arm were covered in searing welts. I swore but what could I do? "Gotta learn to run through this," I told myself, and pressed on.

At mile seven I was nearly out of water. I hadn't crossed a single running creek yet. Luckily there was a backpacker camp nearby. I stopped at the faucet and drenched my burning, itchy legs in water. It was surprisingly tepid and did little to put out the fire. I filled up my bladder and pressed on.

At mile eight, I started to feel nauseous. I tried to sip more water and felt the warm liquid gurgling back up in my throat. I stopped running to avoid puking and forced down a couple of salt tablets, then tried to continue back up the trail. I suddenly felt quite weak and dizzy. My pace slowed considerably. At mile eight and a half, I decided any benefit I could glean from this training run had passed, and turned around.

And of course, the trail back to Skyline Ridge is predominantly uphill. The heat needled into my core as I sipped water, fought the urge to puke, caved in to the urge to scratch the surface layer of skin off my legs, and generally tried to shut out the world with daydreams about frozen tundra and snow. The disassociation exercises helped a little, but that didn't change the fact that I had slowed to a 14-minute-mile pace even while running what felt like a full effort on a gradual ascent. I started alternating walking — and then predominantly walking — to cope with the nausea, but I felt fully cooked.

I staggered back to my car certain that this had been my worst run, ever. In 17 miles I never felt good, not even once, and despite my resolve to press on through the worst of it in hopes it would get better, it only continually got worse. In that way, it was a valuable experience. I definitely learn more from the runs that go badly than the ones that go well. During today's run, I learned that when it's summer outside, I'm better off just staying indoors, the way other people do when the world is covered in ice and snow. But more realistically, what I need to do is work on my heat acclimation and fluid and salt intake, and probably build up to three-and-a-half-hour runs in 90-degree weather more slowly in the future.

All the live-long day

So what makes for a tougher, more physically taxing day: An eight-hour trail run or eight hours of hard-labor trail work? I got this question a few times during our Saturday stint with the Tahoe Rim Trail work crew. And honestly, unless you're better trained for the effort of guiding 600-pound boulders down a 50-degree sandy slope for 100 meters without losing them in a clattering tumble while screaming "Rock! Rock!" ... I'd be inclined to say the latter is the harder effort.

We met up with the crew in a casino parking lot in Stateline, Nevada, and made our way up a brand new, yet-to-be-opened connector trail to the TRT. We donned hard hats, work boots, and leather gloves and marched up the beautifully sculpted trail until we reached a point where it resembled more of a mountain goat track along a rugged sideslope. This is the point where we set up shop. The only trail work I've participated in the past all involved minor maintenance — clearing away brush, chopping out limbs, moving deadfall, that sort of thing. I've never actually built a trail. So when I was assigned to the "rock wall crew," I didn't think anything of it.

As it turns out, the on-trail construction of rock walls is nothing like I imagined it, which was admittedly more in line with laying perfectly symmetrical bricks in pre-mixed mortar. No, in real on-trail rock wall construction, you are given a pick ax and a very heavy iron prying tool, and pointed in the general direction of a very steep slope were you must gather all of your building materials, which you must move using brute force with a little help from gravity. And you can't use just any rock — they have to be rectangular, with flat bottoms, solid granite, and about the size of a carry-on suitcase. Eventually you have to go very far up the mountain to find such rocks. Then, not only do you have to guide them safely down the mountain, you also have to position them perfectly in place, somehow, without straining your back or scraping your arms or bruising your foot or jamming your finger. Beat and I were both unsuccessful in this regard, and sustained a number of small injuries.

Once all the big stones were in place, we had to gather up piles of smaller stones and crush them into fill for our trail. I dripped sweat and gasped for oxygen as I skittered up and down the steep slope gathering rocks, but Beat really had the tougher job with the sledge hammer. At least he looked good in the process.

Sweaty and completely coated in dirt at the end of eight hours, our crew of five paused briefly to enjoy our creation — about 50 feet of new trail. Fifty feet. I tell you, I am never going to look at a rock-lined section of trail the same way. It's truly amazing how much labor goes into trail creation, and I'm glad I had this fun experience to give me a new appreciation for trails and the people who build them.

The evening brought a beautiful summer sunset over Tahoe Lake that we were almost to knackered to enjoy. But we did rally for a short walk near the beach.

On Sunday morning we set out to enjoy miles of other people's labor on the Tahoe Rim Trail near Castle Rock. I saw an uncountable number of rock walls along the trail, and could only shake my head in disbelief. The trail was perfect for running — rolling and smooth with just enough rocks and boulders to keep you on your toes. The fact that this trail is so runnable, yet still fairly steep and somewhat technical, is going to make for a uniquely tough challenge for the Tahoe Rim Trail 100 next month. I'm probably going to be tempted to run more often than I should over that distance. Not to mention the elevation averages about 8,000 feet. I could feel the thin air more during the trail work yesterday than I could running today, but still ... this is going to be a fantastically tough race. I really need to log some running miles this week and start working on getting my head in that game.

Finally, I was amazed to come back and see how many people commented on my last post over the weekend. It was really fun to see the different connections — it seems a large number arrived here either through fat bike interest, my 2007 NPR commentary or the Fat Cyclist, and it's awesome to see so many of you stuck around all these years, even after I moved away from Alaska. It was also fun to see greetings from old friends and also familiar names from the "way back" days of my Homer posts. Thanks to everyone who took the time to comment. I used an online random number generator to draw three names for the book giveaway. I listed the names and comments below. If this is you, please e-mail me at jillhomer@arcticglasspress.com with your address and I will send you a copy of my new book, "Be Brave, Be Strong: A Journey Across the Great Divide," which, incidentally, just became available in paperback on Amazon. I'm awaiting my own shipment and expect to have signed copies available by the end of the week. Check back!

Winners of the book giveaway:

KB: "I found your blog in 2008 via a link on another mountain biker's blog. You probably don't remember but you helped me decide to buy a snowbike by answering my questions about how well one *really* works. I've adored it (a Fatback) and ride all winter long on the Colorado trails."

Carol: "Hi Jill, I found your blog the summer of 2009 while doing a Google search on Alaska for places to live. I was wrapping up nursing school at the time and live in the brutally hot city of Phoenix. I was overwhelmed with endless assignments and clinical rotations and unable to make the trek to the mountains in Flagstaff to cool off. I found your blog while you were riding the Divide. I went back and read every posting you had written. Being stuck in school at the time I was so envious of your freedom and sense of adventure and was able to live virtually through your blog. Thank you so much for sharing the incredible stories and photos of your adventurous life with all of us!"

Shannon P: "I've been following your blog since um, not sure really! it was still "Up in AK" back when I found it, and I was researching fatbikes (aren't pugs grand?)...loved the pics, attitude, and exploits and have been reading every since!"