Feeling the 24-hour stoke

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Making progress

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Peak training ride

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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