Autumn comes to California

 I drove home from Utah on Tuesday, which allowed for twelve hours of guilt-free election monitoring courtesy of NPR. Although I despise campaign season as much as everyone else, I love election day. It's like watching an elaborate game unfold with all the emotions and surprises that go along with it. It also reminds me of the good old days in the newsroom, where election day was often the hardest, most stressful, and yet most fun day of the year. Election Day is the endurance race of community journalism. And even though I was behind the wheel of a Subaru shuttling a bunch of dirty bicycles home from the desert, NPR provided a welcome escape into the frantic numbers crunching and anticipation of the outside world.

Fatigue set in again after the drive. Or, really, not so much set in as settled back in. I'll be honest — it's become an interesting personal experiment for me. Where is my edge, and does it, in fact, exist?   Or is equilibrium possible? What I learn could prove to be very helpful in future long-distance challenges, or so I tell myself when the fitness guilt returns. On Wednesday and Thursday, I went running on my regular 6.5-mile trail loop in Rancho San Antonio, and during both runs I posted times near my best times on that route (although, to be fair, the 6.5-mile loop isn't the one I typically "race" myself on. It's the one I run when I'm tired.) On Friday, our friends Dan and Amy came to visit us from Anchorage. Thanks to their vacation research, I discovered there's a new touring-specific bicycle shop located a half-mile from my house (!!!) And since Dan and Amy are already knee deep in snow and single-digit temperatures up in Alaska, we wanted to give them a small taste of California dirt before they set out on their wine country road tour next week.

I was under the impression that coastal California didn't experience much if any autumn-related change, but maybe that's because I spent so little time here in November last year. We saw a lot of color on our Steven's Creek loop, from sprigs of new grass on the previously summer-toasted hillsides, to yellow trees, to sienna leaves carpeting the trail. I admit that I'm so drawn by the intrigue of travel that I often forget about the beauty in my own backyard. I had more fun on this routine loop than I've had in a while. Dan was sprinting ahead to capture photos of Liehann bunny hopping big air off the leaves, Amy told funny stories, and Beat and I happily donned our puffy coats while the Alaskans rolled their eyes at us wimpy Californians. But it's cold here, even if ever so slightly, and this makes me happy.

The four of us are headed to another race tomorrow. It should be, uh, interesting. But the race was Dan and Amy's idea, and I want my friends to enjoy their vacation. Or, as Amy called it earlier today, "Beat and Jill's beatdown boot camp." At the time, she was talking about our fun little three-hour mountain bike ride. Oh, Amy, you should know us better by now. 

Hollowed out

I cling to the perception that I'm a hopeless endurance junkie, but it's revealing that I spent my favorite hour of the 25 Hours of Frog Hollow unconscious. It was the darkest, coldest hour of them all, the one right before dawn. I'd managed to keep my internal diesel engine humming through the night, but as I climbed up Gooseberry Base for the twelfth time, even that began to sputter. Lactic acid flooded into my legs, and then the dizzy spells returned. By the time I hit the slabs, my body felt as spent as it did way back during lap two, and my sense of coordination was even worse, if that's possible. The bike lurched over ledges and I slammed my front wheel into boulder after boulder, utterly lacking the power to lift up my handlebars. Even when I relented to the push, I stumbled and hit my shins on my pedals. I hated the slabs, hated them with the piercing chill of a thousand desert winters. This icy hate is what now filled my heart at the end of every Frog Hollow lap.

Back at the pit, I fumbled through my procrastination routine of nibbling on a nearly-frozen vegetarian burrito, washing it down with a mini Snickers Bar, switching my lights, adjusting my layers, fiddling with my shock, checking my tires, and staring hatefully at the half moon. A chill crept in as Beat made coffee, and we joked about heating up the interior of the car and drinking our coffee inside. Then it became less of a joke. And before I even fully acknowledged the decision, I was slumped in the passenger seat with an empty titanium cup in one hand and my helmet in the other. "Just fifteen minutes," I mumbled. "Maybe I'll feel better after a little nap."

A lead blanket of drowsiness settled over my aching joints, and I accepted it with the shifty guilt of a child nibbling the edges of a forbidden cookie. In a single-day race, sleep isn't justified, or even needed. Sleep was indulgence, simple and plain, and yet I couldn't remember ever feeling such divine relief. Sleep swept me away from the ink-colored sky, the creepy canyons, the jeep road climb that somehow grew progressively longer with every lap, the flickering lights, and the slabs. Oh the hateful slabs. Benevolent sleep took all of my icy abhorrence, my aches, my feelings of inadequacy, and flushed them into a beautiful void. I was out cold.

Liehann, Beat, and I display our cutthroat competitiveness at the race start. Photo by Trang Pham

That I had even ridden double-digit laps was more than I expected. Given how I've felt on the bike and in general for the past month, how spotty my fitness seems right now, and how few miles I've ridden in total since June, I wasn't expecting the performance of my life. It was worth going because Frog Hollow is a good course — a 13-mile loop with 5.5 miles of jeep road, 7.5 miles of singletrack, and equal parts of challenge, fun, and humbling reality checks — and the event is full of great people and good humor. Months ago, Beat and I made plans to race solo along with our friend Liehann, and expected to see other friends at the venue as well. It was a vacation. I know I've taken a lot of those, and yet my appreciation of the opportunities I have to engage in adventures never wears off no matter how tired my body feels. So I was going to race, and my strategy was to start out slow, and then slow down.

Photo by Trang Pham

About four miles in, I realized that even this race strategy wasn't going to work. I'd purposely started near the back and my climbing pace wasn't just slow, it was glacial. And yet I felt horrible — lactic acid legs, sore shoulders, and dizziness. What was with this dizziness? I launched into the Jem Trail, a flowing piece of smooth singletrack, and could barely keep my wheels from veering into the bushes. I was riding like a drunken beginner, worse than that, because race guilt was creeping in and I wasn't even halfway through the first lap. I burned way too many matches powering over the mini steps at the bottom of Jem. By the time I hit the Virgin Rim jeep road, I was so fried that I coasted the gradually descending slope at about 8 mph, just so I could recover. Then I came face to face with the slabs. First lap meant I needed to at least try to ride this section, but doing so just made a mockery of mountain bikers everywhere. I dabbed so many times that my bike might as well have been a velocipede, and still I managed to slam into bushes. The Virgin Rim trail is rocky but doesn't require advanced technical skills by any stretch of the imagination. I was just riding poorly, because my head was spinning and my legs had no power. The first lap ended with the unsettling anxiety that I might not even have the stamina to finish a second.

Beat had decided to wait for me at the pit, and we set out together for lap two. Beat was riding Frog Hollow with a cracked rib from a mountain bike crash two weeks earlier, and on top of that he was riding a singlespeed, which demands a lot more core strength than granny-geared bikes to power up climbs. I thought he was in for a world of hurt, but he claimed his rib wasn't giving him too much trouble — he was just experiencing the usual pains that crop up when one doesn't train on bikes, such as sore butt and knees. I complained about my lactic acid fatigue and dizzy spells, and lamented that "I used to be so much better at mountain biking." "You were never that good at mountain biking," Beat replied matter-of-factly. Which is true ... I admit I've fumbled through a lot of miles while avoiding the mastery of technical skills and cultivating a growing fear of speed ... but it's still disheartening to have that truth pointed out to me at the beginning of a long mountain bike race. I'd rather just hold onto the delusion that I used to be able to dance over the slabs and that maybe, just maybe, I'd find my way back to the grace and poise that I never actually had. (I should mention that Beat also pointed out my supreme slogging abilities, so his statement wasn't as harsh as it sounds.)

But the vistas surrounding the Frog Hollow course are stunning, and the flowing Jem Trail is and will forever be near-effortless fun. So I kept pounding out miles with the hope that somehow, somewhere, I'd find something. That something came during lap four, which was more than fifty miles into the race. I reached the top of the Gooseberry Base and realized I couldn't remember anything about the climb. The malaise and fatigue that had shadowed me for three laps finally faded away. It was as though my body finally resigned itself — "Fine, we see that this is how it's going to be" — and fired up the trusty old diesel generator that it saves for tough times. For a long time after that, nothing was as hard as it had been. I was still moving relatively slowly, but at least it didn't feel so bad.

The return of the ol' diesel engine after five hours of struggle brought my thoughts back to the book I've been reading that I wrote about last week, "Flow." In one section, the author wrote about the assumption that "extreme" athletes, such as climbers, engage in risky behaviors because they have a pathological need to experience danger, that they are exorcising deep-seated fears, or are simply reckless sensation seekers. He argues that, actually, the whole point of climbing is to avoid danger as much as possible by developing the skills and knowledge to overcome risk. "Enjoyment derives not from the danger itself, but from their ability to minimize it. So rather than a pathological thrill that comes from courting disaster, the positive emotion they enjoy is being able to control potentially dangerous forces."

This sense of control also applies to suffering, I believe. I seek out physically grueling challenges not because I have a psychological misfire that leads me to believe I actually enjoy suffering, but because by confronting suffering, I teach myself how to control it. I derive a lot of pleasure from rejecting physical discomfort and mastering my emotions amid hard struggles. And once I push over that seemingly impossible wall, there's real joy in the realization that I've freed myself from my own suffering, and I could probably just keep going, as long as I want to keep going.

After lap two, Beat and I largely stuck together. He always climbed faster than me, so he waited at the top of the Jem Trail. With the aid of my big ring, I usually stayed ahead on the descents, but he caught back up in the heart of the slabs, where we could struggle and commiserate together. Beat compared the pains of the 25-hour race to a hundred-mile ultramarathon, noting that, "In running, if you're hurting, at least you can slow down and walk for a while. But on a bike, you just have to take the beating." Another aspect of the bike race we commiserated about was the constant barrage of team racers — you know, the guys riding four- and five-person relays, pounding out 45-minute laps with fierce aggressiveness. The majority were nice, announced their presence, and snuck past gently. But there were a handful of jerks that barreled past regardless of how little room there was on the trail, and I was shoulder-checked once and twice nearly knocked off my saddle. But courtesy aside, it was disheartening to have to constantly listen over my shoulder, waiting to pull over so I could let someone pass. It broke my flow in the best of situations, and in the worst left me rattled and upset. I realize that relay teams are a staple of 24-hour racing, but it's difficult to share a course with something that is effectively a different race. I'm sure they don't like having to pass the slow soloists any more than we like being passed.

After lap eight, Beat decided he was well on track to hit his target of ten laps, and wanted to sleep for a while. It was still before midnight, and I was hoping for a little more relative solitude as some of the teams and solo racers decided to call it a night. I continued through my pleasant daze, diesel engine humming, surprised by how okay I felt, still. Because of my "slow down" strategy, I always spent a long time in my pit, savoring my burritos and making sure everything on my bike was adjusted just right. Sometimes I would just stand there looking at the stars until the chill set in, and then I'd launch into a new loop having little concept of how many miles had passed, or what time it was. It was a beautiful sort of perpetual motion, interrupted only by my extreme disdain of the slabs.

Photo by Trang Pham

As I was setting out for my twelfth lap, Beat and Liehann rustled out of their tents. Liehann had decided to take a short nap as well after his shock busted and would no longer compress, leaving him with severe hand pain. But Liehann is a little competitive and wanted to muster at least more laps than me, so we all set out together. It was just after 3 a.m. Something about that lap broke my endurance spell, and I was back to feeling dizzy, achy, and now because of the late hour, sleepy. After struggling through lap twelve, it didn't take much to convince myself a fifteen-minute nap in the car was a great idea, which turned to thirty minutes, and then an hour. The sky was washed in pink light when Beat and I finally emerged, agreeing I could bust out one more lap so I could at least match what I rode last year, which is thirteen laps and 169 miles.

Photo by Dave Nice

Liehann, Beat, and I stayed together for the sunrise lap, taking it slow, stopping at vistas, and chatting with volunteers along the way. We called it our "victory lap," acknowledging that while we had energy to ride it faster and time to ride another, we didn't really want to. The most difficult part of 24-hour racing is finding motivation, especially if you're not particularly competitive with other people. One my goals were achieved — to come to Southwestern Utah and ride lots and see friends and have fun — it was difficult to ignore how much my butt really did hurt and how my legs were still so sore.

Beat got his ten laps and Liehann netted fourteen. We finished the victory lap at 9 a.m. sharp (24:00), which was good enough for me to finish fourth among female soloists. Riding a fourteenth lap that finished after 25:00 wouldn't have lifted me any higher in the standings. If I wanted to podium, my only option would have been to skip the nap and wedge in a fifteenth lap. Even if I had known that's where I stood in the rankings, I doubt a third place standing would have been motivation enough to skip that wonderful nap. Still, fifteen laps has always been my goal at Frog Hollow. Despite my shortcomings, it was definitely achievable this year and I can't help but wonder if I might have motivated toward it had I gone into the race with a clearer goal. Maybe someday, when the reality of just how many times I've ridden that loop has faded from my memory, I'll feel motivated to go back and try.

Still, any day that includes nearly 170 miles of mountain biking, and homemade banana bread, and a nap, can hardly be regarded as bad day. In fact, it was a great day. I'm not sure I love mountain bike racing, but I am a hopeless junkie for a long ride with friends.

Heading down to Frog Town

Photo from the 2011 25 Hours of Frog Hollow. I don't remember who sent it to me, so unfortunately I can't credit it.

On Wednesday I made another long trek across northern Nevada with three mountain bikes wedged inside the Subaru and a sharing-size package of Pretzel M&Ms to keep me company. A secret shame of mine is that I sorta love endurance driving/road trips, but not so much when anchored to Interstates because of time constraints. If I had my druthers I would take twice as long to reach Salt Lake City via a slow drive over the Sierras through Yosemite National Park, followed by a thirsty traverse of Nevada and the Great Basin on U.S. Route 50, i.e. "The Loneliest Highway." Someday. But until then I battle the hypnotic effect of I-80 with tried and true endurance-racing sleep deprivation techniques, such as sucking on M&Ms or Life Savers, and blasting myself in the face with frigid air. I only stop long enough to empty my bladder and refill my caffeinated beverage supply, and I've managed to whittle the 800-mile trip to twelve hours.

But the reason I am returning the the Beehive State for the third time in just over a month is this race that Beat and I signed up for back in May; this late-season race neither of us really trained for despite the fact we're both a bit overtrained and tired in general; this random Utah race that we've made something of a tradition just because it's so full of silly fun; this mountain bike race that just happens to also be really long and arduous, called the 25 Hours of Frog Hollow.

The 25 Hours of Frog Hollow is "The Longest One-Day Race Evah!" because it takes place over Daylight Savings Time, so the clocks fall back and add another hour to the day. And how does one make a long day last even longer? How about continually riding laps around the same thirteen-mile loop of dirt, sand, singletrack, and rocks, for twenty-five hours, at least fourteen of which are going to be pitch dark because hey, it's November. And even though this race is held in the desert of Southern Utah, it's still November, so temps can and usually do drop well below freezing at night. And no matter how much fun I'm having when my wheels first hit the sand, eventually I realize that it's 5 a.m. and the sun has been gone for twelve hours, I've probably run over at least one kangaroo rat and witnessed the disturbing carnage of many more, my fingers are frozen and my shoulders feel like someone is stabbing me with a hot fork, I've ridden a mountain bike 150 miles and am still hoping for fifty more, but there are so many things I'd rather do than ride my mountain bike, including stabbing myself with hot forks. And still, when I think back to the 23 laps and 300 miles I've already ridden in two years of Frog Hollow, my memories are filled with scenes accompanied by playful music like "Naked Kids" by Grouplove:

Yeah, racing a mountain bike for 25 hours is kinda like that ... in a magical world where the desert washes are filled with Pepsi and fairies and unicorns ride mountain bikes. I fully expect to see some fairies or unicorns in Frog Town, given this race starts only three days after Halloween.

Clearly I don't have high ambitions for this race. There's going to be some fast ladies lining up and I expect them to put in inspiring efforts as I dawdle far too much, doing whatever it is I actually do out there in mountain bike fairyland. I got on the podium last year by slowly picking my way through the field as temperatures dropped into the low twenties and some of the faster women slowed down in that water-bottle-freezing cold. I might have even won outright if I hadn't eaten a can of tuna and sent my stomach into a tailspin. It's all fun and games until someone eats a can of tuna. Then it's just unpleasantness, vomiting, and flickering moments of lucidity when all the tough realities emerge — "Actually, riding a mountain bike for 25 hours isn't silly fun. It's really hard. And I love the Jem Trail but I've already descended it thirteen times. I mean, really, Jill? Really?"

So I will stay away from tuna this year, and otherwise just focus on fun. Beat unfortunately is injured, again. He crashed his mountain bike two weeks ago and took a hard handlebar punch in the rib cage. He finally visited his doctor earlier this week and confirmed that one of his ribs is cracked. Beat's doctor knows him all too well and admitted that he can probably race his bike because there's little he can do for a cracked rib anyway. But it causes him a lot of pain, so we'll see how long he holds out at Frog Hollow. I'm glad he's still flying out here tomorrow and hope he can have at least one fun lap. In all likelihood he'll stubbornly push through a hundred-plus miles because he's just like that. His capacity for largely purposeless suffering never ceases to amaze me.

Anyway, this is just my blog post signing out for a few days. Have a great Daylight Savings Weekend, everyone. And take comfort in the fact that Election Day is nearly here, and no matter what happens, at least the election will be over. 

Go with the Flow

Shortly after I finished my Kokopelli Trail ride in Utah last weekend, I found myself in a position I land in frequently — trying to explain to skeptics what it is about long bike rides that I find so appealing. When attempting to verbally describe this concept while my mind is still fried from the physical demands of the ride, I often hem and haw and mutter buzz words such as "pretty" and "mountains." One non-cyclist friend speculated that she would become "crazy bored" on a six-hour solo ride; another mountain biker friend called this particular redrock canyon route "cheesy" because it lacked the necessary amount of adrenaline-pumping singletrack. "I can't really explain it," I finally concluded. "But long-distance rides are one of the few activities I can fully immerse myself in. Sometimes when I'm on my bike, I get so caught up in the movement that I let go of everything else; nothing else matters. It's liberating, really, to lose myself so completely."

A couple of days later, while chatting about music on our way home from Moab, my friend Craig shared similar sentiments as he described improvising on his saxophone. After his wife and daughter go to bed, he sometimes slips into his garage and lets the whole world disappear into the music. He's playing the instrument, but the harmony seems to be creating itself, an independent energy that pulls him along for the ride. As the conversation continued, I realized that Craig wasn't just describing the same emotions I feel during long bike rides. He was describing the same experience.

When I pointed out the similarities of our reactions to these two otherwise unrelated activities, Craig recommended I read "Flow: The Psychology of the Optimal Experience" by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. This was a fairly popular pop psychology book written in the 1980s that I had never heard of before this past weekend; strangely, as Csikszentmihalyi's theories bolster the same ideas I have been forming — and writing about — for years. "Flow" proposes that optimal experiences are formed when people focus so fully on an achieving a goal that they shed all excess distractions, and in the process experience energized attention, enlightenment, and joy. He proposes that the happiest people are those who consistently enter this kind of "flow" state, funneling all of their energy and emotions into the singular satisfaction of the moment.

"I developed a theory of optimal experience based on the concept of flow—the state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it," Csikszentmihalyi wrote in "Flow." Later, when describing his clinical research, he explained, "What I discovered was that happiness is not something that happens. It is not the result of good fortune or random chance. It is not something that money can buy or power command. It does not depend on outside events, but, rather, on how we interpret them. Happiness, in fact, is a condition that must be prepared for, cultivated, and defended privately by each person. People who learn to control inner experience will be able to determine the quality of their lives, which is as close as any of us can come to being happy."

And another quote that will resonate with endurance junkies everywhere: "The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile. Optimal experience is thus something that we make happen."

It's a compelling concept that can obviously be applied far beyond the simple acts of riding bicycles or playing jazz music. A painter creating a mural, a lawyer building a case, two friends engaged in an engrossing conversation, and a worker on an assembly line are among examples of flow states described in the book. I just started reading "Flow" and am only a quarter way in (27 percent according to my Kindle), but it's been quite illuminating reading. I considered some of the times in my life during which I've entered into a fully immersive state, and the activities that generated this flow:

1. Long-distance cycling, especially in wild and scenic landscapes
2. Hiking and running, especially in physically demanding conditions or on difficult terrain (i.e. climbing steep mountains)
3. Piecing together all the components of a daily newspaper under tight deadline pressure (i.e. editing and designing newspaper pages — sadly not a high-demand skill these days.)
4. Writing

In fact, flow is exactly what has been missing from my writing lately. Reading this book has sparked consideration as to how I can get this back. For the past year, my strategy has largely consisted of aggressively pursuing the first two activities. This has kept me saturated in flow experiences and subsequent feelings of contentedness and happiness, but admittedly at the expense of more traditional productivity. Still, I feel grateful that I'm healthy and secure enough to have regular access to this enriching state — even if relatively few can understand what's so great about riding a bicycle. It means something to me — and in an existence formed by inner experiences, that's what matters.

I'll continue reading this book and working harder to apply this satisfying singular focus to other aspects of my life. But I'm blogging about it now because I believe the concept of flow can be an effective shield in the widespread battle against anxiety, depression, and discontent. It's something worth reflecting on — What activities bring you to a state where you forget about time, hunger, exhaustion, even fear? How can these activities become more of a central focus in your life? I think these are important questions. 

Love, Utah

Sunday afternoon after the half marathon, the California crew headed into Arches National Park to do some sightseeing. We decided to treat or tired legs to an easy walk, so Delicate Arch became the destination. At three miles with 500 feet of climbing, it's not nothing — but the rewards are much greater than your average three-mile hike. Despite all of my excursions into Southeastern Utah as a youth, I haven't ventured inside Arches National Park in many years, and have not hiked to Delicate Arch since I was a teenager.

Admittedly, visiting Delicate Arch is on the cheesy end of the outdoor activity spectrum. The iconic landmark has been so exploited to death that now it's most common to hear things like, "Wow, that's what's on the license plates!" from fellow hikers while standing in the presence of this wholly unique entrada sandstone formation. Still, being there made me feel like a little kid again. The weather was gorgeous and we sprinted out onto the sandstone bowl beneath the arch, climbing boulders and basking in the sun.

I'm pretty sure I have a similar photograph of me and other friends sitting on this exact same rock that was taken when I was seventeen years old. I wish I could find it for comparison's sake. The whole excursion was a relaxing and satisfying addition to nostalgia weekend.

On Monday, I headed back to Salt Lake with Craig and Jen. It was Craig's daughter's fourth birthday that day, and he wanted to take her to Sand Dune Arch to play in the sand. I took advantage of the Arches stop to go for a quick six-mile sandy trail run. It was, in a strange way, my most satisfying outing of the week — even moreso than my long mountain bike ride on Saturday or half marathon on Sunday. The weekend crowds had gone home and I seemingly had the trails all to myself, revving my high gears to make good time in the sand and experiencing truly breathtaking surprise when I encountered a new arch around nearly every corner.

The Colorado Plateau is a magical place, and for me rivals the Alaskan tundra in its intimidating expansiveness and bewildering beauty. And like Alaska, the desert can be unforgivably harsh, not the kind of place many people seek to venture very far off the beaten paths. I certainly didn't venture out this weekend, but returning to these spots and looking out over these horizons reminds me that I want to come back, someday, and trace the hidden contours that have been permanently seared in my imagination. I love Moab.

By the time I returned to Salt Lake, winter had arrived, including the first real valley snowstorm of the year. On Tuesday morning I had a few hours to kill before my flight, and found myself standing near the window of my parent's house in Sandy, watching drizzling raindrops hit the sidewalk. "I want to go for a run, but it's really too cold," I told my mom. Then I had a had a moment of self-awareness when I realized that 43 degrees and raining was exactly the kind of weather I went out in nearly every single day when I lived in Juneau. The deep shame of being California-wimpified pushed me out the door, and I had a fantastic 7.5-mile power-hike/run with 3,000 feet of climbing on the Bear Canyon trail, also signed as the Orson Smith and Cherry Canyon Logging trail. Basically, I was working my way up the lower slope of Lone Peak and daydreaming about scenarios in which I had both the time and hardcoreness to ascend above snowline all the way to the summit. I love the Wasatch Mountains.

I did see a little bit of sleet above 7,000 feet elevation, which made me very excited as that's my first hit of snow this season. Winter is my favorite season, even though these days I see so little of it that I've lost nearly all of my cold-weather street cred and even tolerance (see above.) But it was a great end to a very full and rewarding last-minute trip. Thanks, Utah. 

The Other Half

When Monika started planning our big reunion in Moab, she centered it around a half marathon event, reasoning that a lot of us, herself included, were all into running now. Back in the D Street days, there was actually a whole group of runners that did not include Monika or me: Geoff, Bryan, Curt, Tricia, Anna, Micah ... But despite the appearance of converging interests, Monika hadn't convinced anyone from the original crew besides her own husband, Paul, and another friend, Kati, to sign up for the race this weekend.

Luckily she was bringing a large contingent of her own running friends from California. And just before the race, Geoff and Bryan's girlfriends, Corle and Monica, signed up as well. Then we learned there were a few extra bibs floating around. Kati's sister forgot to train, and Paul had injured his ankle and couldn't run. After some grappling it was decided that Jamie would run with Kati's sister's bib, and I was going to be Paul. Thankfully for me and my anxieties about breaking rules, Monika had registered Paul under the name "Bubu," which I presume is a Slovakian-type spelling of the pet name "Boo-boo." Still, it was better to run as "Bubu" than "Paul."

Monika called me out of my tent in the frosty twilight of 6:05 a.m. I admittedly felt groggy and grumpy about the prospect of racing. After all, I had convinced myself I was finally going to partake in a completely lazy, sit-by-the-campfire kind of weekend, and now I was waking up before dawn, with a stiff neck and sore legs from churning through the sand with a mountain bike for 52 miles and 7,600 feet of climbing the day before, just so I could pound my poor shredded quads through another 13.1 miles on pavement. Why do I do this to myself? Even when I vow to relax, I can't.

As we huddled around the picnic table shoveling in instant oatmeal and coffee, two rather strange women — strange to the point of being creepy — walked up to us holding hands. They offered to "stretch" Corle and became insistant when she declined. When I asked if they were running with us, one replied in the most sing-song voice possible, "No, we don't like to run. We like to drink tea." Turns out they were friends of friends of friends who someone invited out to our camp late the night before, and were still up after apparently "drinking tea" all night long. Rudeness of inviting them aside given how loud they were all night and how many children there were in camp, it was reminiscent of the kinds of encounters that used to happen with humorous frequency when I was 21. I had to laugh about it.

The Other Half Marathon begins at the Dewey Bridge, north of Moab, and continues contouring the Colorado River corridor on Highway 128 for 13.1 miles to Sorrel River Ranch. Of all of the highways I've traveled, Utah Route 128 is one of the most scenic. Thirteen miles of desert scenery, combined with the silly fun of running with friends, tempered my reluctance to run so far on pavement. The more serious California runners lined up with their pacing groups, but six of us started off the back near a guy holding a 3:00 pacing sign. "Just stay in front of that guy, and you'll be fine," I said to a couple of the newer runners who were nervous about finishing. The gun went off and we started fresh at about 12 min/mile pace, still joking and giggling.

My original intent was to stay with my friends, shoot photos, and take it easy on my tired legs. But after a couple of miles I lost them in the crowd and gradually got a little more caught up in the running part of the half marathon. I picked up my pace until the mile-long climb at mile eight, and struggled a bit because quarter-filled paper cups of Gatorade every two miles do not provide that much liquid for a desert race, and I was slightly dehydrated. Near the top of the climb was the access road to our campground, and I admit I considered veering off and either heading back to camp or waiting for the others to catch up. As I approached the gravel road, I saw Kati running in a tutu, and as I pushed to catch up to her I noticed a large contingent of friends standing next to the road and cheering runners on. They were so busy cheering for Kati and her tutu that they didn't even notice me, even after I made a full stop directly in front of them and took their photo. Ah, well.

The headwind picked up speed until even the downhills felt more like climbs. The short-but-steep climbs and wind-blasted descents continued all the way to mile twelve. The final mile was downhill but directly into that fierce wind, and I was sorta done having fun with this half marathon. I'm glad it wasn't a full marathon. I rolled into the finish at 2:06, having come within a few minutes of catching up to some of the California crew. I was 501st out of 1,459 finishers, and 46 out of 83 in "my" class, which was males age 30-34. Monika also told me that this is Paul's half-marathon PR now. Since my only other half marathon was the Greifenseelauf in Switzerland one year ago, and my time there was 2:07, I think it's my PR too. Yay!

Beat, however, told me that because I'm a "runner" now, I really need to get my half marathon time under two hours. Boo. I really enjoyed myself in The Other Half, and I doubt I would have enjoyed myself as much if I made a concentrated effort to shave a half minute off of every mile. When Beat asked if I *could* have shaved at least a half minute off of some of those miles, the answer was emphatically yes (certainly in the first 8 miles, but not in the last five.) "So you're not really trying," he replied. "It doesn't count if you're not trying."

This gave me an idea for a future blog post — examining the emphasis on getting faster solely for the sake of getting faster, and why this value has to be a prerequisite to being a "runner." I'm never going to win and sometimes wonder why it's so important to pick my way up through the middle of the pack. I do understand the satisfaction of personal improvement and the competitive spirit, but I feel the need to examine just how much these increments mean to me, as an individual, before I commit to something like training specifically for a faster 50K, for example. Sometimes I wonder if I get caught up in the peer pressure of "faster is always better" without acknowledging which aspects of the running experience really mean the most to me. Or maybe, as Beat says, I'm just being lazy. :-)

Either way, I had a great time at The Other Half — excellent scenic-yet-challenging compliment to the rest of the weekend. Thanks, friends.

Strange steps take us back

I was just a hair over 19 years old when I decided I hadn’t made enough new friends during my first year in college, and opted to rectify that by joining the University of Utah’s environmentalist club, Terra Firma. Yeah, I wanted to save the environment, too, but I was working two part-time jobs to buy myself the luxury of not living at home, taking a full load of classes, and I had little time for extracurricular activities. So my primary motive was making friends, but when I walked into that first meeting full of young men with hairy faces and women in sun dresses, I had no concept of how deeply this single action would shape my future. 

Just another typical evening at the D Street House. Photo from May 2003. 

I was just a hair over 22 years old, and had been out of school for more than a year, when I moved in with them. “They” were a loosely organized household of ten students, an unwieldy group stuffed two-plus to a bedroom in a small house in the Avenues of Salt Lake City. We called ourselves the “Terra Firma House,” and later the “D Street House.” We've since speculated that more than thirty people called the place home for at least a short time. The rent payers were in constant fluctuation, but we were bound by our love of living cheaply and traveling to the desert whenever we got the chance. The drama level was about what you’d expect from a co-ed group of twenty-somethings crammed into a small living space. Flings sparked and faded, wild parties drew police crackdowns, couches were willfully destroyed, people moved in and moved out, but Terra Firma House lived on. 

I was just a hair under 24 years old when I left. Ironically, the "wild" period of my early twenties was also when I took my career as seriously as I ever have. I commuted seventy miles a day to my job at a small-town newspaper so I could spend long hours editing articles, driving out to accident sites to shoot photos, and interviewing local artists and businesspeople. Returning home every night to a different party ultimately proved to be more frustrating than fun. One day, I arrived at the D Street House after a long day at work to find several of my roommates dismantling a thrift-store-purchased arcade "Skill Crane" with a sledgehammer. I loved these people, and one in particular, but enough was enough. I told my boyfriend at the time that I was moving to Tooele to live closer to my job. For a time, I believed I’d never look back. 

But one thing I’ve learned about myself since that time is that I always look back, and the views are often cathartic and rewarding. For all of the tangents our lives have taken since the Terra Firma days, some things never change: We still laugh about the time a rat crawled into Bryan’s car and died a week before anyone discovered it; we still bond amid the flickers of orange light and sage-scented smoke; and we still love the Utah desert. 

For the last six months, my friend Monika, the “Rockin’ Slovakian” of Terra Firma days who now lives in San Francisco, has been planning a big reunion of friends in Moab. For a number of reasons I was on the fence about going, and as recently as one week before the trip wasn't planning to attend. But as the gathering reached a critical mass of old friends, including several traveling from as far away as Alaska, I decided to make it happen. I bought my plane ticket so late that I checked in at the same time, and made last-minute arrangements to join the group at a campsite next to the Colorado River. 

Friday night was a whirlwind — more than forty people had gathered at the group campsite, and we visited several others who opted to stay with their families in condos back in town. Children played barefoot in the sand while the rest of us huddled next to a small fire, trading the rapid-fire versions of our life stories and laughing at inside jokes. As an introvert, this kind of manic socialization is fun but extremely exhausting. By Saturday morning, while the group made plans, I started looking for an excuse to steal some solo time. 

Most of the California contingent planned to rent bikes in Moab and ride the Slickrock Trail. I looked into this possibility only to find that seemingly all the bikes in town were already rented out for the busy fall break weekend. Other friends were taking their children swimming, or going to town to pick up bibs for the half marathon the following day. Most plans had been made before I latched onto the trip, so I figured I'd just be the odd person out, stuck in camp. But as everyone was packing up to leave for the day, I noticed a bike that I recognized mounted to the top of one of the cars. My ex-boyfriend Geoff and I only had a few short minutes to catch up the night before, so I took the opportunity for an easy icebreaker — "So, you still have the old Karate Monkey?"

Somewhere in our conversation about old bike components, life in Colorado, running, and how few miles he's ridden since the 2008 Great Divide Race, I asked Geoff to let me borrow his bike for the day. We were camped more than thirty miles outside Moab and I had no way to transport the bike by vehicle, so the Slickrock Trail group ride was still out of my reach. Instead, I took off from camp by myself in search of a "touring" adventure, something that would take me to scenic and high places. I found the Onion Creek jeep road, and consequently access to one of the prettiest sections of the Kokopelli Trail.

Riding Geoff's Karate Monkey on the Kokopelli Trail put me in a nostalgic mood, and for long periods of time my mind left the sand-spinning present to travel to desert places in the past. I found myself in Coyote Gulch, anxiously searching for ways to scale a twenty-foot waterfall in Sketchers and jeans, with a forty-pound backpack. Then it was late at night in the San Rafael Swell, sitting in silence around an extinguished campfire as a rare display of northern lights streaked across the starry sky. Then it was a single-digit morning in Robber's Roost, hopping up to breakfast still wrapped in my sleeping bag after a shivering night that I half-believed I wouldn't survive.

Nostalgia is a powerful and double-edged emotion — at once uplifting and sobering, happy and sad. For me, nostalgia is a way of creating continuity with the past, an acknowledgement that everything I do holds a direct line to everything I’ve been through. It’s the reason I can sit down next to a campfire with people who I haven’t seen in as many as five years and pick up stories we left dangling back in 2004 as though no time has passed at all. 

But time does pass. Later that night, back at camp, my friend Jen would lament that our group "doesn't do stuff together anymore. We just talk about the stuff we used to do." It's true. Even during our reunion, we took off on our own tangents before reconvening around the campfire at night. Still, to this group of friends, my own tangent — embarking on a six-hour solo bike ride — seemed to make the least sense. With all the fun activities going on that day, why would I choose to go off by myself and burn up my quads on a long, sandy climb into the La Sal Mountains? At dinner we discussed our plans for the following day, and I jumped at an opportunity to take a friend's bib and run the half marathon in the morning. Some friends joked about my agreeing to a "short" run while others teased me about going on a fifty-mile mountain bike ride while most of the runners tapered on Saturday. My friend Tricia, who effectively hasn't seen me since the days of house parties, Sketchers and jeans on hikes, and vocal disavowals of all structured fitness training, asked me whether I could have foreseen any part of what my life is like now ten years ago.

"Not at all," I replied. "I guess it's just the strange the way life works. One thing builds onto another, so slowly that you don't even notice until you look back and realize that your perspective is dramatically different."

Perspectives keep on shifting, and it's rewarding to maintain connections to the past. These people — and places — have made me who I am, and continue to help me keep sight of where I'm going.