Weekend on the move

After several years of self-experimentation, if one were to ask me what I believe to be the best training for maximizing endurance, my answer would be back-to-back-(etc.) long days on the move, with little time for recovery in between. Doing so forces one to approach greater sustainability, while learning how to increase efficiency, more accurately interpret body signals, and build all those activity-specific slow-twitch muscles. I like to mix up my two main sports (trail running and cycling) in order to reduce repetitive motion, which, thanks to my shrinking violet attitude toward speed, has been the main catalyst of my own sports injuries over the years. (Actually, this is untrue. Clumsiness and crashing have been by far the main catalyst of my own sports injuries. Lack of natural coordination is one of the largest reasons why I have such aversion to speed.) I enjoy my cross-training volume method because it keeps me healthy for a fair number of ambitious goals while spending large amounts of time outdoors, year-round. But don't ask me how fast I can run a 5K. It is probably not a whole lot faster than one-tenth of the time I can run 50K. 

Speaking of 50K, Beat and I decided to get back on the wagon this weekend with yet another Woodside Ramble. We really enjoy running these organized fifty-kilometer trail races, which, thanks to a large and dedicated trail-running population in the larger Bay Area, happen close by nearly every weekend. They're relatively inexpensive, put together nice courses, provide useful swag (50K shirts now comprise more than half of my sports wardrobe, and race mugs and pint glasses about three-quarters of our cup collection), snacks and drinks, post-race barbecue, and a fun community. Beat makes a new friend nearly every run. I prefer to run alone for a higher percentage of the time, but I had an enjoyable chat with a woman from Calgary named Iris, with whom I share a mutual friend, Leslie in Banff. Iris was conducting her own double-trouble weekend after running the Lake Sonoma 50-miler on Saturday. 

Beat and I look a little roughed up in the starting-line photo, for good reason. We both felt significantly sleepy, nauseated, sluggish ... I haven't felt worse before a run in a long time. That's another training benefit of signing up for racing events — it motivates you to get out there regardless of how terrible you feel, and that's how you learn that things usually get better if you just give it time. 

This Woodside Ramble was tough for me because I haven't run, actually run, more than eight miles in one stretch since before the Iditarod Trail Invitational, now nearly two months ago. I love running the trails in these parks (Huddart and Wunderlich), but I was nauseated, slightly bonked because I wasn't eating due to nausea, and severely lacking in mojo during this run. Many times, even on descents, I caught myself unconsciously slowing to a walk because blah, running. I probably would have quit due to lack of interest if I'd just been out on my own time, and I'm glad I had the self-motivating perimeters of the race to stay in it. It's satisfying to learn that even "blah" legs are usually plenty strong, and the "spring slump" I've come to expect is likely less related to real physical setbacks than it is a simple failure of mojo. It's hard for me to return from Alaska to the heat and more routine outdoors opportunities of my home in California. I do enjoy it here, but any return to routine takes a period of adjustment after more engaging adventures. 

Speaking of mojo recovery, I got up bright and (not so early) Monday morning for an exciting road route I mapped out a few months ago and never got around to riding, a "Santa Cruz Century." I bumped the long ride back to Monday rather than Saturday, because I was scared enough of trying to run fifty kilometers that I wanted to do it on relatively fresh legs. This loop from my house weighed in at 105 miles with 11,200 feet of climbing, and covered quite a few new-to-me roads. I love riding secondary roads in the Santa Cruz Mountains for their narrow corridors, lack of traffic, and scenic settings. I tend to forget about frequent 15+ percent grades, teeth-rattling broken pavement, relentless hairpin turns, and surprising (for a Bay Area road route) lack of services. On a hot day like Monday (84 degrees) I actually have to haul three liters of water and most of the day's food. I only expected one gas station stop, in Felton.   

Christmas tree farm on Skyline Ridge. A bit like riding through Alaska's Farewell Burn, but about 100 degrees warmer with much prettier trees. 

Zaynte Creek. Much of the road cuts a precarious side-slope above a steep gorge, with aforementioned broken pavement and hairpins. I am not brave on skinny tires by any stretch of the imagination, and knotted up all the muscles in my shoulders while brake-throttling the descent. 

I stopped in Felton to fill up my water bladder with ice and buy a package of Famous Amos cookies and cheese pretzel Combos (I make the strangest gas station food choices on bike tours. I usually question them the moment I step outside.) I didn't eat anything right away because the heat was bearing down and my stomach was feeling iffy again. After Felton, I immediately had to start up another 2,000-foot climb on the relentless grades of Felton Empire Road. Ooof. 

I continued climbing through the redwood forest on Ice Cream Grade, and arrived at this small mesa that was much drier than the surrounding region, with sandstone cliffs and sparse fir trees. It looked a lot like the high desert mesas of Northern New Mexico. It's fascinating how widely climate zones can vary in short distances in this region. Spring was just beginning to arrive, with ferns emerging from the brown brush. 

It was a swift drop to the coast, with an impressive headwind blasting down Highway One. Northwest is the prevailing wind; I should have anticipated it, but I did not. At this point I was feeling fairly shattered, was looking forward to some flat miles, and was not thrilled to realize that the 25-30 mph headwinds would demand a harder fight than much of the climbing, and it was going to go on like this for the better part of 25 miles. Oooof. 

A little jog over Swanton Road allowed me to escape the coast but not the wind. It was an idyllic setting though — a shallow but narrow canyon filled with strawberry farms and happy-looking horses. 

I could not wait to turn east and start climbing into the mountains again. Even climbing a 15-percent grade is better than fighting strong headwinds on a highway. I started having similar urges to my walk breaks during the Woodside Ramble, when the legs just wanted to give up and do something — anything — else. Here's where the mantra "shut up legs" comes in handy; "you're not that weak, stop pretending and keep pedaling."

 I had this delusion that I could wrap up this ride in eight hours because, "road century." But the effort was not easier mile-for-mile than mountain biking, and with breaks the duration of the ride was creeping closer to ten hours. Ah well. It was a long climb out of Pescadaro and Alpine roads, with a 700-foot descent that I conveniently forgot about.

At least there was a nice sunset to reward staying out late.

And then the moon came out; I just missed the lunar eclipse. It was a few hours later. I expected to feel more tapped out toward the hundred-mile mark, but emerging darkness perked me up, I finally got down the ham sandwich I had been carrying all day, and the reality is I could have gone quite a bit farther. That's both the benefit and technique of building "forever pace," in my experience. The ability to keep going is the ability to keep seeing and experiencing. 

Iditarod playlist

Someone recently asked me about the music I listened to during my recent races — an Iditarod playlist. Listening to music while exercising, training, or racing outdoors is a controversial subject. Some people are adamantly against it, and those who object to racing playlists often carry the assumptions that those who need music are emotionally weak, bored, or trying to drown out fatigue and pain. They accuse us of shutting out the world, but I don't see it that way at all. I don't use music to shut out experiences; I use it to enhance them. I connect with music much in the same way I connect with wilderness, and in my view, music and outdoor experiences intensify each other in equal parts. 

 I don't listen to music all of the time — perhaps not even most of the time during a multiday effort — but I still consider it a vital part of my experience. As such, I carried four iPod Shuffles for the 350-mile trek to McGrath, all loaded up with different playlists. There was one Shuffle that I filled days before the race with mostly new-to-me music, and a few of those songs resonated deeply during the Iditarod. It became by far my favorite Shuffle, and I ended up just recharging that one (with a battery-powered charger) and listening to it throughout the seven days I was out on the Iditarod Trail. Although there were more than 200 songs on that Shuffle and well over 800 total, if I were to pick an "Iditarod playlist," this would be it. Included are photos Beat took during our time together on the trail. 

"Black Out Days," Phantogram

If I was looking for two ongoing themes in my favorite songs during difficult endurance efforts, most are either outright silly or high-energy yet tinted with sadness. I suppose it makes sense. Emotions can be greatly exaggerated out on the trail. Music gave shape to the melancholy, while at the same time outlining an underlining joy. I remember this Phantogram song first came on during the first night of the journey, as we crossed the Dismal Swamp beneath green waves of Northern Lights. The moon was out and the trail was distinct enough that I could turn off my headlamp and walk through the darkness, gazing over my shoulder at the aurora for a long while. I often sang out loud when the lyrics resonated: "If I could paint the sky; Would all the stars shine a bloody red?"

"Reflektor," Arcade Fire

The entire Iditarod Trail is lined with reflective route markers, either permanently affixed to trees and tripods, or tied around wooded lath in the snow. During the long winter nights, these reflectors capture even the dim light of headlamps from a long distance away. Finger Lake, at mile 135, is a checkpoint at the end of a long series of frozen swamps. All of these swamps look the same, and it's the kind of place where you think you've arrived about three hours before you're actually there. As we made our way through the interminable swamps, every distant reflective marker somehow convinced me it was the lights of the lodge. Of course "Reflector" provided the perfect score for every mild disappointment I experienced when I realized I was wrong: "I thought I found a way to enter. It's just a reflector. I thought I found a connector. It's just a reflector." At one point, Beat was several hundred yards ahead and I indulged in singing loudly: "It's just a reflection! Of a reflection! Of a reflection! Of a reflection! ..."

"Jump Rope," Blue October. 

"Jump Rope" is one of those songs that just landed on my iPod, and I hated it at first. It annoyed me so much. My Shuffle was usually stuffed beneath all of my clothing layers, pressed against my skin to keep the battery warm. But if I could reach it at all, I would skip this song. For whatever reason, the random song generator really liked this one; it came on a lot. One day, we were making our way over a series of snowmobile moguls on the trail and I found myself mumbling, "Up, down, up, down, up, down, yeah ... it will get hard." After that, I became hooked on the blatant motivational theme and catchy repetitiveness.

"How Can You Swallow So Much Sleep?" Bombay Bicycle Club

Sometimes, amid the physical exhaustion and encompassing focus on forward motion, I imagined the Iditarod Trail as a sentient entity that would converse with me, without prompting.  This song is a good example of how I interpret my imaginary and often abstract conversations with the Iditarod Trail. I would pose a rhetorical question like the one presented in the title, and the Iditarod Trail would answer with repetitive prodding and incessant demands — "Can I wake you up? Can I wake you up? Is it late enough? Is it late enough?"

"Good 4 It," Wallpaper

This song has a line about "zombie phone" that for whatever dumb reason made me giggle every time. It also contained more resonant lyrics than that: "How to stay alive though? How the f*** should I know?"

"Leave it Alone," Broken Bells

I had a tough morning the day we traveled between Finger Lake and Puntilla Lake, miles 130 to 165. Monotone clouds and light snow deteriorated to fog and moderate sleet, and then rain. The cold soaking weather, combined with dreary skies, lack of views in what I knew to be a beautiful region, and day three (or was it four) fatigue, sapped away any energy or willpower I could muster for sled-dragging and made the miles seem endless. This song was the perfect rainy day anthem. "Could it all be over now? We've seen it all the while ...  There's no dimension to the clouds ... And the moon and world around.  That's the heart of all my pain ...  cause I don't wanna go ... Oh the distant light ... in a hue we can't describe, still we know."

"Lies," Chvrches

This was a good marching song. I also imagined it as the Iditarod Trail taunting me, which the Iditarod Trail often did in my imagination. "I can sell you lies ... You can't get enough ... Make a true believer of anyone, anyone, anyone."

"I Gotta Feeling," The Black Eyed Peas

The day after it rained, we crossed over the the far side of the Alaska Range. Several days of warm temperatures absolutely scoured the already-dry region of snow, as well as a lot of its surface-coating ice. For fifty miles we hacked through knee-deep alder tangles, standing water on top of glare ice, bare dirt, roots, ankle-deep mud, wet swamps, tussocks, and shin- to knee-deep stream crossings. This wouldn't have been a terrible trail to backpack if it was a warm day in the summer, and we were carrying backpacks rather than dragging 45- and 75-pound sleds over endless obstacles. The sled-dragging part was always my weakness in this endeavor; I never became terribly strong at it in the best of conditions, and in the worst I was absolutely at my physical limit just to maintain forward motion on the steep rollers along the South Fork of the Kuskokwim River. We covered two miles in a good hour. In a bad hour, sometimes closer to one.

After a series of stream crossings, some of my gear had gotten wet, my shoes and socks were soaked, my sled was filled with greasy mud, my head was spinning, and I knew that the temperature could possibly drop to 30 below overnight — as it is known to do in the Farewell Burn in February. I had a complete, mucousy, blubbering breakdown spurred by paralyzing fear and frustration, that Beat was unfortunate enough to witness. Shortly afterward, iPod brought up this Black Eyed Peas song. Knowing that we were going to be spending that night sleeping on muddy ground in the Burn, with soaked feet and gear, in an area where there probably wasn't enough snow to make more water, made this song even more wistfully relatable — "I gotta feeling. That tonight's gonna be a good night." I must have repeated it eight or ten times, using the catchy beat to motivate my body to pull harder over the roots and tussocks. I sang out loud to the part where they repeated all the days of the week — "Get with us, you know what we say, say ... Party every day ... p-p-p-party every day." ... Because that's what we do on the Iditarod Trail. :)

"Last Words," Hospitality

Another haunting song that got me through some long miles. It was beautiful amid the frozen swamps, far-sweeping horizons and spindly spruce forests of the Farewell Burn.

"Army of the Damned," Lonewolf

Beat and I agree that this death metal song is the perfect anthem for walking to Nome.  But it's appropriate for all frozen-purgatory marching occasions.

"Roar," Katy Perry. 

Yeah. I pretty much had to go there.

"Team," Lorde

One the final stretch into McGrath, I operated in a dreamlike state of mind. I was slightly low on food and rationing calories, and discovered there was a peaceful place between alert and bonked, where time lost meaning, landscape features blurred, and everything seemed magical. As Beat and I traveled the wide expanse of the Kuskokwim River, we began to approach another walker who was about a mile ahead. We knew it had to be our friend Steve, who left Nikolai the previous night just as we were arriving. While in Nikolai, Steve made a phone call and learned that his father had died, and was justifiably emotional. Rather than rest in the remote village, he opted to leave not long after sunset, facing a long night on the river in order to reach McGrath and fly home. The fact that we had caught up to him many hours later, and after what had been a cold night (20 below), raised some concern. It needn't have, as Steve just needed to be alone when he left Nikolai, and had bivied for several hours on the trail. But I was worried he was distraught or in distress on top of everything else, and Beat seemed determined to catch him. We power-hiked on the verge of running for 45 minutes, and again I was at my physical limits on rationed calories and a child-like emotional state. During that hard march, Lorde's "Team" seemed to score the strange combination of stress and bliss. "And you know, we're on each other's team."

"Happy," Wrens

The temper tantrum that erupted while listening to this song is one of my most prominent memories from my first trip to McGrath in 2008. I put it on the playlist of all four of my iPods for that reason, but in the strange way Shuffles work, "Happy" did not come up once until the final day — in almost the same spot as my 2008 emotional eruption on the Kuskokwim River. Hearing this song in a similar location but very different context underscored just how different my journey had been this time around. It was a fitting finale to my 2014 playlist as well. 

Suddenly spring

 Spring is my favorite time of year in California. In this region, spring actually spans February and March; by April it's the cusp of summer, with its heat and parched hills, face-stalking flies, dusty trails, stinging nettle and robust poison oak. But for now it is still spring, and returning from white winter to hills splashed in green has been refreshing.

 Less refreshing is re-acclimating to 80-degree temperatures, discovering that SPF 15 is no longer going to cut it, and sweaty chamois. But, Alaska adventures are over and it's time to look forward to the summer projects, put in more productive screen time, and get back out there in anticipation of the rest of 2014. I'll write soon about my summer plans, but let's just say there is a lot of mountain biking *and* mountain running in my near future. This is to be the year of "forever pace," a grand experiment and one that I'm pretty excited about.

 Trying to pull myself out of White Mountains 100 and travel fatigue resulted in slow-paced plods on Thursday and Friday, but by Saturday both Beat and I were feeling more snappy and rallied for a four-hour mountain bike ride with Liehann. This was Beat's longest effort since he returned from Nome two weeks ago (was it really that recently? It feels like months at this point.) He rode the same bike I used in the White Mountains, re-fitted with 29" wheels. Beat purchased the soft-tail Moots as a mountain bike that just happened to be convertible to a fat bike, and I think this was his longest ride so far on the (decidedly slimmer) beast. He seemed pleased with the handling and agility. It is a great bike.

 Enjoying the spoils of snow biking in sunny California.

 Thirty-five miles and 5,200 feet of climbing in the "heat" admittedly felt tougher than I expected, but saddle time is my current goal, so I joined Liehann for his long ride on Sunday. We planned an 80-mile loop through Big Basin and Pescadero state parks. The winter here was exceptionally dry, but when Beat left Alaska, he took all the bad weather that had been shadowing him for two weeks and brought it home — a whole week of rain. I just missed it, bringing Alaska's unseasonably blue skies and warmth home with me, to enjoy the newly lush trails and hillsides after green-up.

It seemed cooler on the move than it was. Our lunch break in the sun quickly migrated to a lunch break in the shade, huddled in a thin sliver of a fir tree shadow — which was humorous given we were riding through Big Basin Redwoods State Park, offering a lot of places to escape the sun just below the dry and exposed ridge. For lunch I had a sad bread-and-cheese "sandwich" that I cobbled together from a relatively empty fridge in the morning. That's when Liehann pulled out an entire pound of sliced turkey and offered to share. That's an important sign of a good bike partner — the ability to complete a sandwich.

 Blasting down Gazos Creek fireroad. Photos can't really illustrate it, but this is pretty much the best descent ever, at least for a fireroad. Fast and flowing with swooping turns, steep drops, the filtered sunlight of huge redwood trees, cool shade, moss and ferns, gurgling creeks and chirpy birds to complete the tropical rainforest feel of the place. The climb back up Pescadero is equally steep, equally redwoody, and decidedly less sublime. I felt more tired and taxed than I did at any point during the White Mountains 100. But if I stopped my internal whining long enough to consider it, I realized that my legs still felt plenty strong, the head-boiling sensation would fade once acclimation kicked in, and eighty miles is really not so far. It was a big weekend — 115 miles and some 15,000 feet of climbing all told, but not a big deal. In both 2012 and 2013, I returned from Alaska feeling physically downtrodden, a mental state that carried into rough-edged summers. I'm experimenting with making this season different simply by switching up my attitude. We'll see how it plays out, but it's my new mantra: "not a big deal." No need to worry about limits if there are none.

Beat keeps asking about my Iditarod race report. I haven't started it. I'm spending my days with newspaper projects and finishing up the book about Tim Hewitt, as well as working on my book proposal for Ann Trason. With the Iditarod story, I had this idea to spend a bit more time on the writing, polish more than usual, and integrate text and photos in a more dynamic way than the blog allows. Basically, I want to make a small digital book out of it. Beat thinks there might not be enough material there, but I want to have fun with the project — after all, what's the point of writing about your own adventures if you can't have fun with the writing as well?

Since I struggle so much with finishing a full book, I'm considering the prospect of "micro-publishing" to keep the salmon wheel turning. Other authors have tried this with variable success, some slim to none, but it seems worth a shot. I recently did my taxes, and although my books are dwarfed by other sources of income, it continues to surprise me how many royalties they still bring in. This blog, which I spend hours and hours and hours on (for fun; it's my relaxation outlet) pulls in about $1,000 a year through Google Ads. The books, which I spent a few weeks writing years ago and haven't done much with since, still make considerably more than that. It's all chump change in the Silicon Valley, but it's a start. Something I really need to figure out this year, in addition to finding my forever pace, is what I really want to do as a writer/editor/publisher. Taxes make it starkly clear which efforts "pay off" and which ones really are just a hobby. I've never been one to place all or even the majority of my self worth in the things other people are willing to pay me to do, but splashes of honesty are occasionally needed when the things I've been so dedicated to just aren't working. With that said, I maintain loyalty to the downtrodden newspaper industry, and I believe even more firmly in books.