Embracing The Slog

I’m a weirdo who engages in tedious and sometimes injurious exertion to find peace. And while I realize there are better ways, for now, I’m okay with that.

I wish I could explain what it is I love about slogging — by which I mean monotonous and often strenuous movement over long distances. Back when I was still realtively new to The Slog, I’d mash pedals through a November sleet storm in Alaska. My toes were numb and every part of my body hurt, but the cacophony in my mind had lulled to a quiet lullaby. I’d smile dumbly and think — “If only everyone could know how this feels, the world could be a better place.”

And now, what is it … 18 years later? 19? And here I am, still pursuing The Slog. These days, I find it while I’m hiking directly up the steepest trail in the neighborhood on a 95-degree October afternoon in Salt Lake City. I justified this ridiculousness to my mom and sister — who were enjoying a quiet Sunday afternoon — by telling them, “I want to see some fall leaves.” But I didn’t care about that, not really. Bright-colored leaves are fun, but they don’t spark the same zeal as marinating in a sweat-soaked shirt while my calf muscles quiver on the verge of cramps. Head sweat collects on the brim of my cap and falls to the dirt like raindrops as the trail pitches relentlessly higher, forcing shallow gasps from my chronically compromised lungs.

Sure, on some level it hurts. But my mind, my ever-roiling mind, moves into the eye of this storm of physical discomfort. Here, I experience tranquility that I’ve not found anywhere else. And yes, I’ve tried meditation. Perhaps with not enough focus, it’s true, but why should I force it when The Slog is so simple and effective? Psychologists call this “Flow State” and everyone finds their own path to flow. For some, it’s music and art, others logic and problem-solving. Still others find flow in monotonous tasks. These enviable folks won the mental health lottery, in my opinion. If I could float in mental tranquility while mopping floors, honestly, I would choose that, because I could work minimum-wage jobs and live out my days in an outwardly simple but profoundly satisfying existence.

Instead, life saddled me with a passion that is both monotonous and useless. Also, it demands enormous expenditures of energy, time, and resources (you can’t keep slogging up mountains if you stop buying shoes.) It frequently leads to injury. In middle age, I’ve come to understand how the dopamine-fueled drive to pursue ever-greater challenges is not sustainable for my body or mind. Critics say I’m a masochist, or a narcissist, as though external validation is ever a good enough reason to tear oneself apart. I want to say, “No, I understand how meaningless this is in the scheme of things. But if you would only try it, maybe you’d understand how freeing it can be.” I can still love The Slog for everything it is while accepting that it’s not going to change the world or even my troubled mind. Regardless, aging will catch up with me, probably sooner than later, and if I can’t find inner peace in a less physically taxing way, I’m in for a tough senescence.

Before this past Monday, I hadn’t ridden a bicycle outdoors in months. There are reasons for this, many of which have faded enough to reveal themselves as excuses. While packing for my trip to Utah last week, I noticed my bike helmet wasn’t in its usual spots and went on an hourlong search to find it. It wasn’t that I needed the helmet for the trip, but I was perplexed how such a thing could just blip out of existence. Finally, I found it in my bedroom closet — exactly where I’d tossed it aside while unpacking my suitcase after I returned from Paris in June.

This visual of my bike helmet stashed in a closet, unused and unloved for more than three months, sent me into a spiral of remorse that seemed to erupt from nowhere. While acknowledging the overwrought ridiculousness of this emotion, I got caught up in the need to express my frustration with my current state of injury.

“I’m so sorry I’ve neglected you,” I said to my bikes after walking downstairs for the specific purpose of speaking with them. “It’s just, you know, it’s been kind of a hard summer. And now my arm is injured and I think it may be a torn ligament with scar tissue. The physical therapy hasn’t been helping much and I have to see the doctor a third time to beg for an MRI that I’m not sure I can get or that I even want, because maybe it’s better to have a stiff elbow and be at peace rather than ride the rollercoaster of our irritating medical system.”

Of course the bikes do not care, but anthropomorphizing them helps me feel less alone.

Then, on Saturday, I was returning from the Grand Canyon with my mom in sisters when Sara realized that her surprise for us — customized hoodies celebrating our rim-to-rim achievement — would be stuck in Mom’s mail hold until after she returned to California on Sunday. Mom set in motion a valient effort of the sort that I think can only happen in Utah — calling a friend who dropped everything to drive to Mom’s post office just before it closed Saturday afternoon and sweet-talk the postman into less-than-legally releasing the package to her care. But it worked. When we arrived at the friend’s house to pick up the package, she randomly offered to let me borrow her husband’s bike. Since I’d flown to Utah and had no car, I recognized this as my one opportunity to see fall leaves in the Wasatch Mountains — my Sunday hike in Sawmill Gulch notwithstanding.

The friend’s husband — a fit man in his 70s — wheeled it into the driveway let me test it out. It was a simple Specalized hybrid with a large leather seat and 3x8 gearing, which gave me the impression that it was a vintage model. It felt fairly heavy compared to my mountain bike, and it didn’t even have front suspension. But it was well taken care of and had disc brakes, so I felt confident I could at least ride this bike without killing myself, if not ride it especially fast. I raised the seatpost a couple of centimeters and took it out for a short spin along the street as my sisters watched.

“You look so happy,” Sara exclaimed, and I called back, “I love bicycles!”

It was true. I do love bicycles. I missed them so much. I hadn’t even realized. Maybe if I kept to the pavement, I could manage a longer ride without impacting my hurt elbow. Did I mention I’d fallen on my arm again in the Grand Canyon on Friday? Yeah, I’d actually forgotten about that as I wheeled around the block like a 10-year-old who just received a new bike for her birthday.

So what did I choose, with an unfamiliar bike, limited cycling fitness and an arm injury? Guardsman Pass, the highest paved pass in the Wasatch. Topping out near 10,000 feet, riding to this pass from Sandy would require 50 miles of pedaling with more than 6,000 feet of climbing. It was just … not smart … I know. But I was too enamored with the idea to let it go. I was going to ride all of Big Cottonwood Canyon, my Dad’s favorite canyon. Mom had even purchased commemorative shirts to remind us of this (between the hoodie and T-shirt, my sisters and I would return from our third successful R2R with a respectable collection of swag.)

I was in pain from the start. First it was my elbow. Then I shifted my weight to hold the handlebars so lightly that I was effectively sitting bolt upright, which caused sharp pain in my lower back. The upright position also required my calves to generate a disporortionate amount of power, and these muscles were still sore from the Grand Canyon hike. Soon enough I realized that I really should not have risked using this saddle in my running tights without at least slathering some of Beat’s homemade foot lube on my bum. Rest assured that this pain trumped the others for the remainder of the climb.

So I turned around, right? No. No I did not. I had nothing to prove, only injuries to aggravate, and I was in real pain. And yet I was in love. How else do I even describe it? I was plodding up Big Cottonwood Canyon at an unconscionably slow speed, caught up in the beauty of the scenery and nostalgia of familiar places, and floating through a peaceful state of wonder. Flow state within The Slog is not unlike turning to float on your back while swimming in turbulent waters. Earlier, you were thrashing and gasping and the noise surrounding you was deafening, but now you are simply bobbing in the waves, letting them take you where they will, while the peaceful rhythm of the current drowns out the surface noise.

It’s easy to ignore turbulence and pain in this state. Of course, that doesn’t mean these things have disappeared. And sooner or later, you’re going to need to start swimming again.

I thought about the price of flow as I sat on a bench on Guardsman Pass, sighing at the beauty of the Heber Valley while simultaneously reeling through old hurt from the last time I was here. It was three years ago, almost to the day, during a bikepacking race that I foolishly attempted to drown out the cacophony of grief from losing my father. Instead of calming my inner turmoil, the ride drove it in so deeply that it still reverberates when I pass through these places. This is the risk of the The Slog. It’s a place of intense and lasting emotion that doesn’t fade from memory after things go wrong.

And, of course, with my butt temporarily freed from the torture saddle, my arm resumed its complaints. All of the hard part — the brake-grabbing descent — was still ahead. “I’m going to have to tell both of my physical therapists about this, and the Grand Canyon fall,” I thought miserably, because of course I am seeing two physical therapists for the same problem when I’m not even willing to abstain from recreational cycling. I tightened my elbow brace and turned to face consequences.

Surprisingly, everything eased up as I zipped down the steep pavement toward Brighton. I stood out of the saddle to appease my butt, which made my back happier, and even the arm had improved … or gone numb. It was hard to tell. Still, I was no longer in pain and in disbelief about this as I turned a corner and caught a glimpse of the scene above.

The center peak in the background is Mount Raymond, where my Dad fell in 2021. Its bowl was filled with gorgeous golden aspens. As I stopped to gaze at the mountain, my imagination transported me there. I was sitting in the dappled shade of the autumn leaves, gazing up at the ridge, and feeling a gentle breeze on my skin. It’s a place of eternal tranquility. I can’t explain this, even to myself — why the view from Guardsman Pass evokes such turbulence and Mount Raymond does the opposite. But I am grateful for it all — the beauty, the pain, the awe, the peace.

This is what keeps me coming back after all these years.