Training for life … again
Sometimes I feel like I’m right back where I started. That’s a good thing.
I’m back in training. I know, I know … when in 18 years of yammering online about outdoor activity have I not been in training? For the past few years, though, I’ve juggled a more volatile relationship with endurance racing. There were times when I nearly committed to giving it up, cold turkey, and denouncing the practice as a destructive addiction. And there were other times — such as now — when I embraced the justifications … err, reasons … why this hobby is good and necessary. Life is already so destructive and it’s difficult to cope. My mental health starts to fall apart without this meditative practice. Race goals give my meditative practice a tangible purpose, which creates satisfaction, which creates motivation to continue. Training is always a great excuse to boost myself outdoors, where I am happy. Even if I don’t start happy, I nearly always end an outdoor excursion feeling good.
Eighteen years on, I still marvel at my unlikely immersion into endurance racing. I possess no particular athletic talents. I’m slow and uncoordinated. I have the proprioception of a toddler. I’m lazy. My personality isn’t particularly competitive — I’m Type B to a fault — although I won’t deny that I enjoy a win and can be borderline obsessive about numbers. I’m afraid of so many things, and those things often get the better of me. In hindsight, this last, particularly loathsome trait is what drew me into racing. Racing provided a perimeter — a tangible objective with a path I could visualize — to prove that I could transcend the parts of myself that I dislike and distrust. For this test, only the most outlandish goal would work. So, as a complete racing novice, I signed up off the couch for a 100-mile winter bike race through the Alaska wilderness in three months’ time. That was November 2005. The rest is a whole bunch of history.
I would not be the person I am today without the endurance racing community. The person I’ve become still has all of those aforementioned faults, but I have amassed an otherwise incomprehensible amount of inner strength. I’ve gained the confidence and ability to move as I like through the beautiful world (I realize health and injury could take this freedom away from me at any time; my gratitude is what keeps me moving.) I’ve stayed reasonably fit, although I have enough health issues that sometimes I wonder if I might have been physically better off as an occasional gym-goer. (Probably not … my genetics mostly say otherwise.)
Best of all, I’ve had too many life-changing moments and incredible experiences to count. I’ve met so many fascinating people. I would not have met my husband if it hadn’t been for racing. He, unlike me, doesn’t fret about the emotional and physical costs of racing. He loves it unconditionally, and at age 54 continues to succeed in some of the most demanding races in the world.
So why give it up? Because it’s a problem to start with an outlandish thing and continue into exponentially more outlandish things into middle age. Again, my husband will disagree that this is a problem. But I had an intense “Come to Jesus” moment during the Iditarod Trail Invitational in 2020. That was the year when I decided it was well within my capability to walk a thousand miles across Alaska while dragging all of my survival gear in a sled within the span of 30 days. It was also the year when every day of the race was slammed with big storms or crushingly low temperatures or both. I had attempted and succeeded at some big things, but before 2020 I had never pushed myself so hard — physically or mentally — for so little progress. My body was flagging and my mind was reeling with frustration and fear. I didn’t fear for my life — although death never feels far away when it’s 45 below zero — but I did fear for my physical and emotional ability to keep moving. This is like fearing for your life when moving is your only option. I more or less collapsed 15 miles shy of the 300-mile mark and struggled to drag myself to safety. I was struck with the cruel realization that I had found my limit. There was nowhere left to go.
Then, one week later, Covid took over the world. You’d think on some level, I would have welcomed the mandatory break from all races. Instead, I took on the lockdown as its own challenge and doubled down on local goals and virtual races. The crux came on the Winter Solstice. I had organized my own virtual race — a 160-mile winter challenge on bike, skis, or foot. I spent hours designing a Website, setting up a race report blog, and coaxing others to enter my free virtual race for women, The Wild Winter Way. A number of women signed up. But when it came down to it on Dec. 21, I was the only idiot dragging my bike through knee-deep snow drifts in a howling wind at 9,000 feet after midnight — loaded down with gear and fully unsupported, because I was still afraid of stepping inside buildings during These Unprecedented Times. I was the only finisher of my Wild Winter Way. I could have done all of that without tricking myself into believing this silly adventure was something meaningful by calling it a race. I could have just not ridden the grueling 160 miles altogether and instead spent the darkest day of the year curled up in my warm bed and reading books like a normal person. What have I become?
Instead of scrutinizing this question, I kept doubling down on the self-organized racing. In January 2021, four other friends decided to take on a 120-mile winter bike challenge for which we were all physically present together in Leadville, Colorado. It was fun to be at an almost-real event with actual people. But my friends had the wherewithal to leave the course when it stopped being fun. They went to bed at a reasonable hour before temperatures dropped to 5 below. Again, I was the only idiot dragging my bike up a steep and churned-up snowmobile trail for the fourth time at 4 a.m. while a high-alpine howled in my face. This was so stupid. And yet, I acknowledged that I was having a great time. The moon was out and the snow-drenched mountainside glowed with otherworldly blue and silver hues. I felt like a solo space traveler on an alien planet, wrapped in a miraculous space suit that could effectively block his deadly wind. There’s no way I would have embarked on this ridiculous yet exhilerating adventure without the impetus, even if the “race” was contrived.
After my dad died in June 2021, grief threw me into an entirely different, alien state of mind. Suddenly, nothing I had accomplished in life had any meaning at all. The difficult races I’d completed … the books I’d written … the awards I’d won. It was all just noise. All that mattered were the people I loved, the time I had spent with them, the time with my dad … and he was gone. I still felt drawn to places, but for the first time in my life, I had no interest in visiting new places or seeking novel adventures. I only wanted the familiar. While staying with my Mom in Utah, I must have ridden my bike up Little Cottonwood Canyon two dozen times. I didn’t track my personal record or my progress. How had I ever cared about such trivial things? When I returned home, I spent most of my time riding my indoor bike trainer even though it was summer in Colorado. I wanted to drown out the noise of my mind, which physical activity accomplished. I didn’t need my activity to be anything more than that.
It took two years to shift from “racing doesn’t matter and never mattered” to “racing is not for me anymore” to “hmm, racing was pretty much my only hobby what do I do now?” to “I miss focused training” to “actually, racing had some great benefits and now that middle age and health struggles and grief have more or less pulverized my ego, I don’t need to do the most awesome thing anymore, just something that sounds fun and gives me daily purpose.” This shift has not been straightforward. Some mornings, I still wake up with a strong sense of nihilism toward racing. But I like to think I’ve become more of a racing existentialist: “Perhaps racing has no meaning or purpose, therefore I am free to create my own meaning and purpose.”
So I’ve decided to start small — keeping in mind that my small thing isn’t a small thing at all. I have nothing but respect for all distances in racing and acknowledge that a fast 5K could be the most difficult race I’ve ever run. It certainly would be for me, because speed and I get along like toothpaste and orange juice. No matter how hard I tried, the experience would be extremely unpleasant and not all that successful. I’ll never say never, but for now, what I still want from a race experience is a journey — a life in a day, but not necessarily something that’s going to take the last shred of my soul to finish. I settled on a beautiful and familiar 100-mile foot race in Utah that Beat also loves, the Bryce 100. It’s not until May 2024, so I have lots of time to change my mind if I change my mind.
My past self was so enamored with racing that I’ve completed upwards of 60 ultramarathons since I started running in 2010. But it’s been long enough since I last raced that I need to complete an organized run of 50 miles or more in order to qualify for the Bryce 100. 50-milers are tough to come by this time of year unless I want to invest quite a bit of time and money into travel. But I found one that’s close to home … if too soon — it’s on Nov. 11 — in Fruita, Colorado. So I signed up for the Kessel Run and I’ve been in training for … two? … weeks now. I can’t say I’m filled with optimism, but my run-cramming has been going reasonably well. I’ve gotten fairly comfortable running 16 miles at least, and I haven’t even fallen on my face … yet.
It’s going to be an adventure any way it rolls out. In many ways, I feel like that bright-eyed 26-year-old marveling over a brochure for the Susitna 100 and thinking, “Why the hell not?”
I’m excited.
Your sense of purpose in training and racing resonates with me. I've always loved backpacking, but it's been too easy to let the minutiae of life push it away. But, as I've discovered photography and combined it with backpacking, it now has a bigger purpose, and I'm pursuing more remote areas, longer distances, and harsher conditions. Well and good to a point, but your article here is helping me keep some perspective.
Good luck! I’m running a 6.5-miler tomorrow and I’m going to be really sore because I have hardly run at all in a while.