The Dark Places We Visit in Pursuit of the "Perfect" Race

Last year, at Trail Runner's first annual Photo Camp, I had a terrific conversation with Jason Schlarb and Jen Benna, two elite ultrarunners who'd come to run and "model" for the camp. Over beers and a post-run hot-tub soak, we all chatted about the dreamy pursuit of "the perfect race," that magical experience in which the stars align and everything unfolds like a dream.

Jen had experienced just that earlier that year at the Zion 100, which she ran many hours faster than any previous hundo she'd done, handily won by over an hour, and smashed the previous women's course record by nearly four hours. A month after our Photo Camp, Schlarb also set his own 100-mile personal record and bagged a dominating win at the hyper-competitive Run Rabbit Run 100. He also not only won, but broke the course record, by well over an hour.

Well, I'm no elite athlete, but that doesn't mean I'm not competitive with myself and my own goals. Granted, I tend to favor realistic expectations over ambitious ones, and until the Bear 100 last weekend, I'd never approached a race of that magnitude with a true time goal, other than just to not quit and make it to the finish line.

But, I trained hard this year. For my third 100-miler, I felt ready to graduate from the "just finish" mindset to the "race a wee bit" mindset. So I set a goal of finishing in under 28 hours, which felt ambitious for me on the Bear course (22,000 feet of elevation gain), yes, but also plausible. Nevertheless, it's scary to admit goals like this aloud, because if things don't go as planned, it's nice to be able to cop out and say, "Oh, I didn't really care about my time anyway."

But, here's the problem: I did.

Or, perhaps more accurately, I cared about my goal of wanting to nail "the perfect race." Or even, less ambitiously, to just not fall apart. I wanted to run hard and feel (mostly) good the whole time, or as (mostly) good as it's possible to feel during a 100-mile race.

And I felt pretty darn good for most of the race! Photo by Annie Murphy.

I wanted to be able to look back on the 2014 Bear 100 and say something other than "Everything was great until the sh*t hit the fan between the miles of 70 and 75," which has been the story of the other two 100s I've run.

In hundo #1 (2012 IMTUF), around mile 70ish, massive blisters bloomed on every available surface area of each of my toes. I went from being briefly in the women's lead to spending 25 miles wincing in pain with each step and missing the race's already-generous cutoff of 36 hours by three minutes.

In hundo #2 (2013 Leadville), I got exactly 1.5 hours of sleep the night before the race and thus, by mile 70ish, was literally falling asleep while running/hiking. I stopped to nap on the ground or on aid-station cots many times over the last 25 miles and, like a zombie, crawled over the finish line in 29.5 hours.

Last weekend, I was careful to sidestep the issues of #1 and #2—wearing toe socks (no blisters the whole race!) and getting plenty of sleep (didn't even need caffeine to get me through the night this time!). I felt great.

Feeling psyched around mile 20. Photo by Annie Murphy.

Nonetheless, come mile 70ish, something vicious found a way to rear its head. In this case, around 5 a.m., the skies unleashed a holy terror of freezing rain. The final quarter of the course turned into a muddy slip-and-slide, an outright waterfall in places, that slowed me to a necessary walk—which, in turn, chilled me to the bone.

Stubbornly, I'd wanted to run the Bear without a pacer. And I did just that, which, for the most part, I enjoyed. I can't tell you what exactly I thought about during my long, lonesome hours through the night, but I can tell you that I felt calm and joyful. There's magic to be found in solitude in the mountains. Furthermore, people are far more likely to approach and start a conversation with you when you're alone—so, all day and all night, I enjoyed sharing a few miles at a time and great conversations with strangers.

I crossed the state line around 4:30 a.m.

... and utterly failed to take a selfie with the sign. But posting this blurry photo to show how happy I clearly still was at that point in the race!

But, come the apocalyptic rains, my solitude took me to an especially dark place. I grew cold. I slipped several times, falling and hitting my head against the ground. All the moisture from the rain caused significant chafing on my back and thighs, rubbing my skin raw and bleeding in places. I cried some. I distinctly remember repeating the words, "I've never been this miserable in my life" inside my mind like the refrain to some terrible song. By the time I stumbled into the aid station at mile 85, every one of my layers of clothing and gloves and cap soaked through, I'd convinced myself I had hypothermia, so was fully prepared to quit and go home.

I wept there, too, disappointed in myself for giving up—but equally certain that I was, in fact, experiencing a medical emergency that warranted quitting. And yet, when I got there, my crew—my boyfriend and my dad, who also helped see me through Leadville last year—was nowhere to be found.

I couldn't imagine doing anything but sitting, swaddled in blankets next to a campfire, so that's what I did. Nearly an hour passed as I sat, shivering and semi-conscious, before I overheard one of the volunteers mention that the road to the aid station was impassable for two-wheel-drive cars.

And so it dawned on me that my crew wasn't coming. There would be no piling into a dry, heated car and being gently lulled to sleep on the drive back to a warm hotel room. There was nothing but a 15-mile expanse of mud, rain and cold fog awaiting me. Impressionable as I was by then, thanks to the gentle but firm encouragement of a fellow runner and his pacer—thank you, Nate and Ben!—back out I went.

Other than the mud on the trails, which only grew worse, everything improved from there on. The rains calmed. My body regained warmth as the coldness of night fell away and I was able to keep up a steadier pace. At the next aid station at mile 92, I happily fell into the arms of my crew, changed into dry clothes and took off for the finish line, thrilled to be "gettin' 'er done."

Cruising down the finishing chute, happily outfitted in dry clothes, shoes no longer identifiable under cloaks of mud.

Finisher swag.

Post-race portrait. Thanks for the snap, Jeason.

Am I satisfied with my race at the Bear this year? Of course I am. There's no being disappointed when you finish a 100-mile race! But that "perfect race," at least for me at the 100-mile distance, remains elusive. I've experienced it in a 50K; I've experienced it in a 50-miler. I'm just still hungry for it in a 100-miler. (It typically takes me only a few hours to go from "What the hell was I thinking, running 100 miles is the worst idea ever" to "When can I sign up for another one?")

Once again, this sport has thoroughly humbled me. Every time I get the teensiest bit of an ego about my running, something comes along to tear it down. And, for that, I have nothing but gratitude. Ego doesn't belong in the mountains.

Thanks for reminding me of that, Bear! Other than my own rambling, self-indulgent reflections here, I have nothing but good things to say about the race organization, beauty of the course, volunteers, aid stations, fellow runners ... truly a top-notch event I'd heartily recommend to anyone. Thank you to everyone who was a part of the 2014 Bear for making this an unbelievable experience! (And, for a far better photographic and video representation of the race's beauty and mudfest alike, check this out.)

Thoughts on a rainy Friday

Changed my blog layout, as some of you non-RSS -feed readers may have noticed. Just needed a change of scenery, I suppose.

That's what autumn is all about anyway, right? Shifting seasons, changing colors, falling leaves, a new year beginning for the schoolbound, that cyclical creep of cool, crisp September air nosing its way into August heat. For Seattle, it's just meant a lot of rain the last few days. I keep thinking about Ruth, who just moved here a few weeks ago from New York, and how she must be calling home and telling everyone, "It's really true, this gray and rainy all the time business about Seattle!"

For now, though, I like it. Rain means books, fleece, butternut squash soup, music, snuggling with Chloe, Cozy Time socks, copious amounts of tea, and snowboarding season just around the corner. I guess that's how I know I moved to the right city...I can take my place among my Seattle friends whose Facebook statuses all echo my sentiments: James "likes that it's overcast today" and Gale wrote, "has anyone looked outside? Exquisite rain. Really. Top notch Seattle rain. I love it.", etc. Clearly I am in the right place. I was listening to some great music a minute ago, but I've turned it off, because I'd rather sit by my open window and just listen to the droplets splattering in the gutters. What a great sound!

Life's been interesting lately. I've read more books in the past month than I think I have in all my time since graduating. A bittersweet observation...completely awesome and tragic, all at once. Why did it take me until now to remember how much I love reading? How much richer my life feels when it's surrounded by words - real, thoughtfully crafted, deliberately transposed words - and not just Twitter posts? For once, I haven't held myself to one or two books at a time. I've checked out dozens from the library, spent afternoons lost in bookstores, placed exorbitant orders with Amazon (no, I don't think they're evil, just because they're an online retailer), and woken up every morning surrounded by books and let myself take to work the one or two that really appealed to me on that particular day - rather than holding myself to the one, necessarily, I was reading the night before. It's been fantastic.

I went for my first run in 6 weeks. I did about 3.5 miles, and it felt spectacular, but also hard (though not as hard as I was worried it might be.) But I was ready to be done by the end. It's sad to not be in the kind of running shape I was in just a couple months ago, but my body feels strong and rejuvenated and excited for all the rebuilding and strengthening that's possible when you're not already in tip-top shape. The fact that "going for a run" only takes half an hour now instead of three or four is also very productive for the book-reading habit.

Got together with three lovely Oberlin folk a few nights ago for tacos and a political discussion on the pros and cons of Katy Perry and her effect on American pop culture. Ah Oberlin...it's amazing how many fellow alumni have settled in the rainy city, too.

School starts in another week and a half. I'm excited for all the possibilities. And again, for change. Change is great. It's always been a positive driving force in my life. I've had so many ideas in the last few years, but with the modern technological age, it feels like a roadblock to not have the skills to build websites for my ideas. School will (hopefully) help me develop those skills, and for that, I'm infinitely grateful.

My eclectic soundtrack for the month:
Goodbye, Sean Fournier (his whole album if obtainable free at his website)
Jolene, Dolly Parton
Turns Out You Won, Meredith Bragg
Seminole Wind, James Taylor
Otherside, Macklemore
Alla This, Ani Difranco
In the Barrel of a Gun, Emily Wells
Cornflake Girl, Tori Amos
When You Come Back Down, Nickel Creek
Ain't No Reason, Brett Dennen
Somewhere Over the Rainbow, Israel Kamakawiwo'ole

That's all I got for now, folks.

Summer's coming.

They don't call it the Evergreen State for nothing.
Ah, what glory, the seasons! After what's been a relatively dry winter for Seattle, April unleashed days on end of relentless rain. This weekend, the sun finally emerged again - just in time to illuminate all the beautiful flowers and greenery that have blossomed under profuse watering last month.

Because all of my prior visits to Seattle occurred between late April and early June, I'd really had no concept of the Northwest during any season but the verdant, sunny one. In the past few rainy, gray months, I'd almost forgotten that I'm living in the same city with which I fell in love five years ago. But this weekend - with the skies blue and cloudless, the air crisp and humidity-free, the sliding glass walls of open-air cafes pushed aside to let in the summer breeze, and all the people outside basking in the sunshine - I was reminded.

Not that I don't still have some appreciation for the rain. Two friends from work, Jenica and James, and I miraculously all had a shared day off this week. Though I found what seemed like a great hike for us off of the infamous Mountain Loop Highway, my plans were foiled by a late-season snowstorm in the North Cascades. Instead, we stuck to lower elevations and went for a rainy trek to see Wallace Falls:


This area typically draws a lot of hiker traffic, but because of the weather, we had the trail and the falls pretty much to ourselves. And even though we missed out on some views due to the heavy mist, it was kind of nice to hike in fog; light rain can be really therapeutic, in ways...cleansing, renewing. And just a little more hardcore than your usual, sunny day hike :)


Supposedly, the Olympic Mountains are on the other side of all that mist.


The trees were gorgeous and stunning, as always.
Also: best trailhead sign ever. We had a photoshoot at it on our way out.




As with all good hikes, we finished up with - what else? - a trip to Grocery Outlet. There's one in Monroe, which happily, meant all new random surplus groceries to explore! Needless to say, we enjoyed some fantastic snacks on our drive back to the city...including: oatmeal raisin cookies, milk chocolate with sea salt almond nibs, and lots of tasty trail mix. Jenica needed to go home, but James and I rounded out the evening at an old favorite - the Hopvine Pub on Capitol Hill - for yummy soup and the beginning of open mic night.

I'm just happy summer is on its way - and for once, it won't mean 100+ degree temperatures and stifling humidity. Instead, it's going to mean: many more mountain adventures, fresh fruit smoothies, camp outs, backyard barbecues, summer concerts, long runs again, playing outside with friends, hiking the Grand Canyon this July, swimming in Lake Washington, riding my bike, and more mornings like this one: having no trouble waking up at 6 a.m. because sunshine was pouring through my windows.

Peace out, Seasonal Affective Disorder.

Boot camp continues

Last-minute trail-running boot camp continues. (Yes, I know this is a terrible way to prepare for a race. I'm just really excited, and can't help myself.)

So, yesterday was intended to be my last big run day before next weekend. I would have loved to have gone out to Cougar Mountain again and done a long, rolling trail run with a lot of elevation, but unfortunately, I had to be at work at 11 a.m., and Cougar Mountain is just far enough away that a decent run out there before work was implausible. So I did my best to work with what the city has to offer instead, and plotted out a 12.5 mile course around Seattle, hitting up as many steep hills as I could possibly cram into one run - though promising myself I'd take it slowly.

What I did instead was a full 16-mile run with a couple miles worth of hill sprints about 9 miles in, at Gasworks Park, and still, my average overall pace was a full two minutes per mile faster than the last time I did a long, hilly run. Granted, I was primarily on roads this time, and roads are always faster than trails, but my gosh how wimpy and manageable all the city hills seemed after spending the last couple weeks trying to run up mountains!

Today, as I wrote before, I was up at 6 a.m. (for the second day in a row, woohoo!) to get out to Issaquah to proctor an SAT for a room full of bleary-eyed high schoolers. I packed all my running gear and my favorite trail-running guide to western Washington *just in case* I felt like cramming in a bit more last-minute elevation training.

Turns out I did. This time, I went for West Tiger 3, one of six peaks in the 13,500-acre Issaquah Alps. It only got a 3 (of 5) "Pain" rating in the guide (as opposed to Mount Si, which got a 5), despite climbing 2,000 feet in just a few short miles with pretty much relentlessly steep uphill trekking. It was a bit rockier than Si as well, and given that it's been raining all day long here too, I definitely had to take the downhill a bit slower to make sure I didn't slip on wet rocks or twist an ankle in the sloppy mud. Taking the uphill slowly wasn't such a conscious decision...it just happened. The good news, though, is that I ran for 2 whole miles uphill before having to stop and take a rest! (Compared, again with Si, where I was lucky if I could string together a 30-second segment of actual running before breaking down into a hunched-over, discouraged trudge.) And then I made it up pretty much the rest of the way actually running, except for the last really steep, incredibly rocky chute to the summit.

Apparently on a clear day, you can see Mount Rainier, Mount St. Helens, Puget Sound, and the entire Seattle skyline all from the top. I will definitely have to go back another time for all that! Instead, I reached the summit and found myself enshrouded in fog and complete silence, save the gentle pit-pat of the rain hitting my rain jacket. I sat down on a rock for awhile to appreciate the solitude, and the simple joys of fresh air and rain and my breath, before turning around and beginning my roller coaster of a ride back down to the bottom.

All in all, a good start to my weekend. 5 a.m. wakeup call tomorrow morning to leave for volunteering on Orcas! No pictures from today (cameras and rain, a bad combination), but hopefully some soon. And maybe also soon an entry that doesn't just obsess over running... :)

P.S. My latest work for OutdoorsNW: Click me!


(Photo courtesy of ONW.)

It started to rain

Cup o' Joe Mondays are taking this week off :/ My excuses:

Alan in town + U-hauling the rest of my junk out of my storage unit + bookcase shopping + getting furniture moved into the apartment + my last big marathon training run (21 miles in 3 hours of pouring rain) + a couple seriously long work shifts

=

No time for lounging in coffeeshops. Just a caffeinated GU energy gel on my run yesterday..."Orange Burst" flavor. (Not recommended.) Since then, I've been basically inhaling food like it's nobody's business. 19 days until race day!

There will be a more substantial entry soon, hopefully complete with photos as Alan and I get things more organized, arranged, decorated, etc. Meanwhile, the skies continue to pour and pour and pour. I had enough foresight to take along my rain jacket when I went to work this morning, but it wasn't enough to keep my jeans and shoes from getting absolutely soaked on the walk home at night. I've learned at least one particular sidewalk corner to dodge, though, to avoid getting drenched in a ten-foot tidal wave of puddle-water when cars come plowing through. An important skill, undoubtedly...

Anyway. I guess they weren't kidding about the rain.

Cup o' Joe Monday: Installment III

Fuel Coffee
Happy Labor Day! Fortunately, the holiday doesn't stop Seattle's coffeeshops from opening their doors. Seyeon and I woke up at the bright and early (i.e. overcast and drizzly) hour of 6:30 a.m. this morning to squeeze in Cup o' Joe Monday before observing the holiday with...all-day work shifts at our respective jobs! Woohoo for The Working Life!

So, we hit up Fuel Coffee on 19th Ave. Fuel has 3 locations around Seattle. This one's tucked into a lovely little strip of shops, cafes and restaurants in the middle of an otherwise sleepy, quiet residential neighborhood. If coffeeshops with lofted balconies are my favorite feature, those with free refills are a close second. Fuel boasts the latter, along with free wi-fi, as well as access to High 5 Pies, an entrepreneurial pie venture by the same woman who founded Fuel itself.


The atmosphere at Fuel is great. We arrived three minutes after they opened, and had the place to ourselves for about fifteen before the morning crowds started coming in - young twentysomethings, older couples, even a family who came in for coffee, bagels and reading together around a table. The baristas were great - down-to-Earth, really friendly and engaging, and enthusiastic about my Cup o' Joe blog project as Seyeon told them about it.


Best music of anywhere I've gone so far - relaxing folksy indie music at the perfect volume. The coffee itself gets a real thumbs-up, too. Espresso drinks seemed a little pricey, so I just went for straight up drip coffee, but it was wonderfully smooth. Great artwork on the walls, really tastefully done, and a bookcase full of books, maps, zines, travel guides and puzzles for browsing and playing with. + Lovely lighting!


Will definitely be coming here again!

Ode to coffee and overcast skies

Well, the rain has finally arrived. A couple overcast days in a row here - still comfortably in the sixties, but brisk, a little wind coming off the water, and the drizzly faucet of the Seattle sky let loose. It's funny how much different kinds of weather affect different people. Seyeon's mom, Andrea, and I both thrive in this kind of climate - cold enough to drink tea and wear fleece around the house. It's heat and humidity that suck energy out of me - if it's hot, I tend to think, Well damn, I'm uncomfortable; what can I possibly do today but sit still in front of my fan and be miserable? But the cold makes me feel alive. It gets me moving, if for nothing else but to keep myself warm, my blood moving. My mind is more alert.

And the overcast sky! It's obviously far too early in the game to lay claim to total enjoyment of it, but for now, I don't mind it at all. It's an enabling condition for two of my favorite activities: writing and running.

WRITING

Often times, if I stay inside to write, I feel guilty for not doing all the other things I could be doing with my day, outside in the sunshine like normal people. Staying in with a laptop feels antisocial. But not here. It's no surprise to me that so many of the great business leaders, computer programmers, writers and artists have thrived in Seattle. With a host of coffeeshops to hole up in during the long, gray days and work away at, it's easy to slog away and get things done here. I have taken on the challenge of building myself a rockin website from scratch, and despite the tedium of teaching myself code and implementing it, it's been a blast to get swept up in the nose-to-the-grindstone-but-in-a-creative-way vibe of Seattle's coffeeshops.

I told myself I wasn't going to repeat any cafes for at least my first few months here. There are so many to explore, there's really no excuse to repeat. Each place has its own ambience and vibe...its own aromas, couches, freshly baked pastries, artwork on the exposed brick walls, script on the chalkboard menus. Nevertheless, I've failed miserably, having discovered a small local place that I absolutely adore, and can't seem to break out of the habit of frequenting in the mornings to write, work on my website and conduct my job search.


Cappuccino: the price of productivity.

RUNNING

Cool, overcast weather is absolutely ideal running weather to me. Again, the sun drains me - so with it safely behind the clouds, I feel like I can run forever. There's an entire blog entry in my discovering the joys of urban running, but for now, suffice to say that I've had several amazing runs around the city - exploring residential and commercial districts alike (though the two are often deeply intertwined in Seattle), getting lost here and there (I actually ran several days ago with a printed Mapquest map clenched in my hand; the ink wound up getting wet from sweat, leaking all over my palm and dissolving into complete illegibility by the end of my run), but thus learning how all the neighborhoods connect. It seems near impossible to run more than ten minutes in any direction before running into a huge, sprawling park with trees and trails and solitude - before emerging again on city streets, and running across bridges over scenic stretches of the bay, with stunning views of the mountains, the Space Needle, the downtown skyline and all the lush, green hills that surround it. Beautiful! I did 13.1 miles yesterday, running from my doorstep through Interlaken Park, across the University Bridge, along the Burke-Gilman Trail, to Gas Works Park, then up a 2-mile stretch of gradual uphill to arrive at Seattle's runners' paradise: Green Lake! And then back home again to stretch out my unbelievably tight calf muscles!

And finally, bonus of the weekend: Zephyr calling me with an extra ticket to go see Othello at the Intiman Theater near the Seattle Center - an absolutely fabulous performance.