Year: 2011

 

Cascade Crest 100

August 27-28, 2011

Easton, WA

‘Interesting choice of a pacer,’ Keith remarked to Aaron on the Friday before the start of the Cascade Crest 100 mile race in Easton, Washington.  For I, his pacer, was most known for being whiny, dependent, delicate, and with zero experience in long races.   On top of that I was having lingering stomach problems from my recent trip to Nepal that nearly kept me from boarding the plane to Seattle.

It has been fascinating to observe the power of preconceived notions and their ability to block out anything that deviates from one’s prefabricated order.  To someone outside of WUS like Monica Ochs, who crewed for CCC female victor Shawna Tompkins and joined Amy and myself in touring the course in Amy’s Civic ‘Bridget’, the natural question within the first hour of meeting me arose, ‘So is the guy you’re pacing your boyfriend?’  To which I answered, ‘Yes, he is, but it’s quite strange, no one knows.  You see, we don’t hide it, we act normally – he walks home with me after each Tuesday night group run, we’ve made numerous references to the ‘extra’ bed we have in our hotel room, and heck everyone knows I’m a princess and here I am flown across the country to wade through mountains for an entire night.  We’ve been waiting for people to use their own powers of inference to call us out on it.  But the closest anyone has come is that someone thought Aaron was showing up to all our WUS runs because he was having a fling with another male runner (who actually was a girlfriend himself).  I guess he gets some credit for noticing and wondering why in recent months Aaron has greatly increased his Tuesday night attendance.  But overall they’re all astonishingly oblivious.’

I knew that I would not be particularly adept at crew.  At the first crew-accessible aid station at Tacoma Pass Aaron asked me if I had his bag.  Not only did I not have his bag, but I didn’t even find out what it was he wanted so I could try to dig something up for the next crew-accessible aid station in 10 miles.  All the other crew people were leaping to attention, taking charge, disseminating instructions, asking the runner key questions – kind of how I imagined war would be.  Wives kissed their husbands, friends patted their runner on the back.  You know what I did when Aaron arrived?  I threw my hands in a V and exclaimed, Yea!  And remained standing exactly where I was beside Monica.  Then I admitted I had none of the materials Aaron was requesting and apologized profusely for being worthless.

Fortunately I did have a learning curve as the day and night wore on, and by the mile 68 aid station at Lake Kachess, where I was to start pacing, I had Aaron’s drop bag ready for him as well as extra drink powder mixes and shot bloks and felt proudly organized.  Although externally chipper and unfathomably polite, Aaron was not in great straights when I joined him at mile 68.  As we trotted off up the road to the ‘Trail from Hell’ Aaron explained that he had ‘no up and no downs’ and it was going to be a long 32 miles home with lots of walking.  But I was giddy to be out on the trails, talking a mile a minute as I recounted all the stories from the day, continually gazing up at a black sky freckled with so many stars that it was difficult to make out any of the known constellations (although the 7 tough miles of dirt road with 3,000 feet of gain to No Name Ridge provided more than enough time for us to identify Orion, the Big Dipper, Cassiopeia’s Chair, and the Seven Sisters as we plodded (and mainly walked) along).

It was not easy to watch Aaron navigate the ‘Trail from Hell’, groaning like an elderly patient as he tried to discern the easiest way to sprawl across the multitude of giant blowdowns (apparently late snows had slowed their removal by the forest service).  Always so unshakably positive-minded and rarely expressive about suffering, it was entirely unnerving to witness the pain take over him and his body.  I found myself getting increasingly angry at the course for having so many steep inclines (those damn Cardiac Needles!) that came in such gratuitous droves – couldn’t the trails be more merciful on my poor Aaron??

Somewhere along that relentless 7 mile dirt road climb I began to experience problems of my own in my right foot.  I have a history of coming down with plantar fasciitis when I have run at an unnaturally slow pace to accommodate another runner, something about altering my footstrike and coming down harder on my heels.  The pain alleviated somewhat when we returned to the softer trails after No Name Ridge, where Aaron also found new life and started running again, but I had to dance on my toes to spare the inflamed right heel (although it was impossible to complain too much given the state of Aaron’s much-abused body).

Overall, I discovered that I absolutely love to run in the night – it’s surreal, peaceful, and so beautiful with the clouds of stars and a faint outline of the mountains.  On barely any sleep I never got tired, never took caffeine, never got in bad spirits.  Although I’m still a bit perplexed how female runners plow through the night without imagining killer psycho rapist murderers around every blind turn — I would freak out.

And of course the best part about running through the night is getting to see the sunrise, which Aaron timed perfectly to coincide with the most scenic section of the course between Thorp Mountain and French Cabin, with a red ball of fire glowing over the Alpine Lakes Wilderness and Stuart Range.

Did I enjoy pacing?  Absolutely.  Does that mean I wish I’d run the other 68 miles?  Not really.  Does that mean I’ll never run 100?  Fortunately I don’t have to decide that today.

(Photos courtesy of Glenn Tachiyama)

On occasion, though, we do still rely on our own powers of perambulation to explore the trails.

Ragan, aka The Professor, and her husband, aka The Other Professor, decided to take advantage of the summer by fleeing from the heat and the hustle and the occasional bussle of DC. They chose to head to higher grounds in West Virginia. I let Ragan know that I would be in Canaan Valley this weekend, and we agreed to meet for a light jaunt around Dolly Sods. I promised her that someone would have to go to Nepal to find better trails than the trails in West Virginia!

Ragan and I had a thoroughly enjoyable run in Dolly Sods. I took her on a 24 mile loop that covered many miles of trails in the southern portion of Dolly Sods, through lush foliage, over rugged, rooty trails, up long climbs. The trails twist and bend, following a sandy creek bed for a while before veering to the left through a grove of rhododendrons that lean into the trail just far enough to brush your shoulders as you pass them. At the next right, the rhododendrons might give way to a pine forest made dark by the high canopy. During the long, technical descent to the base of the Red Creek valley, Ragan mentioned that the trail was so technical that she could hardly take her eyes off the ground to enjoy the surroundings. I agreed. During the equally long ascent (equally long in terms of distance—much longer in terms of time), she suggested that after this run, she was going to have to rest her brain. I agreed once again.

I had explained the route yesterday when she offered to stash aid. After 13 miles, we reached Forest Road 75, know in some circles as The Road Across The Sky. We refilled our bottles with the water and Gatorade that she had dropped. The day had been cool but slightly humid. There were clouds in the sky, but so far, no sign of the predicted thunderstorms. We had been sweating and talking so much that the refill came as a welcome relief. A weird dude with a pony tail and a tie-dyed shirt pulled his beat-up, circa-1992 Camry into the parking area near the trail head. I asked if he would mind packing out our aid to save me the hour and a half of driving that would be required to retrieve the mostly empty bottles from that side of the wilderness. He was happy to oblige. Ragan pointed out that there was still half a gallon of water, a banana, and a small (airline-sized) packet of almonds in the bag that we left with him. Even though I feel like he did us a huge favor, I have no doubt that he counted the remains of our aid as a huge score.

We ran up the road for less than two miles before following another trail back across Dolly Sods. This portion of the run was in Dolly Sods North, which could almost be on a different planet from where we had started the day. The trail began by swooping up and down through a dense forest before taking us over a small crest where the woods gave way to wide open, rolling hills.

The weather and company were so agreeable that when we reached a decision point—where going straight would give us five more miles, while turning right would give us eight—we chose the longer option. As we had for the prior three hours, we continued yammering on about racing, experimental economics, relationships and whatever else might have occurred to one or the other of us at any point in time. We scrambled over a large beaver dam to cross a stream, filled our shoes with muck on a boggy, mossy trail, and we sampled some wild blueberries.

It was a perfect day for a run.

I distinctly noticed on Laveta’s watch when it showed 9am.  That meant that the last day of our MISMS meeting was commencing back at the Dwarika hotel, where I was supposed to be helping South Asian influenza researchers use the BEAST program.  Instead I was out climbing Pulchowki, situated at an elevation of 2782m just outside Kathmandu, already drenched in sweat with my new Nepalese trail running friends Roger, Richard, Narayan, and Laveta.

I had been terribly torn about the decision.  On one hand I really liked the participants at our meeting and wanted to help them master some sophisticated software for the Bayesian phylogenetic analysis of their influenza virus sequence data.  But on the other hand, this was just a puny half day of tutorial.  I had been working for nearly two weeks straight, traveling to Beijing and then on to Kathmandu, giving talks, helping people use the software, explaining all the details of it, over and over again.  So when Laveta invited me to head out to the mountains Saturday morning with some of the local Nepalese ultra trail runner folk she knew, I decided to play hooky.  I mean, I had been on the road for 2 weeks and while I’d had loads of interesting experiences I hadn’t yet done anything just purely for myself.  Despite it being monsoon season, Saturday’s weather called for sun and blue sky — that sealed it.

I knew that I made the right call when halfway up the mountain we were able to look out across the valley to see the snow-capped Himalayas, even glimpsing the Annapurna.  The peaks were so high, jutting out above the clouds, that at first I thought they too were part of the clouds.  They were so beautiful.

There was another unexpected upshot to the good weather.  When Roger explained that the blood streaming down his legs was not from thorns or cuts but from leeches, he then clarified that if it had been raining we all would have been COVERED head to toe in leeches.  I have to say, leeches fall into my Things I Very, Very Much Wish to Avoid category.  Laveta had already warned me about the leeches, recalling that the last time she’d run through the kind of temperate rainforest that covered Pulchowki she’d uncovered loads of leeches on her feet when she took her shoes off.  But she assured me that by then the leeches had been sufficiently ‘gorged’ and although bloated with blood were easy to remove and no longer interested in feeding on her insteps.

Everyone’s legs were covered with blood from the leeches (leeches have anti-coagulants).  Laveta had even removed one from her face, although fortunately it hadn’t yet drawn blood there.  Going up the mountain there wasn’t any leech problem as we were on a graveled Jeep road.  But going down we took a single-track route that was highly overgrown.  In fact, I’m not sure you could refer to it as a ‘track’ at all.  It was more like an impression of a trail — perhaps if one looked at it from a certain angle a trail had once existed there.  (We did encounter a couple cows on the mountain [a lovely spot to be a cow!], prompting Roger to enthuse, ‘Where the cows can go, WE can go!’)  The other problem was that the track was so steep and so slippery (again, they assured me that with rain it would have been even slicker) that in order to not fall on our asses we had to grab handfuls of foliage (Richard and Laveta continually fell on their asses anyway), exposing our hands and arms to any leeches on the nearby foliage.  [Those of you who thought that leeches only exist in ponds and streams, let me expel that delusion — leeches can exist anywhere with sufficient moisture.]

It must have been my lucky day though.  I was the only one not to take a spill and the only one not to get a leech (although I brushed a few off my shoes before they could crawl any higher).  I did get quite a few ladybugs on me, but Roger and Narayan were so disappointed that I hadn’t gotten a leech that they tried to transfer some of their own to me (this was NOT successful).

So once we got down the mountain, braving the leeches, flies with 3-inch stinger-tongues, navigating through the overgrown trails that were slick as ice (I don’t know what is in that soil, but it even glistens like ice — I can’t count how many times I hydroplaned and nearly wiped out), Roger and Narayan announced that we had taken the wrong trail and rather than staying on the ridge had arrived in an unknown village.  We had all long ago run out of water, we were drenched in sweat and covered in blood and mud.  So the Tea Break at the village was very welcome.  Village Tea Breaks are apparently a routine part of Nepalese trail running, and this was in fact our second one of the day, as we had stopped for tea about 3 miles in at the village at the base of the mountain.  Women boiled the tea over an open flame and served it to us with milk and sugar and we ate biscuits.  Nepalese are extremely friendly, as evidenced by their open arms welcome of a very war-torn group of strange trail runners.

We had to add about 4 more miles to get unlost and back to Narayan’s house, where his delightful family served us more tea (Tea Break #3) and a wonderful meal of rice and daal with 7 kinds of beans that had been made for the Hindu religious festival that day.  At the beginning of our run we had passed men partaking in the festival by mass bathing in their underwear in a giant concrete pool with string tied around their necks (something about upper caste members wearing string around their necks and once a year they have to change the string).

Before I sign off, I have to apologize for not having any pictures from this run — from the leech-bled legs to the Himalayas to my colorful running partners*, neglecting to bring a camera was a major omission**.  Especially since I actually wore a pack this time and could have easily toted along a camera (my first experience running with a pack — there was no way I could run 20+ miles in the Nepalese mountains unaided without a pack with water and granola bars and such — and I actually found the pack very comfortable — what a breakthrough!)

*Roger Henke is a Dutch expat living in Kathmandu who now manages the Summit Hotel and runs an excellent website about trail running in Nepal, including the Annapurna 50k/70k/100k in January, visit http://trailrunningnepal.org/.  Roger is exactly how you would imagine a old hat European transplant in Kathmandu trail runner: lanky frame, nothing to them shoes, completely unfazed by anything, was the only one not to exhaust the water supply in his Camelback (as if a camel himself), and with a set notion of what our run was going to entail and entirely non-catering to any of the other group members, some of whom were not particularly enjoying his selection of nonrunable ‘trail’ (Laveta was having an especially rough day, not much taking to the overgrown trails, steep and slippery descents, the leech on her face, her bruised tailbone (from many spills) or her blistered feet and chaffing thighs).  Laveta hails from Baltimore and is in Nepal doing a year of fieldwork for her PhD at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health on the community-wide effect of vaccinated pregnant women with influenza vaccine (very cool study).  Hence, she attended our influenza workshop and provided my critical link to the Kathmandu trail running community (she did marathons and Iron Mans in the States but got into trail running in Nepal).  Narayan is exactly how you would imagine a native Nepalese trail runner, legs toothpick thin, long black hair back in a ponytail, a pronounced hooked nose, friendly but self-contained, gliding up the hills as if he had been raised in these mountains (actually, he had….).  Richard, of the UK originally but with no place he calls ‘home’, represents the substantial ‘lost souls’ category of young people living in Kathmandu.  Richard does various computer-related jobs to make ends meet, broke up with a girlfriend of several years a week ago (she was living in Afghanistan and the distance became too much), and very openly admits that he has lost his traction in life and feels directionless.  Richard had that cutting British wit about him (his favorite game was pointing out the ugliest buildings in Kathmandu, ranging from over-the-top ostentatious in a neighborhood of makeshift shacks to 1970s Soviet Eastern European) and provided good-humored commentary about his opinions about Roger’s selection of ‘trails’.

**Fortunately I found the blog from ultra star Moire O’Sullivan (just published a book Mud, Sweat, and Tears) who had an eerily similar first time run in the Kathmandu mountains with Roger, Richard, et al. with pictures that look entirely familiar so just insert my little face into these photos~ http://moireosullivan.com/2010/03/24/ridge-running-in-kathmandu-valley/

Almost a Fight at Postrun WUS? Well, not really, but you missed the fun. (Ask Aaron sometime).
Yep, classic night at CPB&G. Best lines of the night:

Creepy Dude: I’m just gonna move here!
Aaron: Excuse me? Well, OK!
Tom: WHAT DID HE JUST SAY TO YOU!?
Aaron: Nothing. No, nothing Tom.
Tom: NO,WHAT DID HE JUST SAY TO YOU!?
Creepy Dude: I just said I’m just gonna move here! . . .