FAQ

1. When will the Beer Mile occur?  7pm on Tuesday, September 19, 2017
2. Where will the Beer Mile occur?  Soapstone Valley trail

3.  Is there parking?  We encourage taking the metro to binge drinking events.  But if you opt to drive, there is not parking at the trail head.  The best option is to convene at Julian’s house, approx. 0.6 miles away, and walk or trot over.  To facilitate the carriage of the beer, a single vehicle will transport everyone’s beer (metro-goers can carry their beer discretely in backpacks).

4.  So, this Beer Mile doesn’t go around a track?  Wussies have gotten away with a lot over the years, but needn’t press their luck.  The top portion of the Soapstone is a wide, relatively flat and groomed double-track, easily accessible from the metro, and a sensible choice for this year’s BM.  The course will be 4 consecutive one-quarter mile out-and-backs preceded by a beer drunken within a single Drinking Station.

5.  What are the rules?  For those of you who did the Donut Run, you may recall that the RD allowed for competitors to take some liberties with the classic structure of the event, although these liberties were taken into account during the awarding of prizes.  The Real Prize goes to male and female competitors who drink a beer while confined to the Drinking Station and run the quarter mile (repeat 4 times), with no puking.  Puking requires a penalty lap, no exceptions.  This is approximately the 17th Beer Mile I have organized, and I’ll admit that there has always been a ‘Cali Clause’ that permits females and males no taller than 5’6 to drink 2 pinot grigios while completing the full mile (drinking not confined to Drinking Stations).  There has also been a ‘Momma Jill clause’ for seniors aged 65+ to drink 2 beers and complete 1 mile (drinking also not confined to Drinking Stations).  Jared will be scouting for rules violations.

6.  Prizes? Yes.

7.  What does a hoard of drunken BMers do after the event?  Cleveland Park Bar & Grill is a short trot/longish walk away.

8. Registration?  Please email Martha at marmot4281@gmail.com.  Please let her know whether you plan to be a ‘real’ Beer Mile or will be doing a version of your own creation.  Do to the nature of the course, the number of runners may have to be capped to avoid a stampede.

9.  What do I need to bring?  A light!!!!  Very important.  BYOB.  If you’re Joe Clapper, someone to count your laps for you.

10.  Any other tips?  We learned from Robin not to eat apples beforehand.

Abstract

Sean, Miles, and Daniel designed a killer five-day adventure itinerary for me and Aaron in Frisco, Colorado. For anyone headed yonder, here are some tips to maximize your summer adventure within the constraints of altitude.

Introduction

In the fall of 2016, Sean stunned the VHTRC by deciding suddenly to sell his home in Leesburg and move permanently to Frisco, CO. The move drove a dramatic improvement in the quality of life of Mr Andrish, including the arrival of his service dog Miles, a yellow lab who is the first known creature to rival Sean in pure love of mountains and trails. Sean’s airy condo has views of mountains on all sides, and a paradise of trails for running, skiing, and snowshoeing. World class downhill skiing is just a free shuttle ride away at Copper Mountain. Mountain air has also been good for healing Sean’s post-surgery knee, which has been letting him trail race again.

Frisco’s gems have been known to the VHTRC for many years, owing to the real estate prowess of Kerry, who was the first to buy property here. Sean’s translocation has made it even easier for Virginians to get a taste of the Rockies, and Sean spent much of his summer hosting visitors: Keith and Tracy en route to Hardrock, the Schmidt family, Tom S., Steve and Heather, and even the peripatetic Britt Z. Aaron and I were slotted in for Labor Day weekend, the finale to Sean’s long summer of hosting.

Aaron and I also made last-ditch efforts to link up with other recent Colorado transplants, Daniel and Phil. Daniel and his wife Jenny recently introduced baby Lilia to the world, who we’ve only gotten to know via Facebook to date. I was particularly concerned that their wonderful cat Buster might need extra attention. But I’m afraid I don’t have the Wechsler gene for planning, and we only managed to link up briefly with Daniel, and will have to plan better next time (including getting a rental car) if we want to make it to Golden.

 

Results

Tip #1: There will be blood. You can’t control everything in a good adventure. You can try to do everything right: slather sunblock head to toe, bring enough water, stash extra clothes in case the weather changes suddenly, which it is bound to do in the West. But there will be blood. In my case, the gore looked more gruesome than it really was: just a gusher of a nose bleed.

I just stuffed my right nostril with tissues and moseyed along. Sean, on the other hand, got a real doozie of a hand gash after taking a wicked fall that slammed his shoulder into a tree. Sean is accustomed to taking a slide, but this one was so painful he went into a kind of shock and had to sit down for a while. The Andrish Family Way is to stick some leaves in there and move on. But Sean accepted my demand that we take him to the hospital and get him stitched up. Sean’s ER doc told him he could still run, but I doubt he’d guess we’d do another epic run the next day, shuttling to Copper so we could make our way back to Frisco via Uneva Pass. Since when did a little blood keep an Andrish down?

 

Tip #2: the Kite Lake Trail is an efficient way to bag 14ers. The plan for our five days in Frisco could be summed up as: bring running clothes, show up. So when Daniel announced that he could arrive at 7am on Friday and drive us to the Kite Lake Loop for our first big adventure, we were totally game. The Kite Lake trail takes you over four mountains over 14,000 feet (Mt. Democrat, Mt. Cameron, Mt. Lincoln, and Mt. Bross) over a mere eight miles. You’d be hard-pressed to find a more efficient way to bag a handful of 14ers.

Tip #3: Take an Easy Day. On your first adventure, you’re going to have an altitude-be-damned attitude and push through the dizziness and fatigue because you’re just so stoked to be out there. Your lungs will burn, your head will spin, but you’ll soldier on. But take a tip from the ole marmot and back off the next day. Summit County’s event calendar is chock full o’ fun stuff all all summer, and a quick glance at a local newspaper will yield a host of activities that won’t burn your lungs.

Since the Kite Lake trail had knocked the snot out of the two sea level-dwellers, we took the free shuttle to Breckenridge and began Day 2’s adventure with the Summit Foundation’s Great Rubber Duck Race. Over 10,000 rubber duckies were released into the river, and the winner got $3,000. Someone finally came up with a better way to raffle. We topped off the festivities with awesome Higgles ice cream, and a free gondola ride up Peak 7 [Tip #4: Free gondola rides are offered at Breckenridge all summer long.] so we could so we could cruise eight miles downhill on the beautiful Peaks trail all the way to Frisco [Tip #5: Point-to-point adventures are made dead easy by the Summit Stage, which runs a free shuttle every half hour between points of interest, including Frisco, Copper, Breckenridge, and Keystone].

Tip #6: Skip the race. Our visit coincided with the Breckenridge Crest Mountain Marathon, Half Marathon & 10k, a temptation most VHTRCers wouldn’t have been able to resist. I get it: races are a good excuse to travel and see beautiful parts of the world. But why exactly do you need an excuse? Can’t you just go out to visit Sean and Miles and run in the mountains? We covered some of the same trails as the marathon course, but we got to all run together, giggling and farting, and stopping for all the views and all the critters. And there were a lot of critters.

Critter highlights: Mamma moose with calf, yellow-bellied marmot, pika, steller’s jay, hummingbird (females are tough to ID but possibly black-chinned), hummingbird clearwinged moth (that was originally mistaken for a hummingbird), clark’s nutcracker, snake (unidentified), sharp-shinned hawk, red-tailed hawk, black-billed magpie

Tip #7: Wait a couple days for your big adventure. We arrived in Colorado on a Wednesday evening, and it wasn’t until Sunday that we felt like we’d adjusted to the altitude enough to have the big adventure of the trip. The run around Buffalo Mountain was the highlight for me. Not as otherworldly as Kite Lake, but just pure pleasure. Waterfalls, sweeping vistas, and, maybe most critically, peaks where you weren’t freezing your ass off and could just bask in the sun for a while and watch the marmots scurry through the rocks. Where Miles had plenty of water to frolic in, and where the scenery was always changing, from pine-floored forests to meadows peppered with wildflowers. It reminded me in many places of Fat Dog. Sure, Sean and I ended up covered in blood (see Tip #1). But this is the day I’ll recall when I need to go to my ‘happy place’.

Tip #8: Encore. Always encore. We might have reeled it in after our the Buffalo Mountain bloodbath. The irony of Sean’s fall is that it was actually in one of the least technical stretches, as we reached the popular, groomed Lily Pad Lake trails down at the bottom of the mountain. Sean had no trouble with the boulder fields, but meandering tourists are a whole ‘nother thing.

But I’m so glad we rallied for a final point-to-point adventure, taking the Summit Stage out in the other direction to Copper Mountain so we could run back to Frisco on yet another route. We went slooow, demonstrating to Sean just how long a human could spend watching marmots. But we managed not to incur any more blood, and found some unexpectedly beautiful country on some less-traveled trails.

 

Tip #9: Everything is more fun with dogs. Creatures tend to fall into one of two categories: spirited or obedient. Miles is rare for being both. One moment he’s thrashing in a lake like a puppy, then crashing through the forest understory chasing imaginary prey. Miles is a force of nature, a true athlete, and at the young age of two we’re only beginning to see how far he can go in the mountains (I suspect very far). But Miles also takes his service responsibilities seriously, obeying Sean’s commands like they’re gospel. One thing Miles is not is a guard dog. When another dog snarled and snapped at Miles while we were in line at the coffee shop, the poor sweet thing bounded into my lap for protection.

 

Discussion

Mission: Frisco was another glowing example of the success of the concept of Noncation. With the three-day weekend and the relatively short stay, there wasn’t quite as much work accomplished as when we do longer 10-day trips. But there is something wonderful about just crashing at a friend’s and not having any of the standard stresses of vacation: (a) the sinking feeling that you’re going to have hundreds of emails when you get home; and (b) the pressure that you need to do everything, because this is your one chance. We covered a lot of territory, but we left a long list of things we didn’t get to do in Frisco. We never climbed Mt Royal. We didn’t make it to Golden to see Jenny, Lilia, and Buster. We didn’t join Phil and Kim in Leadville. We didn’t make it out to Aaron’s childhood neighbor’s ranch in Eagle (ponies!). But, we can leave with the comfortable knowledge that we’ll be back. Sure, there’s a place for real vacation, and I’d like to go somewhere exotic like Brazil or Kyrgystan (someone is still owned a honeymoon….). But in the mean time there’s something absolutely wonderful about vacations that involve zero planning.

The trip was also a proof-of-concept that Martha and Sean can spend five whole days together and not want to rip each other’s face off. Back in the day in Woodley Park, there were loads of good times, but there were also times when Sean’s stubbornness brought me to my knees. I guess Sean left all the old ticks in Virginia, because in five days in Frisco I couldn’t even manage an eye roll.

Materials and Methods

Running gear. You know I’m not a big gear person, but I have to give a shout-out to my new Ultimate Direction Groove Stereo waist belt. I noticed it on Adam W. when he did Highland Sky back in June and hit him up for the details. It impresses me in terms of comfort, including not making me as hot as a vest, and storage, including a nice front pack.  I’ll add that Sean and I are also big fans of the Saucony Peregrine trail shoes.

Food and beverage. I would also add that if you’re heading to Frisco, there is great food to be found at Tavern West (a bit more upscale) and a new Mexican place near the Whole Foods called Rio Grande (casual). Great ice cream can be found at Breckenridge’s Higgles. For coffee, head to Rocky Mountain Coffee Roasters on Main Street. And your best local dive bar is definitely Moose Jaw, where we dragged Sean to play billiards even with his hand freshly stitched. Why most women can’t properly wield a pool cue remained an unresolved question, even with hours on the trails to come up with plausible hypotheses. Sean provided a useful insight that he learned to shoot pool in the basement of his college fraternity, while his sister’s sorority had no table. But this just seems to beg the question of why women don’t take up such an elegant sport that doesn’t require any male muscle strength. The marmot would like to know!

 

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Sean Andrish, for so kindly sharing his space with a bear and a marmot who is not always so tidy. A big thanks also to Miles, who was like the rainbow jimmies on an ice cream scoop and just made every grand adventure sparkle that much brighter. A thanks also goes out to the cute PA at Summit County Hospital who made Sean’s visit to get stitches a lot more pleasant. Daniel deserves a big shout-out for enabling our adventure to Kite Lake. We can get around pretty far in the Summit Stage (which also deserve a big acknowledgment here for shuttling our asses around for free between restaurants, trail heads, and medical centers all week), but we wouldn’t have been able to do that awesome hike without Daniel’s truck. We also appreciated Daniel’s colorful commentary, which could be considered a different flavor of jimmies. Finally, we’d like to acknowledge a nameless group of hikers who very kindly gave us an entire bottle of water when Sean was sitting on a rock in a state of post-trauma shock after splitting open his hand.

This summer marked the 10th anniversary of the Sarah-Martha-Sarah Girls Weekend, which kicked off in 2007 in State College. A lot has gone down in the last decade, including three marriages, two babies, two degrees, and at least four moves across the country. Not that any of it ever got in the way of three girls getting together once a year to do exciting things together like walk to the drug store.

But it’s been a memorable run, and looking back at the ten years, we’d like to thank some of the folks who helped make it fun along the way:

 

It’s time for another round of my favorite game.

Yay	Boo
Yellow fever vaccine	Shingles
Adirondacks	Atlanta
Yuraku	Chinese food
Christian Pulisic	Real Madrid fans
Escarpment Trail Run	ETR with shingles
Legalization of weed	Jeff Sessions
Sadie and Dean (Trevor’s dogs)	Archie and Max (Gary’s dogs)
Storm King Art Center (NY)	It turns out art museums cost $$ outside of DC
Take Yo Girlfriend to Work Days	The decision not to get a new office kitty
Wegmans coming to Tenleytown	Wegmans not coming to TT until 2021
Anvil: Story of Anvil	A Quiet Passion
Sean moving to Frisco	Sean missing future Lobsterfests
Sean dancing	Sean only dancing if AC/DC is playing
Miles	Service Dog: do not pet
Science	My dad’s books
OzzieManRules GOT reviews	HBO’s decision to torturously draw out the last GOT season over two years
The Swahili word ‘pole’	Getting ‘congratulations’ instead of ‘pole’
Aaron getting over chronic Lyme Disease	Aaron suddenly being much faster than me
Puffins	Canada geese
Flexiril	Tramadol
90s grunge	Drug overdosing
Maggie from ETR’s AS#6	Vomiting 12 times
Clapper finishing ETR #25	Clapper never walking again
Jeep Wranglers	Trying to listen to music in Jeep Wranglers
Friends having babies	Having to block friends who exceed the well-established FB limit of 1-baby-pic/week
Playing S-F-M with Joco	Ghosting
Kasteel Cuvee de Chateau	Trying to utter coherent sentences after 11% beer
Just Curious Show	UltraRunner Podcast
Little Boo	Aaron’s refusal to get another kitty, dog, or pony
August	Watching Aaron sufferfest through August
SnowShoeFest	Global warming
Speed croquet	Croquet
Bayesian statistics	The fact that American public education doesn’t provide even a basic understanding of statistics/probability needed to interpret the world
Black-eyed susans	English ivy
Cheez-its	GUs
Getting your hair washed	Hairdressers who talk to you
Wolf Trap	Wolf Trap in the rain
Vaccines	Hospitals
Hamilton	Times Square
Harry and Snowman	The lifespan of animals
Skiing	Ski boots
iMovie	Posing for pictures
Kerry’s Death March	Runs that start before 9am
State College	Getting to State College without a car
Vace pizza	Insulin resistance
Run For it! 5k	Tough Mudders

 

Happy Valley Sprint Triathlon  results

July 2, 2017/ State College, PA

 

Some people think triathlons were invented as a way for running stores to stay financially solvent.  I think they were invented to make people do sports they really suck at.  And learn to get over themselves.

Aaron glanced over at Penn State’s outdoor pool as he rode by, beginning the bike portion of the Happy Valley Sprint Triathlon under the shrills of AC/DC.  The pool had cool saline water, and was surrounded by a couple dozen people with either a clipboard or a lifeguard buoy.  Aaron could make out just one lonely yellow swim cap still in the pool, thrashing her way from one wall to the other, many minutes after everyone else had vacated for their bikes.

I had warned the three guys sharing my lane that I was a late-entry with no business being in the fifth and fastest heat of the day.  I promised to cling to the lane line and try to stay out of their way.  They periodically hit my feet as they passed, and my attempts to hug the lane line mostly resulted in me hitting it with my elbow a lot, slowing me down even more.  In the end, it took me over 22 minutes to swim 750 meters.  Out of 144 participants, my swim time ranked 122nd.  Since all the slow swimmers had started in heat 1, I was DFL when I came out of the pool, and had a lonely bike ride with no one in sight.

Aaron and I had registered for the event that morning, snagging the last two slots.  Twelve hours earlier, somewhere near Syracuse during our drive from Lake Placid, New York to State College, PA, I had decided that maybe we should change our plan for Sunday morning.  Some of my happiest memories are of running with friends in Rothrock State Park, belting out songs and making crude jokes.  But Tom had reported that no one else wanted to join us.  Something about fly infestations in the forest and prior commitments to volunteer at the Happy Valley Sprint Triathlon.

If everyone else was going to be at the Tri, we decided we might as well too.  We had just spent a week at our friend Michaela’s house on Rainbow Lake in New York, so we had our swimsuits and goggles on hand.  I had my mountain bike.  And we had some really stinky trail running shoes that looked like swamp things after that morning’s 2.5 hour run on the trails around Lake Placid.  After a week of rain, the trails were reduced to puddles in good places and marshes in bad places.

Aaron pointed out that didn’t have a bike.  And we weren’t going to arrive in State College until sometime after 10pm, due to a delayed start after spending most of Saturday morning wading through Lake Placid’s marshes.

No problem!  I promised Aaron the Nittany Valley Running Club (NVRC) would come through for him.  I graduated from Penn State almost a decade ago, and most of the folks I knew from the Biology Department are long gone.  But most of the runners are still there, and it’s a tight-knit community.  So a last-minute email blast to the NVRC produced an outpouring of folks willing to let Aaron borrow a bike for a day.  Our friend Judd, who’d won the Loch Haven triathlon that morning, won the bonus prize for Best Late Night Tri Gear Hookup.  When we rolled into his Lemont home at 10pm, we found him in his garage working on a newly washed Trek road bike.  In addition to the sweet ride, he threw in some gels, some baby powder for the transition zones, a toolkit, a water bottle, and a helmet.

When Aaron and I grabbed some late-night dinner at IHOP, it donned on us that we were actually going to do this thing.  Our week of adventures in the Adirondacks could not be described as ‘tapering’.  On Friday, Aaron had convinced me to swim a mile roundtrip to some island in the middle of Rainbow Lake, more swimming than I’d done all year in total.  And running in the Adirondack mountains is not particularly leg-sparing, with 1,000-foot climbs that the trail decides need to be completed within a half-mile.  On the one day when it wasn’t downpouring, I’d discovered that thick sand is not so easy to bike in.  It was all great fun, and most days required dunks in the lake to get all the mud off.  But it’s not what one would optimally do in the week leading up to the first triathlon attempted in two years.

Aaron and I managed to snag the last two available spots in the HVST by waking up at 4:45am and getting our butts out there bright and early.  Of course, the only two slots still available were in the final heat with the studs.  I suggested we go back to the hotel and sleep another hour, but Aaron has a lot of experience with triathlons and knew it was better to hang out and take our time getting things prepared.  And by ‘prepared’ we mostly mean that we were able to put our incredibly stinky wet shoes out in the increasingly hot sun until they were mostly dry by our heat’s 8:45am start time.  I was enthusiastic about how quickly the sun dried our shoes.  And then realized that sun’s heat would soon be directed at our backs for a couple hours.

Aaron spends a good deal of his life wondering when his wife’s next bout of tears is going to hit.  So it was a moment of great relief when he saw me grinning ear-to-ear and waving enthusiastically on the out-and-back bike ride.  I was dead-last, completely alone.  On a clunky mountain bike that moved like a draught horse in the Kentucky Derby.  But if I was perturbed, I sure wasn’t showing it.  And I tend to show it.

The bike ride rolls along the road that goes to State College’s puny airport.  My ride out was a lot more fun than the ride back, when I was all alone with no one to even wave to.  But it’s a beautiful stretch, with meadows on either side, and in my solitude I spotted lots of birds: indigo bunting, eastern phoebe, american kestrel….

I’ve only done two other triathlons previously.  My first, Luray Triathlon, I got off the bike feeling fresh and passed tons of people during a sub-40 minute 10k.  The second, Anthracite Triathlon, I came off the bike with jello legs and suffered through the hot run.  So with an N of two, I didn’t really know what to expect coming off the bike this time.  But one thing I was absolutely sure of: no matter how I felt, I was going to be alone.  So I enlisted Tom and Mike to run the 5k with me and boost my spirits.

M&T got five-star reviews for boosting my spirits, even if they ran less than a mile with me before complaining that I was running too fast and leaving me to run the dreaded ‘four hills’ on my own.  For a moment, I thought maybe I should slow down and just jog it in with them.  Isn’t that what folks at the back of the pack are supposed to do?  But I hadn’t raced in a while on account of the carb-restricted diet I started in April, which had brought my running to its knees for several months.  I had to skip Manitou’s Revenge in June, and considered that I might never race again.  And then I had an extremely useful consultation with Dr Stephanie Howe-Violett, who added one key tweak to the low-carb diet my endocrinologist had prescribed: permitting me to eat simple carbs during exercise, and 30 minutes before and after.  Because it turns out you process carbs differently when you exercise, absorbing the sugars directly into the muscles and avoiding the insulin spike.  The low-carb diet is still a challenge, particularly to get enough calories each day, but at least this one little change gave my running new life.

I reunited with M&T on my way back from the hills.  They goaded me on for a quarter mile and then threw in the towel again.  But they did their job well, and even at the tail end of the pack, with nothing to run for, I dipped under 19 minutes to run the 4th fastest 5k out of the 144 participants, finishing the HVST on a high note.  My 5k time beat the next-fastest female by 3 minutes and finished 60th overall.  Aaron finished 23rd, pretty remarkable given that he’s done like three bike rides all year.

In the end, the HVST was all I’d hoped it would be.  Sure, I stunk my usual self in the pool.  And I was unusually slow without a lighter road bike.  But there’s a warmth and friendliness about the State College community that always makes me nostalgic.  Whether it was Judd adjusting Aaron’s bike seat so it fit just right.  Or Meira unsuccessfully trying to splash me with water at the mile 1 aid station.  Or our post-event finale at Meyer Dairy, the absolute happiest place on earth.  We were in State College for only 16 hours, but I always come out of there feeling more hopeful about the world.

The Lake Placid region has also become one of my new favorite places, and Aaron and I will be returning there at the end of September.  It was, of course, first and foremost a work trip, as Aaron and his co-business owner Michaela had at least three VR shoots that week in the Lake Placid area.  I towed two government laptops along, and had pretty standard work days, complete with 7am conference calls with Bangladesh.  One of these days, Aaron and I will take a bonafide vacation.  Where we actually leave our laptops at home.  And bring at least one outfit that couldn’t be worn trail running.  (I’m still owed a honeymoon…ahem…Pantanal, Brazil….um…..giant anteaters and jaguars…..).  But until that day, I will remain a diehard fan of Noncation.