Part I.  Why We Held Our Wedding On Escarpment Weekend

Aaron and I decided to get married in June.  To clear up any potential misconceptions about rose petals and moonlight, Aaron’s proposal had the phrase tax implications in it.  And in keeping with the pragmatism theme, I suggested we just go down to the DC court house.  To be ultra-efficient, we could do it on the day of his birthday, June 15th.  Aaron finds celebrations onerous, particularly on his birthday, and that way we could spend the rest of our lives celebrating our anniversary instead.  Kill two birds with one stone.  Aaron loves killing birds!  But instead of declaring Yes, let’s do it, Aaron equivocated Let me think about it. I’m afraid Aaron discovered the stiff price to pay for deliberation.

By the time I got home that night after dinner with my parents, Aaron’s window had passed.  If you want to get married at a court house, it turns out you have to do it before the parents find out.

But at least I came up with a sensible plan.  Okay, maybe not everyone agrees that combining your wedding with a famously tough trail race the same weekend is sensible.  But there was a lot to be said for holding the wedding in conjunction with the Escarpment Trail Run (ETR) at the end of July.  Being six weeks away, we had enough time to plan something small and simple at the house of a friend or family member, but no so much time that it could snowball into something elaborate (once Wechslers get planning, it doesn’t stop).  Furthermore, Joe had already rented out a big house in the Catskills for all the trail runners, and had planned a beautiful mountain run for Saturday.

And ETR has a special place in my heart as the birthplace of my trail racing career.  It was my first trail race ever, in July of 2006.  I have a particular fondness for that twenty-five year old version of myself: fearless, stupid, up for anything.  My Penn State running buddy Ken Davis had been trying unsuccessfully for a decade to get some of the Nittany Valley road running crew to join him on his crazy mountain race in New York.  Everyone thought Ken was nuts.

But I was twenty-five, and I was just getting unleashed on the world.  That year, I’d moved to State College, begun a PhD in Biology, run my first Boston Marathon, and somehow convinced everyone to do the Beer Mile.  If there was a new crazy adventure, I was IN.

My friends pointed out that I had no experience with mountain endurance events.  One concerned friend knew a thing or two about summer hydration from his single-speed mountain bike races, and dropped off a Camelback, some Cytokine drink mix, and some gels, and helped me get a proper fit, wishing me luck.  Another friend didn’t know anything about trail racing, but decided last-minute that he should really come along just to make sure I didn’t kill myself.

I’m not sure which is crazier: (a) that I carried no water during the race, (b) that the only reason I wore trail shoes was because RD Dick Vincent told me someone had actually died in the race after slipping off a ledge.

Somehow I had decided to scrap the Camelback.  It was only 18 miles and there were aid stations.  I figured I might get hungry, though, and as a precaution I started the race with a Clif Bar clenched in my hand.  How very prudent of me!

By mid-race my mouth didn’t even have enough saliva to eat the Clif Bar.  For the last 4-5 miles I was so extremely dehydrated that I started falling for no reason, as vividly captured by my friend’s video footage of my classic wipe-out (one of many….).

I survived the race, and even finished first female in just under 4 hours.  I had dirt in my teeth and blood all over.  My body was in such shock I actually needed a blanket.

Still, I loved the trail racing experience.  Ten years later, I can still remember the sense of discovery as the race unfolded.  Learning for the first time that it was acceptable to walk the climbs.  Being wide-eyed at the overlooks.  Storming down the hills with reckless abandon.  And feeling so alone on the trail that I actually decided to just pee straight through my shorts while running instead of stopping to take a squat (my bottom was soaked from sweat anyway, I reasoned).

Somehow, I’ve never been able to return to ETR, but not for lack of effort.  Some years I couldn’t run because of injuries; other years I had travel.  Last year I ran Manitou’s Revenge, which includes sections of the Escarpment trail, but couldn’t run ETR because I had a work conflict.  But I promised to return in 2016 to celebrate the ten-year anniversary of my first trail race.

I should mention there were other compelling reasons to hold the wedding in conjunction with ETR.  I had my cousin Sarah and her exquisite taste (and no-nonsense efficiency) to help with arrangements on the ground (Sarah’s family and my uncle Jon live in Rhinebeck, NY, a quaint town just across the Hudson from the Catskills).  And we had a long-time family friend, Jean Briggs, who had a beautiful wooded property on a lake just outside of Rhinebeck, where I had been to many tented birthday celebrations as a kid.  Jean had passed away just a few months earlier, but her children hadn’t put the house on the market yet.  They thought that having one last bash there would be a great curtain call.

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Part II.  It’s Not a Real Wedding Unless it Almost Doesn’t Happen 

Aaron and I arrived at the Rhinebeck Town Clerk’s office to obtain our marriage license 15 minutes before closing time.

Clerk: Okay, I’ll need some ID, a driver’s license.

Marthon: (fumbling with wallets) Check.

Clerk: And, as proof of age, a birth certificate.

Marthon: (silence)

The bad part is not the major f%*( up.  The bad part is when you realize you have to tell your parents.  And they are going to say all the Parent Things like They might be smart, but they still can’t get their life together.  And Didn’t someone tell you what documents you needed to bring? as if the Rhinebeck Town Clerk was someone we’d been regularly FaceTiming with.

But we needed their help.  To make a long story short, Aaron and I obtained our birth certificates, with a little help from our friends.  Aaron’s parents’ neighbor (Wedding Hero I) was able to locate his birth certificate in his parent’s apartment in Rosslyn.  And I have a major debt to Stephen (Wedding Hero II), an NIH intern who was taking care of our cat Leda for the weekend,  who found mine in a desk drawer.  I think Aaron and I set a record for fist-bumps.

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Part III.  The Rhinecliff Hotel is a Big Fat Liar, but it Works Out for the Best Anyway

Next drama: the Rhinecliff Hotel, where the Schwartzbards were hosting the Friday night dinner, did not have a liquor license for hard alcohol, just beer and wine.  We knew this wasn’t a *real* drama.  No one was going to throw their wine and demand bourbon.  But it was Aaron’s father’s sole stipulation that the venue have an open bar option, and frustrating to be misled.

To make up for the mishap, the Rhineclif Hotel upgraded us to a fancy room with a better view of the Hudson River and a beautiful balcony.  With wine, beer, prosecco, and a beautiful sunset to boot, no one was missing their gin.  Well, maybe my father.

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Part IV.  Hiking Over Hair, Sandwich Over Makeup

My mother’s single request for the wedding was that I don’t wear running shorts or high school track pants.  I think this brings up an important lesson: if you really want to knock the socks off your guests at your wedding, spend the decades prior priming them to have very low expectations.  Hair drier?  Forget about it.  Make up?  Please.  So when you step out at your rehearsal dinner with blown out hair, people will notice.  One of our friends literally did not recognize me.  Girls who are always put together probably have to spend all day grooming to nudge their bar a little higher.

Without all that grooming to do, I spent the morning of my wedding hanging out with friends.  Aaron and I were staying in a big house with a dozen other trail runners.  Saturday morning we all went out for a monster brunch and then set off into the Catskills for a 9 mile hike organized by Joe.  A pack of my best friends from childhood came along (although some of them didn’t quite know what they were in for).

I will always remember the glorious hike with all my best friends: picking four-leaf clovers, spotting birds and mushrooms, taking in the views, munching on snacks, seeing gorgeous waterfalls, and, of course, getting lost.

Aaron and I actually had to run the last couple miles so that I wouldn’t completely miss my 3pm hair appointment.  I ended up being 20 minutes late, but weighing hiking with friends versus hair, I absolutely made the right decision.  The hair stylist rocked (although she admitted she’d never done a bride before).  We speed-did my hair in 40 minutes.

The only problem was that I didn’t have any time for lunch.  Aaron kindly plopped a sandwich in my lap, but it was not possible to eat a sandwich without it getting completely doused in hair spray (I believe the stylist was aiming for my head and not my face, but in fairness she was a bit rushed).  Keith and Tracy magically showed up at the hair salon like fairy godmothers with paper towels to spare the sandwich from the bombardment of toxic hair spray.

I arrived at the wedding about a half hour before the guests were set to arrive.  I was clean, but still in a t-shirt and shorts.  The moms were already trying to corral people for family photos.  With the clock winding down, it came down to sandwich versus make-up.  Sandwich 1 – Make-up 0.

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Part V.  Bug Hunt is the #1 Wedding Highlight

Despite early efforts to skirt most wedding traditions (toasts, white dresses, vows, bouquets, bridesmaids, flower girls), in the end I pretty much went along with much of the wedding rubric.  I even got a long white dress, although ordered from Zappos and technically not a wedding dress.  But I did get my bug hunt.

You know how you spend the first quarter or so of your life excited about getting older?  Getting to drive a car, go off to college, go to fancy parties and travel the world?  And then gradually the allure starts to fade.  You decide high-heeled shoes stink.  And cocktail parties are boring.

For my 28th birthday, I decided I was done with bars.  Hence the birth of Lobsterfest.  We would do Run for the Birds, play tennis, march around the creek in Shepherdstown, and, resurrecting an old Martha birthday tradition from when I was little, we’d have a bug hunt.

A bug hunt is pretty self-explanatory.  You get a jar, and you try to find bugs.  ‘Bugs’ is a fairly loose term.  Worms are included.  One year a newt was allowed.  There is one important rule: do not kill your bug.  And you must (at least loosely) identify your bug.  Prizes go to (a) Biggest Bug, (b) Best Bug, and (c) Most Bugs.

In the days leading up to the wedding, I was surprised to discover that my family didn’t seem to understand I was dead serious about the bug hunt.  The day before heading up to New York:

Me:  You’re bringing plenty of jars for the bug hunt, right?

Mom: Huh?  You’re not seriously having a bug hunt at the wedding.

Me:  Mom, we’ve been planning this all along.

Mom:  Well I don’t have many jars.

Me:  Whatever. Tupperware.  Plastic containers will do.

Mom: How about tennis ball cans?

Me:  Perfect.

On the day of the wedding, it was raining too hard during the cocktail hour to do the bug hunt before dinner, as planned.  But after dinner the rain let up, and there was a brief window before it got too dark.

 Me:  Fred, the rain has let up.  We have to do the bug hunt soon before it gets too dark.

Fred: Bug hunt, eh?  And what are said categories for the bug hunt?

Me: Biggest Bug, Best Bug, and Most Bugs.

Fred:  What’s the criteria for best bug?

Me:  I’m judge.  Color.  Rareness.  Coolness.  Whatever.

Fred:  And there are rules?

Me:  Bugs must live.  Bugs must be identified.

Fred:  Sure.

Me:  Okay, you’re the Grand Master of the Bug Hunt.  Let’s get this going!

Fred kind of shrugged and walked away.  I furrowed my brow  I turned to my friends sitting at the table, folded my hands in front of me, straightened my back, and asked indignantly, ‘Did he just say No to the bride?’

Realizing I was on my own, I kicked into fierce marmot mode.  Under the table I found the paper bag with the collection of miscellaneous jars, tennis ball cans, and plastic food containers my mother had amassed.  I passed them out to each of the tables, explaining their purpose.  When I got to Fred’s table, he accepted that he wasn’t getting out this Grand Master thing.  I added one more amendment: this year, amphibians and reptiles would be permitted.

I realized this was going to be an exceptional bug hunt as soon as I saw Deb on her knees scooping a frog directly from the pond water with her bare hands.  (As a molecular ecologist who studies newts, Deb had a distinct advantage.)  But other wedding guests also discovered that the rain had brought the frogs up onto the grass.  It became a race of man against beast, as hands and jars darted to intercept the slippery frogs as they mad-dashed back towards the pond.

The bug hunt was an amphibian bonanza.  Fred and Summer caught a frog.  Daniel caught a frog.  Deb caught two frogs.  Somehow even Uncle Jon ended up with a frog.  Summer’s enormous frog won for Biggest Bug.  Best Bug went to a huge carnivorous water beetle extracted from the pond.  Deb’s two frogs won Most Bugs based on mass, and I think Cecile and Bernard’s large ant colony won for Most Bugs based on quantity.  The Lapointe boys cleverly tried to convince me that their canister of pond water contained millions of micro-organisms, but I’m afraid one of the rules is that you have to identify the bugs.  In the end, all participants got prizes, which consisted of a scoop of the personalized M&M’s Michele had given us, complete with my and Aaron’s faces printed on the shells.

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Part VI.  Sean’s Wobble is the Wedding Highlight Runner-Up

A bride only gets so many you-have-to-do-what-the-bride-asks-on-her-wedding-day cards.  I’d already cashed in most of them for the bug hunt.  But Sean had already been well briefed that he was expected to learn how to dance the Wobble, along with Sarah, Rosie, Cecily, and myself.  I had even sent him YouTube instructional videos.  The morning of the wedding, Sean was still trying to get out of it.  Excuse #1: he had never danced at any wedding before in his life.  Excuse #2: his March knee surgery.  But I’m afraid it’s an uphill battle to claim injury when the bride is on to the fact that Sean had spent the previous month climbing 14,000 ft mountains in Colorado.

But I have to give Sean credit for exceeding all expectations on the dance floor, Wobble++.  And a shout out to Scott, who emerged as our Wobble Grand Master.  It turns out that Rosie, who typically resides in the I-refuse-to-dance camp, also has some killer Taylor Swift moves when sufficiently hydrated.

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Part VII.  Muffing Wedding Traditions

I have a distaste for staged events.  I shrivel inside at the idea of a bride and groom’s first dance.  Aaron and I agreed to have a ceremony (as brief as possible), and to break the glass.  Stomping on the glass actually sounded like fun, and I was disappointed to learn it was the groom’s job.  But we nixed a host of other wedding traditions: the bride carrying and tossing a bouquet, smooshing cake in each other faces, bridesmaids and groomsmen, and any kind of bride-groom, groom-mother, or father-bride dances.  I relented on having flower girls at the behest of my nieces Summer and Savannah.  I also conceded that my father could give a time-limited toast.

I had hoped that I would be able to skirt the tradition of the bride and groom kissing and the end of the ceremony.  One of the strategies I entertained was asking Judge Sanchez to finish the ceremony with a rousing You may now fist-bump the bride.  But I figured that in all the commotion and excitement, Aaron and I would easily slip out before anyone noticed.

I was wrong.  Kiss, kiss, kiss, they chanted.  I had entered my photo op nightmare.  I flashed Aaron a deer-in-the-headlights look.  I was squirmy, and we mostly got each other’s noses.  Maybe he managed to get the side of my mouth.  It wasn’t as traumatic as I’d feared.  Fortunately no one made us try a re-do.

The cake was another example of the bride messing up the photo op.  When Aaron and I were told to cut the cake, we took it literally, and started doling out slices.  It turned out the cake thing was just for show.  We weren’t actually supposed to cut pieces for our guests.  With a little effort, I managed to convince the caterers just to cut up the cake where it was, scaffolds and all.  Weddings are silly!

Fortunately, any cake photo op snafus were forgotten as soon as the guests had their first bite of its moist and varied layers.  The cake design was another one of the bride’s wild and crazy ideas.  At one point my mom had informed me that we’re going to have a chocolate cake, since that’s what the girls preferred (‘the girls’ being my adorable nieces Summer and Savannah).  I had to play my bride card: one layer almond, one layer lemon, one layer pistachio.  There was a quizzical response.  No one had ever heard of such a cake.  In fact, Terese, our cake maker, had never even made a pistachio cake before.  I, myself, struggled to explain where my cake vision came from.  It was partially inspired by my friend Sarah’s triple-layered wedding cake, but the only layer in common was almond.  But somehow it worked.  Go figure.

To cover the girls’ chocolate requirement, Aaron’s baker extraordinaire friend Jen made very popular cupcakes and ‘cookie within a cookie’ concoctions.

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Part VIII.  Final Remarks

Aaron and I were astonished by how many people actually came to this wedding, given the six-week notice.  Of course, the short notice meant that some of our important friends and family couldn’t make it, and I hope the pictures and descriptions here help them feel like they were a part of the experience.  In particular, my cousin Claire, who has always been the closest thing I have to a sister, couldn’t make it from Africa, where she and her husband Josh recently moved to from Germany.  My oldest running friend (going back in time and forward in age) and long-time frustrated fashion consultant Tom also couldn’t make it, an absence that was particularly conspicuous on the dance floor.  But I hope he at least saw all the dresses.

We tried to keep our wedding party very small, which didn’t permit us to invite every one of our friends and family.  But I particularly regret that we didn’t invite Aaron’s ActivTrax boss Gary.  It wasn’t my call. But Aaron and Gary go way back, and sometimes you have to pull your Bride Authority card.  My dear friends Alice and Isabella from Padova, Italy, also could not make the wedding on such short notice, but I wore the earrings they gave me so they could at least be there in spirit.  It was also nice that the wedding ring Aaron gave me was his maternal grandmother’s, another person whose absence was felt (she passed before I had a chance to meet her.)  And the spirits of Jean and Jim, with whom I had spent so much time  at this summer house, coursed through the entire event.  I bet Jean would have rocked the Wobble.

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Acknowledgements

How much do you know about Greg Lemond?  Maybe you’re aware that he won a couple Tour de Frances back in the 1980s.  Perhaps you even heard the incredible story about how, right after winning his first Tour, his brother-in-law accidentally shot 30 pellets into his vital organs while hunting turkeys in California (no relation to Cheney), preventing any attempt to defend his title the next year.

Or maybe, like me, you must shamefully admit that Lemond’s name may ring a bell, but honestly hadn’t even heard of the Tour de France until Lance Armstrong came along.  In my partial defense, I was 5 years old when Greg Lemond became the first American to win the Tour de France in 1986.  And still only 9 when he won his third and final Tour in 1990.  And Lemond kind of fell out of public favor during the long Armstrong Era, when Lemond’s quips about rampant drug use were not taken kindly by Armstrong’s massive fan base, including the media (Lemond’s quick fall from Golden Boy into obscurity is just another example of the long reach of Armstrong’s circle of destruction).

But if you don’t know much about Lemond, you need to stop what you’re doing and pick up a copy of Slaying the Badger: Greg Lemond, Bernard Hinault and the Greatest Tour de France.  After reading Richard Moore’s book and watching the EPSN 30-for-30 documentary based on it, I’ve decided that Greg Lemond is my favorite athlete of all time.

Whoa, there, don’t get your panties in a twist.  I’m not saying Lemond is the greatest athlete of all time.  I grew up watching Michael Jordan, whose body movements made Carl Sagan rethink Newtonian physics.  But while Jordan inspired awe, Lemond melts hearts.  I watch a ton of ESPN 30-for-30 documentaries, including the obscurest of great sports stories (one of my favorites is The Best That Never Was about Marcus Dupree, high school football legend).  And as far as I’m concerned, Greg Lemond’s is the greatest.

If you haven’t become addicted to 30-for-30s, toss that one on your list as well.  These short films were originally 30-minute clips on 30 interesting sports figures to celebrate ESPN’s 30th anniversary.  They were such a hit that now they’re produced every year and in longer 1 hr+ versions.  30-for-30s are the antidote for anyone who feels ill every time the Olympics roll around and we’re subjected to those sappy canned stories of triumph over adversity (or expected to be excited to learn that Michael Phelps eats a lot of pizza).  If you want happy endings, stick with NBC.  The athletes that makes it in that perfect Disney way (hard work and believing) are kind of boring.  Bring on the athletes that reflect our own messy, imperfect lives, filled with psychopaths (see The Price of Gold about Nancy Kerrigan, and Tonya Harding) or gruesome violence (see The Two Escobars and the interweaving of drug cartel violence and soccer in Colombia, leading to the most tragic event in World Cup history).

I think you’ll also appreciate Slaying the Badger more if you’ve seen the film The Armstrong Lie.  Lance Armstrong left a deep stain on sports.  I will never be able to witness a heroic athletic feat again without a gnawing doubt that it might not be clean.  But that’s not why I hate Lance Armstrong.  He’s in good company: Mark McGuire, Marion Jones, they all share responsibility for the mutilation of sports.  But what sets Lance apart is the way he systematically took down innocent people who, justifiably in turns out, were not convinced he was clean.  He tore their lives apart.  He made them outcasts.  He abused his fame and power to bully and ruin them financially.  If he were just a cheater, I could forgive.  He was a monster.

I know there’s been a lot of debate about whether Lance should be welcomed into the trail running community.  I don’t believe the science is there to justify excluding him (we still don’t understand the long-lasting effects of doping).  And it would be a slippery slope to start excluding folks just because they’re terrible people.  But it’s completely mystifying to me how anyone could look him in the eye and pretend he’s in the same category as, say, Marion Jones, like he’s just a guy who made a terrible mistake.

Except for both being talented American cyclists, Greg Lemond is the exact opposite of Lance.  You think George Washington’s impressive for being honest about a little cherry tree?  Try removing an organ for the sake of integrity.   When Lemond was trying to return to cycling after accidentally being shot in the chest by his in law, he ramped up too quickly and needed to have a second surgery.  To avoid having to inform his cycling team in Europe, he somehow convinced his doctors to remove his appendix as well, so he could just say he’d had an appendectomy.  That way, technically it wasn’t a lie.

Lance Armstrong is famous for winning Tours, using drugs, and a bunch of other things (lying, helping people with cancer, screwing over Sheryl Crow).  But one of his impressive feats is the way he controlled the peloton.  Lance was the consummate bully.

Lemond’s great rival Bernard Hinault also admits that his five Tour victories were not just feats of skill and stamina.  Hinault used his domineering personality to psychologically bludgeon the other riders into submission.  Hinault, the grizzled French mega-hero, got the name ‘Badger’ for his clenched determined jaw and improbable feats of fortitude, such as climbing back on his bike to finish a stage bloodied after riding off a cliff.  Winning the Tour is a heck of a lot easier if you can get the other riders to refrain from attacking when you don’t want to attack, and to not take unnecessary risks that could put you in jeopardy.  Hinault had enormous power of intimidation and an imposing temperament that famously punched a protester at the Tour.  Whereas Hinault perfectly fit the European machismo image of Tour Patron, Lemond’s sunny easy-going Californian disposition could never domineer his own team, let alone the entire peloton.  Their differences made for a very interesting (or, from Lemond’s perspective, torturous) 1986 Tour.

Most sports are fairly straightforward.  Sure, no one really knows what off-sides is in hockey.  Even after winning my 7th grade wrestling championship I still don’t know what I got points for.  But at least in most sports you know (a) who your opponent is, and (b) whether you’re competing in a team sport (in which you win or lose as a team) or an individual sport (where you win or lose as an individual).  If this seems like it should be a pretty easy thing to figure out, well then you haven’t watched much competitive cycling lately.

When Greg Lemond won the 1986 Tour de France, it was not clear whether Bernard Hinault was his teammate or his opponent.  In fact, no one’s sure whether Bernard knew.  As far as I can tell, cycling is the only competition where the sport is organized in units of team, but the prize money (and glory) is organized in units of individual.  Imagine if Real Madrid took on Barcelona, but the declared winner was just one player: Ronaldo or Messi, or maybe Neymar or Suarez depending on who happened to score.

As it turns out, Tour de France is not at all like running a 100m dash; it’s more like being in an ant colony.  Within each team of 8 riders, a single queen bee is designated who has the best overall prospect of winning.  The rest of the team become the workers, known as domestiques.  Domestiques shield the queen from the chaos of the peloton (imagine masses of high-flying cyclists swerving down mountains at high speeds, inches from each other and throngs of spectators on either side), they allow the leader to draft to save energy, and they shuttle food and water from the support vehicle.  In the case of a crash, a domestique may even have to give the leader his bike and wait for a new one from the support vehicle.  Domestiques may be allowed to win certain stages.  But ultimately they know their place.

Only, in the case of the 1986 Tour, there were two queen bees on the La Vie Claire team.  At the 1985 Tour,  the new upstart Lemond was the stronger rider than the aging 4-time Tour winner Hinault.  But they were teammates and a deal was struck: Lemond would assist Hinault to his 5th and final victory in ’85, and ’86 would be Lemond’s turn.  The cooperative and stage-based nature of cycling makes such deals quite common.  In fact, one of the strengths of Slaying the Badger is its ability to convey (even to a non-cyclist such as myself) the importance of cooperation, etiquette, and unwritten rules.  However, Hinault continually attacked at the ’86 Tour and seemed to be going for his 6th victory, and then pretended to be teammates on his bad days, to the great consternation of Lemond.

It’s a staggering testament to Lemond’s raw talent that he was able to win the 1986 Tour, against one of the greatest, most intimidating cyclists of all time, and without the customary support (almost all of the riders on team had greater allegiance to Hinault; Lemond surmised that even the coaches and support vehicles favored Hinault).  Has anyone ever won the Tour virtually solo (Lemond had just one ally — fellow American Andy Hampsten)?  Even with EPO, could Lance have won a Tour without George Hincape and his team of highly disciplined minions?

Perhaps equally astonishing is Lemond’s comeback victory at the Tour in 1989, in what is still the closest finish in Tour history (8 seconds).  In 1987 Lemond was pelleted with a shotgun turkey hunting with his brother-in-law.  Lemond lost some 65% of his blood volume, and nearly bled to death.  Surgery could not remove all of the pellets, some of which remain lodged in his liver and the lining of his heart.  He could not defend his ’86 victory, missing two Tours  (’87 and ’88).  In 1989 Lemond returned to the Tour as a non-favorite.  In the final stage, a time trial, Lemond somehow erased 50 seconds over ~15 miles on two-time Tour winner Frenchman Laurent Fignon.  So much for the final stage being perfunctory.

Lemond was able to win one last Tour in 1990, perhaps the last clean Tour before the Era of EPO descended.  There are a lot of things in Lemond’s career that didn’t go his way.  The bullets at the height of his success likely robbed him of a status as one of the greatest riders of all time.  Lemond also could have won even more Tours had his career not run head on into the EPO era that began in the early 1990s.  But the real tragedy is how in retirement Lemond’s reputation and livelihood were smeared by Lance Armstrong, who bullied and ostracized anyone who questioned whether he was clean.  Instead of enjoying a retirement as an exalted Tour hero, even Trek bikes terminated business relations with Lemond because of their discomfort with his outspoken questioning of Lance.

In the post-Lance era, Lemond is making yet another comeback, and finally enjoying the hero status he was denied too long.  One may wonder how Lemond could not be bitter.  About Hinault’s early betrayal, about getting shot in his prime, about EPO cutting his career short, and finally, in retirement, being robbed of his reputation and business — just because he had the integrity to call out Armstrong.  But part of Lemond’s great appeal is that nothing ever seemed to go right for him.  In his ’86 Tour victory, he had three crashes in the final stage.

I’m actually kind of in need of a new hero.  The more I learn about Michael Jordan, and how cruel he was to his teammates, the more his aura dims.  Jordan punched tiny point guard Steve Kerr in the face during practice.  Toni Kukoc is probably still in therapy.  Apparently he would stop passing a guy a ball for the rest of the game if he made a mistake in an earlier play.  At the Wizards, his ceaseless taunts made new 18-year old draft pick Kwame Brown cry every day in practice.  Next to Lance, Jordan may be the second-worst bully in sports.

Against the likes of Lance, Jordan, and Hinault, Lemond’s shy, relaxed nature is especially endearing.  In some ways he reminds me of another childhood hero of mine, Cal Ripkin Jr., whose twinkly blue eyes similarly belied an integrity that harkened back to an older age of sport.  I was in the stands in Camden Yards the day Ripkin tied Lou Gehrig’s record of 2,130 consecutive games, and just a row away from where his home run ball landed.  But Ripkin’s and Lemond’s circumstances couldn’t have been more divergent.  One guy played 2,131 consecutive games.  The other got shot in the chest and missed two Tours.  One guy had his father as team manager and his brother Billy at second base (the Ripkins were a family affair).  The other guy was an orphan on his own team.  At one point, Lemond became so suspicious of sabotage that he started taking other riders’ feed bags in the aid stations.  Lemond also suspected that his own team manager Paul Köchli subversively favored Hinault.  There’s a defining moment in Slaying the Badger when Köchli misleads Lemond about how far back Hinault is in order to get Lemond to slow and wait for him.  At the end of the stage the young Lemond cries like a lost puppy after realizing that he could have won his first Tour had he been allowed to continue his attack.

By the end of Slaying the Badger, you can’t help feeling that Lemond is the Job of professional cycling.  To this day, Lemond can’t exert fully or he risks lead poisoning from the pellets still lodged in his body.  Why does so much misfortune have to befall a talent so innocent?  Is his gentleness his weakness, easily exploited by the alphas?  Do ruthlessness and intimidation always win?  But there is some satisfaction in seeing the tides turn in recent years, when Lance gets stripped of everything, and Lemond, as always, stages an improbable comeback.

To celebrate my brother Fred’s 10^th birthday my grandparents took him on a trip to the wilds of Alaska. I was only 5, but I vividly remember Fred’s descriptions of waters teeming with marine life – whales, puffins, more bald eagles than you could count – and woodlands full of bears and moose. He brought me back a necklace with a little gold shell on it, and every time I wore it I dreamt about the day I would turn 10 and have my own chance to explore Alaska’s wilds.

When my cousin Claire and I turned 10 my grandparents took us to Nova Scotia. We did not disguise our disappointment that the destination wasn’t Alaska. But we were promised that Nova Scotia was a lovely island teeming with birdlife. We set our hearts on seeing puffins.

There were no puffins. Fred had gotten the greatest adventure of his life and we’d gotten some seafood buffets. At least, that’s how two sullen 10-year old girls remembered it.

When Aaron and I started dating, he was informed that I was owed two things in life: a horse and a trip to Alaska.

When I found out that Alaska had made the short list of possible locations for the celebration of my mother’s 70^th birthday, I lobbied hard. And when we finally settled on Alaska, I pushed against the popular inland passage cruise from Seattle to Juneau. As an infectious disease epidemiologist, a cruise boat has about the same appeal as a hospital ward. I pushed for a flight to Anchorage, followed by a road trip around the Kenai peninsula, including a one-day boat ride. And I whole-heartedly threw my support behind my brother’s motion for a bear tour. The bear tour was not cheap, as you had to charter a private plane to take you to a remote wilderness inaccessible by road.  But when in Alaska.

The Nelson family has a Theory of Travel that the Amount of Time Spent in a Place should be proportional to the Time Spent Getting to the Place.

Vacation Time(Location 1): Flight Time (Location 1):: Vacation Time(Location 2): Flight Time (Location 2)

Thirty-five years of living on this earth have taught me that this Theory of Travel is patently false. As Aaron puts it, maximization is not the same as optimization. I whittled my parents’ two-week trip down to 5 days. Plenty of time to see a puffin.

 

~                              ~                            ~

Day 1: Marthon don’t run the Mt. Marathon race….but sure put it on the bucket list

Aaron and I didn’t get picked in the lottery for The Mt. Marathon Race — a crazy 3,000′ scramble to the top Mt. Marathon, followed by a rapid descent back to town, all over the course of just three miles. It’s the country’s 2^nd oldest race (only the Boston Marathon is older). But we were in Seward on the day of the race and got a real taste for why this race is so famous. First off, the atmosphere is incredible. The small town of Seward swells on race day, held every year on the 4^th of July, becoming jammed with spectators who take the race as seriously as the Boston Marathon. This was a particularly exciting year for the race because a local Alaska cross country skier broke the course record set by Killian Journet last summer.

After the race Aaron and I took a short hike on part of the course. Well, it’s not really a ‘hike’, it’s more of a scramble. I haven’t scaled down cliffs like than since Finn took me and Sarah platypus-hunting in the Blue Mountains.

Day 2: Martha gets her puffin

Our trip was structured around two big events: (1) The Boat and (2) The Bears. Our primary reason for coming to Seward was The Boat. Of all the wildlife in Alaska (including the bears), Fred was most excited about the prospect of spotting orcas in the wild. I had waited 25 years to see a puffin.

On July 5^th, the day of my mom’s 70^th birthday, we took a full-day boat ride out of Seward to tour Resurrection Bay, the best way to see Alaska’s diverse marine wildlife. It was a rainy, overcast day, but that proved fortuitous as a large number of folks cancelled and we had plenty of room on deck to watch and photograph wildlife.

And despite the odds (orcas are typically seen only once per week), we had a gorgeous look at a pod of four orcas, including a calf. The trip was a bonanza of marine life: hoards of Stellar sea lions lazing on the rocks; playful otters tussling in the harbor; shy harbor seals popping their heads out of the water for a doe-eyed peek; a mother humpback whale romping with her calf, repeatedly slapping the water with her tail while her calf breached.

And a good thing we had Fred along to identify the diversity of marine birds: rhinoceros auklets, marbled murelets, phalaropes, jaegers, sooty shearwaters, red-faced cormorants, etc., etc. And, yes, I got more puffins than a girl could dream of. Horned puffins, tufted puffins, puffins flying, puffins bobbing in the water, rocky outcrops teaming with puffins. Twenty-five years worth of puffins. I also learned my new favorite word: puffling. As in, Duck:duckling::Puffin:puffling.

 

Day 4: Bearfest

The only point of Day 3 was to drive from Seward to Homer so that we could have our much-anticipated bear trip on Day 4. Maybe if it hadn’t been pouring rain the drive across the Kenai Peninsula would have been more memorable. But honestly, if there was a day for terrible weather, we couldn’t have picked a better day than Day 3.

On the face of it, a bear trip sounds like a terrible idea. A tiny plane flies you to a remote stretch of Alaskan wilderness called Katmai, drops you off, and sends your party off out into woodlands teeming with very hungry bears for several hours unaccompanied. I can’t be the only one to whom this seems like a great way to feed some famished grizzlies that have lost 40% of their body weight during a long hibernation with some fatty tourists.

Grizzlies are not to be trifled with. During our stay in Seward the local newspaper had just reported two recent bear attacks: one in Denali and one right along the drive from Seward to Homer. But for the price they were charging us, I figured there had to be sounder plan than Make Noise and Carry Bear Spray.

It turned out that making sure tourists didn’t become bear food was taken very seriously in Katmai National Park.  The whole thing is actually extremely well organized.  Yes, you have to take certain precautions to make sure you don’t turn into bear chow.  But I was very impressed with the park’s infrastructure.

• One thing in our favor is that July is the month that the salmon travel upriver in droves to spawn. Which for the bears means feeding frenzy. Bears have to catch about ten fish a day to get back the weight they lost during hibernation. Bears are much less likely to pay humans any mind when there’s loads of delicious salmon around.

• No food was allowed to be carried in the woods. Not even gum. All food had to be safely secured at the visitor center before we ventured out. For someone who doesn’t go out for a 30-minute run without snacks, the prospect of going snack-less for four hours almost caused a panic attack. But I recognized that it was in my own interests not to carry snacks in areas teeming with hungry bears.

• A wooden platform was built adjacent to the waterfalls that were the most popular spot for the bears to feed. Under no other conditions could a human possibly feel comfortable being that close to a dozen massive grizzlies.

• We took full advantage of the Bob Boom, making my dad walk in the front. For the first time that I can remember, we actively encouraged my father to talk loudly about politics.

Nothing can prepare you for the scene at Brooks Falls. More than a dozen massive grizzlies stand below the gushing water, waiting for the right moment to swipe at a fish. A young mother stands on the shore with three tiny cubs treed next to her. On the other shore, a hulking male rips the roe out of his salmon, gulls squawking and darting in for stray pieces. A bald eagle flies in, sending the gulls squealing in all directions. Mergansers bob in circles in an eddy in what seems like constant confusion over who the leader is.

Each bear had its own personality. All the bears cleared for the dominant male, who got the choice fishing spot and caught three times as much salmon as the others.

A young female bear with three tiny cubs struggled on the shore as she tried to protect her young from the marauding males while finding moments to dash out and catch fish.

While the larger, older males stood Zen-like for long periods of time in a single spot before gracefully snatching a fish with a quick swipe of the paw, an adolescent male did spread eagle belly-flops off rocks and spent most of the day looking like he’d just gone through a washing machine.

Whereas the dominant male carried new catches to a large flat rock to peacefully engorge, other males consumed their slippery catches right in the spot where they caught it under the waterfall. Even after decapitation the salmon still flops vigorously, and several forlorn bears watched their catches slip away in the swift current.

The bear pecking order was mostly set and most bears knew their place, skittering away immediately if a more dominant bear approached. But there were still tussles. Grizzlies are so powerful that most fights are over in a matter of seconds, with one animal quickly backing down rather than face the alternative. But one bear was covered with scars. Another was chased fully out of the river.

The greatest testament to how thrilling watching the bears was is the fact that I went four hours without any snacks and didn’t even notice. When 7pm rolled around and it was time to head back to have dinner, I opted to instead spend every possible minute with the bears and save my sandwich for the plane. I can’t think of a time that has ever happened before.

Watch the live BearCam at Alaska’s Katmai National Park

Lessons of a Nelson Family Vacation

1.  Longer is not better.  Previous Nelson safaris to Africa and Argentina have been 2-3 weeks.  Alaska 2016 was proof-of-concept that you can have an amazingly fulfilling trip in a much shorter period as long as you plan carefully.
2. Mt Marathon is definitely a race Aaron and I would like to get back to some day, either in the short-term or long-term.  It’s bloody hard to get into the lottery, though.
3. Alaska will bring out the amateur photographer in anyone.  Aaron has always been an aficionado of film, and we knew going in that photography would be a major part of the trip for him.  But whether I was just snapping landscapes with my iPhone or borrowing Aaron’s super lens to catch some bears at the end of the day at the falls, Alaska proves you don’t have to be a gear junkie to fall in love with photography.  I still need to learn about aperture and lighting and such.  But next time maybe I’ll even try some birds.
4. Shell out some $$ to do the big highlights.  The bear-viewing was more money than the Nelsons had ever shelled out for any half-day event.  We thought it would be cool, but it was hard for us to believe that it could possibly be entirely worth it.  It was, no question.
5. It’s never too late to fulfill a childhood dream.  One might have thought that 25 years later the puffins would have been anti-climatic.  I’ve declared that the new house Aaron and I bought is going to have a prominent puffin theme.

Highland Sky 40

Canaan Valley, WV

June 18, 2016

 

We had a bunch of first-timers out at HS40 this year, peppering me and Aaron with questions about the course.  Aaron’s won the race a bunch of times, I’ve got the women’s CR, and we have a house in Canaan, so I guess we know a thing or two about the race and the area.  So for anyone coming out here next year, here’s a summary of our best tips for HS.  It’s one of my absolute favorite races.  Not just for its beauty, but also for its challenge.  You’d be hard-pressed to find a race that gives you a taste of everything.  You’ve got the full trail challenge — tough climbs, boulder fields, the gnarliest technical trails through woodlands.  And you’ve got a full speed challenge, with the Road Across the Sky, and some run-able trails through open grasslands.

1.  So, #1, HS favors chimeric runners, the ones who can switch back and forth between trail and road running — folks like Aaron.  Trevor, who finished 2nd this year, can attest to the value of having a little road speed in you.  At mile 20, he hit the 7-mile Road Across the Sky in 8th place.  By the end of the road, he was squarely in 2nd.  A little spring from marathon-training made up a whole lot of ground there.
2.  A key piece of advice is to think of the race as two distinct halves, with the Road Across the Sky starting at mile 20 as the turning point.  Prior to mile 20, you have a pure trail race: gnarly terrain and big climbs.  The year I set my CR in 2013 it was an extra adventure because large swaths of the course were under a foot of water.  The Sodds are always a bit mucky, but in this case you couldn’t even see what rocks lurked in those jet black puddle-lakes.  My best advice for this section is to not look at your watch and just take the terrain as it comes.  It’s going to vary from year to year.  Don’t push the climbs, keep your heart rate in check.  Have fun on the rocks, but don’t push them.
   

   Boots has clearly mastered the second-half let ‘er rip stratagem.

3. Because in the second half, air it out!  The good news, is no matter how the first half goes, after the half-way point you’ll have ample opportunity to make up some time.  The Road Across the Sky is a mean old man, with endless long dips and climbs that you can see for a mile ahead.  And hot exposed in the sun.  But you can make up so much ground here if you didn’t bang your little system up too much in the technical first half.  Let ‘er rip.
   

   PJ also takes our ‘let ‘er rip in the 2nd half’ advice to heart.

4. The Sodds are visually deceptive.  For some reason, hills in the open plains of the Sodds look less steep than if the same ascent were in the woods.  It’s something to do with your visual field.  So don’t let it bother when you find yourself walking climbs in the Sodds that don’t think you need to.  If you had trees on either side, you’d be walking.
5. 

   A salad I made after the race with fresh strawberries, local goal cheese, local greens, and walnuts from Highland Market.

   There are great food options in the Valley for pre-race meals.  There’s great pizza at Siriani’s.  If you need some protein, head to Tip Top in Thomas, WV for Friday Grass-Fed Burger night (there are veggie burger options too).  If you’d like a home-cooked meal, Highland Market is like a housed farmer’s market, serving meats, fruits, and veggies from local farms.  Save Hellbender Burritos for post-race.

6. Nettles.  Yes.  In the first climb.  They sting, be prepared.  Some years are worse than others.  Some folks where calf sleeves.  Others realize that it’s the least of your problems on this challenging day.
7. Wear sunscreen!  Next time our aid station will have spray-on sunscreen and I’ll just spray it on cooking runners as they come through.
   

   Tip #2: Making an aid station too hospitable can sometimes result in a lingering runners problem.

   

   Jeff was one of our first lingering runners.

   

   Girls in cute dresses did not help Bob’s lingering runner problem.

   

   In fact, Team Gaylord’s party van was in general a negative help for the lingering runner problem.

   

   So were the puppies!

   ~                     ~                      ~

   

   Tip #3: after an exhausting day of volunteering, curl up with a fuzzy kitty

   

   So the next day you can learn how to take selfies while biking with friends!

Aaron and I have a favorite game we play called ‘Who’s Life is Worse?’  After a long weekend in the Laurel Highlands, we found our game caught in yet another stubborn stalemate.  What was worse, getting injured two weeks before the race and getting to run 0 miles (me), or Aaron making it 40 miles and having to drop out because of the severe bursitis in his heels?

I concede that a DNF is more acute agony.  That moment of defeat, when you throw in the towel, letting your race dreams slip away — that’s gut-wrenching.

But Aaron will be up and running again by the middle of this week.  He’ll be well on his way to training for the Fat Dog 70 in August, his priority race of the summer.

While I won’t be able to hit the trails for another month or so, possibly more.

~                ~               ~

I had been talking about Laurel for a year.  I had turned down a paid trip (airfare, accommodation, food) to Oxford University because it would conflict with my plans to run Laurel.

Why was Laurel so important to me?  At one time, many years ago, I had come to Laurel bursting with possibility.  Back in 2009, the Laurel Highlands 50k was my first ultra.  We were having beer and pizza one Tuesday night after WUS and Keith and Mitchel were going up for the 70 that Saturday.  And the next thing I knew I’d signed up to do my first 50k that weekend.  Who needs training?

Race morning wasn’t auspicious.  I got lost driving to the shuttle bus that takes you from the finish to the start and missed it.  I didn’t have a GPS.  I stopped in gas stations at 6am to ask desperately, ‘How do I get to Ohiopyle?’  Laurel is a point-to-point, and driving is not nearly as direct a route as running.  By some miracle I got there 10 minutes before the start, all in a frenzy.

But fortunately Keith had told me everything I needed to know.  There was going to be a big climb at the start.  And I should just run it like a marathon.

And I had my tried-and-true Tom Cali Marathon Nutrition Strategy: 1 clif shot blok every 5 miles.  Took me to a 2:55 at Boston earlier that spring.  The miles along the Laurel Highlands Trail are marked with painted obelisks, so it was easy to pop a blok every 5.

As it turns out, marathon miles ain’t the same thing as trail miles.  One blok every 5 miles wasn’t even close to what I needed nutritionally.  The last 8 miles were so rough.  I felt sick to my stomach.  I stopped eating.  I felt dizzy and dehydrated.  I was barely walking at the end.

But I finished 1st woman, 2nd overall, and set a CR that still stands.  I was 28 years old, full of promise.

~                ~               ~

Seven years later, that promise had all but snuffed out.  I never did much at the ultra distances.  Sure, I had moments of life, a CR at Highland Sky.  But mostly disappointment.  I wasn’t totally dispirited as a runner — even as I aged into the 30s my speed on the roads held nicely.  I just never got it going over the longer distances, mostly because I never even made it to the line.

But two events last summer got my ultra blood rushing again: Manitou’s Revenge and the Teton Crest Trail.  I made a big dark circle on the calendar around the date of the Laurel Highlands 70.  I was going back to Laurel.  Nothing was going to deter me, not tantalizing speaking gigs in Europe, not the training required.

Everything was going great.  Promise Land 50k was a great training run at the end of April.  The next week I had another great training run with Keith/Phil/Julian/Aaron around DC.  Aaron and I got some seriously quality training runs in the Sodds the following week.  And I got one last long run in DC before I jetted off to Belgium.

My first day of work in Belgium was Monday.  I couldn’t walk.  Something in my shin, an injury I didn’t recognize.  It hasn’t stopped hurting since.  I went to the ortho and he gave me his Rx: some serious painkillers and a definitive DNS for Laurel.

~                ~               ~

My DNS and Aaron’s DNF kind of reflect the larger arcs of our running careers.  My ultra running career has been frustrating, but more in a DNS stillbirth kind of way.  I just never got it going.  Every time I sign up for a big ultra race I get injured and never even toe the line.

Aaron, on the other hand, enjoyed some wickedly good years of ultra running in the late 2000s.  He got out there, hit his stride, and had some monster wins, including Hellgate.  Everyone knows Aaron.  But just as he was flourishing, he came down with Lyme disease, and has never been the same.  Tough to say which is worse, my DNS running career that never even got its legs, or Aaron’s DFN running career that faded unfairly before its time.

Regardless of who’s right, next year we’re just doing the Laurel Highlands Relay.