Some people endure all the travel so that they get to do a race.  I endure the race so I get to do the travel.  –Martha Nelson, July 19, 2015

When we realized that Steve’s wedding in Jackson Hole would conflict with the Lurray triathlon in August, we scrambled to find another triathlon to do this summer.  I had several criteria:

(a) open water swim in a clean lake (no pools, no dirty rivers)

(b) Olympic or half-ironman distances

(c) less than 4 hour drive from DC

(d) gotta have some hills (so many of the triathlons cater to people trying to get PRs by being pancake flat. bo-ring.)

(e) gotta fall on one of my few free weekends this summer (I’m having an epidemic of conferences that spill over into the weekend this summer)

After scouring the calendar of tris, we came across Anthracite in Jim Thorpe, PA that seemed to fit the bill.  It was Olympic distance, in a fresh lake, and meandered through the hills adjoining Pennsylvania coal-mining towns, the biggest of which was Jim Thorpe.

Aaron and I have been swimming fairly consistently this year.  We try to swim every Tuesday morning, and occasionally on Thursday, but with my travel schedule this probably averages out to about 3 swims a month.  Not enough to really get in swim shape, but enough to consistently work on form.  I set a very low bar at last year’s Lurray Tri.  But I can now breathe to both sides.  And Aaron promises I’m don’t look like I’m drowning, even if it feels that way.

I can’t really say the same about our bike prep.  I think Aaron has been on a bike for a total of <5 hours so far this year.  The fact that I’m double that made me feel like I had done some training.  But 10 hours of biking doth not a training make.

The day before the race I purchased my first wetsuit.  It went something like:

‘Um, it’s kind of tight around my chest, I can’t take a full breath.’

‘Good fit.’

‘It’s kind of choking my throat.’

‘Perfect.’

My lack of wetsuit experience would become apparent during my 5+ minute transition zone 1 time.  I felt like I was trying to skin a seal.  An angry, stubborn seal that did not wish to part with its epidermis.

After buying the wetsuit, Aaron and I shimmied up rte. 70 all the way to Mauch Chunk Lake, besting the packet-pickup deadline by four minutes.  ‘Mauch Chunk’ was the original name for the town of Jim Thorpe. Let’s see, on one hand we can name our town after a great Olympic hero, or as an alternative something that sounds like mouse vomit.

On our drive up to the lake, the road became noticeably steeper.  ‘Whoa, Aaron, there are hills here.’  We decided that we’d better drive part of the bike course to get a better sense of what we were in for.  There was a lot of muttering of curse words.

‘Mile for mile, Aaron, have you ever done a harder triathlon bike course.’

‘Nope.’

‘Maybe we should have done some training?’

‘Maybe.’

‘It says it’s a high of 92 degree tomorrow.  We’re gonna roast.’

‘Yup.’

We picked up our race packets and listened to an extraordinarily efficient pre-race briefing by the no-nonsense RD.  The key message was: don’t fly down the big hills because there will be 90-degree angle turns at the bottom and you will crash.  Got it.

There was only one B&B where you could book for just one night (most have 2 night minimums on weekends).  You couldn’t book online.  Nor by email.  You had to actually call and leave a message.  The kind little old lady who ran the B&B called me while I was boarding a plane in O’Hare and somehow I managed to give her my credit card info over the phone before jetting to Ontario.  She sent us a confirmation in the mail.  With stamps.

The B&B was one of the highlights of the trip.  It was a old Victorian right in the middle of town.  We were put in the ‘Arizona Room’ decorated for Sedona hippies.  Since we had to rise at 4:30 am for the race, our fridge had been pre-stocked with milk and juice and bowls were on the table along with homemade granola and coffee.  And, most beautifully, we were allowed to check-out late so we could shower after the race.

Jim Thorpe is a surprisingly cute and touristy town.  We thoroughly enjoyed Stone Row Pub (which we returned to for post-race brunch).  And the long lost pleasure of thumbing through CDs at a real brick-and-mortar record shop (I bought Aaron the latest Florence + the Machine).

‘Just so you know, this is not how triathlon starts normally go,’ Aaron clarified.  I guess the nice thing about a super hilly bike course is that super type-A triathletes are deterred.  There were plenty of tricked out bikes, but the air was not drenched in testosterone.

The whole Organization of the Gear part remains my Achilles heel.  I had a couple gear fails: (a) my goggles kept fogging up, so I couldn’t see anything (I couldn’t even make out the giant red balls marking the swim course until I was right on top of them); (b) it took me twice as long to get out of the wetsuit as everyone else; and (c) I ran out of fluid on the bike in the baking sun and entered the run completely dehydrated.  When Aaron finished his race, he was amused to see that the water bottle from his bike had been pilfered.  Apparently, a dry-throated marmot had drunk everything in sight after its bike ride and strewn it on the ground.

Triathlon is a perfect space for me to practice not being competitive.   I’ve been a front-pack runner since the day I set foot on a track my freshman year of high school.  I really had no experience in being a leisure athlete.  Even on family ski trips, Nelsons don’t wait for each other.  Nelsons blast down as fast as they can go, and if you can’t keep up…..well, hope you know the way.  My stubby skis and diminutive size meant that turning was never really an option for me.  So when I had to do a mandatory wrestling tournament in 7th grade, my honed survival instincts shot me through the elimination bracket.  I had never pulled girls to the ground before, but being a Nelson had prepared me well, and in the finals I defeated a tomboy named Kate who was 5 lbs heavier (quite a lot when you’re only 75 lbs to begin with).  We had only two weeks of training in wrestling moves, so they were really just cat-fights.

So enjoying being a back-of-the-packer is not really in my DNA.  Ultras have taught me a lot about how to rein in the testosterone and just enjoy the day.  And after a temporary setback at Holiday Lake, where my attempt to run non-competitively this year left a bitter taste that no amount of alcohol and honey has been able to clear, I got Operation Tame the Marmot back on track at Manitou’s.  It’s not the greatest feeling in the world to pop out of the water and have all the bikes gone (it kind of feels like you’re entering a disaster zone of a previously inhabited city that’s been destroyed by a tornado).  But I just take my merry time in the transition zones, enjoy the cool fresh lake and the wind in my face on the bike.  There’s a balance to racing in a way where you’re in check and just enjoying being out there, but exerting enough to still feel satisfied with your effort.  I’m still trying to find that balance, but triathlons are an ideal venue for experimenting.

The old me would have rolled my eyes at placing 3rd in my age group at a dinky triathlon (I think there were only 5 women total).  But Marmot 2.0 held up my little award and smiled for the picture with pride.  Anthracite is kind of a Race for the Birds of triathlons.  Prizes for all!  We even saw some highly acrobatic Eastern kingbirds darting along the shoreline during our post-run splash in the lake.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Manitou’s Revenge, 54 miles

June 20, 2015, Catskills, NY

What kind of race is Manitou’s Revenge?  The kind that ate through Brian Rusieki’s shoe a few years ago.  And made Joe Clapper eat his boot, after he assured Michele he’d finish in under 16 hours (he finally crossed in 20+ hours).  Many of the climbs are so steep you have to use your hands.  As Joe wrote on the VHTRC club page:

The RD Charlie Gadol does it the old way.  If you seek a lot of course markings, aid station staff with rubber gloves, and a pampered experience, this might not be your course.  Manitou is in the Catskill Preserve, a 125 year old forest of firs, maples, and birches with spectacular views for 54 miles. The trail system predates switch backs. You get what you need but, no one is holding your hand.

This year, there were added challenges of torrential rain storms and vandalism of course markings.  Dave Quivey got the brunt of the rain storm, in the dark, and claimed he fell 50 times (which was consistent with the criss-crosses of cuts and bruises all over his legs and feet, and the mud found in his ear).  Joey went 6 miles off course, adding another 1700′ of elevation gain.  I did some ‘bonus miles’ of my own, and winner Brian Rusieki commented that the winner was simply ‘the guy who got lost least’.

The ~83% finishing rate of MR is remarkably high, given the conditions, and no doubt reflects how much RD Charlie Gadol curates the entrants list.  No wimps allowed.  Given my lackluster ultra record (can’t seem to get through without puking), the only way I got into the race was based on Clapper’s word.  I was a bit concerned that Joe had oversold my trail cred to Charlie.

But I’m a big sucker for (a) free race entries, (b) wacky adventures, (c) nostalgia (Escarpment was my first trail race in 2006), and (d) road trips with fun friends.  So when Charlie asked me if I wanted to run the race, I shot back an immediate response in the positive.

Over the next months, as I learned more about the race, and came to understand the true meaning of 15,000′ of elevation gain over 54 miles, I began to recognize the very real possibility that the race would crush my scrawny ass.  Joe mentioned that the early Escarpment section of Manitou’s was the ‘easy’ part.  It didn’t help that my stomach didn’t recover for weeks after Bull Run (Sunday training runs devolved into long walks) and I spent most of May in Paris and Belgium for work, where 15′ elevation change was the closest thing you got to a hill.  When I got home from Paris in late May, I threw in one quality training week, running the most miles I’ve ever done in a week (74 miles) before I had to jet to Iowa for work in early June, another place I couldn’t find a hill.

But I was excited about heading up to the Catskills, especially since we had such a fun group of VHTRCers heading up for the Azul Train — Joe and Michele, the Quiveys, Joey, Aaron and me.  I hadn’t really hung out with the Quiveys before.  That’s gonna change.

Dave, Joe, Joey, and I were running, and Aaron, Michele, and Jill were crew.  Aaron was deeply handicapped by the fact that this was my first time having any crew and I was hopelessly clueless.  The morning of the race I noticed that Michele had a very detailed list of all the specific things Joe wanted at each aid station.  I had simply given Aaron two plastic bags of miscellaneous items, one which I told him contained things ‘I would probably want’ and the other bag consisting of ‘back-up’.  I just had mostly gummies, crackers, and gels, which got old real quick.  Next time I’ll bring a lot more variety of things to eat — Ensures, Cape Cod potato chips, more V8, and apple sauce were all things I at one point desperately could have used during the race.

But Aaron was stupendous and absolutely made the race for me.  That surprise V8 midway through the race was clutch.  The pizza was on the money (even though it was hard to eat the second slice when you need both hands to crawl up the hill).

Aaron also talked me out of the major low I had at the first crew-accessible aid station, ~17 miles in, where I was queasy and psychologically felt like the race should be over (I entirely recognized that this was the finish area for Escarpment, where 9 years ago I had collapsed in the medical tent).  ‘This seems like a nice place to end a race!’ I declared.

When I ran Escarpment in 2006, my first trail race ever, I didn’t even bring a water bottle.  It was July.  I got so dehydrated the last third of the race that it was terrifyingly dangerous.  There are super rocky descents that you have to use your hands for, and my mind was checked out and my legs were jello.  I couldn’t focus enough to stay upright and my body just kept slamming down on the trail.  There’s a beautiful YouTube video where you can see my legs just give out from under me for no reason.  My friend who ran the last bit with me said that he was absolutely terrified for my life, seeing my head come dangerously close to smacking into boulders several times as I body slammed my way to the finish.

Did you notice in the video that I was clutching something in my right hand?  The father of my friend from Penn State (Morgan W.) was standing at the finish line, and after I crossed I placed in his hand a crumpled up little empty gel packet that was covered in mud and blood and sticky with goo that I had clearly been carrying for many, many miles.  Even as I faceplanted over and over, I held onto that little wrapper in a little fist deathgrip. Despite the fact that this was my first trail race, and that my mind was barely functioning from dehydration, I knew enough not to drop trash in the forest.  I would continue to see Morgan’s dad at various PA events over the years, and I he never forgot me, marveling over that crumpled little bloody gel packet I had deposited in his palm before collapsing.

At Manitou’s those memories all came flooding back as I ran that last stretch of Escarpment again, and it was a serious reality check.  Nutrition is my Achilles heel, and I realized with a bit of dread that over a race of Manitou’s length the cost of not eating and drinking enough today would put me in even more danger than I had experienced at Escarpment.  If I got dizzy and depleted and lost the plot over that distance, I could crack my head open on those rocks.  For the remainder of the race, I focused on survival.  I drank so much I peed constantly, dozens of times.  And I tried my damnedest to shove enough food down, even if it was the last thing in the world I was in the mood for.  And even if it meant walking in some of the stretches I would have liked to run.

‘Keeping it in the pants’ has become my unofficial ultra running mantra.  When I’m on the roads I give myself a lot of leeway.  If I want to rage like a bull, I let myself go for it.  If I want to compete head-to-head with someone who’s bugging me, male or female, I to let myself dig in.  But in ultra running, I’ve been trying to rein in that motor, and subdue the competitive instincts.  Most of the top female ultra runners weren’t fast when they started out, and got many years of grace period to figure out all the things like nutrition before they became competitive.

I never got that grace period.  In 2009, when I did my first ultra, the Laurel Highlands 50k, Keith K. told me to ‘just run it like you run a marathon, you’ll set a course record’.  LH50k is not an easy course, with a big climb around mile 7, but Keith has run 50+ 100-milers so I figured he knew what he was talking about (word of advice: don’t listen to Keith).  Approaching it like a marathon, I ate one shot blok every 5 miles (not one pack of bloks, one little square).  By mile 20 or so, having run several hours on some Gatorade and a handful of shot bloks, my depletion hit me, and I felt like I was going to vomit and stopped eating entirely.  It was hot (mid-June).  I walked the last mile or so.  I did manage to set a CR, that still stands, but I didn’t run another ultra for years.  I stuck to shorter trail races where nutritional depletion wasn’t an issue, like the Women’s Half.  I finally stepped up to the Uwharrie 20-miler in 2011, where I won again, but when they handed me a beautiful huge ceramic vase as my first-place award as I crossed the line, I asked them, Oh good, is this to puke into?  They swiftly yanked the vessel from my arms before I could defile it (the clay used came from the same North Carolina mountains we were running).

Why is nutritional depletion such a hot button for me?  Even aside from running, I require a huge amount of food/calories just to get through a typical day.  When I was a kid, my mom cooked me pancakes, waffles, french toast every morning before school (Saint Mom).  I didn’t just eat just one waffle, but two or three.  When my family went out to a fancy brunch when I was in middle school, I ordered a waffle with strawberries.  And then I waitress if I could please have another one.  Who just ate one waffle for breakfast?  My pediatrician prescribed for me a milkshake every day.  I would go over to my friends’ houses after school and politely inform their parents, in my little British accent, that — doctor’s orders — I needed to have a milkshake (I was shocked to discover that some of my friends didn’t stock their fridges with ice cream at all times!).  When I went to Stanford my freshman year, other girls would look askance at my tray piled high with food.  My friends from high school just knew that was how I was, and hadn’t made me feel so conspicuous about it.  When I got to Amherst, where the food wasn’t nearly as good as Stanford, I had to get a doctor and a nutritionist to write letters so I could get off the required dining meal plan so I could eat in town, as I was starting to waste away eating cereal for dinner.  Thank you, god, for Antonio’s Pizza in Amherst, MA.  Kept me alive those years.

‘Does it bother you that you got two pieces of pizza and I only got one?’  I was living off campus in a house owned by a crazy lady who leased rooms to myself, a woman who had come from Kyrgyzstan to study the local Men’s Resource Center, and a kid who had just graduated from Amherst High School, who would join me sometimes for pizza cravings.  He had a habit of staring me straight in the face and asking pointed questions, as if hoping to fluster me.     

‘Oh, I’m sorry, did you want a second piece?’  He had successfully flustered me into considering that maybe he didn’t have enough money for two pieces of pizza.

‘No, just, you’re a girl.  And you’re having two pieces of pizza and I’m only having one.’  At the time, Antonio’s was the greatest pizza I’d ever had.  They had funky kinds like chicken tortellini and potato pizza.   

I rubbed my temples. ‘This is what I always do: I eat two pieces of pizza.  I’m happy to buy you a second piece if you want it.’

‘So you’re not bothered.  A lot of girls would be bothered.’  

‘Why?’

‘Because they think they shouldn’t eat as much as a guy.  Hannah would never eat more than me.’

I flushed, realizing I was discovering how women think from an 18-year old boy.  But relieved to have at last firmly established that each of us were eating exactly the number of pizza slices we desired, and I could now re-focus on the magical blend of finely chopped bell peppers, chicken bits, onions, and jalapeños smothered in melty cheese.  

 

When I finally did take a swing at ultras again, I was plagued by the same problems — running too hard, not eating enough, nausea, vomiting, swearing I’d never do it again.  So these days I’m stepping back and reclaiming that lost grace period, letting myself go as slow as I have to in order to be able to eat, without anything hanging over about finish order.So as I ran at Manitou’s I made sure to ask people if they wanted to pass and step aside, and not let anyone subtly push me into going faster (if someone’s breathing down my back my natural instinct is to quicken).  I chatted with a couple people — such a small world, an Australian biochemist from the University of Sydney knew Eddie my PhD advisor, whom I’d just visited last November~  He told me about some cool ultras in the Snowy Mountains in Victoria that I’ll have to check out for next time I’m in Australia.

As I had suspected, a beautiful and challenging course like Manitou’s is perfect for adopting a mindset that you’re going to set back and enjoy the day.  First, just finishing Manitou’s is an accomplishment, in and of itself, and I wonderfully went through the whole day without anyone in any of the aid stations mentioning what place I was (I ended up finishing 3rd female).  And much of the course is not run-able, so I had plenty of opportunities to walk and just focus on nursing down morsels of food and keeping my stomach in a happy place.  My goal was simply to finish before dark, realizing that those rocks would be even tougher after nightfall, which I just barely accomplished (I finished around 8:30pm).

Ideally, I’d like to be able to not have to devote so much energy to shoving food down my throat, which detracts from the enjoyment.  Maybe if I had more suitable things in my drop bags I could have stocked up on calories in the aid stations and not had to focus so much on eating on the trails.  And I did go off course a bit, far enough that I had a feeling of doom in the pit of my stomach that I wasn’t actually sure I would ever find my way back to the blue trail and may be lost in the woods for hours.  When I finally did find the blue trail, I was so disoriented I wasn’t sure which direction to take it (I guessed right).  I was highly depleted when I finally finished the race in 15+ hours.  Sadly, I felt too ill to stick around and be social (although it ended up being the right choice, as I ended up vomiting from over-depletion when I got back).

Overall, these were my lessons from Manitou’s:

(a) Crew is the best.  Specifically Aaron Schwartzbard Crew Extraordinaire.

(b) The Catskills are *awesome*.  I can’t make it back to Escarpment this year because of a work commitment, but I will be back for Escarpment hopefully in 2016 and Manitou’s again in 2017, and possibly a new fall race they’re holding (Cat’s Tail Marathon).  Even though you can drive to the Catskills from DC in ~6 hours, there’s something about the area that makes you feel transported to a very distant land.  Maybe my mind was a little hazy from the length and ardor of the run, but I kept seeing monkeys in the trees and bright lizards at my feet.

(c) Speaking of which, the mind does funny things when you run by yourself for that long (this was nearly 2x as long as I’d ever run before).  In addition to seeing things that don’t exist (‘No, Martha, that can’t be a monkey, you are in N-e-w Y-o-r-k’), I sang the same songs in my head over and over again for hours, sometimes just a single verse or lyric:

“All That I Need”/Blind Melon

All that I need is the air that I breathe
And all that I need are things I don’t need
And all that really matters is what matters to me
And who of you are like me

If I was to smile and I held out my hand
If I opened it now would you not understand
Because you know if I’m to benefit I’ll do everything that I can
And who of you are like me

That lasted several hours.  Then as the day went on longer I switched to Pink Martini’s ‘Hang on Little Tomato’:

You gotta hold on, hold on through the night
Hang on, things will be all right
Even when it’s dark
And not a bit of sparkling
Sing-song sunshine from above
Spreading rays of sunny love

Just hang on, hang on to the vine
Stay on, soon you’ll be divine
If you start to cry, look up to the sky
Something’s coming up ahead
To turn your tears to dew instead

(d) Relatedly, I have serious issues with boredom.  Manitou’s was *awesome* that I didn’t struggle with boredom much, because the course was always throwing something new at you.  Even though my little calves were not trained for those steep ascents, I loved the parts where you climbed with your hands.  So much, that when we got to the last climb and there was no hand-over-hand, I started pouting a little.  This is bor-ing!  But I think that’s why I’m kind of bi-polar when it comes to running: I either want something really fast (marathon and below) on the road, full of adrenaline and heart thumping, or I want something really technical and gnarly on the trails.  People keep suggesting that I run something like JFK because I’d be really fast.  Running for long periods on a flat boring canal makes me want to curl up on the side of the trail and sob.   A lot of people don’t get how a ‘roadie’ like me digs the 5k and something like Manitou’s, but not something like JFK.  It all comes down to the boredom factor.

(e) If I do go back to Manitou’s, I want it to be with as much of our little Azul Train as possible.  As I declared to Aaron and Joey on the ride home, ‘That was the Most Fun Race Excursion!’  Meaning that it wasn’t just the race itself that was awesome, but the whole weekend with Joe, Michele, Dave, Jill, and Joey.  The post-race hikes we did, going to town, and just hanging out in our quirky house.  I really, really appreciate how everyone skipped a day of work so that we could all have our post-race fun together.  Which is really what it’s all about, right Sean Andrish?

(f) ‘Crackheads Gone Wild’ is not nearly as funny as you think it’s going to be.

 

‘Aaron, if you could go on vacation, anywhere in the world, where would you want to go?’

‘West Virginia.’

‘Aaron! Be serious.’ And I realized he was.

If I go too long without traveling (say 3-4 months, to some place at least as exotic as Europe), I get flat. I get a little narrow and self-fixated. I need my brain jolts.  On the other hand, if Aaron had it his way, the farthest we would vacation would be Canaan Valley. And eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches every day.

But Aaron’s reluctance to travel abroad isn’t just an affinity for consistency and routine. Aaron’s company is small, and it’s hard to take extended time off work when you’re solely responsible for the company having a functional IT system (and its clients who use its software).

Hence, the birth of noncation.   Some people staycation, where they take time off work but just stay in their homes and do fun things around their home town. Aaron and I go the other way. We fly somewhere and plant our laptops and work regular hours.

Our first noncation was in Frisco in May (‘mudseason’). We worked in the morning, took a little jog around the mountains mid-day, and then worked again into the evening. On the weekend we did some biking and spring skiing in A-basin. And then we went home. We did another noncation in Minneapolis last summer, working from the university during the day but having our little adventures in the evening: renting bikes, running trails with a local running group, hitting up some local breweries.

Noncation may sound like a cop-out. Or at least not very romantic. No Paris or Maui. But there’s something quietly romantic about two people with seemingly incompatible positions finding a way to both get what they need, even if it’s not so conventional. Aaron gets full days of work. And I get my mini adventures, memories, and sips of different cultures.  Everyone wins!