Catastrophe after catastrophe and at the end a happy ending

These play-by-play posts are boring even me (although they're serving as a good training journal, I guess). This weekend --for reasons that you'll see later in the post-- I decided that I'm going to turn an eye back to my cycling and do a bike-specific block. The high running miles are trashing my legs, so I think that I'm going to cut down on the junk runs (treadmill jaunts just to get in miles) and train a little smarter, not harder. So unless there is an overwhelming outcry, I'm going to continue with the traditional race report and rant style that I've used in the past. Please donate to the San Francisco AIDS Foundation anyway. (The previous sentence is a link, don't know why it's not showing that way on my screen.)

Monday: Run 3 mi and Spinning (boring entry)

I have to surrender my Mondays to a Higher Power lately because they are beyond my control. Knowing that I wouldn't be able to swim, I brought stuff for a treadmill run which I would have to break into two chunks in the time between morning clients. The first workout was about 25 minutes of balls to the wall sprinting. I set my tabata timer and ran 10 minutes straight of 20s on 10s off at 9 mph (about a 6:30-ish mile?). The 3 miles does not count the time I was straddling the treadmill letting the belt run underneath me. I was going to repeat the workout in my second 45-min break, but I decided to get breakfast instead. Why beat myself up?

Monday I usually go swimming before Spinning, but this time I had a client right up until the very last second that I could be at the studio before I had to leave for class. That's alright, I'd be able to jump in the drink Wednesday and Thursday.

Tuesday: Run 6 mi

This blog is not a "bitch about work drama" blog, so I'll just say that a chick who was apathetic about her job and didn't want to go out of her way to fix a simple problem that may cost me $1000/month. After meeting with said road block on Tuesday morning I was fuming and furious. I had about an hour to run and went for some trails that I haven't run in awhile because the uphills are too long and the downhills not long enough. I had never been able to run these trails without walking, but this time I had only a little time and a lot of pent-up stress and frustration to work out.

I hit the hill and started running, and then I never stopped. I gained and lost about 1000' over 6 miles, including some 18 switchbacks on one climb. Finally! Evidence that I was getting better! I was never a good hill runner, but I've had nothing else to run around here and it finally seemed to be paying off slowly but surely. I really needed some affirmation at that moment. I've felt like I've been stuck in place with my fitness for months now, with all the terrain and training being so different. Maybe I was getting stronger than I thought.

Wednesday: Run 6.7 mi, Spinning

Wednesday is my new day to have a big open gap in the middle of the day, but today my big open gap was filled with a stupid meeting at the Y. Afterward I had 4 hours before my class -- not enough time to go home. I planned to go for a quick run till the pool opened again (they close it in the afternoon so that they don't have to pay lifeguards at off-peak times), then go for a dip and get some work done. I ran an easy rolling hour on the treadmill, going only as fast as my legs wanted to take me and staring at simulated trails in Utah and North Dakota on the treadmill screen as I ran. Then I rinsed off and went down to the pool.

The pool had opened about 20 minutes before and already had people circle swimming in all the lanes. I looked at the fast lane and there was no way. I couldn't have swum a length without having to pass two other people. I asked the lifeguard what he thought I should do. He pointed to the medium lane. I looked at the guy wriggling down the pool reaching his arm way across his body and moving at an impossibly slow pace, then at the side stroker, and the dry-haired breast stroaker and left the pool. I HATE swimming sometimes!

Well at least now I had about 90 minutes to get some work done. I grabbed my laptop and took it to the kitchen. No sooner was I settled in, but a troop of about 15 wild teenagers came in and sat all around me. I picked up my computer and went to a classroom. The teenagers followed me there. At least they would be having a workshop and couldn't all scream at once. I tried to pull up the wifi and I couldn't. I went to the community center room. Couldn't find the wifi. Fuck, I had so much work to do and needed to get to the company blog and e-newsletter software. I went up to the room that the offices come off of, which was now being used as a nursery. Among screaming children I tried to resolve my wifi problem. After an hour of trying, I was no closer than when I'd started. My life was beginning to feel out of control and I wanted to kill someone. I slammed my laptop shut and flounced away with a shocked-looking 5-year-old staring at me. On the way to the locker room I put my laptop on the floor as I went to grab a drink. A slimy little kindergartner came by and stood on my fucking computer to get to the fountain next to me. "Don't stand on that!" I growled, pointing at the computer under her light-up pink shoes. She gave me a shocked look and backed away slowly. I gave her the same dirty look I would have given an adult in the same situation and flounced off to teach my class.

Thursday: Spinning

Thursday was really going to be the day that I finally jumped in the soup. When I was packing in the morning for my day: work stuff, swim stuff, stuff for spinning, change of underwear and socks, stuff for Girls on the Run, food... I looked at my swim suit sitting with my dirty laundry and I thought, don't forget that, Claire! So naturally I thought that I hadn't forgotten my swim suit. Still, before I left to go swimming, a sneaking suspicion snuck over me and I checked my backpack. Not only had I forgotten my suit, but I'd actually even pulled my spare suit out of my bag.

NO SOUP FOR YOU! was all I could think.

Friday: Run 10 mi

This week had been one endless string of one minor annoying task after another and I couldn't be more excited that it was Friday. I was driving to work when I got a text from Judi. "Are you alright?" What the fuck?! I had no clue what she was talking about. "They say a tsunami is supposed to hit California at 11 am." It's 6 in the morning, I thought. How the hell am I supposed to know what will happen in 5 hours?

Once I got into work there was no way to get around the tsunami news. Both TVs were showing shocking footage from Japan, but in general the attitude about a tsunami here at home was pretty much a joke. The apocalypse had been moved forward to about 8 am for the Bay Area, but they were only predicting 6' swells, which didn't really matter since it would be low tide and most of the coast is cliffs anyway. I was slightly worried about getting home since the only way to get to my street is by going along the coast, but I drove home right when they said the tsunami was charging toward me anyway. My exit is a steep hill that drops down about 600' to the freeway, and beyond you can see the ocean (see left). People were lining up along the side of the hill to stare down at the ocean from a safe height and take pictures. No one seemed too worried about the end of days. By lunch time pretty much everyone in San Francisco had forgotten about the tsunami, including me.

Well, everyone had forgotten except the San Francisco police who had blocked off the most direct route to Golden Gate Park, which was where I'd decided to squeeze in my 10 mile run. I took an extra 30 minutes to cross the city on surface roads and park at the far end of the park and started running the trails that snake through the perimeter. When I got down to the ocean, I could see that they still had the Great Highway (the road that goes along the 4-ish miles of coast on the ocean side) blocked off with one lonely cop and one of the pope mobile looking things that meter maids use. They weren't letting traffic through, but they were letting pedestrians and cyclists through to the beach. Smart.

I continued running, and at one point I looked down at my Garmin to see how much further I still had to run and saw that the whole face had come off of my Garmin! What the...? I backtracked along the trail and found it lying there on the ground all in one piece. I tried to snap the pieces back together, but they would hold together no more. What's amazing is that the thing had worked right up until the moment that it had fallen apart on my wrist. I wanted to be pissed, but instead I was impressed. What would suck, though, was that I would have no GPS for the 200K I had coming up tomorrow. (Which would prove an even bigger pain than I anticipated).

I ran what I guessed might be about 10 miles, and then hopped in the car and sped off to work. I had an hour and a half to shower, eat, and drop off my bike at the bike shop to get some new tires and minor work done. I decided to drop by the bike shop first because I now know better than to leave anything valuable in my car, even if it's in the trunk. "Can you just adjust the limit screw in the rear so that I can get into my hardest descending gear in the back?" I asked. Then I turned toward the door.

"It'll only take a second," the guy said. I sighed.

The adjustment should have only taken a minute, so when he started looking like he was just fucking around with it I tried to distract him. "And can I get a decent training tire? Mine are falling apart." Even more to my dismay, the guy came around the counter to the tire display rack. I was very aware that I smelled like sweaty crotch and all I wanted was to get into the shower, I did not want this dreamy-eyed bike mechanic standing 6" away.

"Whatever, this one will be fine," I said choosing one that looked similar the tire that was already on my bike and was cheap.

"But it doesn't match your bike," he said.

"I'm stuck with a white bike now. I'm so pissed that I don't care if my tires match. Do you mind putting them on for me?" Now for sure that would get him off my case.

"You've worked at a bike shop and you can't put on your own tires?!" he asked.

"I can," I said. "But I don't feel like going through 3 tubes trying to get them on while they're still stiff. I'll pay the $10, can you just do it for me?" Not being able to get new tires off was how I met Lindsey.

"Yeah, I'll show you some tricks." I'm never going to get out of here!

He started trying to show me how to put tires on with your hands, which I know how to do, and when he couldn't even do it without a tire lever I said, "Do you guys sell any food around here?" If I didn't leave right now then I wasn't going to get anything to eat, and I really needed to have my carbohydrate stores topped up before tomorrow.

"No, but hold on, we have some Gü Chomps upstairs. Then he disappeared before I could say that I was going to GO AWAY and pick up the bike in an hour. I ate five sample packets and he still hadn't gotten the tire on. Finally I just came out with it, told him that I had to go shower before my client came in and I'd be back in an hour. When I came back to pay for it I joked, "Now it won't go flat again tomorrow, right?"

"As long as you ride it on French roads," the guy told me.

Saturday: Bike ~120 mi

The Moss Beach 200K started in downtown Santa Cruz and followed Highway 1 nearly the whole way back to my house. I showed up with plenty of time to put my bike together, check in, and go to the bathroom. It had said on the website that there would be bathrooms at the start, so once I got my brevet card I went over to the public bathrooms across the street which were... locked. Goddamnmotherfucker! I have yet to go to a brevet here that has a fucking bathroom at the start of a race that lasts 6-13 hours. I went behind the building and was about to drop my shorts in a secluded corner when I saw a woman walking toward me on a hiking trail. Fuck lady, hurry up and pass! I thought. She was walking slowly and it would take her a good two minutes to get out of sight. Then she saw something on the ground that interested her, stopped and crouched down to get a better look. Fuck it! I thought and pulled down my shorts anyway. I got back to the start just in time for the pre-race meeting. "Don't do anything stupid," the guy said. And that was it. We left.

The guys took it slow getting out of Santa Cruz, but once we hit the first slight incline they poured it on. Highway 1 isn't "hilly," but it's relentlessly undulating. Without my GPS, I had no way to gauge whether these guys were fast or if I was just riding like shit. One thing was for sure though, I was going to be in a tight spot if they kept up this pace for the whole 200K. Since this road had been my one and only training route for my first triathlon, I had a rough idea about distances for the first 28 miles: start at the spot where Shane and I used to drink 40s and talk about heartbreak, 9 miles to the naked beach where we dropped acid and mushrooms next to masterbating naked men, 11 miles to the tracks in Davenport, 25 miles to where I tore my tire that one time and had to wait with a homeless Hawaiian man for 3 hours for Lorraine to get off of work and come pick me up, 28 miles to Pigeon Point and then I was in uncharted territory.

Only we didn't get to Pigeon Point and instead turned off into Butano State Park instead, and now there were real hills! And suddenly... the boys slowed down! The pack splintered and I found my way among the stronger guys gliding up and down the hills at a conversational pace. When we came back out onto Highway One, we were in a group of three guys on TT bikes who looked too good on their bikes to be randos, and a guy with funny teeth and a SF Randonneurs vest who kept falling off the pace and then shooting past us.

As soon as we crossed the town line into Moss Beach I heard a funny hiss. Noooo! I thought. Then I felt the telltale vibrations from the road that meant I had a flat. I could count on one hand the number of times I'd had a flat on the road, and three of those times had happened on Highway 1. The first was the aforementioned time when I was stranded all afternoon waiting for Lorraine. The second was a few months later in my first half ironman when I flatted 5 miles from the finish and my spare tube had a faulty valve.

I was so pissed. I would have been better off with my 2000-mile-old tires that had been falling apart at the seams. Sure, it wasn't really the bike shop's fault, but they were already on my shit list for adjusting the front derrailleur (which I hadn't said anything was wrong with) to now rub against my chain every time I was in the small ring, and not putting lube on my chain which I thought was standard practice every time a bike was in the stand. I sat down in the middle of the field to take off the tire. It was so stiff that it kept flinging my tire lever into the middle of the field. The third time this happened, I flung the wheel into the grass and screamed.

Finally I got the flat fixed, and I hit the road. I found the triathlon boys only about a mile up the street at the turnaround checkpoint. I asked them to wait just a second, ran in and got a receipt, and came back outside ready to hit the road again. But no sooner had we hit our stride again and I felt the road underneath me again. Nooooooooooo! Another flat. I had had to use a tire lever to get the tire back on, and it looked like I'd nicked the tube after all. I came to a halt and watched the boys disappear down the road.

Now I had no more tubes, no more cartridges, no patch kit, and I was all alone. I stood at the side of the road trying to decide what to do. My house was only 8 miles away to the north. My car was 55 miles away to the south. What could I do? Finally I trudged back to the checkpoint where now the crowd was all weirdo randos with holes in their shorts and suitcases on their bikes. "Does anyone have a spare tube and a pump?" I asked dejectedly.

I had tried to fix it myself, and so when a guy offered to show me some "secrets" to not using a tire lever, I just let him do it and pretended to care about his tips. Once the tire was on, he took off leaving me to pump it and put everything back together. It was fine, but now I was alone and without a cue sheet. I knew how to get back to Santa Cruz, but not what turns to make in Butano Park to get to the fourth checkpoint. I told myself that if I met up with someone before the turn-off then I would do the whole route, but if not then I would just continue straight along Highway 1 back to Santa Cruz. I'd only be cutting off about 4 miles anyway, and they were hilly miles.

I thought I'd be throwing a mental temper tantrum once I was by myself, but I didn't. I actually felt fresher going my own pace. This was me at my best: just me alone with my bike over long distances. The wind, which had been at our backs going north (which never happens) had turned some time while I was fixing my flats, and I had another tailwind coming home. As I approached the turn-off I saw another rider up ahead and found myself staring down at my top tube, hoping that I wouldn't see where he or she turned so I wouldn't have to do the extra riding. It was irrational because I was feeling great, but I wanted to be alone. There was no avoiding her, however, and I was relieved to see that she was a mountain biker; not part of our crew. I rolled into Santa Cruz around 2:00, 7 hours after starting, and realized that I had no idea where the finish was. At the boardwalk maybe? I thought. When I hit the car (before the boardwalk), I decided that since I was going to be a DNF anyway, I might as well pack up the car and look online to find out where the finish was. It was actually over 2 miles behind me.

So by my reckoning, I probably did at least 120 of the 125 miles, but since I hadn't been to the final checkpoint there was nothing that I could do. I drove to the brevet director's house, told him I was alive, and tore up my card while he wrote "DNF" next to my name. Then I went back out onto his street of million dollar homes and pulled off my shorts right there on the street to put on underpants and jeans. Hey, it's Santa Cruz after all; they have a 'clothing optional' ordinance. As I was cowering ass-out behind my passenger side door (I am a little bit modest) the rando guy with the funny teeth who had been riding with us at the turn-around rolled up to the house. So I hadn't even finished that badly, even though I didn't finish at all!

What annoyed me most of all was that I think I had ridden well in spite of everything, but I would never know how well I'd ridden. By my reckoning, I was off the bike for about 30-40 minutes (5 min at checkpoint 1, 10 min for flat 1, 3 min at checkpoint 2, 20 min for flat 2), giving me a finishing time of somewhere between 6:30 and 7 hours for 120-ish miles, 55+ of which I'd ridden by myself at no special pace. What the hell kind of shape was I in? Good or bad?!

Sunday: Bike 13.2 mi

While I was riding I had spent a lot of time thinking about how I needed to get my climbing together. I always get dropped on the climbs, and although I can usually claw my way back up to the pack, I'd tire out a lot less if I could just stay with the big boys on the climbs right from the beginning. I've never been a strong climber, but ever since I moved to San Francisco and haven't been able to ride outside much, what climbing gains I made with Eric last year seem to be eroding flat. I also thought that I should probably start scouting the climbs for the double centuries that I was targeting over the next few months.

The most famous climb in the three double centuries in this year's California Triple Crown was Mt. Tamalpias, or "Mt. Tam" which dominates the horizon when you look north from the City. I didn't need to be doing another long, tough ride, but I did want to do some reconnoitering for the next time that I had to put together a solo ride, so I drove over to Stinson Beach (a drive that proved more dizzying than the climb itself) to ride the most direct way from sea level to the 2500' peak 6.5 miles away.

In the first fraction of a mile I felt like I was going to die atop my bike, but as my legs warmed up the climb wasn't actually so bad. I only encountered 3 cyclists going my way, but I passed them all easily. One of them was a woman from the Dolce Vita team who had not invited me to join when I asked for a late entry. I make it a point to drop them like they're hot every time I pass them on the road. Bitches.


It was a cool, blustery day and cold raindrops started falling as I reached the summit. I was tired and dehydrated and my chain was making a terrible noise against my derailleur, and yet I couldn't shake the feeling that I was the luckiest person in the world. It hadn't always looked like I would land on my feet, but here I was doing what I love to do in the most beautiful places I'd ever seen. If you'd told me a year ago that Lindsey dumping me would be the best thing that ever happened to me, I probably would have drunk a liter of Drain-O at the suggestion that life would go on without her. But all I could think as I came around a corner and saw the Marin Headlands below me and then the sun breaking through the clouds over San Francisco, all I could think was that Lindsey dumping me was the greatest thing that has ever happened to me.

Typical Week

The most interesting part of this post is skinning my ass on a trail on Tuesday. Hopefully I'll have something more interesting to talk about next week.

Monday: Swim 2700 yd

Another Monday, another 13-hour workday. Now that Girls on the Run has started again, my Mondays have become somewhere between exhilarating and suicidal as I get no time off during that time (if you count the 1 hour that I may or may not get to work out and the 45 minutes that I get to do admin stuff between 7:15 and 8:30). I managed to piggy-back a 2700 yard swim onto my Spinning class, doing a lot of drill. I can't even remember this workout, so I won't bore you with it.

Tuesday: Run 3.25 mi

Tuesday the sun was back and I had some time to go running, so I hit the hills hoping to find some new trails. This time I drove to a trailhead half way up the mountain with the plan to just keep making lefts and see where it took me. What I think I found was downhill mountain bike trails. The hills were so steep that I kept taking these prissy little mincing steps because it was really too steep for any human to try actually running on something like this. To be honest, I don't think any wheeled vehicle should be riding down something like this either, but I guess that's what full-face masks and body armor are for.

At one point I found myself standing at the top of what must have exceeded a 50% grade. It was only a short drop of about 30-50 feet, but the ground seemed to stop, and then start again about 5 yards away and two stories below me. BOMBS AWAY!!!! I got to the bottom of it with only a bit of knee soreness and quite a bit of embarrassing arm flapping, but I found my way to the bottom upright. Then I continued down the half overgrown trail.

No more than a minute later, I hit another short dip -- the kind that makes your tummy drop out when you're skiing but that's over before you know it. I started down it hardly breaking stride, until my foot slipped. I tried to dig my heel into the dirt, but it all slid down the hill with me, just like in a cartoon. My ass hit the dirt, and then I just kept going I sledded down that hill on my ass, feeling my spanky shorts pull up the hip level. The loose dirt and gravel dug shallow stinging cuts up my right leg from my ankle to the fleshy center of my ass cheek.

I got up more angry than hurt and no more than a minute later the trail was swallowed by a clump of overgrown poison oak, or what I think is poison oak but could very well be dingleberry bushes for all I know. I picked my way through the plants very carefully in my short shorts and ankle biter socks, and thought I got to the other side safely, but there were two whip-like spots on my ankles that burned and I couldn't tell if it was from the sting of falling or from the poison oak. My good mood on this run was spoiled.

I was hoping that when I reached the bottom of the hill I would find another trailhead that would lead me back up to my car on the main trail, but instead I found myself in a church back yard. (Why is it that every property that borders the wild wilderness has abandoned Big Wheels rotting under the bushes at the edge of the property? Just an observation...). This meant that I was going to have to go back the way that I came, namely straight up.

I huffed up the hill mostly at a slow walk. At many points the hills were so steep that my GPS simply autopaused and wouldn't resume until I'd reached the top of the slope a few minutes later. If the ass rash and poison oak weren't enough to piss me off, the fact that I was walking something steep enough to make my hamstrings burn and my Achilles feel like they were going to burst and my effort wasn't even being recorded made me want to sit down in a poison oak patch and pout.

Nearly an hour after I'd started, I ran down the final slope to my car with only 3.25 mi on my watch. Had I had someone with me, then I would have laughed at my luck but being alone in a Claire's head can sometimes be a stormy place.

Wednesday Run 3.7 mi, Spinning

There was no time to swim before my Spin class on Wednesday, but at least I could run. So I suited up, put on my racing flats (which are my only road running shoes these days) and hit the treadmill. I had enough time to run for about 5 miles, so I started at a comfortably hard pace and kept speeding up until I was running 7:30 miles at 0.5% grade (which is supposed to simulate running outside, right?). My legs were a bit cranky and I was flinging sweat onto treadmills 2 machines away, but my lungs and heart felt good.

Then, all of a sudden, I felt an old "problem" that I hadn't felt in a long, long time. The phantom poo! I have gotten quite good at running for long distances on the verge of a poo emergency, so I made myself finish at least a 5K. Then I tried slowing down to a warm-up pace to see if the prairie dog would crawl back into his den, but after another few minutes it was clear that some further action was required.

Leaving my water and towel on the soaked treadmill, I made a run for it. I dashed down the aisle between the treadmills and the wall of ellipticals that was blocking my path to the potty. I rounded the end of the ellipticals and all I had to do was go down about 5 machines and hang a right, go through a door, take another right, and it was the first door on the left. Suddenly a grandma pushing a stroller popped up in front of me. What was a stroller doing on the exercise floor?! I cut left, and granny drifted left. I cut right, and granny drifted right. I tried to pass her to the outside on the turn, but the buggy made wide right turns. I tried to cut to the inside... Fucking Asian drivers! (I'm sorry, I hate racist statements like this, but every time I get stuck behind someone going 45 mph on the freeway, cut off by some dumbass, or someone almost hits me on my bike they're always either on their cell phone or Asian.) I had to get to the door before this stroller-pushing granny. Have you ever seen someone try to open a pull door with a stroller?! This could take hours! "Excuse me," I said, nearly elbowing her in the face as I passed. She smiled at me politely like I was just saying 'hello, how's your week going.' I sprinted through the door, holding it open just long enough for her to catch it with the front wheel of the stroller and finally made it to the bathroom. This poo was not a "phantom" poo at all, and I'd made it not a moment too soon.

Thursday: Swim 2700 yd, Spinning

Both this swim workout and the one earlier in the week involved some "fast" free. As someone who used to be able to swim a straight 2000 yards in 30 minutes (1:30 pace), I now struggle to hold 1:35's for straight 100's. It's sad and frustrating. And lonely.

Friday: Run 9 mi

After my kiester sledding incident on Tuesday, I wasn't too thrilled with the idea of exploring new trails and having to hike around through the poison oak, so I hit the one runable trail I know (actually not a trail at all, but the archaeological remains of the old Highway 1 when it went through the mountains rather than along the coast). This is a relatively mild climb, but it's relentless, sitting between about a 4 and 6% grade for two and a half miles. After about a mile of it the phantom poo problem was back, and I gave myself permission to walk for a few seconds every mile until I hit the top. At the top what I should have done was run downhill and let the sourness in my entrails sort itself out, but it was all too much. I reached the top and stood with hands on knees for a minute until the burning in my tummy subsided.

I've been running in one of the most beautiful places I've ever run, but these solo excursions were getting increasingly lonely. Over my shoulder I could see the carcass of a car far down the steep hillside left over from well before I was born. When I was in Phoenix, I'd told Flipper about these cars and he'd asked, "Why don't they pull them out with cranes?" Taking pictures with my phone to post them later on the internet was getting less and less satisfying. I really, really wanted someone to share this stuff with. I am always trying to get people to come out on a run with me: clients, other trainers, perfect strangers, I don't care. But no one will come with me. It's all very frustrating. Lonely, lonely, lonely Claire.

Saturday: Run 11.5 mi

Friday's run was so great that I decided to repeat it on Saturday. I knew this trail went all the way over the hill back to (the new) Highway 1 on the other side of the mountain, but I had always had to stop short and turn around before the end of the trail. I took my usual walking breaks on the way up, about one for every mile, and then I started down the other side. I passed all the usual landmarks where I'd had to turn around before: the 5-mile summit, the 6-mile sinkhole, the 9 mile glade of trees, and I just kept running. I could feel the air getting warmer, thicker, and more humid. Finally I passed the switchback that marked my turn-around for the 10-mile route and kept going. Only another half mile down the trail I found another house with another rotting hotwheels marking a fork in the trail, and a quarter mile later I hit Highway 1 and the ocean on the other side. I surprised myself by running the whole way back, despite the fact that I was woozy and starving after only drinking 8 oz of water for a 2 hour run.

Sunday: Trainer 2:20

Sunday the torrential mist that characterizes mother nature's bad moods in these here parts was slumping down, so I set up the trainer in the garage. My motivation was somewhere between zero and negative two, and I was out of good watching on Hulu, so I grabbed a book. I should have ridden for 3 hours (at least) but I didn't. Sue me.

While I'm here, I'm going to give a plug to Matt Fitzgerald's Racing Weight. I love how Fitzgerald's brain works, and this book is what I haven't known I was looking for for years. Not only does he answer a question that we all struggle with --how do you safely lose weight to optimize your power-to-weight ratio without compromising your training and performance?-- but he cites really interesting studies that I hadn't heard about in other books. I credit the final 2:19 minutes I spent on that bike to picking up Racing Weight rather than trying to finish Fit Soul, Fit Body.

Another break-up, another 50K

I apologize for my last post being boring. My housemate has this annoying habit of talking to me constantly whenever I'm awake, whether I'm clearly trying to concentrate on something or not, weather I'm a grumbling bear first thing in the morning or not... I get easily distracted. The result is crappy writing like my last post. Oh well.

This week was a rest week, and while in some ways I'd planned it perfectly (it was rainy and shitty all week and I was on the rag), it also would have been a great week for a crash week. The reason will be clear in a second... If you read only parts of this week, read Monday and Sunday.

Monday: Nothing

Valentines Day. Fuck Valentines Day. Last year Lindsey and I had joked that we were going to break up on Valentines Day. We didn't but she didn't even buy me a card, and broke up with me 2 weeks later. This year, I really did break up on Valentines Day.

Scout had been out of town for almost 2 weeks on a trip to Belize with her brother and his family (they pay for her trip so that she can watch the kids). Since she couldn't be reached by phone, e-mail, or any other means for 10 days, I had all my free time to myself. No having to pack 6 changes of clothes (2 days' worth of working and work-out clothes) and drive around her neighborhood for half an hour looking for parking so that I could stay over her house for the night, going to bed at midnight and waking up at 5 to get to work. No more having to go out to eat when I couldn't even afford gas because she keeps no food in the house. Having my whole weekend free and not having to give up my one precious morning off. No missing an opportunity to race because we never had time together. I realized that I really, desperately didn't want to answer to anyone but myself when it came to my free time.

I had been breaking up with her in my head for a week before she finally came home on Sunday afternoon. When she called, I didn't pick up because I knew that my voice would betray that something was up. When I listened to the message, it was filled with "I've missed you"s and "I can't wait to..."s. I felt so rotten I wanted to disappear. I got in the car and sent her a text to say I was headed into the city and did she have a minute. She didn't respond. I got to her neighborhood, parked and called her. No answer. She's got this annoying habit of turning off her phone when she's not using it that always makes me want to scream at her. It's the only thing that really annoys me about her. I sat around waiting for about 15 minutes, and when she didn't call back I turned my phone to airplane mode so it wouldn't even ring for the rest of the night and drove home. I was so frustrated that I was thinking about doing it in a letter or over text message. In reality, I was just scared and wanted to do it in the most yellow-bellied way I could think of so that I wouldn't have to deal with her pain.

I had some morning appointments, and then a Spin class, and then I was going to have to dump her. It was rainy and ugly out, which put me in an even worse mood. I didn't know how I was going to get all cheery for a Spin class in this state of mind. Then a Valentines Day miracle happened: no one showed up to my Spin class. I packed up, got in the car, and drove to her neighborhood.

I had her meet me in the Starbucks. She came in and smiled when she saw me, giving me a kiss. I immediately dropped my head into my hands and couldn't speak or even look at her. After several minutes she asked, "What is it?" I couldn't get the words out. I shook my head and was silent for several more minutes, at a loss. "Is it cancer?" she asked. Whaaaat? The first thing you come up with is cancer? What the hell is wrong with you? I thought. It was so far off her radar that even cancer seemed more likely. I shook my head. "Are you leaving me?" she asked slowly. I nodded and burst out crying.

There were several uncomfortable parallels between what was happening right now and what happened with Lindsey, so I wasn't taking any of this lightly. I felt terrible for blindsiding her, and it broke my heart to see the waves of realization crashing over her over the next hour or so. One minute she'd be fine and try to change the subject, then she would realize something else and start crying or say something desperate or walk away with her hands in her hair. I wanted to hug her and protect her from anyone ever hurting her again, but I couldn't. "It has nothing to do with you," I promised her, but that means nothing when someone's breaking your heart, I guess.

We walked around for about an hour in the rain talking and not talking. Right before I got in my car to leave she told me, "While I was gone I had a dream that I was trying and trying to call you and I couldn't reach you. I was searching for you frantically in my dream because I thought I'd lost you..." The desperation in the dream and the defeat in her voice broke my heart all over again. I kissed her, told her I loved her (something I'd never told her before, but it was true... but not like that. Whoever coined, "I love you but I'm not in love with you" should be shot) and got in the car. Ever since I've wanted to go back over there and take it all back, but I can't.

Tuesday: Nothing

Every moment that I wasn't working, I was in bed. I'm a rotten piece of shit. I didn't want to work out, I didn't want to work, I just wanted to curl up in bed and be comatose.

Wednesday: Swim 2100 yd and Spin class

I can't avoid workouts when I'm being paid to be there. After teaching my corporate bootcamp class outside the city, I could have gone home and taken another nap, but that's what I'd done all morning. I could have done some work, but making my head work seemed even more painful than making my body work, so I went to the pool before my spin class.

To be honest, I wasn't all that depressed over the break-up. I was mostly depressed because the sun was gone and because no matter what happens, money doesn't grow on trees and everything always feels like a fight. Suddenly I wanted to curl up with anyone and everyone just so that someone would give me some attention. I swam lots and lots of drill, and for the first time since I started swimming again in December I felt like I was "swimming on my side" again. Maybe, just maybe I'd be able to swim again someday.

The Spin class had grown even more than last week, and I had designed a workout to explode everyone's hearts in the room. When I want to do that, I alternate between accelerations and higher-resistance high cadence sets that somewhat approximate outdoor climbing. It turns everyone's ears off and means I don't have to talk much during the class. So that's what we did.

Whenever I do really high-cadence pedaling in my classes (at a cadence fast enough that the "official" Spinning literature tells you not to use because someone might get hurt), I always take a minute to explain safety. "If you're a beginner, go as fast as you can without your butt bouncing and keep your pedals in control. Intermediate, try to hit 120 rpm..." (we've got electronic consoles on our bikes). "If you've been riding for at least six months, try to make that top number on your console disappear..." (which happens at 140). "If your feet come off the pedals, hold your legs out to the side and use your resistance knob as a brake like this."

I had given that talk, but that was before 3 teenagers came into the class 12 minutes late and sat in the opposite corner of the class from everyone else. I usually scan back and forth, but I guess I hadn't looked at them in awhile, until I saw that the girl was off her bike and limping around. Aw fuck. I went over and made sure that she was okay, helped her stretch out the charlie horse, and told her to take it easy. Then I gave the safety speech again. Next acceleration set you know what happened? Another one of them bashed himself in the leg. His damned basketball shoes were too big to fit into the toe clips and he'd ramped his pedals up to about 150 rpm. Idiot. I hate teenagers.

Thursday: Spin

This time there were no accelerations and everyone survived.

Friday: Swim 1900 yd

With the weather alternating between hail, cats, dogs, and cold winds, I wasn't in much of a mood to do anything outdoors with my 8-hour break between clients. I still had some 1900 yards to swim to meet my quota for the week, so I went to the high school pool in Pacifica. This is a real 50x25 yd pool with at least a dozen lanes, diving boards, and blocks. It's also not a salt water pool like the one I swim in at the Y, so it feels like I'm swimming through corn syrup. I wasn't really in the mood to have to fight through another workout where everything feels harder than it should be. I know that the best way to get back to where I have been is just to be patient with my body and not compare myself to where I have been in the past. But there are days when you don't want the adjectives "patient" or "forgiving" describing your workout. I wanted something "punishing" that would squeeze out anything yucky still buzzing around inside my head. If I tried to swim some fast hard freestyle sets I knew I'd just be more frustrated with myself than ever before.

So what to do? These lanes are nice and wide, and I felt like doing something that involved a lot of thrashing and kicking: butterfly!

This is what I used to think about butterfly: there is absolutely no rational reason to do butterfly. It's the most inefficient stroke, taking massive amounts of energy to cover a distance that you could cover much easier with any other stroke. It's not the fastest stroke either. It's a short axis stroke, deriving its power from bending rather than twisting in the water, giving it almost no carryover to freestyle. Unless you are a specialist or an IM swimmer, there is no reason to swim butterfly. This is why I swim butterfly: because it creates a lot of waves and you are likely to get smacked if you try to share a lane with someone doing a fly workout. I felt like smacking someone today. And it makes me look cool.

After a couple of 50's, I had the lane to myself. I bobbed at the end of the pool until some old lady thought that she might want to share the lane with me, and then I would do another 50 and by the time I got back to the wall, she'd be gone. I did a total of 625 yards of twitchy, sloppy, gasping, thrashing butterfly before I'd hit the number of yards I wanted to swim that day (1900). Then I went into the locker room and I looked into the eyes of each one of those water aerobics ladies thinking, You wanna fuck with me? I'll fucking eat you. You better tell your friends that any lane that I'm in from now on is off limits! Then I went home and shirked more busy work to climb into bed and make the world go away for a few more hours before I had to return to work.

Saturday: Trainer 1.5h

It was pouring with rain, but I had about 20-25 miles to make up. I was feeling droopy on the inside from all the rain, and for once I didn't want to watch crappy reruns on hulu, so I did something that I judge other people for doing at the gym. I brought a book.

I set up Mark Allen's Fit Soul, Fit Body on the handlebars and I read that book for the next 90 minutes. The book isn't wonderfully written, and having a rather low opinion of both of the writers' personalities, I wanted to think that I was better than them. But my head's been my biggest rival lately, and my newest project is to end the constant state of crisis in my life, so I read. What I read about will become relevant in the race report to follow.

Sunday: Run 29.25 miles

I had a problem. I had a big black hole in my thoughts and I had a marathon of running to make up this week-- a rest week. Swimming isn't tiring enough to have an effect on a rest week, I was already ahead on my cycling and the Spin classes would take care of the rest, but what about the running? The Claire answer: a 50K.

We will go through the first part of this race report with a focus on clothes:

It was cold as I drove out to the East Bay for my race. It being February, I suppose that I should admit that "cold" is a relative term. It wasn't mid-winter Boston prep series cold where your snot freezes to your face at 19 degrees, it was a California 'should I or should I not have worn shorts' 36 degrees. I'd gone for the shorts and a tank top, with a light jacket to go over it. As we started running, the jacket got warm, and when the sleeves started sticking to my arms like shrink wrap, I peeled it off. Then the shade came back and my nipples and goose bumps were hard enough to poke your eye out. It would be like this for the rest of the day, too warm for a jacket but too cold for a tank top. There are worse things in life than being moderately too hot or too cold, but this was a long day to be uncomfortable for any reason other than running.

I tried to get this pic without anyone in the frame, but it looks like I just caught this guy red-handed coming out of the wrong bathroom or something.

It had rained all week, turning the trails into slippery sludge. It wasn't as muddy as the last time I'd tried to moon walk up these hills, but the back portion of the first loop brought us through some fields. We kept having to open and close these heavy gates where the springs on the latches were all rusty and I had trouble opening them. On about the third gate I noticed the sign; something about cows. Then I realized what I'd been seeing. In the past half mile I'd seen as much volume of shit as three entire horses. And not that straw-y dry horse shit that I was used to seeing, it was this wet, black shit that looked like horse diarrhea and the horse had been eating Odwalla Superfood bars. And it was everywhere. I wondered what they were feeding their horses out here, and now I realized that this was cow shit, over the trail so much that you almost couldn't avoid stepping in it between the puddles.

The fields were sopping wet, and right before the nine mile mark I lost it. SQUELCH! Suddenly I was ankle deep in mud. No fighting it now. Squelch, slurp, squelch, slurp, squelch, I got to the other end of the puddle and felt the water sloshing around inside my shoes. Fuck! Only 9 miles in and my dry socks were a thing of the past. Twenty-two miles is a long way to go in wet socks. I hadn't been so covered in cow shit since my parents took me to a dairy farm when I was 5 and a cow lifted up its tail and projectile shit on me from head to toe (I didn't even get to eat an ice cream cone that day because my parents thought my hands were dirty). I got to the next gate and there was a giant mud puddle several inches deep right in front of the gate. I stood in the solid-ish mud at the hinge end of the gate and tried to pull on the latch. I couldn't get the leverage on it to move it, because every time I leaned my weight against it my feet would slip in the mud. I sighed. Splash!

Finally I managed to pull the gate open and started climbing the small hill on the other side. I was walking the hill, staring at the ground like you do when you're feeling sorry for yourself when I noticed my shoe. As I came up over the ridge there were three cheerleaders yelling and ringing cowbells. "WOOOOOOOOO! You can do it!" they yelled.

"Fuck that, I'm just wondering what the hell is on my shoe?" I said, pulling out my phone to take a picture. A minute later I got to the aid station, "I mean, what the hell is that?!"

"I've seen mud before, but I've never seen it foaming," the aid station guy said. It looked like sea foam was on my shoe, only it was cow shit foam and it took the next five miles to finally melt away into my socks.

Right around the time I covered myself in cow shit, I was starting to feel a pre-bonk wooziness. I had felt kind of hungry at the start, but had chalked it up to the caffeine. I was only drinking water, and when I ran out, all they had was more water. At the first aid station I'd been trying to keep up with a New Friend, so I'd just grabbed 3 Shot Blocks and 1/3 of a Payday bar and tried to shove them in my face as I trailed my New Friend up a hill. And I still couldn't keep up with my New Friend and wound up alone. At the cow shit foam aid station I could see nothing that I really wanted to eat: no cookies, no potatoes, no peanut butter sandwiches, so I just grabbed 3 more shot blocks and kept going. About half a mile later I figured out that I might be in a bit of trouble and thought about turning around, but I really didn't want to tack on an extra mile to what would already be a really long day.


I was all by myself now, not a soul in sight and I was starting to get the headache, irritability, and wooziness of a low-grade bonk. This was no good at all, I was only about 10 miles in, and there wouldn't be another aid station for miles. I tried to draw on the lessons that Mark Allen and The Voice had taught me in the book yesterday. I tried to concentrate on the sunlight and the nature around me, but all I could think concentrate on was how I wasn't quite warm and wasn't quite cold and how I wished they wouldn't put shooting ranges right out in the middle of my nature like this. I tried to concentrate on the bubble of my life force out in front of me, extending out from my heart. It drew me forward for a minute, but then it popped. I tried to feel lucky for being able to do what I was doing today, and give thanks to the Universe, God, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster for my body and my life, but the "Poor Me" was just too loud. I concentrated on how I would yell at the volunteers at the next aid station for not having enough food or any sports drink.


Fifteen miles in and I did lay into the aid station volunteers, but with a smile on my face and in that 'shucks this is hard, why in tar-nation did I sign up for this' way that aid station volunteers love. "Only 4.2 miles to go!" a volunteer told a guy that came up behind me while I was drinking Coke and eating as many cookies as I could shove into my face. He was doing the 30K.

"It's the .2 that'll kill you," said the other volunteer.

"So get the .2 out of the way first," I said around a mouthful of peanut butter and jelly, like it was the most normal suggestion in the world. The 30K SMOF (straight man over 40) and I set off together, and I even managed to hold it together for the next .2 miles or so, but when he began running up a short, steep hill I had to walk and I was alone again. I would be alone until mile 28.5.

I finished the 30K loop and at the finish line aid station I stopped again to get as much food into my face as I could. "It's just 10 miles to the finish, a short 20K." I must have been hearing things. I looked at him, confused. This was too good to be true, surely I was doing the math wrong. "The course is a couple miles shorter than we thought," he explained. I tried to do the math in my head, but all the numbers had already fallen out of my brain.

I felt so low, so tired. Ten miles was so far to go. I'm such a weak, pathetic loser. What the hell is wrong with me? My knees hurt so much, my legs were aching, my ankles hurt, I couldn't take another step. I felt like those terrible last 10K of a marathon when someone puts industrial strength magnets in your shoes and turns up the electromagnet in the ground. You're so weak! You're fucked! I told myself. What the hell were you doing signing up for this thing? Don't you realize that you're not in the same shape you used to be in? If you feel this way after... I looked at my watch. ...after 20 miles...

Twenty miles. It sunk in. I'd been so absorbed in the next 11 miles that I'd completely forgotten about the 20 behind me. Hang on a sec, this is how you're supposed to feel after 20 miles. This is how you've always felt after 20 miles. Do you realize that you just did it again, you rocked up on no training to speak of and you peelled another one of these things out of your ass? It set me to thinking, and I definitely had time to think. I started thinking about how everyone gets all worried about overtraining, but what is overtraining anyway? I mean, in some corners of the sport the only competition lies in getting to that uncomfortable state and being able to stay there. This was not a new thought to me, but one I hadn't thought in awhile. Fuck everyone who called this overtraining. I can be uncomfortable. I don't want to do these attrition races forever, but dammit, I was darned good at being uncomfortable and no one could stop me.

The last 10 miles were brutal. It was a slow death plod with feet barely clearing the ground, but slowly, glacially the miles started to spread out behind me. I thought I would never hit the "4.2 miles to go" aid station. When I finally did I asked, "Am I the last one? I haven't seen another soul for hours." It was okay for me to be last, but I at least wanted to be prepared for it. If you're going to be DFL, then you have to start preparing yourself for a different kind of victory when you're still out on the course. DFL is a very different thing when you don't find out until after you've finished.

"No, there are still people behind you," she told me.

Every time I started walking up a hill, my hips would seize up. Every time I ran downhill my knees and ankles would feel like they were being beat to dust. When I hit the last 1.75 miles paved road, I descended to another ring of hell. I started to trudge at a slow walk up another short roller when two older women came around me. I rallied and caught up with them. "How are you guys doing? How's your race going?" I asked.

"Great, really great. We aren't as trained as we like to be, but we got lots of leg up time yesterday, so things couldn't be better. How are you?"

"Having a tough day, to be honest. It hasn't gone as well today as I hoped and I'm hurting pretty bad," I admitted. I could draw myself out of my pity party, but only if someone was there to tell me that they were hurting too.

"Well you're almost done," she said. "Look, only .75 miles to go!" She pulled the pace up to 8:30 min/miles. Really? I thought. But if I wanted the company I was going to have to keep up and I was going to have to think of positive things to talk about.

"My depth perception is all off," I said as we came up on yet another family taking up the whole road and I had to figure out a way to get around them (very difficult). "I've been convinced that every cyclist on this road has been aiming right at me. Does that ever happen to you?"

"No, can't say that it has," The Cheery One said.

"Maybe it's just that I know that my reaction time is slowed..." I said. "If you hit a grown-up you're alright because you just bounce right off. You've gotta watch out for the kids, because if you trip over them they'll send you ass over teakettle." She pulled away from me after that, and then so did her friend. And I was alone again.

I crossed the finish line about 50 yards behind the Silent Cheery One in about 5:47. Wait a sec! 5:47?! My best 50K time on a flat course was 6:01:03. I probably couldn't have run the 1.75 miles to a full 50K in under 14 minutes, but with all the hills and stopping that I'd done, this was probably the strongest 50K I'd ever done! Sure, I'd finished 31st out of 40 overall and 11th out of 14 women, but hey I was there at the end and I'd done better than your average Claire.

Coming Back

This week was the first week that I committed to doing at least an Ironman a week to raise money for the SF AIDS Foundation (Click here to donate). Just 4000 yards swimming, 112 mi biking, and 26.2 mi running? This should be a cinch, right? Ideally, I'd like to overshoot it and swim some 50 miles, bike 2500, and run 500 before the AIDS LifeCycle in June, but it turns out that an Ironman is still a really long way to go when you try to spread it out in a busy work week.

Monday: Run 5 miles

I decided that a Spin class counted as 20 miles, since I also had to ride to and from the gym (about 4 mi round trip) and indoor rides have no coasting. But the Y was closed on Monday, meaning that I would be short both a swim and a bike for the week. Instead, I ran 5 miles barefoot on the beach. My plan was to run for an hour, but 50 minutes in my big toes were so sore that I was afraid that I had open sores on them and was rubbing sand into my wounds. Can sand get picked up in your bloodstream and kill you? It probably can. When I got home, I saw why: Giant, twin dime-sized blood blisters on each of my big toes. I was hobbling for days.

Tuesday: Run 10 miles

The next day was a running day as well, and I hit the ancient "paved" road through the trails. This used to be the old Highway One before they carved the new one into the sides of the cliff. The road is so narrow and windy, that it's no wonder that there are pre-war car carcasses rusting out all over the hillside. The trail leaves from near my house, climbs over a mountain, and drops you a few miles down the coastline. I had wanted to run all the way down to the ocean, but ran out of time only a mile or so from the end and had to turn around. Every time I run these trails, I'm blown away by them. I spend half the time with my head up looking over to the next hill and wondering how to get to the trails I can see going up the side, or wondering how long the little trail tributaries go and what's on them. I ran 10 miles that day, but I wanted to keep going and going forever. I hadn't even wanted to go on this run when I left the house.

Wednesday: Swim 3000yd, Bike 20 mi

The next day I did a boot camp-style class with my new corporate client. The class went really well, but I'm embarrassed to say that I managed to make myself sore with the jump squats, lunges, Spiderman push-ups, and abs circuit. (Really?! An abs circuit made me sore?!) Then again, what really fucked me up was the Spinning class that night where I almost made myself throw up. I realized half way through that five and a half minutes of "Don't touch that dial, we're building leg muscles here!!!" was a bit intense, but if I touched my own resistance knob, the class would know. The next morning I couldn't walk down stairs.

Oh yeah, and I swam that day.

Friday: Swim 2000 yd

Friday I still had 1000 yd I had to make up on the swim, so I joined the old ladies during lap swim at the local high school pool. It was a fantastic pool, but I hadn't realized how easy the salt water pool at the Y had made swimming. Now that I was in a regular old chlorinated pool (and a deep one, no less), I felt like I was swimming in baggy clothes. Originally I tried to tell myself that it was a 25m pool, not yards, and that's why my times were so slow. But no... I just sucked. After a warm-up I swam 10x100 IM. I love IM because I love swimming butterfly, but can't do it for more than 50 yards on the best day. IM lets me swim lots of butterfly without having to look like a fool hanging onto the deck and gasping. I don't know when I started loving butterfly so much. I used to hate it. But then I just woke up one day and I could swim 25 yd no sweat, and now I do it every chance I get. I think it makes me look cool. (It's probably better that I never see myself swim fly and preserve my self-delusion on this point.)

Saturday: Bike 75 mi

Which brings us to the weekend. It was going to be in the 70's all over central California, and with no clients or races for the weekend, I decided to go down to Santa Cruz to ride through the mountains. You can't look in any direction in Santa Cruz county without seeing some sort of park or nature preserve, so it was no problem planning a route that took me through Henry Cowell Redwoods state park, Big Basin state park, Castle Rock state park... I knew it was going to be hilly. What I didn't expect was a 40-mile climb. Right: The new white bike. As my friend Tommie said, "Only virgins get to ride white bikes." Well, after what happened to my last bike, I don't think I can be called a bike virgin anymore.



I started near sea level a few blocks from the base of campus at my alma mater. In 2005 when I first started riding, I had ridden up Empire Grade (the road that climbs the mountain behind the university) twice: Once I took my ancient Pugeot that was 2 sizes too big for me, whose brakes didn't work, and whose friction gears kept ghost shifting so often that I carried a screw driver with me at all times to tighten the shifter bolt. I had gotten part way up the mountain, given up in despair in someone's driveway, and then ridden down the hill trying to make myself as big a sail as possible because my brakes didn't work and I still hadn't mastered descending. I thought I was going to die that day. The second time, Lorraine led me up there on the carbon fiber bike I would later borrow for my first half ironman (and then carelessly ditch at the side of the road with a spectator when I blew my spare tube). I had gotten off the bike in that same driveway and refused to go on until I caught my breath. Then she had flown away down the other side while I gripped the brakes so hard that I thought my arms would fall off.

This time when I passed the driveway, I was surprised at how high up it was; about 10 miles into the climb (how the hell did I get up this high on that 54cm steel Pugeot?!), and how I was still riding as hard as I could to get up the grade. Either I was stronger back then than I give myself credit for, or I'm weaker now than I thought. After 17 miles of climbing, I turned toward Big Basin and again rode down the steep, winding hill full of blind turns with my hands gripping so hard on the brakes that I was sure that they would fall off. At one point I tried to come to a stop to give my forearms a rest, and was unable to stop at all.

For another 20 or so miles I rode through the redwoods, climbing slow, grinding, relentless hills with reprieves that always came too late and were too short. I was running out of Chewy bars, and pretty soon I would be out of water. I hadn't passed a single store or gas station on the entire ride, and wouldn't find one until mile 60. Luckily, though, I finally reached the top of the ridge at mile 40, and hardly had to climb another foot for the rest of the ride.

Life was perfect out here. All I could think about was how lucky I was to have this weather, this bike, this body, and the time to be doing this. I hardly got any sun on my bare arms and legs because I was under the canopy of redwoods almost the whole time, but every once in awhile there would be a break in the trees and I could see the entire Santa Cruz Mountain range spreading out around me (given, I was afraid I would have to climb another mountain and wondered which one of those humps would be next every time I looked over the views). I kept thinking about how far I had come since I lived in Santa Cruz and started riding and running for the first time. I kept thinking about how this was exactly what I'd been trying to get back to for so many years, and how lucky I was that I was finally here, despite the misfortune that it took to get me here. I wished Lindsey could see me now and eat her heart out. I couldn't believe how good life was.

When I got back to town, I met up with an old friend and Shane's ex girlfriend, Kat. We had both worked at the same gym in 2004-5 when I first got my personal training certification. I had done nothing with my credential back then and eventually let it expire, while she had been working in gyms ever since. Now we had both found our way back to personal training, her as a powerlifter turned martial artist and me as... Claire. She suggested we go to a tea room with a jacuzzi and catch up.

Slowly the conversation turned to training, and eventually body fat measurements. "I was below 15% before I moved out here, but now I've gotten so fat.." I told her. She looked at me in the borrowed bikini. "Yeah, there's no way you're 15% now," she told me matter-of-factly. It was a wake-up call. I was smarting from it for the rest of the night, until things went even worse and I had other things to feel bad about.

We went to dinner and to a small show with a bunch of bands whose songs all sounded the same and pretty much sucked. Suddenly I had a feeling, There's something wrong with my car! Kat had told me to leave the car in a shopping center where she promised that they never ticketed. I thought it was stupid to leave my car sitting there with the brand new bike in the back seat, right near where the junkies were known to hang out, even though downtown Santa Cruz looked like a church picnic compared to the San Francisco Civic Center area. When we got back to the parking lot, though, my car was gone altogether.

"Kat, where's my car?" I asked.

"What are you talking about? It's right there," she said.

"My car's not blue." Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit! I had been working so, so, so hard to put together a savings account, to start to pay off my debt, to park carefully in San Francisco so that I wouldn't get towed or booted because I couldn't afford another setback like this. As with any misfortune, I wanted to blame someone else. I wanted to blame Kat for making me park there. I wanted to blame the towing company for being a bunch of fucking assholes who just steal people's money. I wanted to blame everyone I'd ever met in my life who I had willingly or unwillingly gone out to food, coffee, or drinks with. What I needed was to be alone and punch things, but instead I was in Kat's car having a panic attack about where I would get the $380 it would take me to get my car back.

Well-meaning, she tried to talk me down. "How can you be working so much and not have any money?" she asked. Because my life is out of control. I have so many business expenses that my real income is half of what it appears, and because I keep having to absorb financial setbacks. Because I constantly eat out because I have no time to cook. Because no one around me cooks either, so every time I want to hang out with someone, we have to spend money at a restaurant. Because I spend $50/week on gas. Because $380 isn't chump change! Then she started trying to solve my problems, which only made me feel more helpless. I can't cook! I don't have the time or energy or organizational skills or resources to be cooking for my schedule. Yes, I'm sure there is a way, but I sure as hell don't have the energy or the appetite for it. Because I have been emotional eating to get through my day and please, oh please, oh please don't make me face that demon too... I'm so exhausted from all of the things I've had to face over the past year. I just want things to be easy! Why oh why am I such a fuck-up. I recognized what she was trying to do; that I was stuck in my thinking and things are always better than you think, but I was just digging myself into a hole of frustration and self-loathing. I couldn't snap myself out of it.

I got my car back, and as I drove back to her house I figured out my real expenses in my head. I couldn't believe how much less money I really had than I thought. No wonder I still felt short so often! Why do you fail so badly at being a grown-up, Claire? Why can't you figure out this simple subtraction and addition? Kat continued to try to solve my mental block, but eventually she had to admit that I just needed to sleep it off. I didn't sleep it off, and was in a rotten mood all the next day (and deep into this week).

Sunday: Run 12.5 mi

The next morning I met up with Lorraine for the first time since the AIDS LifeCycle in 2008. We had a lot of catching up to do over our 12.5 mile trail run. "This has been my year of surgeries," she had told me over the phone. When I saw her in shorts and a tank top, I scanned her body for scars. I thought for sure that after all these years of ultrarunning, that her knees had finally given out, but her knees were unblemished. Her old shoulder issues maybe? But nope, those were good too.

"So what did you have operated on?!" I asked.

"My brain."

"WHAT?!" She had had a noncancerous tumor pressing on her facial and auditory nerve. They had had to sever the auditory nerve, which affected her balance making her run "like an old lady," as she put it. Well this 60-year-old woman who was running "like an old lady" after brain surgery still schooled me on the trails, but at least I was stronger than her dog, who was also getting old.

It was good to talk to Lorraine. My life would be very, very different if I'd never met her. I don't know if I ever would have gotten into trail running or even ultradistance stuff... or even cycling if it weren't for her. She taught me to change my first flat. She made fun of me for not having the right bike etiquette. Today I was telling her about my cracked frame and all the memories I had on it. Lorraine, who is not a very reflective person said, "You know, it's important to take a second to look back at how far you've come. When I met you, you were still riding that bike with a kickstand," (the Pugeot).

She was right, of course. "Lorraine, you've finished every 100 miler you've ever done and won your age group at Western States. You've gotta be so proud of what you've done, but no one can even conceive of what an achievement that is. How do you handle the problem of when people don't even know how to measure your successes. I mean, you've got to have bad 50 milers, right? For you, 50 miles doesn't even register as an accomplishment to finish. So how do you deal with the people who can only think to say, 'but that's amazing that you even finished at all! I couldn't even drive 50 miles! (harharhar)'"

"I had that conversation with my doctor just a few weeks ago," she told me. "I was telling him that I felt like I still didn't have my energy back" (the surgery was almost a year ago). "He asked me what I was doing and I told him trail running, road biking, lifting weights, but I still wasn't mountain biking. He said, 'I have trouble feeling sorry for you because you're doing so much better than 99% of the other patients that I see."

"But he doesn't get that your life was bigger than 99.99% of the people that he sees," I pointed out. "You had so much more to lose! This is your life." It was impossible to stay angry around Lorraine, although I was still a bit sullen about my predicament. It really would have been the perfect weekend...