... And I'm faster than YOU, and YOU, and YOU... (Chapter 3)

Related posts:
Dykes and Bikes
A ride down Memory Lane
Alisa: "Do you know him?" Me: "No, I just liked his jersey."

"Claire! Your alarm didn't go off!" It wasn't quite light yet, but there was enough light to see that Shane was alarmed. We'd arranged to meet up with Kat for coffee at 5:30. Shane and Kat broke up 2 years ago, but that doesn't mean there's been any less drama between then and now. They hadn't hung out in months and he didn't want to miss the excuse to see her without having to break down and call her himself.

"FUCK!" I said, looking at my alarm. It was 5:15 and supposedly Kat would be here waiting for us in 15 minutes. That is, assuming Kat was up. Luckily she was up but still at home, which gave us a little while to pack our shit up and take the tent down. I don't usually drink coffee except for before races, but I figured that since I was on vacation, and technically this thing was like a giant race, I could have all the coffee I wanted. I didn't want to miss a chance for some real, good coffee.

When we got back we met up with Lorraine for breakfast, and when people saw our Pete's Coffee cups everyone wanted to be our friend and find out where a decent coffee place was. On the ride they were serving Maxwell House instant coffee. It might as well have been water. Food was prepared in a kitchen truck and served every morning and night out of giant aluminum pans under a canopy. At night the vegetarians had a separate line, but in the morning I had to get in line with everyone else and just say no to sausage and bacon. The plan was to ride with Lorraine and her crew, but somehow we got separated from them again. With 2,500 cyclists, that happens.

We pulled out onto the street and couldn't even clip in for a few blocks. Slowing. Stopping. Slowing. Stopping. Rolling. Stopping. There are 3 highways that lead out of Santa Cruz, and they all meet in one intersection. Our camp ground was only about 3 blocks from that intersection, and getting 2,500 cyclists through it at rush hour is something that someone should have thought of before now. Way back in the crowd we could see the light changing and changing, but no one was moving. People were getting impatient. As we got closer, someone saw that there was a roadie up there directing traffic and the word filtered back and we stopped grumbling. Well, everyone stopped complaining except for to one ass hole. "AW COME ON! MOVE PEOPLE! IT'S FRIGGIN' GREEN FOR CRISSAKES!"
"There's someone directing traffic," Shane said. The guy didn't hear him, and went on complaining. "There. Is. Someone. Directing. Traffic." Shane repeated. The guy made a few more snide comments, but eventually the guy next to him said, "No, dude, really, there's someone up there directing traffic," and he shut up.

I wish we'd taken a look at the rout before we left in the morning so that we could cut out most of the Slowing. Stopping. Rolling. Stopping. It took us even longer to get out of Santa Cruz than it took us to get out of San Francisco, and they chose some of the most trafficked, worst paved roads in Santa Cruz with some of the narrowest lanes to do it. The asshole was still behind us, and when someone rode by way out on the left he yelled, "I wonder if that yahoo knows that we've ALL thought of doing that!" Like that guy was getting away with something? Like Mr. Personality was supposed to get an award for outstanding behavior for waiting around with everyone else? In the safety video the Kindergarten Teacher had explained to us, "Remember, 1-1-1." (she shows her index finger 3 times for effect). " It only takes one rider, in one town, having a problem with one local, and it could be the end of the ride. So please, if you see someone who is not riding courteously or safely, please remind them: 1-1-1." We continued along at a snail's pace, and eventually the asshole DID try to break away, only to scare the shit out of someone in a pickup truck who flipped him off at the next light. The asshole flipped him off back.
"Hey man, you really shouldn't do that!" someone said.
"It's just reflex," the guy scoffed.
"Dude, I was about to 1-1-1 his ass!" Shane said later.

Now in our third town of Slowing. Stopping. Rolling. Stopping! we got to the Ugly Mug, a coffee shop that had sponsored an ALC team, including our friend Meg (who you will meet later). The Mug was offering free drinks to cyclists, and while most people stopped for a free drink, Shane and I pushed on ahead to get out of the madness and away from 1-1-1 guy.

Giant cut-outs of people somewhere near Salinas. These "people" must have been 20 feet high. I have no idea what they were there for.

Soon we were back on Highway 1, which goes clear around the Monterey Bay in a section called The Safety Corridor. They call it the Safety Corridor because it's not very safe. There's only about 1 lane of traffic going in each direction, and it's pretty much the only way to get from one place to another in those parts. The shoulder is narrow and people drive like jerks and there were semis everywhere, and I just wanted to get out of there. I didn't even know you COULD ride your bike on this street. The inland side of the highway is all strawberry farms, and brussels sprouts farms, and spinach farms worked by illegal immigrant workers. I couldn't believe the number of people who stopped their bikes to take a picture of the poor people at work. I waited for Shane at a farm stand where a lot of riders stopped to buy fried artichokes, and he was far behind. His knees were really feeling bad, so I rode on ahead.

After the not-so-safe Safety Corridor

Right before the next rest stop we had to ride for a few miles on a bike trail with gratuitous stop signs. I rode up behind a girl in a jersey that said something about riding across Alaska. "Alaska! Cool!" I said as I passed her.
"You're supposed to put your foot down at the stop signs," she sneered back. I'd come to a complete stop, but clipping out is such a pain in the ass.
"Thanks, next time I will!" I said, trying to hit the tone of voice right so that she would think I was serious, without while I would still know I was being sarcastic. Damned good thing, too. Apparently the "Safety Vehicle" was right across the street at the next stop sign writing down rider numbers for people who didn't put their foot down. I did just to make a point to stupid Alaska girl, but Lorraine's friend Trish wasn't so lucky and found a ticket on her bike the next morning. I assume the tickets work like warnings, 2 or 3 strikes and you're out.

I got into the rest stop just as Lorraine and her crew were leaving. "Nooooo! That's not faaiiir!" I whined, so Lorraine stayed back while I refilled my water bottles. I was surprised when we pulled back out again that I kept pulling away from her. I'd only ridden with her once 3 years ago, but I'd had to pull over for a breather on an uphill, and she'd dropped my sorry ass on a steep, technical downhill. I'd assumed she'd always be faster than me. I've talked about Lorraine here before. She's the ultrarunner who is older than my parents, a faster runner than I am, and (I always assumed) a better cyclist. Pretty soon we caught up with her crew and rode with them all the way to lunch.
"You guys are going slooooooow!" I whined. "Is that because you're old?" This is something that Lorraine and I can joke about. I just assumed that that kind of joking would be okay with the rest.

From left to right: Trish (mother of 3), Power Lesbian Shannon, One-Liner Nerine, Lesbian Alisa, Lorraine, Me, Shane

We all pulled in to lunch together, and Shane and Narine (another member of Lorraine's party) pulled in a few minutes later. Let me take this opportunity to introduce you to the cast of characters:
Me: Well, you already know me.
Shane: Who you know pretty well by now. He was one of my best friends from late college and thereafter. Our lives just seem to follow similar paths, and somehow we still manage to see each other at least once a year, no matter where we are living at the time.
Lorraine: Who alternates between role model, mom, and friend. She lives her life in reverse. She was serious when she was young, so now that she has all life's mistakes behind her, she's being young and having fun. She spends all her time running on trails, mountain biking, road riding, and racing in really beautiful places. I often channel my inner Lorraine to make important life decisions.
Alisa: Who you've met: the outspoken lesbian.
Narine: The master of one-liners. She was the slowest rider in the "Old Ladies'" group, but she was ubiquitous. I saw her everywhere. "Stop following me!" she said each time. I never got to know too much about her personal life. I DO know that she does Crossfit.
Trish: Trish was a mother of three and sweet as anything. She's one of those people that just seems so nice that I'm afraid to hang out with them because I'm just going to look like a jerk.
Shannon: I don't know how Shannon knew Lorraine's crew, but she knew Shane because Shane knows ALL the "power lesbians" in Santa Cruz. "Power lesbians" is a term that Meg (who you WILL meet soon) coined to talk about the L-Word clique of hot lesbians in Santa Cruz who all lead dramatically cool lives and have all slept with each other at one point or another. I recognized Shannon when we were introduced. She didn't recognize me. "Did you ever you never go to the Dakota?" she asked. Dakota is the dyke bar in Santa Cruz.
"I was there almost every weekend," I said. "It's okay, a lot of people didn't notice me there. I have hair."

At lunch I was pretty excited about being the fastest one in the group. I was genuinely surprised that I was faster than Lorraine and Shane, and enjoying feeling like I was competent at something. I did a lot of outright bragging, thinking that everyone knew I was kidding. I have a problem with that a lot, especially in California. I assume everyone knows I'm kidding, and everyone else thinks I'm serious and sits there stewing thinking, "What the hell is WRONG with this girl?!" I later found out that that's exactly what Alisa was thinking about me at that very moment.
"If she were really all that, she wouldn't need to brag about it," Lorraine muttered to Shane.
Meanwhile, I was off somewhere saying, "And I'm faster than YOU, and I'm faster than YOU, and YOU, and YOU..." When I heard Lorraine's comment I knew I'd laid it on too thick, but that wasn't for another day or so. I quit bragging right then and there, but I had to point it out after another day because no one had noticed. I guess they'd already decided I was a jerk.
We were already almost half way to LA when Lorraine said to Alisa, "Have you noticed that Claire stopped bragging. She wanted everyone to know that." After that people were nicer to me.

But for the moment I still thought I was the shit. We were riding through dry, dusty fields and there was a tremendous tailwind. As we were pulling back out onto the road I asked the Old Ladies, "Do you want to play my game? It goes like this..." and I reached out and poked Alisa in the ass. "Now you gotta catch me!" I called over my shoulder and sprinted off. I'd been playing that game with Lorraine and Shane every time I passed them in the last couple of days.
"There she goes," said Alisa. No one sprinted after me. High on life I let the tailwind carry me through the fields at speeds in the mid-20's. Between rest stops volunteers were holding out Red Vines and I grabbed them. It was a piece of cake! I was going to do those bottle grabs like a pro at Vineman this summer.

Do I have shit in my teeth? Noooooooo, because I just FLOSSED!

The next rest stop was at a vineyard. I was slightly disappointed that I didn't have to wait ages and ages for everyone to show up. As we parked our bikes Lorraine said something and smiled. "You have shit in your teeth," I said. I would want someone to tell me if I had something in my teeth too.
"So do you," she said.
"Really?" I said, curling my lips around my teeth. "Where?"
"Eeeeeeeverywhere," said Shane, waving his hand around his entire face to show that I had Red Vines stuck in my teeth up to my eyeballs.
"Well what do I do?!" I asked. "I can't swish with Power Ade, it's red!"
"I have dental floss," offered Power Lesbian Shannon.
"What? Like ON your bike?!"
"Yeah," she said, like it was perfectly normal and reached into her seat pouch and pulled out some mint floss. Talk about random...

Shannon convinced us that we HAD to stop at the next rest stop at a mission a few miles away. The mission offered free post cards and there was a banner for people to sign, but Shannon was most excited about the Otter Pops. "Two years ago when I did this I tried to ride with my Otter Pop in my mouth. Not a good idea. I fell off my bike going like 20 mph and got all cut up. So finish you Otter Pop before you get back on the bike!"

When we got to the Mission we laid our bikes down in the dusty lot and Shannon went to get an Otter Pop, while Lorraine danced with some bears in skirts. I followed Alisa, Trish and Narine into the Mission where we signed the banner and wrote some postcards in the cool shade.

Lorraine dancing like a crazy lady with some bears. Look how hard the wind is blowing!

Back out on the road I started to pull ahead again and was surprised to see that Shannon was keeping up. Shane I could understand because he's doping, but Shannon? She was right, you're stronger if you finish your Otter Pop before you get back on the bike. I slowed down a bit to talk to her and she told me that the next stop would be skinny dipping. I was ambivalent. "I don't know, I've been single for a long time, and there are just certain things you let go when you've been single for that long..." I said.

Then we turned a corner, and the wind that had been at our back was now blowing us off the road. It was crazy! It must have been over 20mph, and it kept grabbing our bikes and throwing us at the field next the road. I'd never ridden in a crosswind so strong. I almost lost Shannon for a little while, but then she caught up at the swimming hole. When we got to the skinny dipping river, it was down a steep gorge with a bridge over it. A roadie stopped us and made us wait before crossing the bridge. In a minute a school bus crossed, and then another one. The kids on one side of the bus were smiling and waving at us, but the kids on the other side were still trying to see over the edge of the gorge and giggling. They'd seen something in the gorge that was WAY more entertaining than a bunch of bike riders. I would hate to be the principal of that school the next day when all the angry phone calls start coming in!

Lorraine was waiting on the other side of the bridge (I forget how she'd gotten in front of us), and we decided that the water was definitely not deep enough to be worth it. There was some doubt about whether it would even cover our tits if we were to sit down in the deepest part, and climbing down that steep grade in bike shoes didn't sound like much fun. So we rode off together through the final 10 miles that were like a roller coster, a whole series of quick downhills that pushed you all the way up the next uphill. "I see you slowed down," Lorraine said to me, in the sarcastic tone I expected for all my bragging.
"Well, I got lonely," I said. "And Shannon was kind enough to keep up with me."
"You've slowed down now, but I almost puked trying to keep up with you before," she said.
"You did not!" I said. I was pleased. Someone had almost puked trying to keep up with me! Someone had clearly thought that I was worth almost puking to keep up with!

Worth noting was Rest Stop 4. The guys who had been dressed as badminton players the day before were now dressed as beauty queens. They were all in wigs and prom dresses. One had stuffed her belly and her sash said MISSed MY PERIOD. Another was dressed in an orange jumpsuit and a mullet wig and was holding handcuffs. Her sash said MISS 20-40.

We got back to camp so late that day that by the time we'd pitched the tent, showered, and eaten, it was almost bed time. I sat up for awhile talking to Lorraine, while Alisa went off to find the 12-step meeting that someone had arranged in camp each night. How cool is that?! Alisa and Trish knew each other from AA. Alisa never wound up making it to her meeting, but that's a story for tomorrow...

Total Distance: 105.4 miles
Total Time: roughly 5:51 in the saddle (I don't know for sure since my Garmin ran out of batteries)
Average Speed: roughly 18 mph

Map:In real life we rode all the way to King City. My Garmin didn't make it that far.

Elevation Profile:
Splits:
Related posts:
Dykes and Bikes
A ride down Memory Lane

A trip down Memory Lane (ALC Chapter 2)

Day 1: San Francisco to Santa Cruz

We woke up at 4:00 in order to be in the Cow Palace by 5:30. I had slept badly and insisted we stop for coffee on the way. It was early, but Shane insisted that Starbucks would be open. We were in one of the cultural centers of the United States, after all, and where there's culture, there's coffee. Of course Starbucks would be open. When we got to Starbucks there was a man sitting at a table out front, there were baristas inside, and I waltzed up to the door which was... LOCKED! "They're not open yet," the man grumbled. "I'ont know why not. Says right there on the sign they open at 5:00."
I looked at the sign. "It says they open at 5:30." I said, trying not to be rude.
"They're supposed to open at 5:00!" he insisted.
"It says right there, that they open at 5:30," I said. Maybe he hadn't seen the sign. People in San Francisco are crazy, especially the type that sit outside a Starbucks at 5:15 in the morning on a Sunday. Maybe he hadn't checked.
"No it doesn't. It says right there, Monday-Friday 5:00 a.m-10:00 p.m."
"Yeah," I said. "But it's Sunday." He looked stupefied. "Congratulations, you have the day off!" I said as I ducked into the car and out of his reach. He didn't seem to be rejoicing that he still had one weekend day left.
"Well, they'll have coffee for sure when we get there," I said. "They wouldn't have people show up somewhere at 5:30 and not give them coffee." Would they?

We picked up Shane's friend Lidia (who was there to take Shane's car home in exchange for getting to keep it for herself all week), and since my bike box was taking up the whole back seat, I sat in a complete stranger's lap the whole way to the Cow Palace. I hoped I didn't smell bad. I was wearing an old jersey, I knew that smelled bad.

When we got into the Cow Palace Shane and I dropped off our stuff at the gear trucks and went inside. They were serving breakfast, but NO COFFEE! I couldn't believe it! I asked one of the volunteers how in the world an event like this could have us show up at 5:30 in the morning, serve breakfast, and not serve coffee?! "I guess they just don't want people having to... GO... in a big hurry," he offered as an explanation. I grumbled as I walked away with my banana bread, but every time we saw someone with a Starbucks cup I would conspire with Shane to mug them (no pun intended).

They kicked everyone out of the bike racks at 6:00 for the opening ceremonies and herded us into the stadium (which still smelled like cow dung). Someone made a speech about those who had been lost to AIDS. I wanted to soak it up, but most of the speech seemed so trite, and he must have used the term "exhausted and elated" two dozen times, so I tuned it out and started watching the people around me, making up stories for some of them. There was an older couple right in front of me who hugged and cried during the moment of silence. I imagined that they had lost a son to AIDS. All around us there were people in "Positive Pedalers" jerseys with phrases on them like "eliminating stigma through positive public example", and "we all have AIDS if one does". These men (because they were almost all men) didn't look sick. I liked to imagine that I was in a way responsible for this because maybe they got their treatment through the San Francisco AIDS Foundation. As they started playing a song that I didn't recognize about loss and people proceeded through the center of the arena with banners with messages from riders to friends who had died of AIDS, it really, really dawned on me how lucky I am. I think that AIDS treatment and prevention is a great cause, but I've never been close to someone HIV+, or someone who died of AIDS. The number one reason why I did this ride was for the challenge. I'd seen the banners and markers lain out on a table at orientation yesterday. "Do you know anyone to write something to?" he asked. I shook my head. "Me neither," he said. So we walked on. Now I looked at all the people around me, many of them were men who were about a generation older than me. Most of them were gay. They were survivors from a time when they probably HAD lost not a few friends, but many of them. Some of the older ones might have known people who died totally alone, when people still didn't understand how it spread and treatment was virtually nonexistant. A lot of them had probably sat through the time when people were screaming that this was God's retribution on homosexuals, back before enough straight people were infected to be noticed, back before it was cool to be gay. I got misty-eyed and tried not to let Shane see that I was crying when he handed me the sunscreen.

When the ceremonies ended I sniffed back my snot and tears so I wouldn't get caught and Shane and I made a bee-line in our clipity-clopity shoes to bike parking. We were lucky. We were among the first let into the racks, and our rack was close to the exit. We only had a couple of hundred people in front of us, and so were able to ride out in about 15 minutes, but the people in the back must have taken hours to get out the door.

Just out the door, waiting for the hundreds of people in front of us to get through the traffic light at the exit.

This is not actually the rout we took, but it'll have to do. My GPS won't show me a map of the rout for some reason.

Slowing... Stopping...Rolling... Slooooooooowing... Stopping... Rol-Slowing!

We didn't hear much other than that for the first hour or so. I've never ridden with a group of cyclists so obsessed with yelling out a narration of their every movement. There were tons of traffic lights and tons of slow people, and we had to at least look like we were trying to stay single file. It took us about an hour to go the first 6 miles.

And there were people of all different abilities (mostly, not very good) all mixed together. It made passing dangerous. Not 2 miles into the ride as Shane and I were passing a group a woman came up on a pothole and swerved to miss it, crashing right into Shane and taking him out. She stayed upright and rode off. Shane was able to clip out but his bike went down and it took him a couple of minutes to get rolling again. "Is everything okay?" I asked when we were able to pull back into the road.
"Yeah. I don't think I've ever clipped out so fast in my life!" he said. I felt validated. I keep my clips as loose as possible for just such an occasion.
After another mile we crested a hill, and there in front of us was a woman lying in the road, holding her arm and crying. She must have just fallen. The men around her were holding their arms crossed above their heads, signaling to aid vehicles that it was a medical emergency. "Let's get out of here!" I said to Shane, and we started hauling ass to get to the front of the pack.

We hit a hill and the crowd slowed to an impossible crawl. It was a wonder they didn't tip over. "On your left!" Shane and I called out every once in awhile as we passed a steady stream of people. We couldn't be expected to call out for every single one of them, could we?!
"Call it out, please!" someone would say every once in awhile, so we started calling out more.
"You're not supposed to pass on the freeway/on a hill/on the road/on a day that ends in Y!" some of the more disagreeable riders called after us. I wanted to tell them to learn to ride their frigging bikes before they told me how to ride mine, but they were ancient history anyway.

Shane remembers that drinking water is important.

Gargle, gargle, gargle.

After the first aid station where we hit the porta-potties, the food, and then the exit, we started climbing Skyline Drive. It was a long climb, lasting several hours, and Shane and I weren't fooling around. I can go slow on the flats, I can brake behind someone on a descent, but it is so hard to go someone else's pace on an uphill. Go too slow and you lose momentum and it gets harder than climbing more quickly. So we started passing people like crazy again. I was breathing hard, but I still managed to call out "On your left!" several times to every group. Shane kept dropping back. I would wait for him when it flattened out and he would show up again heaving and wheezing. "I smoked for so long, I forgot I have asthma!" he gasped. That excuse didn't make much sense to me, but whatever, I could hear he was having trouble breathing. I didn't mind slowing down a few times every hour to let him catch up.

Finally we crested the hill and started going down. Before we picked up much speed I passed a couple of guys riding two abrest and chatting. "On your left!" I called. I wasn't a yell, but it was loud enough. When we talked about it later, Shane said that he could hear me, and he was riding behind me.
When I passed them the guy on the outside yelled, "Call out, or I'm going to hit you and it's not going to be pretty!"
"I did! You should listen to what's going on around you rather than flirting with your little boyfriend," I yelled back. Okay, the boyfriend part was in my head, but I was seething. I wanted to give him a piece of my mind, but settled for making him look like a tool. I'm a good descender by American standards, and I sped away so fast that he would see that I was a serious cyclist and I meant business. I hope this made him feel like a tool.

The scenery was beautiful. At the bottom I took this:
... and this:
... and this:
The lunch stop was on Highway 1 (what is called the Pacific Coast Highway in southern California). Just because it is the coast, though, doesn't mean that it was flat. The climbs aren't long, but some of them can be pretty steep.

Sometimes Hwy 1 is flat.
But sometimes you see this to your left, and to your right is a 300' cliff down to the ocean. Sorry about the quality of the pictures. The majority of the road shots were taken at 20mph.

Lunch was right before one of these steep hills... at the bottom... meaning it would be the first thing we rode when we got back on our bikes.

See it there in the background? Maybe it doesn't look like much, but let me tell you, on cold legs after eating a huge sandwich, it's A LOT!

We got to lunch early enough that there were still picnic tables avialable, but by the time we left people were everywhere, all over the ground, picnic tables, and the beach. It sure was chilly when you stopped moving, so once we'd finished our meals, Shane and I hopped right back on the road. That hill SUCKED, and I tasted my sandwich more than once muscling up it, and the next one too. For the next half hour or so, my stomach just ached. I slowed down a bunch of times to let Shane catch up, but he never showed. I figured I'd wait for him at the next aid station, which was about 20 miles from camp. I was waiting for what seemed like forever on the road outside the aid station. I saw dozens of riders ride by, and whether they went into the aid station or kept on pedaling, the volunteer at the entrance clicked a little counter for each of them. I guess this is how they make sure no one goes missing.

Shane finally rolled up, and he was not a happy camper. "Where have you been?!" I asked.
"That hill... upset my stomach," he said. "I gotta go to the porta potty." He made a sour face. At least the porta potties were pretty fresh. We were near the front of the pack now. As we were getting ready to leave, Shane's friend Shannon pulled in. She was having stomach issues too. Stupid hill.

I thought Shane would be able to keep up once he'd 'unloaded', but when we started rolling again he dropped off right away, so I was riding alone. I went to UC Santa Cruz, so this rout had been part of my regular training rides. I knew the road very well, and was surprised at how much better I felt riding it now than I did 3 years ago. I passed the big pothole that had once torn a huge gash in my tire, and I'd had to call Lorraine to drive 30 miles to pick me up. I didn't even know Lorraine at the time, she just happened to be the one at work that day when I called desperate for help, and she just happened to have a bike rack on her car. I wished I'd known where the heck she was in this crowd to point it out to her. Later, coming into Santa Cruz, I passed the spot where I hit a nail during the Big Kahuna and got a flat... which subsequently lead to me switching bikes with a spectator... which made me feel horrible the whole race, because I was borrowing Lorraine's beautiful carbon fiber bike. Where WAS Lorraine anyway? And where was Shane?

I stopped again at the entrance to Rest Stop 4 (they always have the best rest stop) where there was a whole group of pretty boys with badminton rackets, red spanky shorts, and tank tops and headbands in a brilliant Tennis White. I waited, and waited, and waited. Finally Shane turned up. "I'm going to ride up to campus just to see our drinkin' spot," I told Shane. "Do you want to come?" The UCSC campus is at the top of a pretty serious 2-mile, 700-foot hill.
"My knees are hurting me. I might just go ahead to camp," he said.
"Okay," I said. "See you there."

A few miles down the road I turned off to go up to campus. Just as I was afraid would happen, some idiot followed me. "This isn't the right way!" I said. He was still there. "I'm not going right to camp, you should go back that way!" I called over my shoulder. He didn't go away. I slowed down and turned to yell it in his ear if need be. "YOU'RE GOING THE WRONG... SHANE! What are you doing here?"
"Well, camp doesn't open for another half an hour or so anyway, so I figured I'd come along," he said. When we started climbing I pulled ahead. We both knew what trying to climb at someone else's pace is like. I hit the first red light and turned around. Where was he? Next light: still not there. I figured he must have gotten tired and gone ahead to camp. I rode the rest of the way up and stopped to take some pictures.
Our senior year Shane and I spent way too much time up here in our cars drinking and talking. It looks out over all of Santa Cruz and the Monterey Bay, and at night the whole town is lit up and you can see the stars. We used to come up alone, too. One day I bought a 6-pack and brought some reading for a class up here planning to have some nice, quiet Claire time. When I pulled in there was only one other car there. It was Shane's car, which is pretty hard to miss– it's lime green. When I went to knock on his window he had a 6-pack on his passenger's seat and he was reading a European history reader. I wished he were up here with me. It would be so cool to be back here, both of us together, on our bikes rather than in our cars (he took up riding after I left), now that we'd both quit drinking and smoking and didn't have nearly as much angst to talk through. I finished taking my pictures and was getting ready to mount my bike again when who comes rolling up the hill with some UCSC student on a mountain bike, but Shane! "Dude! My seat's fucked up!" he said as soon as I was within earshot. "I didn't tighten the bolts enough and it's been sliding all day long! No wonder my knees are so fucked up!" Sheesh, he should have known better! When we put my bike back together, we didn't tighten the handlebar bolts enough, and I wound up riding with the handlebars practically upside-down the last few miles back to his house.

So I got my picture of us back together in our drinkin' spot. I love how you can see the reflection of my arms holding the camera out in his sunglasses.
It turns out that Shane's knees were royally fucked up, though. They would be bothering him for the rest of the week. We showered and hung around camp for a little while waiting for other people to come in. Shane got his knees checked out and I wrote for a little while. We eventually tracked Lorraine down, but everyone we knew on the ride, including her, still lived in Santa Cruz and went home to sleep. Shane and I walked into town where all the crazies and hippies hang out and talked about old times. I also tracked down my old friend, Chris, who was the only person I managed to see in Santa Cruz that was NOT affiliated with the ride.

I was glad there wasn't much night life in the camp. As soon as everyone had eaten dinner and the sun went down, pretty much everyone just went to sleep. Shane and I put in ear plugs and turned our headlamps off around 9 o'clock. Right before we went to bed I held up a piece of paper. "I HOPE THEY HAVE JUICE AT BREAKFAST TOMORROW!" it said.

Total distance: About 84 miles (as I mentioned, my GPS wasn't working quite right)
Roughly 4:40 in the saddle
Average speed (for recorded time) 18 mph (including all that b-s in San Francisco)

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Prologue: Dykes and Bikes

Prologue: Dykes and Bikes

More than 2 weeks have passed since I started the AIDS/LifeCycle, and my memory isn't as fresh as I hoped it would be when I promised to write this whole experience down. Depending on how you look at it (or how much my long posts exasperate you), that could be a good thing or a bad thing. I'll do my best, but this account will probably not be sequential, and some of the events may take on more flourish with time, especially since most of the witnesses 3,000 miles away. Hopefully it'll keep things interesting.

San Francisco:

I got into San Francisco late, late at night (by my body clock anyway), and famished. After paying a not-so-outrageous price for my ticket, and then $100 to put my bike on the plane (one way!), they could at LEAST feed me more than some orange juice and a bag of pretzels! I hadn't eaten anything else in 12 hours. We stormed a burrito joint as they were closing, lugged my bike box up the 3 flights of stairs to Shane's apartment, and unpacked the bike. By the time we got the bike put back together and I'd dug my pajamas out of my duffel bag, I'd been up for over 24 hours.

Even so, I woke up at 5:00 with Shane the next morning, and by 6:00 we were riding through Golden Gate Park on the way to his office. I'd planned on getting some coffee and prancing through the city while he was working, but the coffee shops didn't open till 7, and a quick check in with my sense of direction told me that if I wandered off by myself, I might never find my way back. I finally found some coffee, which was SPECTACULAR for about an hour, but then I crashed a little bit and spent the afternoon sullenly waiting for Shane to go to meetings so I could play with his computer.

When Shane finished his work for the day we took our bikes back out to run some errands in the city. He took me on something called "The Wiggle", which apparently gets its name because it "wiggles" around all the big hills in San Francisco. So we "wiggled" down to one bike shop looking for a new saddle for Shane and more CO2 cartridges for me. I was standing in the middle of the shop waiting for Shane to pump up his tires when an employee came over to me. "That's a really nice bike!" he said. "That's great that they made it in your size. It seems to fit you perfectly."
"Thanks!!!" I said. I had ridden crappy bikes for so long and taken so much shit for it, that it was one of the greatest complements I'd ever received. I beamed like the fat chick who comes back skinny and beautiful after summer vacation and now all the boys want to date her.

Shane didn't find a saddle he liked there, though, so we "wiggled" on down to another bike shop. Shane is used to riding in the city, and he has cleats on his shoes that are easier to clip into than mine. We hit every single red light in the city of San Francisco, and at every single one he left me to eat his dust. Once I finally got clipped in I would have to stand up and sprint my guts out to catch up to him, only to stop in a ridiculously hard gear at the next stop light. I hated San Francisco. Plus, Shane's a guy, so he's got more explosive power. And he's doping. Well, sort of anyway, he's got a legal prescription for a drug that's been banned as performance enhancing anyway.

Leaving the second bike shop, proud new owners of a saddle, some CO2 cartridges, and various Clif products, we were in a bit of a time crunch to get back to Shane's apartment. "Is it okay of we don't take The Wiggle?" he asked. I'd already been dropped at dozens of lights, I was not going to admit that I was apprehensive about San Francisco hills. Shane takes his bike everywhere in the city and he's always talking about these crazy hills he has to climb over a million bajillion times a week. He's also always talking about how he's doing speed work and getting up to about 30 mph on the flats. I believe that maybe his bike computer needs adjusting, but I believed him about the hills. "Don't worry, there's only one hill," Shane promised. I agreed but thought, Only one hill, but how many "bumps?" What's NOT a hill in San Francisco, Shane?! So he took me on one of those 4-lane roads that goes directly under the freeway for several miles, and I thought I was going to die. I almost got run over about a million times in the narrow little lanes filled with glass and all kinds of pointy shit. And I still hadn't faced The Hill. When we finally hit The Hill, I clicked down to a mini gear a little too soon and dropped back before we even started, and Shane pulled on ahead. We went up one block, and then another, and then... it was over. (The hill in the picture is not the hill we climbed).
"That was IT?! That was the hill?!" I asked? People in San Francisco exaggerate. Shane exaggerates. I mean, it was steep...ish, but it wasn't anything I couldn't find at home. And then we didn't hit any more hills the whole way back to Shane's apartment. I was almost disappointed.

For the rest of the day I was crabby and tired. We met up with our friend Kat and wandered around the city for the afternoon. I remembered why I don't like San Francisco. I always feel like I should like San Francisco, but I just don't. All cities have crazies, and in a sense it wouldn't be a city without them. But in San Francisco the lunatics seem to be running the asylum. I think it has to do with all the fogginess that's around all the time. Seriously, how can someone stay sane in that kind of murkiness?!

We went out for sushi for dinner and I had a seat facing the window. Suddenly all these bikers started going by. First they were the bike messenger types and the hardcore roadies and "one less car/un coche menos" types, then the real characters started coming through: people on BMX bikes, people on hybrids with tires that were 90% flat, people on tall bikes (this was a new one for me), people in costumes, people on kids' frames that they had somehow fit large tires on to, people with sound systems on fenders or in baskets on their bikes, hippie types on decrepit mountain bikes, and every minute or so, a police escort. This was Critical Mass, "Only in San Francisco" meets "Un Coche Menos". On the last Friday of every month bikers from all around San Francisco meet and ride around the city (on an undisclosed rout that changes from month to month). The sole purpose, as far as I could gather, was for bikes to take over the streets and make things miserable for the cars for about an hour and a half every month. Fuck you, motorists, Viva la bici!

Shane was excited too. He's lived in the city for years and keeps forgetting to show up for Critical Mass. "See! I told you!" he said. "I bet they follow those roses we saw all over the city!" Shane's all into graffiti and he'd seen a girl tagging roses on signs all over the city in pink marker. He knew she was in the upper echalons of the San Francisco bike counterculture and was way more excited about his discovery than anyone else at the table. He avoids other riders socially, but he watches them all like a hawk.

Orientation:

Before we had to show up at the Cow Palace for orientation, Shane and I rode a couple of miles to Trader Joe's to get some lunch. When we came out my back tire was flat. What the fuck?! "Oh well, this way at least I'll get some practice changing tubes on this bike," I said. What I was thinking was, We're going to miss orientation because I got the first fucking flat of the summer. Why now?! I bet this is a sign. Fucking fabulous, Claire, now you're going to miss the ride. These things only happen to you.

Once I pumped up the tire, though, both of our bad moods went away. Neither of us had ever used a CO2 pump before. "Woooooow," said Shane. "That didn't even take a second!" He poked my tire, "And it's so haaaaaaard!"
"Lookit the nozzle of the pump! It's all frosty!" I squealed. "Oooooh! Look at the valve stem, it's all white and steaming! Cooooooooooool!" And it turns out that we weren't even that late anyway.

I love saying I went to the Cow Palace, Cow Palace, Cow Palace!

The first thing that they did when we got to the Cow Palace was to take our bikes away. They stuck a sticker with our rack number on our handlebars and a matching sticker on our shirts so we could find the bikes later. I tried not to be weirded out by the fact that the guy had put the sticker squarely on my boob. Everyone here is gay, Claire, I reminded myself. You are among friends. Of course not everyone who was involved with the ride was gay, but it was a ride to end AIDS, and we were in San Francisco, so... what do you expect? As soon as we walked down into the main area it was like walking into a magic fairyland and * Poof! * everything was rainbow. There were swishy, limp-wristed men hugging and kissing each other hello and tough, confident-looking women with short hair and wide stances everywhere. Immediately, I didn't feel gay enough. I'm not really butch, and tend to be "straight-acting" (a new term I learned on my summer vacation), and I tend to feel pretty confident in most aspects of my life (except meeting women). But every once in awhile I'm surrounded by a whole bunch of homos I don't know doing a whole bunch of homo things that I don't do, and suddenly I'm self-conscious. I have too much hair. My pants don't have enough pockets. I don't have any visible tattoos, let alone rainbows or pink triangles. My voice is not deep and gruff. I fly miles under the gaydar. This is how I lost all my hair 2 years ago (a condition I'm still recovering from - see the picture to the right... if you don't know me well, let me tell you that I look ridiculous). Instantly I had a crush on every single woman I saw, and wanted to look like them so that they would look at me.

Except the lady with a mullet, an oversized t-shirt, and tapered knee-length jean shorts. I didn't much care what she thought of my hair. I didn't think much of hers.

We found Lorraine and her crew (who I will introduce later) and went in to watch the safety video. I thought that the safety video was going to be the most boring half hour of my life, but they managed to make it entertaining. After a few hollow thank yous, and several reminders of how important safety is to the success of the ride Lori Jean from the L.A. Gay and Lesbian Center gave her schpiel. She was like a kindergarten teacher, but funny in that way that people are when they talk to adults like they're a kindergarten teacher. She held up hand-colored cards to illustrate her points with things like happy faces, sad faces, and a hot dogs ("no hot dogs - the human kind") on them. Then the straight-laced cop came on to give his 2 cents. He reminded us that we were sharing the streets with motor vehicles, and should follow the same traffic rules such as:
~Coming to a complete stop at a Stop sign.
And the video cut to a whole group of drag queens on bicycles touching their stilettos to the pavement.
~Only passing on the left.
A woman with a dozen different colored zip-ties sticking off her helmet like a gay pride porcupine passes another rider.
~Always pull over to talk on your cell phone.
A muscle queen in the most FAAAbulous bike kit you've ever seen stands at the side of the road straddling his bike and flapping his wrists around like crazy as he tells some juicy gossip into his cell phone.

... and so on.

Leaving the Safety Video we got the first of several arm bands. This one orange, meaning that we had watched the video. Then we went to registration where they banded me again with a green arm band that was my ticket to special vegetarian meals, and a red(ish) arm band that meant I was riding for San Francisco.

We still weren't done accessorizing yet. We still needed our tent assignments, so we got on THAT line. Lorraine had forgotten to put us on the list for group tent assignments, so Shane and I got in the much longer line alone to get our tent. When we were alone Shane (who isn't good at keeping his voice down sometimes) asked, "Is she a lesbian?"
I gestured to the crowd full of short-haired women, "Which one, Shane?" A bunch of the people around us laughed.
"Lorraine's friend. The blond. With the short hair." Among Lorraine's group there was a woman whose name we hadn't caught yet who was very outspoken and charismatic. She was the type that whenever she was in a group, everyone's attention naturally turned to her, and she knew what to do with it. Meet Alisa (uh-LEE-sa).
"Yes, Shane. She is a lesbian."
"Well, sometimes you can't tell, you know. Sometimes they're just... soccer moms... with short hair." More chuckles from the people around us. Shane used to have better gaydar than I did. How do you live in the gayest city in the world and have your gaydar get worse?

On Day Two I would have my first real conversation with Alisa. It went like this.
Whole group: "Blah, blah, blah, conversation about stuff and things blah, blah, blah..."
Alisa to me: "Are you straight?" Matter-of-factly, just like that. Out of nowhere.
Me, a little taken aback, not knowing how to respond: "Uhhhhm... No. I'm not."
Alisa: "Oh, cuz I couldn't tell."
That conversation will give me a complex for the rest of my life.

After waiting for the better part of a year we finally got to the tables and got our tent assignment. "Can we be as close to G as possible?" I asked. Lorraine's crew was in G. The guy came back with P-23. The highest letter possible was Q. Oh well. They gave us two blue P-23 tags each, one to put on our bags, and one to put around our necks, an orange tag for our tent, and lots of little chains (the kind they use for cheap key rings) to attach them to our bags and ourselves.

And just when I thought that they couldn't hang more information off my body a woman called us over to her table. She had a whole bunch of chips with numbers on them. "Is this your first ride?" she asked us.
"Yep, we're virgins," I said. I just wanted to get out of here. Who was this woman and why wouldn't she leave me alone?
She handed each of us a chip with a 1 on it. "Put this on your necklace, and if you have any questions you can look for someone with a high number around their neck. They're the veterans." This did not seem like the cool thing to do, but I did it anyway.

Finally we found our bikes at the racks and put our numbers on before saying goodbye for the evening. They would stay in the Cow Palace waiting for us until tomorrow morning, when we would have to be back here at 5:30 in the morning for Opening Ceremonies and Day 1.

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...And I'm faster than YOU, and YOU, and YOU...

I'm not dead... yet

Hi everyone. I'm back from California, and other than turning a different color I'm completely unscathed. It was the most perfectest vacation ever, and I plan on telling all y'all all about it soon, but give me a few days to catch up on life before I get around to posting again and poking around on all your spaces.

Things to look forward to:
A week of porta-potties
Thousands and thousands of drag queens, as far as the eye can see
Why I'm going to start doping and become a male gymnast
The weekend that was "All about Claire's butt" (Mayra's words, not mine)
Scabies, sweat, vomit, prickly heat, bugs in people's hair, and other secretions and bodily mishaps
Rocketpants and Claire take on LA, and win!
and The Great Ice Cream Disaster of June 2008

...among other things...

Going off into the great, big world for awhile...

In a couple of hours I get on a plane for California for the AIDS/LifeCycle to benefit the San Francisco AIDS Foundation. I won't have much access to computers over the next couple of weeks, but when I get back I'll post about all my adventures on the 7-day, 545-mile ride. There will be all kinds of fun updates and pictures on the LifeCycle homepage during the ride (June 1-7), so check that space out all you want and look for me in the background of some of the pictures.

A special thanks to my super supporters:
Warrior Woman
Bob Almighty
Mindy
CVSurf
Nitsirk (aka "lady in the ironman jersey")
Cranky
Trihardist
Runner Leana
and most of all, Angry Runner

If you would still like to donate to support the San Francisco AIDS foundation, it's not too late! You can still donate at aidslifecycle.org/2275

Have a great couple of weeks of training and racing. I can't wait to hear about it!

Beyond the marathon

Alternate names for this post:

I Have a Cowbell and You Don't

Things That Suck Giant Donkey Balls and Things That Don't
There's More Than One Way to Skin a P... never mind

I've always wanted to do ultramarathons, and the gateway drug into ultramarathon addictions is the 50K. It's technically an ultra, but it's a "soft" ultra, an ultra "light" if you will. Still, 50 kilometers is 31 miles, and since they're usually on trails, the terrain doesn't tend to make it easy for you. Sometime in my Boston marathon taper, (when I thought I was invincible and could do anything), I decided that I could do a 50K NOW. I wrote to a few friends, and they cautioned me that 50K was a long way, that if I wasn't comfortable with marathons, and I don't usually run on trails, then maybe I should put it off until I was better prepared. They think I can't do it! I raged (remember, I was tapering and I was grouchy). That same night I got a flier for the Pineland Farms 50K in the mail, and it seemed like fate. Even still, I didn't tell anyone about my plans. Sure, Gretchen, Mindy, and Cranky knew, but no one else. If too many people told me I shouldn't do it, I might start to believe them. Then I'd be out $40.

And the other reason why I didn't say much about it was just in case I failed, I wouldn't have to tell anyone. I could just pretend like it didn't happen. I realize that I'm a fairly weak runner and I was prepared to walk the last 10 miles if I had to. I was prepared to come in dead stinkin' last. I just wanted to see what was on the other side of that 26.2 mile line. However, since a 50K is about as painless as you can go in the ultramarathon world, at times it was easy to forget that this race was actually longer than a marathon. I was about as keyed up about it as I would be for a fifteen mile run.

I was all ready to wake up at 5:00 to make the 10:00 am start, and that's what I would have done if I hadn't checked the race web site just one more time before bed and seen that my race started at 8:00! Shit! Disaster averted, I set my alarm for 3:45 and went to bed, where I stayed awake for a few hours before finally falling asleep. In the morning I was on target to leave at about 5:00... well, maybe 5:05, until I went to plug the address into the GPS in the car and discovered I'd copied the address down wrong. I had to go back inside, print up new directions, blah, blah, blah. I finally hit the road around 5:15.

I drove right over to my local Starbucks where I could see the Hungarian early morning ladies getting ready for the day, but they were still closed for another 10 minutes. So I got back in the car and headed north, waiting until after 5:30 and pulling off for another Starbucks that I knew was near the highway. I pulled up and... it was also closed. Fuck. Driving north towards the New Hampshire border I kept telling the GPS to find the nearest Starbucks until it found one that was near the highway and wouldn't require any doubling back. It was about 6:00 now, and I knew that all the Starbucks in North America must be open at this point. I pulled off the highway, pissed off the bitchy lady that lives in the GPS who seems so peeved when you don't follow HER rout, and finally managed to find the local Starbucks at about 6:20. To my relief, the lemon-shaped lamps inside were on. To my greater relief I could see two employees behind the counter inside. And to my great surprise, the door was locked. Some cyclists were across the street, and I asked them if they knew what the fuck was up. Starbucks doesn't open until 6:30, neither did this other coffee shop across the street. They would be open in 10 minutes, but I didn't have 10 minutes anymore. "Fuck!" I said. "Fuck, fuck, fuck!" I ran back to my car and noticed that the restaurant that I'd parked at had a giant "Open" flag hanging over the door. I tried the door. Not open. Fuck. And now I had to pee.

Finally I found an open Starbucks at a rest stop in Kittery, went to the bathroom, and dashed out to my car. At the very, very best, now I could only arrive 25 minutes before the start. What if they closed registration? Really, I had nothing to worry about. I wasn't even the last person in the parking lot and made it to the starting line with plenty of time to pee and drop my stuff in the car.

The course was two 25 km loops (15.5 miles) that were impossibly wound-up on themselves, which meant that you were never far from an aid station. The 50 mile runners (who'd left at 6:00 AM) would do a 3.5 mile add-on before doing 3 loops, and the 25K race started at 10:00 to do one loop of the course.

I ran with a camera all day, but this was the only picture I bothered to take. Oops. The rest of the pictures from the course are taken from the photos at last year's race on the web site.

The race director yelled something about the course that I didn't hear, and then a cow bell was rung to send us off (I think), and we went... sort of. That's what I love about trail running, people start running-ish, jogging-ish, but no one's really in a hurry. I'd hardly used my legs all week, so I was feeling really great, but I ran-ish, jogged-ish with everyone else, and when we hit the first hill, I stopped and walked with everyone else. If the person in front of me was going slow, I slowed down rather than going around them. We ran in a big pack for the first several miles until the course finally sifted us out.

I found myself running with a guy with a hydration pack. I ran when he ran, walked when he walked, and when everyone else was gone and we were still together, I introduced myself. I would get to know a lot about Jay over the next several hours, as we ran the whole, entire course together. He'd run several 50's of both the metric and English standard variety, although he wasn't a total trail nerd by nature. "These people are crazy," Jay whispered to me after we'd been running together for a few miles. The few other people that I talked to were a bit loopy, and I was glad I'd fallen into step with Jay and not the crazy lady who couldn't stop talking about the black flies in her front yard, or the guy tooting his own horn about his 20 years of ultrarunning experience who still hadn't finished Western States (that's all he talked about).

Jay was in the army and had some unspecified job with the Department of Homeland Security. He'd served in both the Clinton and Bush administration. I was really interested to hear about Jay's experiences with combat, his political opinions, his thoughts about Bush, and his thoughts on war, but there are so many questions that you just can't ask a soldier. "Tell me," I said, "do you miss it?"
"What?" he asked.
"War."
"You must know some people in the military..." he said. I'll admit it, I'm totally intrigued by the military. I have my GI Jane fantasies (no, not that kind of fantasy), and might have wound up in the military if I didn't have to kill anyone, shoot anything, follow orders, or eat meat, and I could walk away whenever I wanted to. I was hoping that Jay would have some great and inspirational stories about intense physical missions, but later in the race when I asked him if he had any, he said, "Nah, nothing like this."
"Well, what about boot camp?" I asked.
"Boot camp isn't as bad as people think it is. If you sat on the couch for 4 years in high school you might have a hard time of it, but if you were an athlete in high school, it's nothing you wouldn't be used to." I was disappointed. If I was going to run with an army guy, I was hoping that he could at least yell insults at me and make me dig deep inside myself to "be all that I could be" or something. He said that the one thing that one of his basic trainees had filed a formal complaint against his unit about was that his drill instructor made the trainee eat cookies until he puked. Hell, I knew people who did that kind of thing for fun! Instead, as time went on, we fell silent, and by the second loop we barely spoke anymore. We just had a tacit agreement that we were going to be in this together, and when one walked, the other walked, when one ran, the other ran, we waited for each other at aid stations, and we paced each other through the whole, entire race.

The race web site describes the course like this: "The trails are wide and non-technical, but very hilly. Although there are no major climbs the rolling terrain is unrelenting." I was afraid that the trails would be like my trails at home that are so rocky, rooty, and steep that I find it hard to average faster than an 11:00 mile, even when I don't walk. However, the "trails" were more like paths: grass-covered paths through the woods, or paths trampled through the tall grass in rolling fields. In fact, the only part that was hard on the joints were the paths through the fields that were slightly banked, and real hard on your uphill ankle. The rolling hills were endless, but the uphills weren't so bad, since we were walking them, and there were only a few knee-busting downhills. Grades tended to stay below the 20% mark, but there were several spots where it reached up to 30% both up and down. We had a cumulative elevation gain and loss of 7,900', which was much less severe than it could have been. I thought ultramarathons had to climb tens of thousands of feet for anyone to sign up. Luckily, I was wrong.

My body felt great, until sometime between miles 7 and 10, all of a sudden, it didn't. My butt started doing that thing that my butt does where it gets tight and sore. I started getting that awful heartburn that I got in the Adirondacks. Jay stopped to use the bathroom and I shuffled on ahead for a few minutes without him. Without Jay to pace me, I felt like I weighed a million pounds. I was running along on a flat with a woman whose shuffle could barely be called "running" in its loosest definition of the word. When Jay caught back up I was able to pick up his pace and trot away. Still, I knew I had to do something, or today was going to "suck giant donkey balls" (Mindy's phrase, not mine). I started hitting my bottle hard, emptying it before every aid station. It was getting hot, and I started drinking a dixie cup or two of Gatorade while they were refilling my bottle. I alternated between Gatorade, plain water, and Nuun at each aid station. I ate potatoes, candy orange slices, Twizzlers, bananas, anything that appealed to me. The aid stations were great, with more food than I've ever seen at any road race or triathlon, even the ones that cost three times as much as this event. "Man, I never thought I'd see the day when I didn't want to eat another Twizzler," I told Jay as I continued chewing on the waxy mess well after the aid station. I'd started chewing on Twizzlers to quit smoking, and kicked the butts, but wound up with a nasty Twizzler habit. Twizzler addiction or not, stuffing my face seemed to work though and whether it was the fluid, the food, the Gatorade, or the Nuun that did it, I started to feel stronger again a couple of miles in to the second loop.

"Stronger" is a relative term. Every time we stopped running I was so relieved at the chance to walk, but after awhile a deep, dull ache would set into all the muscles in my legs and I would NEED to run again to clear it out. And so it went: walk, run, walk, run, walk, run, repeat until you hit an aid station, stuff your face and start over. It was getting pretty damned hot too. The temperatures were in the mid-70's, which is hotter than anything I've gotten to train in this year, and the sun was strong. It wasn't such a problem in the woods where there was shade, but running across those fields it was really beating down.

About half way through the second loop Jay and I came up behind a man who was hunched over, and was tipping over so far to the right that his right ear was on his shoulder, and only the left side of his body seemed to be moving. It was a wonder he wasn't just pivoting around in circles. "Great job," I said as we passed him, and that was when I got a good look at his face. It was my old nemesis, GRANDPA! At the time we thought that he was only doing the 25K, but as it turned out, he was in the 50K. The way the course was set up, you had to pass the finishing area each loop, in order to do a smaller 5-mile loop on the other side. As Jay and I came through the finishing area I tried to spot Mindy, who was supposed to be volunteering. It was crowded, so instead I shouted out to the first person I saw on the other side of the tape, "Hey, if you see a girl on crutches, will you tell her Grandpa's here?! She'll know what I mean." Mindy's Grandpa's biggest fan. The stranger at the finish line looked confused, but I figured it was a simple enough instruction: "crutches", "grandpa". He'd find her, and she'd know what I meant.

I finished my second marathon in just over a month in 5:04, hit the lap button, and kept running. Amazingly, that isn't even my slowest marathon of my life. In an exchange of no more than two sentences, Jay and I decided to run more for the last 5 miles. "Let's get this over with," I said.
"Hell yeah," he breathed, and we kept running. I was surprised at one point to look down and see that we were doing about 9:20 miles. It may have only lasted a few seconds, but I was surprised that my body could still go that fast. To be honest, I was tired and sore and ready to get off my feet, but I wasn't feeling as bad as I thought I would be. A few miles back we'd run into a guy (walking backwards up a hill, I know how that feels!) who had said that the loop was half a mile short, meaning we would have to run one fewer mile. When it turned out that he was wrong, I was suprised that I didn't really mind. Maybe it was because Jay was still there. "I don't need to stop at the last aid station," I said. It was less than a mile from the finish.
"I'm going to stop and have one last drink," Jay said. "You can go on without me if you want."
"Hell no! I've been with you for this long, I'm not going to run ahead now to save a measly minute." So we stopped and had one more cup of Gatorade, ate one more handful of candy, and trotted on towards the finish line.

"Are you particular about your finishing photo?" I asked. "Because I'll be more than happy to hang back 10 seconds so you can get a good shot."
"I didn't even look at it last year," he said. "Did YOU really want to be alone in that photo?"
I hadn't run this race alone, why would I want to be alone in the photo? "Jay, I would be honored to cross the finish line with you, and I would be just as honored to cross right behind you." We joked about how preposterous it would be if we had a final sprint in the finishing chute, and how badass it would be if I pushed him, the army guy, out of the way for the win. As the finish line came into view I said, "Jay, it has been a pleasure and an honor. Thank you so much for taking me through this." We didn't join hands, we didn't stick our arms in the air, we didn't yell, or scream, or whoop, we just crossed the finish line together in 6:03:30. There wasn't even a photographer there.
As they tore the tabs off the bottom of our numbers, the volunteers asked, "Do you guys care who comes in first?" We both agreed that it made no difference in the world.

I'm so proud that we managed to actually pick it up at the end!

We began to walk away, when Jay remembered the finisher's prize for the race: a silver cowbell! "Guess what, I got a fever..." Jay said to the volunteer who stared at him blankly. "And the only prescription is..." his face fell. "Do you know what I'm talking about?" She didn't. "More cowbell!" Jay said, a little defeted that she didn't get the reference.

All I wanted to do was sit down and never get up again, but there was a free barbecue, and I decided it would be nice to have a veggie burger when I went to my final resting place, so I got in line behind Jay for the food. I saw Steven there, who had just finished the 50 mile race, and looked like he hadn't totally recovered his faculties. He was sunburned, shoeless, shoving macaroni salad in his face as fast as he could, and full sentences were a challenge. It was Jay who spotted Mindy first. "I see a girl over there on crutches, but she's not blond." Why do I always think Mindy's blond? While I was catching up with Mindy at the condiment table, Jay stole away and I never saw him again. I wished I could have thanked him one more time.

Mindy had to see about her volunteering responsibilities, and I had to see about my veggie burger, so I wandered over to a bale of hay and sat down to watch the crowd. These people didn't look like they'd just run 30-50 miles. After a marathon people look like a bunch of grouchy zombies, but these people were smiling and hugging and laughing. Why, right over there was a chick in an Ironman jersey who looked as fresh as a daisy. It seemed like an odd fashion choice for a trail run, but hell, if you can do an ironman and run something like this looking as fresh as that, you can wear whatever the hell you want. I started to feel like I would never hack it in the ultraendurance world. I'd seen so many Mdot tattoos on the calves of people passing me today. The chick in the ironman jersey was on the move, coming towards me. Then she waved... at me! Oh my god, it was Nitsirk and Dr. Nick, I felt like such an idiot! We talked a bit about running and ironman and how I'm NEVER doing Lake Placid. I mentioned that I might do Coer d'Alene next year, because it looked pretty flat.
"Flat?! That one's as hilly as Placid, if not more!" said Dr. Nick. But... but... I'd looked at the course comparisons online. Coer d'Alene looks flat-ish. Go here, and tell me what you see.

"Well, we should get going, and you should take a shower," Nitsirk said. "You're kind of... salty..."
I set off on the long walk back towards my car and they went to get their bikes. When they came up behind me, Dr. Nick said, "You're walking kinda' bow-legged..."
"Yeah, I've got some personal chafing issues," I admitted. Think of the worst place to possibly chafe, and I was cut up pretty bad there.
Is it your nipples? Noooo. Not even close.
Is it your... inner thighs? Noooo. But you're getting warmer.
Is it... between your butt cheeks? Nooooo. But you're getting even warmer.
Gasp! Is it your... you know, your.... Yes. I had worn a hole in my "no-no place" and I was going to walk like I'd just gotten off a horse, no matter who could see me. It had been bugging me the whole second loop.
"Oh my god, be careful in the shower!" was Nitsirk's parting advice.
Peeling off my clothes was interesting. My feet looked like hell. I had dark rings of dirt around my ankles, my chest was all chafed up, I had salt all over me, and once again, for the second week in a row, I had bled into my shorts (this time from the chafing). When you're chafed, a shower can be torture as the water washes all the sweat from your skin into the wound. When I went to wash my no-no place, I almost screamed out loud. When I was dressed (and wearing clean underwear) I waddled out to meet Mindy.

Mindy was crutching around the finishing area handing out gold cowbells, pint glasses, and gators to the 50 mile finishers, and I stuck around for a couple of hours to help her out. Really, after seeing her hobbling around trying to unload glasses and cowbells out of boxes while on crutches, you couldn't help but help her. The only shirt I had with me was a dark, long-sleeved t-shirt that definitely wasn't going to cut it in this heat, so I swallowed my pride and helped hand out cowbells in nothing but jeans and a sports bra. I felt naked as the day I was born, but it beat the hell out of walking all the way back to my car to get a short sleeved t-shirt. God, I wish I had a 6-pack!

People crossed the finish line looking alright or looking like hell, but everyone said please and thank you. No one yelled at the volunteers. I wasn't the only one who'd come back from my shower to help out, either. "Everyone's just so nice!" Mindy gushed over and over. I really love the trail crowd. Everyone helps everyone else, even if it means losing a couple of seconds. They're cheap races in beautiful places, and everyone is just so supportive and kind. It makes me wonder why people would do triathlons at all, where the athletes think it's their prerogative to yell at the aid station volunteers whenever they want, and it's standard procedure to push the cheating envelope for a 2-second advantage. God forbid it take you an extra second to get a bottle.

It was getting late, but Grandpa was still on the course. I wanted to see him finish, but there was talk of a cut-off time. The course cut-off was at 7:00 pm, 11 hours after the 50K start. Grandpa finished his first loop when I was already finished (I think). I wanted him to finish so badly. I couldn't say that I beat him if he never finished. There were two 50K guys out still there, both in their 70's. Both were experienced runners that had hundreds of marathons between them, but both were s l o w. At this point, there were about 8 1/2 hours on the clock. As I tried to imagine what it would be like to run 31 miles in 11 hours, I couldn't. Can you imagine the mental toughness it would take to drag your old ass 30 miles at a 20-minute mile? Especially with the horrible posture that Grandpa had. Can you imagine how heartbreaking it would be if someone came up on a 4x4 after 25 miles and told you you had to quit? My heart went out to Grandpa. I couldn't stick around to see him finish but, God I hope he did. I came home with a new respect for Grandpa. Grandpa is the baddest assest mofo of them all. I still beat him though.

By the time I had a couple of veggie burgers in me, I felt a lot better. I was having no problems moving around, and I was able to stand up and sit down with ease. Stairs weren't a problem. When I'd finished I'd felt like I could have gone one more mile... and then one more... and then one more... After Boston last month I felt like I'd been beat up for 2 days afterwards. Today I don't feel half as bad as I did after the marathon, despite the extra 5 miles and endless hills. I guess what they say about the pounding on the road and the virtues of the walk/run really is true. Watching all those people finish the 50 miler really made me feel like there was so much farther to go, so much more left to do. Maine Runner (who's training for Western States) had me practically drooling with jealousy as he talked about his training and fitness. Could I have run one more loop? One of the purposes of this race was to figure out if I wanted to attempt my first 50-mile race in November. Before I even left Maine, I had my answer.

Stay tuned for this weekend's surprise...

... it'll be a 5h0cKer!