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.

Related Posts:
A trip down Memory Lane
...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!

How to wear the skin off your butt in 2 days

I woke up at 5:15 in the morning still on the couch where I'd fallen asleep watching CSI the night before (I am NOT happy with the way that CSI is deciding to commit suicide this season, by the way). My lower back was killing me and I had that generalized pain and fatigue all over that usually means that I worked hard enough the day before to take the day off (this happens very, very seldomly). But I wasn't going to take the day off today, I had a century to ride. I tried to put the thoughts of what the hell am I thinking out of my head, but Iron Matron's words, "I'm actually scared for you. If I actually had any kind of faith I'd pray for you!" kept coming back to me. What if this really is the time that I go too far? I wondered. What if I really can't finish this time? What if this is the time I finally do some real damage? I worried. In situations like this normally I say, "Fuck you, just WATCH me!" but come on, I'm not stupid. I know this is kind of crazy. But no, I missed races last year and never felt so rotten in my life. I was going to finish what I'd started. And if it didn't kill me, it would only make me stronger.

I had my usual breakfast of champions, plus a cupcake for good measure and went back out to the car. At least I didn't have to unpack my car last night or re-pack the car this morning. And no, I never DID wipe the blood off my saddle. Yep, I'm a total slob. Get over it, I have.

This ride had cost me $20, compared to the $225 that the half ironman the day before had cost me, and pulling into the parking lot there was already a marked difference in attitude. People were smiling and looked relaxed. Nobody was stealing crosswise glances at other people's bikes, and there were all kinds of bikes represented: nice bikes, shitty bikes, tri bikes, road bikes, hybrids, bikes with fenders and paniers (spelling?), even a single speed or two. There were fat people, old people, oodles of women, people with long hair, people with a lot of body hair, all things you wouldn't see at a competitive triathlon. I busted out my camelbak without so much as a look around to see who might be watching me and went to registration where they did not ask for a photo ID, they did not write anything on my body that I wouldn't be able to get off for a week, and they informed me that they were very sorry, but they were out of cue sheets. It was so laid back that the ride started while I was still in line for the portapotties, but it didn't really matter, hardly anyone left right away anyway.



I rode for a few miles in a group with an older couple, each of whom had Mdot tattoos on their ankles, but they didn't seem too interested in talking about their accomplishments and they were going pretty slow anyway, so I bridged up to a different group. Finally I found myself in a paceline that was going a comfortable pace and stuck around. I saw one chick in the group, and decided that if she could stay with this group, then I could too. And in the same pack I kept hearing this other woman's voice, but I would look around and couldn't see any chicks. Finally, after several miles I realized that the guy in the black and white race kit, bandana tied around his head under the helmet, and enormous reach out to the handlebars that made him look like he was throwing his bike in a final sprint – the guy who kept riding up and down the pace line on the outside and couldn't seem to pick a spot in the pack – I realized that he was a she. She was one of those middle-aged butch women who thinks she's an alpha male (if you hang out a lot with lesbians, you know the type), and kept alternating between either giving hollow encouragement that wasn't really necessary or narrating what was happening in the pack (also not necessary). Her kit was by some brand called Pro Bike Kit, which to me kind of seemed redundant like wearing a running singlet that said "Running Singlet" on the back, or a swimsuit that said "For Swimming" on the butt or something.

At one point I found myself near the front of the pack and being waved ahead. Now, I usually ride with all guys, and one of two things always happens when I take a pull: A) people realize that I'm not much to draft off of and send someone bigger and faster to the front, or B) I pull ahead feeling strong and look back after a few hundred yards to realize that no one followed me. Who wants to let a girl pull? So when I got waved to the front of this pack I figured that this was probably where I would either drop the group and move up to another pack, or ware myself out all alone off the front and then have to drop back in shame. To my surprise, when we reached a hill, people started pulling around me right away. I had pulled the group, and the group had stayed with me! Crazy. The alpha male rode up next to me, "Nice pull, kiddo," she said.
"Thanks," I said. "People don't usually let me pull since I don't give much of a draft."
"It's not about drafting, it's about being part of the group and sharing the work," she explained. What? I know that. I'm not saying I don't like to pull, I'm saying they don't let me pull. Now I looked like an asshole.

The alpha male was starting to annoy me, and it was pretty clear that she didn't think much of me either, since she would talk to everyone in the group but me. Maybe I hadn't come off as enough of a roadie, I don't know. Maybe I just looked like a "dumb kid" who didn't know what she was doing. Anyway, as I said, the alpha male was moving up and down the line on the left side. Every time she moved into the pace line she would let all this daylight in, and the entire line behind her would start to lose the front half of the pack. It was really annoying me, so I moved up. She was already out there to the left of the pack, so I just pulled up on the right and tried to close the gap. But then suddenly the front pack started moving left. I didn't see until the last minute that we were passing another cyclist, so I had to move left too, forcing her out into the road. It all happened in a matter of seconds and then we were back in formation. "Don't box me out, kiddo," she scolded me.
Who the hell are you calling "kiddo"?! I thought. You're the asshole who's riding unpredictably? Shouldn't someone with a kit like yours who portends to be such a great roadie know how to ride in a pace line, you old hag? I may be young, but I'd ridden in packs before, and she was no stronger of a cyclist than I was. "Sorry, I didn't see him coming," I said, lamely. And how dare you call me "kiddo"! I added to myself. I call myself kiddo in my head when I'm trying to talk myself through something difficult. No one else is allowed to call me kiddo. I resolved to stay near the front of the pack till the first aid station, whatever it took.

I was actually feeling pretty good. The terrain was rolling, but standing up and powering up the hills felt good on my lower back and gave my butt a break. Yeah, I felt way tired, but it wasn't really getting any worse as the ride went on. At one point we climbed a longer hill and I managed to get to the top with the front of the group. "Good job," said the real lady in the group. "That was a long hill." I wished that the Alpha Male could have heard her say that, but she had fallen back on the climb.

When we hit the first aid station around mile 50, everyone laid down their bikes and it looked like they were going to be here for awhile. I filled up my camelbak, ate some pretzels and a banana and sat down on a rock. My feet felt sore now that I was off the bike, and elevating them wasn't helping much. The alpha male and the real lady were standing in the porta-pottie line 15 people deep. I weighed the benefits of a pack against the risks of being around the alpha male when I started to get cranky and decided that it was best to move on by myself.

Shortly before leaving the aid station I met Mike and wound up riding with him for awhile. When he saw the number on still stuck on my top tube and I saw the aero bars on his bike, we started talking triathlon. At one point he said, "You know, I'm just happy I'm holding an average of 17.4 mph. That's good, for me." The way he emphasized it, it was like it was meant to be. Mike was a kindred spirit as far as endurance goals go. "I hold the record for the Hyannis sprint distance swim. I swam 200 yards in 24 minutes!" he told me. "I have 4 goals for every race: 1) not to be the last person out of the swim, 2) not to come in dead last in my age group, 3) not to hold on to anything in the swim (like kayaks), and 4) have fun doing the best that I can do."

Mike is training for Ironman Lake Placid this year. "You're crazy," I said.
"What makes you say that. You don't even know what I can do. I've done 19 marathons, you know," he said. He wasn't bragging, it wasn't annoying at all.
"I say that because I was up there a couple of weeks ago, and those hills made me cry before I got back to my car. You're a brave man."

We talked about marathons, and triathlons, and ironmans, and ultramarathons, and cycling, and how to make sure that you keep having fun through the whole thing. I was enjoying our conversation so much I almost ran Mike off the side of the road trying to ride next to him. Mike was the only one I was comfortable telling about what I'd done the day before. I was afraid someone else would try to tell me what to do, or moreover what NOT to do, and why what I was doing was wrong. I didn't need to hear that. He was impressed, but didn't once tell me that I was going to get hurt or that I should stop. "Is THIS how you're riding your recovery ride?!" he asked at a stop light after I'd pulled ahead a few times.
"Hells no!" I said. "I'm trying to get 'er done as fast as possible so I can get off this damn bike seat!" My butt was really starting to get pretty tender. Eventually I had to leave Mike behind and ride off on my own. The pain in my ass just wasn't worth the company, so I rode off alone into the wind.

The wind had picked up steadily all day, and coming back we had a pretty fierce headwind. You're never going to believe this, but it didn't bother me. I was all alone, riding into a 15+ mph headwind and just thinking about how beautiful the scenery was. What was wrong with me? After 70 miles I was thinking about how I would have to come back and do this ride AGAIN. I sincerely wasn't cranky. Something must be terribly wrong.

Around mile 75 I found the last aid station, tucked away about 200 yards up an unpaved road. I think we were back in Massachusetts at this point. Mike rode up while I was waiting for the bathroom and we caught up some more. Walking over to my bike he said, "You're walking pretty slowly... are you getting tired?"
"It's the shoes, Mike," I said. "It's just the shoes." I asked if he would be continuing on with me, and he told me he would if he could keep up. We rode together for a little while, but I was still feeling good, and with less than 25 miles to go, I just wanted to get it over with. My butt was getting a bit uncomfortable in all positions except off the seat.

Astoundingly, I was still in a good mood. I couldn't believe it. I was riding alone into a headwind, I was phenomenally fatigued, and still all I could think about was how happy I was to be out here, how beautiful and... What the fuck was that?! In a split second something small and round and fuzzy dashed out from the brush at the side of the road right under my wheel. It happened so fast I didn't have time to even see what it was, only that it was between the size of a baseball and a softball, and fuzzy, and the color that they call pardo in Spanish which means grey-brown. I felt my front wheel rumble, and then my back wheel as I went squarely over it. I froze for a second, gripping my handlebars, staring straight ahead, and not knowing what to do. Whatever it was, I'd probably broken its back or its neck. Whatever it was, it was probably a baby something, and it was probably cute, and it was probably suffering and on its way to dead, and there was nothing I could do about it. I decided to just keep riding. If I saw some adorable baby woodland creature gasping its last breath and fluttering its eyelids for the last time and it was all my fault I would definitely never get to the end of this ride in one piece. Instead I kept riding, and somehow managed to convince myself that it was probably a paper bag (although it didn't crackle), or a balled up sock (although why would a balled up sock run out of a bush?) or something. This is what happens when I'm happy and thinking that all is well in the world: cute, furry things die.

I kept riding, now fueled by the feeling that I'd done something wrong and had to get out of there as fast as possible. I was stiff and sore, but I really didn't feel that weak. I kept reaching down to touch my leg and see if my muscles were bulging like a professional cyclist's (they were still pudgy, damn). In the last 10 miles it started to get really windy and the clouds rolled in. Luckily, I picked up a buddy to trade off pulls with for that last half hour or so. We didn't talk much, but it was one of those experiences where you feel like you've had a conversation from all the waving, signaling, pointing, passing and pulling you've done. It wasn't till I hit 100 miles on my Garmin and said, "That's it, it's time for me to quit," that we actually exchanged a full sentence. It was then that I found out that his name was Taz (Taz, really, no shit, that goes almos TOO well with his handlebar mustache), and that he was only finishing up the metric century.
"What's your time?" he asked. It was somewhere in the high 5:30's or low 5:40's. "Wow, that's fast. That's really fast." I was flattered and it gave me the energy to go the last 2 miles to the finish without getting cranky about having to go the extra distance. It's a good thing Taz was there too, or I would have ridden the wrong way up a freeway exit ramp. Only I could get lost on a rout that was so well arrowed.

After 50 miles is when I was by myself.

Total distance: 102.24 miles
Total time: 5:45:45
Average speed: 17.74 mph
Total elevation gain/loss: Dunno.
I even felt like I could have gone harder, which was encouraging.

At the finish I chatted with a few people while waiting for Mike to come in. One guy bragged about having ridden 50 miles the day before and I congratulated him. I was too tired to find a tactful way to brag about what I'd done the day before and make him feel like less of a man. Another guy was standing alone, staring transfixed at the people putting their sweaty hands into the bowls of raisins and M&Ms. "It's like they're the only ones here, like no one else is going to have to eat those," he said, disgusted. I wanted to tell him to lighten up, instead I made some lame joke about replenishing electrolytes by eating sweat. He didn't think it was very funny. Admittedly, it wasn't, and I was kind of revolted when I saw Mike eating from the bowls later.

After about 10 minutes Mike rolled in. "You made it!" I said.
"Was there ever a doubt?" he asked.
"I'm glad to see you," I said. We wished each other luck on our respective seasons and I went back to pack up the car. Imagine my surprise when the next day he'd left a message of support on my AIDS LifeCycle page!

Driving back I managed to miss every single turn back to the highway. Stopped at a red light a pack of cyclists rode by. I was immensely satisfied to see that it was the pack led by the Alpha Male, just now reaching 100 miles. Who were you calling kiddo, you pokey old hag? I thought, and drove home to eat some Thai food.

In other news: I can't believe it, some of the pictures from the Hairy Man came out pretty well!

A very chilly Claire in her brand new wetsuit.
Still look like a douche in all my bike pictures. If you look closely you can see I'm taking my shoes off. They couldn't get an action shot, or wait till my camera-side leg was STRAIGHT? Ugh! This makes me look fat!
A Claire who is VERY happy and relieved to be finishing.

Fucking AWESOME!

I'm working on my report from the century on Sunday, but I just had to share this. Walking to the train this morning suddenly I heard people yelling and noise makers blaring. Then, off of church street came a group of about 100 high school students on bicycles and rollerblades. They were dressed up in cow costumes, Mexican sombreros, fabulous pimp outfits, Marti Gras beads, and just the brightest ensembles you ever did see and screaming their heads off. They all pulled into the rotary at the center of town (which is only about 30 feet in diameter) and did about 10 laps around it, screaming and hooting and howling and stopping traffic.

It must have been Senior Ditch Day.

Whatever it was, every single person on that train platform, and each driver forced to halt in the middle of that rotary was grinning and laughing and calling friends. I wish I'd had my cell phone to get a picture or video. I miss being in school.

Ah youth, I'm getting old.