Reflections on Atacama

I’ve been back for almost a week.  The wounds are healing, the memories coalescing.  (The scabs itching). I’ve been taking long walks in the woods with the dogs and have ridden the bikes a few times.  No running yet.  I’ve been feeding my face as fast as my hands can grab ahold of food bits and yet still feel hungry (and I’m still about a kilogram shy of my pre race weight).  And I’ve had some time to sit back and reflect on the week of the 2022 Atacama Crossing…

And what a week it was.

I suppose I should start with the goals I set for myself when I first set off to run one of these crazy desert multi-day ultramarathon things almost 3 years ago:

1. Have fun
2. Be thankful
3. Don’t get hurt

Well, as Meatloaf put into song in the seventies,”two out of three ain’t bad.”

I had fun in the Atacama.  I enjoyed the tent city that disappeared every morning, popping up in a different spot in the afternoon, greeting old friends and making new ones, bonding over the shared experience of the day’s travails.  I loved being out in the desert, the shifting landscape anchored by the volcanoes on the horizon.  I took joy from the physicality of movement, as my legs traversed the sands.  Granted, much of the racing was type 2 fun, maybe even type 3, but fun it was.  Out on the course, and rehashing it later around the fire.

I am thankful for the health that allows me to run, and I give thanks daily for the doctors and nurses who contributed to keeping me here and to all healthcare workers out there in these challenging times.  And I am thankful to have the resources to travel to such a distant, beautiful place and participate in such a logistically complicated endeavor.  I am thankful for my friends and family for their generosity, support and affection.  And, most of all, I am thankful for my beautiful and loving wife, Nancy, without whom I would not be among the living.  She keeps me grounded while still supporting me in my crazy dreams.

But I did get hurt.  More hurt than the expected muscles aches or blisters.  And, I confess, more hurt than I let on during in my race-day blogging, because I didn’t want to worry Nancy unduly (as we did not have communication during the race outside of the blog).  I fell down.

When I go to my cancer check ups, one of the questions they ask is “have you fallen?,” and I usually respond, “no, I was pushed.”  Because I fall all the the time, out running in the woods, on skis, or sometimes even off my bike if I can’t get unclipped fast enough.  But usually, beyond a scrape or two, I don’t get hurt.  (Although, I guess, the day before the Duathlon World Championships in 2017 I broke my hand in 2 places when I caught my tire in a grate and flipped my bike).  And I wasn’t the only competitor to fall in the Atacama.  Rob (Bilbo) scraped his leg when he fell during the long march.

I fell 3 times on Stage 2.  Twice in the canyon and once crossing the open desert coming into camp.  I scraped both knees.  I was a little frustrated at the time I lost negotiating the water crossings.  I was thankful for Jack and Malcolm who helped me up off the ground.  But I didn’t feel I was hurt, or injured.

Andrew, a friend of ours, tells the story of his rugby days.  If he was left on the ground in a match his coach would come out and shake him and ask, “are ye hurt or are ye injured?”  If he answered “hurt,” his coach would give him a swig of whisky from a flask and leave him in the game.  “Injured,” well, sidelines.

On Stage 3, I fell twice in the salt flats (thank you Jack, again, for picking me up).  As I mentioned before, “frozen broccoli” doesn’t quite describe just how sharp the sand/salt encrustations are in the salt flats.  I had multiple wounds to both knees, my left shin and both hands.  I was hurt.  Fortunately, I was able to get my hands out in time to keep my face from going into the stalagmites.  (Today, 2 weeks later, the sorest muscles I have are my triceps, from the sudden eccentric loading of my arms trying to protect my head during my falls)

I managed to pick my way through the next section of salt flats, slowly and carefully, with a lot of walking, and was rewarded with a section of runnable sand, but then we went into several kilometers of sand intermingled with jagged pieces of slate.  I fell again.  This time my hands got caught in the rock and I dislocated my finger.  Also, for the first time, my head went all the way down and struck rock.  I didn’t black out, the pain and deformity of my finger was full front in my consciousness.  But I was really hurt.

I should have stopped at the last checkpoint and, at the very least, let Dr. Jay tape my hand, but there was a runner in sight ahead, and I pushed through.  And I tripped and fell again, twice.  My reflexes were slow (or protecting my injured hand).  I hit my head both times.  Blood started leaking out of my hat and down into my left eye.  Now I was injured.  And in trouble.  And alone.  And about half way between the last checkpoint and camp.

It’s hard to say if I suffered a head injury, given I was out there by myself, the only witness being my own foggy recollection.  But the fact that I hit my head 3 times in a succession would suggest high risk of one.  I managed to get up the sand dune that blocked my way, re-dislocating my finger in the process, and drag myself into camp.

There, Drs. Andy and Arav cleaned and dressed my wounds and splinted my injured finger.  Andy irrigated and sutured the wound above my left eye.  (Kudos to Dr. Andy, the stitches have since come out and there is hardly a scar to be seen, not bad for operating in a tent, in a sandstorm).

At that point, lying there in the medical tent, asking myself if making The Crossing was worth risking and sustaining injury, I was seriously considering pulling myself out of the race.  I discussed my concerns with the medical team, and let them know that I would abide by their decision whether or not I was safe to continue the race.  As it turned out, there was a weather-related rest the next day, and by Thursday, after 24+ hours of observation, the medical team felt I was safe to continue.

By Thursday, I had come to grips with the fact that running at speed over broken terrain is not a skill I possess.  When we came to the salt flats on Thursday, I had to pull up, lean back (so that the weight of my pack wasn’t pushing me forward), and consciously place my feet in a safe spot on each footfall.  Right foot.  Left foot.  Right foot.  Left foot.  Repeat.  It was a slow process, but I made it through the final 3 days without a fall.

I also came to the realization that I had chosen the wrong shoes.  As I previously noted, I went with the Hoka Tecton X trail shoe.  I have come to depend on the extra pop I get from the carbon plates in the sole of the Carbon X and the Tecton X, as well as what I feel is a faster recovery after a long run.  Unfortunately, the carbon plate shoe is probably a bit too reactive for the uneven terrain in the Atacama.  I think having the carbon plate rocking you forward makes it harder to stay balanced and decreases your chance of recovery if you happen to catch a toe.

Aside from the shoes, I was pretty happy with my gear choices for the Atacama.  I did have a couple of failures, though.  The Shoe Goo I used to attach the velcro for my gaiters failed spectacularly on the 2nd day, in the canyons, so I ran most of the race using my back-up Dirty Girl gaiters.  (I should note that the Shoe Goo and velcro made it through the Namib Race intact, so I’m guessing that the failure was due to the mechanical stressors of the Atacama surfaces). And, as mentioned, my Neoair Xlite pad sprung a leak on the last night (it is possible that I was less meticulous than usual about choosing and clearing my tentsite).

I made it through the week without any gastrointestinal problems (unless you consider being very hungry a GI problem) on my diet of Skratch powders, Picky Bars and Expedition Foods freeze dried.  I started out with 4 kilograms of food (nearly 20000 calories) and could have easily eaten another 4 kg, had I been willing to carry an 11 kg pack.

As far as my training goes, I believe that I was adequately prepared for the race.  Could I have been better prepared for the terrain, perhaps, but I would have had to move to San Pedro and train in the salt flats.  Likewise, I could have been better prepared for the altitude, but I would have had to move houses to Colorado or sleep in a bag.  My legs (and lungs) held up for the whole week, and I was happy with that.

I have been thinking about (okay, obsessing about) running The Atacama Crossing since 2109, and, now that it has come to pass, I will say that the race did not disappoint.  It was an epic week.  Every day presented new challenges, new vistas, new hardships, and new joy.  I am glad to get this out of my head, but, in a way, I am sad to have it behind me.  I feel I put everything I had into The Crossing, and I am quite happy with 4th place.  Would I have liked another result like the Namib Race?  Sure.  But it wasn’t going to happen.  Rob, Mori Mori, and Matt were running too damn fast. Kudos to them.  It was a fast race.  I’m pretty sure, that, if you could calculate it out on a per kilometer basis, that the 2022 Atacama Crossing was one of the fastest ever.  I’m proud to have been a part of it.  It’s hard to finish just off the podium, but, fortunately, I have a great deal of practice, having finished just off the podium (age-group) in the 2017 (racing with a broken hand), 2018 and 2019 ITU World Duathlon Championships.

My heartfelt congratulations and respect go out to all the competitors.  I wish Mori Mori and Matt and all the Grandslammers the best of times and good luck in Antarctica.

So I guess the question is. What’s Next?  And for me, the easy answer is some down time and then, hopefully, winter, and then ski season.  Have I signed up for another multi-day ultramarathon?  No.  I’m going to let things settle for a month or two before I come up with the next big thing.

The Final Stage

Still haven’t made it home yet.   48 hours of travel and counting.  Whereas a sandstorm interrupted the Atacama Crossing, an unusual tornado in Phoenix caused our flight to divert to Las Vegas literally blowing any chance at making my connection home.

The final stage was run on Saturday, in the late morning, and shortened somewhat in deference to the athletes who had gotten to camp in the dark on Friday night.  The final runner got in at about 2am and, after the drumming, the celebration, and an impromptu musical jam session with the camp team, I spent a restless night on a slowly leaking Neoair XLite mini pad.  There are already a limited number of ways that a six foot tall guy can get comfortable on a four foot long pad (<1, in fact), but having to reinflate it every hour or two made things even worse.  Still, I’m thankful that the pad waited until the final night to fail.  (Gear guy note:  this is why a lot of racers opt for a closed cell foam pad as opposed to the inflatable variety)

Saturday morning I had the luxury of sleeping in, or at least staying in my increasingly foul smelling sleeping bag until it was warm out.  I ate my remaining few calories of freeze dried food and insinuated myself into my sweat crusted running kit that was, at this point, only a few 

molecules short of attaining status as an independent life form.  

Sam gave the final briefing and countdown, and we stampeded off down a dry creek bed that led to a dirt track and then onto the road that we had come down the day before (some of us further than others).  One runner, in what seemed to be an attempt to move up in the overall standings from 30th to 29th (or thereabouts), took off in a hurry and soon gapped the field by 100 meters.

Bilbo (Rob) did not appear to be feeling overly threatened and loped along easily with a pack of 8-9 runners while having a conversation with Yago about Yago’s successes as an obstacle run racer.  Matt and Malcolm chatted about footwear options for the Antarctic race.  Jack and Mark kept up a running banter.  And I just barely hung on to the back of the group which, despite the convivial atmosphere, was still moving along at an 8 minute mile pace.

The lumpy, salt hardened road led into a 2-3 kilometer climb, culminating in a steep pitch that left most of us quieted (except for breathing) and walking.  After the crest, we found ourselves back on the plateau with several kilometers of flat and gradual descent winding through red hills offset by white salt flows, blackish dunes and azure sky.  The pack overtook the lone leader.  And, just about the time I caught my breath, the finish banner appeared to our left under a globular rock and salt formation and next to a rusted and graffiti decorated shell of a bus.  There was one last bit of cobbled salt flat to pick my way over, and I dropped back a few paces to make sure that I had clear view of my footing.  But, just before the line, the group slowed and yelled at me to catch up.

We linked arms over shoulders and crossed the line all together in a line.

Nancy was there on the other side of the banner with my Atacama medal.  (Nancy had been in San Pedro de Atacama all week at the Explora Lodge, hiking and biking and sightseeing, but, because of the logistical issues surrounding the sandstorm, had been unable to actually see any of the race).  The joy of seeing her and the relief of completing the crossing washed over me in a crashing wave, and I sobbed on her shoulder for a good minute before I could look up and accept the jubilation of my fellow competitors (and offer them congratulations in return).

There was pizza and beer on a table, as well as a tour of the “magic bus,” the obligatory finish banner pictures and then a bus ride back to San Pedro.  For a shower.

The Long March (Redux)

Somewhere out in the sand on Friday evening, I tried to put out a post about the long march, but apparently it was lost in the aether somewhere.  I know the feeling.  Now that the race is a done deal, the need to describe the experience has lost its urgency, but for the sake of my personal documentation and recollection I am going to try again to get this out while it is still in my head (even if somewhat blunted and romanticized by several pisco sours, a night in a real bed and many hours of air travel (and I’m not home yet).

The long march started from our camp about 5km from Los Ojos del Salar (the eyes of the salt plain), the 2 lagoons we ran around on Thursday.  The long march of the Atacama Crossing usually starts at Los Ojos and is 73km long, but because of the change of camp location, our march was shortened to 68km, the first 14km of which were the reverse of our crossing of the salt flats from Thursday.

I managed to get my pants on correctly, get buckled into my much lighter pack (now containing only the essential gear and one dinner and one breakfast), get my bottles full, and get warmed up and on the line before the 8 am start.  

Rob (Bilbo) was a little late for the start, so we got to watch him lope by the field as we pounded through the dusty field on our way to the salt marshes.  It is a joy to watch him run.  A short lived joy as he disappeared into the swamp with Matt, Mori Mori, Jack and Malcom on his heels.  The flamingos were not to be seen as we made sure our feet were thoroughly soaked to begin the day.  In my continued effort to avoid any new injuries, I quickly lost sight of the lead pack as I moved carefully from swamp, to sludge, to salt flat.  Having 110+ racers move through the course the day before had left a bit of a trail, so that, and some familiarity with the terrain, led to a faster crossing.

We came to checkpoint 2 on the other side of our morning’s dose of salt flats and then ran east, and then north, and then west (more or less) on a series of ever smaller and dustier roads.   Malcolm and Jack came gradually back into view around checkpoint 3 as we left the roads and headed mostly north into open desert.  The surface was mostly gravelled sand as we climbed and descended rolling terrain toward a razor sharp ridge on the horizon.  We hit several patches of salt encrustations as we climbed up to checkpoint 4 where Mary was waiting for us with a cold can of coke.  Boom!  It was about noon, we were somewhere near the halfway point and the chill had definitely gone off the day.  Nothing like an icy jolt of sugar and caffeine to get you going.

As we dropped down into the ravine on the backside of the checkpoint we saw Matt climbing out and heading for the ridge line that now loomed above us.   The trail paralleled the ridge through sand and salt for awhile before coming to the base of a steep sand slope with nothing above it but blue sky.  Matt was about halfway up when I began my slow trudge skywards.  I was able to traverse to my left a little to find a firm ramp of sand to take me to the top.

On the other side we were greeted by a white landscape of encrusted rocks and cobbled salt that stretched out for a kilometer or so before the ridge dropped off again.  Javier, the course director, had thoughtfully found a small notch where we could exit without falling to our deaths, although it did entail scrambling down a steep rocky face to reach the relative safety of a sand dune.   

Checkpoint 5 was nestled at the bottom of the dune, and Matt had stopped to catch some shade and some extra fluids.  There wasn’t much wind down there and, for the first time in the week, we were out in the heat of the afternoon with the mad dogs and the Englishmen.

For the next 15km or so we meandered upstream through the Valley of the Moon on a dry riverbed with comfortable gravel footing.  At checkpoint 7 we left the river and climbed steeply  out of the valley on a road so rimed with salt it looked like ice.  The road led up into a surreal landscape of red rock, glacial salt flows and black sand.  As we crested and turned east the purple specter of Licancabur again greeted us.  It was a harsh climb, but I kept shuffling upward, slightly buoyed by the realization that I was coming to the last few kilometers of the day.

Finally, after a few false flats, the road crested and I headed down into the valley.  I had my earbuds in and some Pitnull bouncing around in my head, as I pounded out the last few kilometers, and, with characteristic tunnel vision, ran right on by the camp, and the finish line for the stage.

Lucky for me, the volunteers manning the finish line saw me go by and, when yelling and screaming didn’t get my attention, hopped in a truck and got me turned around before I ran all the way into San Pedro.

Here in San Pedro de Atacama 

After several flights (including the redeye from Miami to Santiago) and a one hour drive from Calama, I made it to San Pedro de Atacama.  I can’t complain (but sometimes I still do) about the travel, since many of the competitors has much harsher travel routes.  Mabasa had to cross the equator twice on his way here from Namibia!

San Pedro has changed very little since I was here last 7 years ago.  (Nancy and I were on the medical team for the 2015 race).  It is still a charming little adobe oasis on the edge of the desert, guarded by purple ice capped volcanoes.  Hawkers sell anything from fruit juice to llama wool hats to ponchos in the shade of the church of San Pedro while buskers play “Stairway to Heaven” on traditional Pan flutes.  Tourists and trekkers wander the dirt road Main Street (Caracolas) in search of souvenirs, cervesa, ice cream or a tour guide.

As you know, I don’t lay any claim as a travel writer, but I will say the best ice cream is at Babalu’s on the corner of Tocopilla and Caracolas, and that you should watch your step, because the street dogs outnumber the street cleaners ten to one.

I woke up to the sound of fighting dogs slightly before sunrise.  Turns out it’s trash day.  I put on my running gear and went for a little jog as the sun came up just to check out how the legs felt and to get an idea how cold it is here in the mornings (at 8000 ft asl).  The legs are feeling pretty good!  And, yes, it’s pretty cold! (35 degrees F). But it felt immediately warmer the second the sun came up.  I think it’s doable if I don’t freeze taking care of the morning essentials (dressing, eating and visiting the latrine) in the predawn chill.  I managed to run out of town, past the high end lodges to the junk yard where, not too surprisingly, my run was interrupted by the junk yard dogs.  Fortunately, the dogs here are much more easily cowed than the sheep dogs of Georgia, so no blood was shed and I was able to make it to the San Pedro River.

I spent most of the day repackaging my freeze dried food and hydration/nutrition powders into lighter plastic bags, and I went over my gear checklist one more time.  Tomorrow morning we meet at 10am for our pre-race briefing and check-in.  After that we take a bus up into the hills to Camp 1 and the race starts on Sunday!  I’m going to try to continue blogging during the race if time and energy allow.

I am thankful for all your kind words and thoughts.

One week from now we will be out on the course for Stage 1!

Tuesday morning we have an Uber scheduled to pick us up at 5am (horrified face emoji)!  And sometime around 4pm on Wednesday, if the travel gods are properly appeased, I will make it to San Pedro de Atacama.  (Nancy is going to hang in Santiago for a few days, something about a Zoom meeting, and a wine tasting).

So I guess I’d better get packed.  

We (the racers) have been advised to keep all of our race gear and food in our carry on luggage.  And, having watched racers with lost luggage in previous races scramble to find food and gear (and wind up running with heavy packs and suboptimal equipment and interesting food), I have taken this advice to heart.

It all starts with the mandatory equipment list!  I’ve checked it twice!  And checked off each item as it gets packed.  There are still a few things missing.  But, hopefully, I have a handle on these.  I’m waiting for the glue holding the velcro for my gaiters to my shoes (size 11 Hoka Tecton Xs!), so that I can check the shoes and the gaiters off the list.

It looks like my required gear and food is going to more than fill my carry-on roller bag!  

So how is all of this going to fit into my pack?  And, more importantly, how am I going to carry all this stuff 250km across the desert (two horrified face emojis)?  Fortunately, Cody the dog isn’t going in the pack.  A lot of the stuff is packaging that I hope to eliminate after I get it through Chilean customs.  And many of the items in the roller bag I will be wearing on my person, so I will be carrying them, just not inside the pack!  I had my doubts that I could get everything into my pack for the Namib Race, but after taking the stuff (along with a half kilo of sand) in and out for a week,  I feel comfortable that I can manage for the Atacama Crossing.  The first 2 days are the hardest.  After a couple of days of running the pack gets lighter and the screaming from your legs takes your mind off the weight of the pack on your shoulders.

Anyway.  Back to packing!  I am thankful that after 3 years of planning, training, fretting, obsessing, I am on my way back to the Atacama desert!  Safe travels to all my fellow racers, as well as to the race volunteers, medical team and staff!  See you soon!

Food!!

Less than two weeks to race day and a week before I fly to Chile.  My training is in full taper.  Which is a good thing since, at the moment, the air outside isn’t really fit to breathe.

Yep.  Wildfire season in the west.  Again.  Fortunately, none of the wild lands near us are on fire, but our hearts go out to the folks under evacuation orders to our southwest. So I will have to find some indoor activities, like obsessing about getting my food packed up.

I would love to say that I will be eating gourmet, chef-prepared, rehydrated masterpieces off of shiny titanium dinnerware, but that would not be the case.  I will be scooping freeze-dried curry out of the bag with my spork.  And I will be happy to get it.  The good thing about eating your meals out of bag is that you don’t have to be reminded (too much) that your food looks about the same at either end of your digestive tract.  I can only hope that during the transit period my gut can pull a sufficient number of calories out to keep me going for the week.

Speaking of calories, the mandatory equipment list says that I have to bring a minimum of 14000 calories with me.  Which sounds like a lot of calories, and a lot of food.  Until you do the math.  Most people, depending on their size and metabolism, burn 1500-2000 calories a day just sitting on the couch.  Throw in 4-5 hours of running at 400-500 calories an hour (or 8 hours of walking at 200-300 calories an hour) and it becomes painfully clear that 14000 calories is starvation rations at best.  

I will be bringing Expedition Foods freeze-dried meals.  Mostly because they come in convenient 1000 calorie bags that weigh about 200 grams apiece.  Which makes it easy to count calories and to calculate food density (at 5 calories per gram, Expedition Foods has a better energy to weight ratio than most freeze-dried foods).  And, in my opinion, they taste as good as freeze-dried food gets.  I have trained with this product and my gut seems to process it well (see above).  I particularly like the curries.  I will be bringing 14 one thousand calorie bags.

During the day, while I am out running, I will be getting my calories from a bottle.  Over the years, I have tried nearly every rehydration/sports drink product out there, and, about a decade ago, I settled on Skratch.  Brainchild of Dr. Allen Lim, a sports physiologist formerly with the US Cycling Team, Skratch produces naturally flavored products for endurance athletes.  I have found that my gut can tolerate Skratch products under extreme conditions.  I will be drinking Skratch Hydration Mix and Skratch Superfuel during the run which should be giving me about 200 calories and 480mg of sodium an hour.  Kind of like an IV drip.  And at the end of the run I will reward myself with a 250 calorie bottle of Chocolate Skratch Recovery mix goodness.

To round out what is otherwise a pretty boring looking pile of bags, I am bringing some Picky Bars to snack on.  Picky Bars were developed by a couple of pro athletes locally here in Bend, Oregon.  And they are yummy.  I particularly like the Smooth Caffeinator  (coffee, chocolate and hazelnuts) and the Moroccan Your World (Turmeric, ginger and pistachios) Bars.  And the Mint Condition Bar is pretty good too.  

So that’s about it.  

14000 calories of Expedition Foods

6000 calories of Skratch powders

and a couple thousand calories of picky bars.

Oh yeah, and some Starbucks Via instant coffee.  No calories.  But essential!

Hopefully that’ll be enough to get me through the week.  ‘Cause there won’t be any mini-marts out there!

Taper Time!

Less than 3 weeks to the start of the race!  Transition to TAPER is in full effect!  Trainings a thing of the past.  It's time to talk about the important stuff!  Food!  Gear! Electronics!  Music!

There was a discussion on the RTP Community FB page a while back as to which charger brick to bring to top off racers’ electronics.  My answer was none.  Nada.  I won’t be carrying any excess baggage. I will be leaving my phone back in San Pedro de Atacama.  So don’t plan on calling or texting me!

If my electronics die.  So be it.

I will be wearing a Garmin Solar Instinct GPS watch.  With a little help from the sun, and with bluetooth and pulse monitoring turned off, the battery will make it through the race. If the race doesn’t take longer than 30 hours…

And I have found a cheap, small, 30gm, MP3 player that, on Amazon, claims to have a 72 hour battery life (but, in actuality, has about half that). 

You might think that it is antisocial to run with earbuds in, and you might be right, but in the Namib Race I spent at least 60% of the race alone in the desert, and it was really helpful for me to have some music to drown out, or at least temper, the voices in my head.  (And for another 20% of the race it was just me and Ben out there, and he had tunes on as well!)

And so, I will need a playlist!  So, if you have any suggestions, I am wide open.  (Well, not completely wide open, Tony, Sweet Caroline by Neil Diamond isn’t going to make the list, Ba Dum Bum Bum, ‘cause it just doesn’t have a beat that I can run to)

I have pretty eclectic tastes in music.  And I can run to a wide variety of musical genres, as long as the song has an unrelenting back beat that kind of syncs with 160-180 steps per minute.

Some songs that work for me:

Edge of Seventeen (Stevie Nicks)

I Gotta Feeling (Black Eyed Peas)

Take it Off (Ke$ha)

Party Rock (LMFAO)

Jai Ho (AR Rahman)

Buster Voodoo (Rodrigo y Gabriela)

Lust for Life (Iggy Pop)

Hey Baby (Pitbull)

Dreamer (K’naan)

Halo (Beyonce)

She Loves You (The Beatles)

Closer to Free (Bodeans)

Waka Waka (Shakira)

Anyway.  You might be seeing the trend here (the trend being that there is absolutely no trend!).

Or you could pick songs for the playlist that have titles or lyrics more appropriate for the task at hand:

Train in Vain (The Clash)

Beast of Burden (Rolling Stones)

Run Baby Run (Sheryl Crow)

Running on Empty (Jackson Browne)

Before They Make Me Run (Rolling Stones)

Born to Run (Bruce Springsteen)

Horse With No Name (America)

99 Problems, But Jockitch Ain’t One (Jay-Z—apologies J)

Walk This Way (RunDMC and Aerosmith)

It Keeps You Running (Doobie Brothers)

I’ve Got Sand in my Shoes (The Drifters)

Sunday, Bloody Stump Day (sorry Bono)

There you have it.  As I said, I am wide open to suggestions.  Tell me what you think ought to be on the Atacama Crossing Race Playlist!

One Month!!

Holy cow! Only one month until we toe the line at the 2022 Atacama Crossing!

But, before I let my pre-race anxiety run away with me, I should start by saying how much fun it was following the RTP Roving Race in Lapland!  A whole new lexicon of ultramarathon was introduced: duckboards, sauna, Reindeer Stew!  From the videos, photos and posts I was able to track down, it looked like an awesome race.  Congratulations to Takuya and Sarah for their winning performances across what appeared to be interesting and challenging terrain.  And congratulations to Mori Mori and Anim for giving Takuya and Sarah a run for their money, I hope they aren’t tiring themselves out too much, as both the second place finishers are due in Atacama in a month!

From my standpoint, one month left means that this will be my last week of hard training before I start a good solid 3 week taper.  All season long I look forward to the taper, but when it finally gets here I’m thinking:  Already?  Really?  But, much as part of my brain (the sick, dark bit that enjoys punishing the legs and the rest of the body) is thinking, maybe just one more over-distance block, I know how important a good taper is for a long, multi-day race like the Atacama.  I have to let the legs recuperate and the soft-tissues heal.  

This past week we traveled to the Oregon Coast to Cannon Beach with its iconic Haystack Rock.  In addition to some intensive beach lounging, fabulous seafood and some great company, I managed to enjoy a few hours of sand training.  Every day I managed some miles of slogging in the soft sand and trudging up and down the coastal dunes.  These are not the monstrous dunes of Atacama, but I did manage over 1000 feet of elevation change on a beach run, which takes some doing.

And I got to practice my water crossings in Ecola Creek.  It may not be as rocky or as swift as the river in the slot canyon, but it did give me the feel for running in wet shoes and socks!

I also ran the 6 mile trail through Ecola State park to Seaside, Oregon, trying not to trip over the roots of the old growth trees or faceplant in the muddy sections.

And now we’re back in Central Oregon.  I ran a one hour time trial yesterday for some intensity and took an easier 90 minute trail run today followed by my strength workout.  The legs are feeling good and the training plan seems to be paying off.  

Pretty soon it’ll be time to start getting packed!

The Cancer Thing (part 4)

Ok. This’ll be the last cancer bit.

But I just wanted to get some thoughts out of my head about how the cancer affects me now, eight years later.

I’m sitting here typing on my laptop and the thing at the forefront of my mind is, as it often is, is that my water bottle is nearly empty.  And what is my plan to get more water.  This is because the radiation and the chemo wiped out almost all of my salivary glands.  My mouth is always dry.  Dry as a desert, one might say.  And because of this, I am always thirsty.  

To combat the dry mouth, I have taken to gum chewing.  It’s not pretty, but it keeps my mouth sort of lubricated.

Sam drew amusement from my gum-chewing in the Namib Race.  Or maybe the fact that I was having trouble running and chewing gum at the same time.

In addition to my salivary glands, the cancer treatment killed my taste buds.  So I have had to teach myself how foods (and beverages) taste all over again.  It was kind of like having the mouth of a baby at age 53.  Spices and alcohol burned my mouth.  Complex tastes, like chocolate or wine, tasted like dirt, or vinegar.  Salty broths and creams were comforting.  But over the years, as the new buds grew in, I have tried to bring the tastes of my memories out of my head and back to my mouth.  With varied levels of success.  

More seriously, the lack of saliva, coupled with the radiation damage to nerves and muscles in my throat, makes it difficult for me to swallow.  I cannot eat certain foods, like bread, unless I have a beverage nearby.  Before the cancer, I could snag a Clif Bar out of my jersey pocket and chomp it down in two bites, all while pedaling furiously to hold onto my spot in the peloton.  Now, eating a Clif Bar is a 4-5 minute process.  Even taking fluids while cycling or running can look like I’m water-boarding myself.

I am not the athlete I was before the cancer.  I had a dramatic drop of FTP (functional threshold power—a biking fitness marker that estimates the highest average power, in watts usually, that you can sustain for an hour) and V02 max (another endurance fitness marker measuring maximum oxygen uptake during exercise) after my cancer treatment.  Both of these markers decrease with age, but the huge deconditioning my body underwent during the summer of 2014 crashed my physiological stats.  Additionally, the upper parts of my lungs were damaged by the radiation, so physically, I can’t breathe in the same amount of air that I could before.  All the training in the world is not going to bring my V02 max back.

I have had to come to grips with the fact that I will never have the speed or the power that I once had.  I’m good with it.  But while I have lost much of my natural athletic ability, I feel I have gained something.  I hesitate to call it endurance, because the numbers that measure endurance don’t look good, so I will have to call it tenacity.   I think that watching my body get torn down to its lowest level and then gradually clawing back has taught me that I can push myself harder and longer than I previously thought possible.  

It is this tenacity that I hope will get me through the Atacama Crossing.

The Cancer Thing (part 3)

So if you’ve read my previous blogs for RTP, you will know that in 2014 I came down with this lump in my neck (actually at the base of my tongue on the right side), and this lump turned into an invasive mass, and the invasive mass was eventually diagnosed as NK cell lymphoma.  (The NK stands for natural killer.  You know that you’ve drawn the short straw on cancer diagnosis when your tumor had killer in the name).  

You will also have figured out that, since it is now 2022, I got good treatment for my lymphoma and came out on the right side of the 50/50 odds that were initially presented to me.  As I have said, I am thankful daily for the excellent care I received through the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance (SCCA) and the University of Washington Medical Center (UWMC), as well as for the love and support of my friends and family, especially my wonderful wife Nancy.

I had initially considered running the Atacama Crossing in 2019 to celebrate 5 years of cancer freeness, but it became clear that this sort of undertaking would require months of preparation, and I decided that I didn’t want to jinx myself in the hubris department by announcing an event to celebrate 5 years of being cancer free before the 5 year mark (September 2019) had actually passed.  So I signed up for Atacama 2020.  And we know how that went.  And 2021.  Also nope.  In 2021, however, I came up with a Plan B, and transferred my entry to the Namib Race (postponed to the fall), was able to put my training from 2021 to good use.  But I still have this dream-like picture in my head of running across the shimmering sands of Atacama with Licancabur hovering in the background, and so, in 2022, now more than 8 years after my initial diagnosis and almost 8 years after the conclusion of my treatment, I am grateful for the opportunity to make this dream happen.

On a Tuesday in mid June in 2014, I went into the hospital and had an IV port placed in my right chest and a PEG (percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy) tube place in my stomach.  (I was initially against the PEG tube, as I’ve always had a healthy relationship with food, in that I love to eat it, but I was outvoted by my oncologists, and a month later when my throat swelled shut, it literally saved my life).  I was fitted for my radiation mask.  And I received my first round of chemotherapy.  I had chosen the most aggressive oncologist, Dr. Shustov, and he had chosen the most aggressive treatment plan:  simultaneous chemo and radiation therapy.

Initially I felt pretty good.  I was off work.  I would walk our dog Bailey up Queen Anne Hill to Molly Moo’s ice cream.  I would ride my bike gently around Seattle.  But as the Chemotherapy agents began to kill off my cells and I started getting radiation 5 days a week, my life shrunk dramatically.  On July 4th, Nancy and I rode our bikes up through the Golden Gardens Park to the Ice Cream Shop.  It would be the first time she’d ever had to wait for me on a hill, and the last time I rode my bicycle for 4 months.

Getting radiation involved going to the UWMC and lying down on the treatment table and putting the mask on.  And then having the mask screwed down to the table (so the radiation went to the same exact spot every time).  At first, being bolted to a table while a large machine fired radioactive particles into my head and neck didn’t bother me.  Too much.  It was what I had to do.  But day by day, as the particles did their work, and killed the cancer cells, they also damaged the tissue in my mouth and throat, and swallowing became something I actually had to think about.  And every day I would have about twenty minutes, while effectively restrained in a supine position, to think about whether I would be able to swallow my saliva that day, or whether I was going to choke to death on the table before the tech could get in and undo the bolts.  The last two weeks of radiation, my fear got so bad that I needed medication just to get on the table.  I am thankful for my brothers and my friend Jay, who took turns driving me to the radiation machine.

July passed slowly.  I went from eating food, to ice cream, to milkshakes, to ice cubes, to drooling.  Then I sat on couch and watched the slow drip of enteral formula into my PEG tube.

I watched the Tour de France.  In its entirety.  The guys on my bicycle racing team would swing by after their rides and watch with me.  Todd Herriot, my coach, made wrist bands with my racer name, and the team wore them to the races that summer.  After the Tour was over, we watched World Cup Football (soccer).  Never before, or since, have I watched so many hours of TV sports.

In August I got really sick.  I wound up in the hospital with a fever.  Probably from an infection in the damaged tissue in my throat.  It’s a bad sign in medicine when the number of antibiotics you are being transfused with is higher than your white count (your white count indicates the number of infection fighting cells in your blood, and mine was zero).  Nancy spent a scary night suctioning spit out of my mouth, so I wouldn’t get put on a ventilator.

Because of my time in the hospital with the infection, I had to put off my third round of chemo until my blood counts came back up.  I got a blood transfusion and shots of Neulasta to stimulate my bone marrow to make a few white cells.  The Neulasta stimulated my bone marrow so well, it felt like my bones, especially my pelvis, were going to explode.  But it took my mind off my mouth.  And my counts came back up, and I was able to proceed with the chemotherapy.

For the each round of chemotherapy I would check into the oncology ward for 3 days.  I would usually show up early afternoon, but the process of getting the chemicals ready would take all day, so usually about midnight the nurses would come to start the infusion.  First I would get pretreated with dexamethasone and lorazepam, which would leave me in the confused condition of jacked up and sleepy.  And then they would start the chemo.  Two nurses would come in, one to start the drip and the other to confirm that they were starting the drip on the right patient.  They would both be wearing full hazmat gear: gowns, masks, caps, face shields, thick gloves.  To protect them from exposure to the poisonous stuff they were dripping into my veins.  (And I was happy to see them protected.  I cannot begin to say how thankful I am to the oncology nurses that cared for me, their compassion, humor and dedication truly humbled me.)

I would like to say, as a member of the medical profession, that I understood what I was being given, and how it worked.  But I’d be lying.  I’d read the paper Dr. Shustov was basing my treatment on, I understood the statistical peril of limited numbers, but the chemotherapeutic agents being used were way beyond my 1980s grasp on pharmacology.  It was a leap of faith.

But, in the end, my faith, and the expertise of my oncology team, paid off.  I finished my 4th and last round of chemo in September of 2014 and my follow up scans showed the tumor was gone.

That left me with the long path of recovering from the treatment.  But I think think that will have to be in another post.

Shiny New Shoes!?

As of today, there are 60 days ’til the start of the Atacama Crossing 2022!  So it is probably not the time to be vacillating about which shoe to wear.  But.  Hoka came out with a new shoe in May and I wasn’t able to get my hands on a pair until after I got home from Georgia, when it was practically July.  So.

The Hoka Tecton X (HTX) is one of the first shoes to bring carbon plate technology to the trail running shoe scene.  The HTX actually has 2 carbon plates, set in parallel, (like tectonic plates, get it?) which give it the propulsive spring of the carbon, but allow lateral flexibility of the shoe on unstable terrain.

As you might remember from my previous blogging, I was an early adopter of carbon plate shoes, and I am a devotee to the Hoka Carbon X (now in its 3rd rendition, the X3).   I feel that I benefit from the carbon plate technology with a good lift off during my run and again with faster recovery after a longer or harder run.  As I mentioned, my go-to trail shoe had been the Hoka Speedgoat, but the more I ran with the Xs, the more the Speedgoats got left behind unless I was looking at running a really technical or muddy trail.  When it came to choosing a shoe for the Namib Race last October, I weighed the durability and grippiness of the Speedgoat against the pop and the recovery of the Carbon X, and I wound up going with the X.  And the Carbon X did not let me down.  Well, except for those couple kilometers of mud on the first day, they didn’t let me down.  

                           Hoka Tecton X in the foreground, an older pair of Hoka CarbonX2 in the background

Now that I’ve put some miles on the HTX, I will say that these shoes do not disappoint.  I think that they have almost the same pop as the X while offering more stability over uneven terrain, especially running sidehill.  They are almost as light as the X (Hoka reports 269g for a size 10.5) and the midsole has plenty of cushioning for life’s bumpiness.  The outsole is a lightweight grippy Vibram with a medium aggressive tread that looks like it will offer a little more protection from the extremes of Atacama.  The lacing extends further down the shoe to the toes, making the toe box more adjustable (and maybe allowing for more traumatic race swelling?).  In addition the HTX has a toe cap for those moments when you do ram your toe into that rock, and the upper is a tighter mesh letting less dirt in than the X.

On the downside, the lacing also extends further up the shoe towards the ankle and the rubberized tongue tends to bind slightly when the ankle flexes.  This led me to have a little skin breakdown over my tibialiis anterior tendon.  I also wound up with a heel blister my first day out.  Some of this is that my feet have hardened up to the friction offered by the X, but have yet adapt to the movement of the HTX.  

                          a new opportunity for scar tissue!

So I have 60 days to make up my mind!  The new split plate or the old favorite!  

The good news is there’s plenty of dirt out there to run in and the weather this week in Central Oregon is shaping up to be perfect for training for a race in the desert!

70 Days!

Or 10 weeks.  Or not 3 months anymore.

I guess it’s time to get serious about running Atacama!  Not as if it hasn’t been in my head for almost 3 years now.  But now it looks like I am going to take it out of my head and put it in my pack and carry it over rough terrain for a week…

I got a box from England last week.  It looked like someone kicked it all the way here.  

In it were 14000 calories of Expedition Foods!  I am glad to say that all the packages survived the abuse just fine.  Check that one off the list!

I got out my stuff from the Namib Race and looked it over.  I think my pack/vest (the Raidlight Revolutiv 24 liter) is up for another week's worth of trauma.  And it looks like I’ll be wearing the same orange shirt again.  

As I was whinging about in my last post, I felt pretty knackered when I got home from Georgia.  So I took it pretty easy for a week or so.  Then I raced a 50k last weekend (July 9th).  The Siskiyou Outback (or SOB) runs the trails off of Mt. Ashland in SW Oregon.  I had initially signed up for the 100k, but because of my diminished status, I wussed down to the 50k on the day of the race.  And boy was I happy with that decision!  With almost a mile of vertical, the 50k dished out as much, if not more, that I was ready to handle.  The 2 mile/1000ft climb out of the valley in the last 10k in the heat of the day was just about the end of me.  But it was a beautiful day and the trail was amazing with wild flowers and views of Mount Shasta.  So I’m thankful that I could pull it together for the run.

Uphill finish on the SOB! Not bad for an old guy.

This past week I have been putting in a fair amount of time on my bike.  Both to let the legs heal up a little after the 50k and in solidarity with all the guys out on the Tour.

And now it’s time to get the final bit of training dialed in.  After this last week of relative rest, I figure I have two 3 week blocks of hardcore training, with a regenerative week in between, and then a 3 week taper.  How hard could it be?!

As I’ve talked about before, I will try to put in a couple of long distance days back to back every week and one day of higher intensity intervals.  The rest of the week will include a rest day, or two, some easier runs and some long bike rides.  In addition, I try to walk an hour or more every day with the dogs, do my daily stretching and try to fit in a couple of 30 minute strength workouts.  Simple enough!

And as always.  Sticking to the mantra.  Have fun, be thankful, and don’t get hurt!

I am thankful that I live in such a beautiful place and that I live with a beautiful woman who lets me get away with spending so much time running around in the dirt!

Georgia!

Or, as we have to clarify here in the states:  Georgia, the country, not the state.

I just recently got home from Tbilisi after nearly 2 days on planes and in airports, and, well, I got to say it, I feel wrecked.

Part of the problem was that I didn’t get a lot of sleep in Georgia because I was participating in the RacingThePlanet Special Edition Georgia 2022 Race as director of the medical team.  As I think I’ve mentioned before, I got a lot more sleep in the Namib Race last year than I have at any other RTP race I worked.  And this week added some new challenges to getting sleep.  In addition to the predictable late night planning meetings followed by early morning wake up calls to load the trucks, we also experienced lightning storms at night.  While we were lying on the wet ground, in our tents, tents held upright by metal poles…

But, while there may have been a few “what am I doing here” moments, all in all, it was a great time we had in Georgia.  The countryside was beautiful, the food and wine amazing, and the company, fantastic.

Nancy was able to join me on the medical team in Georgia as well as Cassandra and Pearlly.  The four of us have been together on the medical team for four races now.  We also were fortunate to have a fifth doctor, Anne, who helped us out when she wasn’t performing cutting edge research in blister management.

The medical team: Anne, Cassndra, Pearlly, Nancy and some guy with baggy pants

The race was held in the Javakheti Region in the lesser Caucasus.  Beautiful country.  Very green right now with all the rain.  

And the race was fun to follow, although, given the mud and the swollen creeks that needed fording, it might not have been so fun to run.  There were a lot of cold and damp racers and twice as many wet feet.  There were some issues with fog and missing flags on the first leg of the first stage (who knows, maybe the cows ate them?!), so many of the racers put in an extra few kilometers before reaching even the first checkpoint.  And in addition of rain, mud, lighting and fog, the racers had to contend with sheep dogs aggressively protecting their flocks out in the backcountry.  At one point, while checking flags, Nancy found herself encircled by a pack of snarling dogs.  Fortunately she was able to keep her head and launch a rock at the largest of the dogs, and they decided she was a force to be feared and they slunk off.

Florian Vieux from Switzerland, winner of the 2019 Namib Race, dominated the race, giving a master class in how to make slogging through mud look effortless.  Jeff Pelletier, a friend and fellow competitor from the 2021 Namib Race put in a very strong performance to finish second.  I’ve been following Jeff’s training on YouTube with awe and trepidation.  It was good to see all the hard work pay off.  I also noticed that Jeff has incorporated  Skratch Superfuel (which I used in Namibia) into his feed strategy, with good results.  Magdalena Paschke finished 8th overall and won the women’s race, and was never seen during the week without a big smile on her face.  Nancy and I first met Magdalena in 2012 in Kashgar at the Gobi Race, and we also were at the 2014 Jordan Race where Magdalena met her husband Uwe, so it was good to reconnect with her and see her do so well!

                                     Florian and Jeff cross the finish line on the long march

The race finished at the ancient cave city of Vardzia.  And most of the racers gamely took the long uphill walk to the caves for the tour.  After that there was a 5 hour bus ride back to Tbilisi.  We spent the next 2 days touring Tbilisi and the wine region of Kacheti.

                                         Vardzia

All in all, from the medical team perspective, it was a good race.  No one died.  But it was stressful for us in that the racers were always a few degrees away from hypothermia and in danger from the elements and the animals on the course.  We were hard put to keep the latest Covid variants away from the racers.  And our supply of anti-diarrhea medicine was severely tested.  Not to mention an abundance of blisters and overuse type injuries.

I tried to do a little running during the week, but, I think because my body was so fatigued and so stressed, I probably did myself more harm than good.  I’ve done a couple of easy runs since I’ve been back in the states, and, instead of feeling rested like the numbers in my training peaks app say I should be, my legs feel heavy and I feel like poop.

Lessons learned:  1) trying to train when your body is already overstressed isn’t training, it’s self-abuse.  2) sitting on an airplane all day isn’t a rest day.

Still, I am glad I went to Georgia.  There was lots of type 1 and type 2 fun to be had.  I am thankful to Mary and Zeana for putting on the race and putting their trust in me to lead the medical team.

And now there are 3 months left before Atacama!  Time to get my stuff together.  I’m going to take this week pretty easy, and then I think I can put in 2 good months of training before I start my taper!  Should be enough.  Stay tuned.

                                        The medical tent (left) at dawn

Team Ripper Rides Again!  (Race #6?)

This past weekend Bend hosted the Bend Beer Chase.  This quintessential Central Oregon event combines 2 of the area’s most popular sports:  running and beer drinking.  The Beer Chase is a 55 mile relay race divided into 12 legs that circumnavigates Deschutes County in between Bend and Redmond.  Most of the legs start or finish at one of the many local breweries, and all of the transition zones are sponsored by breweries with product tasting available.

Team Ripper, fresh off of its awestriking performance at the Pole Pedal Paddle (barely recovered from injuries sustained at the Post Pole Pedal Paddle Party), was a natural favorite for the Bend Beer Chase (BBC).  Unfortunately, our star runner Nigel had injured his achilles on the river trail a week prior and was moving with a pronounced gimp and Lars had decided that the BBC was not a good enough reason to interrupt his training in quest of world masters’ rowing domination, so we were left with a team of 3 uninjured racers (plus Nigel).  Which put us at a severe disadvantage given that most of the teams had 6 runners.  So we would each have to put out for 3-4 legs of the relay instead of the usual two.

Hans starts us off right!

Hans hands off to Hu!

Nigel shows us how it's done!

Fortunately, Nigel’s tape job held together and he was able to pull his weight and Team Ripper performed admirably, even if I did wind up doing two legs in a row for 13 miles on the uphill, upwind side of the course (let’s just say I didn’t get a PR for the half).  We finished in around seven and a half hours (averaging about 8 minute miles), 12th place overall and, as an added insult, we won the grand masters division (because no one else has lived long enough to compete with us!).  But, most importantly, we finished while there was still beer left at the finish line!!

Some guy in a red hat runs through the sagebrush.

Hans takes the baton from Hu for his final leg!

Team Ripper at the line.  Grand Master champions!

After the 20 or so miles I put in at tempo on Saturday’s  BBC, I went out Sunday  morning a jogged another easy 20 in the woods.

Nancy and I are getting ready for the RTP Georgia 2022 race.  We will be volunteering on the medical team, so won’t be expected to compete in the race, although I am hoping to sneak out and run a few miles on the course.

The logistics for getting a medical team ready for one of these races is almost as daunting as gearing up as a competitor.  Fortunately, we don’t have to carry all of our equipment and food for the entire week on our backs, but we do have to be able to schlep it to and from the Jeeps and, be ready to mount a mobile rescue if need be.  I have been finding out about the supply chain breakdown first hand as many of my usual sources for supplies and medications are either unavailable or on permanent back order.

Cody and Holly look on with dismay at the pile of stuff getting ready to go to Georgia

One way or another, with or without our stuff, we will be in Tbilisi in 10 days.  We are looking forward to seeing all of you (in the Georgia Race) there!

Pole Pedal Paddle!  (5th race of 2022)?

Last weekend (May 14th) was Bend’s (for those of you who are just signing in, I live in Bend, Oregon) biggest athletic event, the Pole Pedal Paddle, locally known as the PPP!  The PPP is either a relay or an individual race (however you want to play it) that starts at the top of Mount Bachelor with a short uphill run to your skis, a downhill ski run to the base, an 8km nordic ski leg, a 17 mile mostly downhill bicycle leg, a 5 mile trail run, 2 miles of paddling the river and then a mile sprint to the finish.  Some 2000 people competed in 2022 in the 44th PPP after a 2 year hiatus for Covid.

Although the PPP is mostly a fun, family event, the sharp end of the race is highly competitive with some locals training for it year round.  This year’s individual win went to Ironman Champion Jesse Thomas, and it is not uncommon to have Olympians and ex-Olympians in the mix.  

I did my first PPP in 1980 as a member of the College of Idaho Ski team’s entry back in the race’s early days when the whole race field lined up on top of the hill.  Now, with the larger numbers, the race is held in heats and is much more orchestrated.  In the past years before Covid I raced the PPP as a pairs team with my brother Nigel and we typically won our pairs’ age group, also known in Bend parlance as “mugging” (the traditional trophies for the PPP have been pottery mugs).  But this year all 4 of my brothers came to town for PPP (and the concomitant Bend Brewfest), so we raced as a family team.

(Side comment:  growing up as one of 5 boys, it would have been uncommon for anyone to actually use my given name, so in this post I will be using the nicknames that we gave each other and that we now use when we get together.)

                                         Hu gets ready for the downhill ski battle!

So as it was, Hu started us off with the downhill ski leg.  Mount Bachelor was socked in with clouds and mist, but Hu came bursting out of the fog in 3rd or 4th place (in our heat) and managed not to kill the small child that cut in front of him.

Hu handed off to me for the nordic leg.  The visibility was poor but the snow was fast as I cruised the first 3-4 kilometers mostly downhill trying to avoid the carnage and potholes from the skiers in front of me.  Then the nordic course turned back uphill and I torched myself trying to get back to the parking lot.  

Fortunately, Nigel was waiting at the pavement, so I could hand off the timing chip without having to take my skis off.  Nigel negotiated the cycling leg in less than ideal road conditions (sleet, wind, rain, more wind) and managed to keep the rubber side down.

Nigel handed off to Hans who, even though recovering from an achilles tendon issue managed to crush the trail run.

                                          Lars and Hans head for the boat launch!

Hans handed off to Lars while helping to launch the racing kayak (Lars, incidentally, being the only one of us to legally change his name to the name given by his brothers) into the Deschutes River.  Lars, an accomplished masters rower, usually races shells with oarlocks, but put in a commendable performance on the river.

                                       Lars takes on the river leg!

                                           Hu on the final sprint!

Lars handed off to Hu for the final sprint and we finished the whole event a bit over 2 hours.  We were the 2nd family team across the line and the 9th team, but given that a number of pairs and individuals beat us, we were 25th in the overall standings.  But we won our age group!  Unfortunately, the potter who made the traditional PPP mugs retired so we had to settle for stainless steel mugs.  But they kept our beer colder!

                           Team Ripper: Hu, Nigel, Lars, Hans and some guy with a hat.

A very fun weekend (in keeping with my goals: have fun, be thankful and don’t get hurt)!  And I am tremendously thankful that these 4 wonderful men (even if they were amazingly annoying teenagers) are my brothers and that we can get together to share an athletic event and a malty beverage.

And the training.  Well.  It is still coming along.  A work in progress.  Took a 4 hour run in the woods this weekend.  Wasn’t particularly fast, but the legs felt good, and except for the occasional raindrop, it was a beautiful day.

Today is supposed to be a rest day.  But, in an effort to get my irrigation pump up and running, I spend a good part of the day digging out a faulty old splice in the line that takes power down to the pump.  So I guess it is strength day!

                                           Nothing like digging twelve foot trench on your "rest" day!

Fourth Race of 2022!

I had another race this weekend.  But before I get into that, last week marked the beginning of the 4 Deserts racing season with the Namib Race.  To me it seems like just a few weeks since I got home from Namibia, but apparently it has been six months.  And I was very jazzed up to follow whatever race action I could find on the interwebs and social media and what not!  It sounds like they raced the course that we were supposed to race last October except that it got changed at the last minute due to high winds and shifting sands.  From what I could tell from the pictures and video, the Namib desert did not disappoint from the stunningly beautiful landscape standpoint.  Nor from the extreme conditions challenge aspect.  When we raced Namib last year, it got hot, into the 40s (Celsius, 100s Fahrenheit), and you expect that in the desert, but this year the temperature got into the 50s, which is just plain crazy no matter what kind of thermometer you’re looking at.  On the long day this year they had a mandatory 3 hour stop to get the racers out of the high noon sun.  I would have found it difficult mentally and physically to stop my run only to restart 3 hours later.

Anyway.  My hearty congratulations to Reinhold Hugo and Terumichi Morishita on an epic battle across multiple stages that Reinhold managed to win by a matter of 10 minutes.  And congratulations to Victoria Connelly and Anim Swart for taking first and second in the women’s race, respectively,  and finishing 6th and 7th overall!  These guys are truly desert warriors!  And it looks like I will be seeing most of them in Atacama as they attempt the 4 deserts grand slam thing.  Hopefully all this racing will have them tired out a little!

And speaking of tired out and racing, this past weekend gave us the Rise Ranch Challenge Race here in Central Oregon!  The ranch challenge was a 3 mile obstacle course involving ranch themed challenges: hay bale stacking, moving rocks, roping sawhorse steers, bridling hobby horses, gunny sack hopping, water hauling, sheep dipping (with us as the sheep) and other bits of fun and hilarity.  Our friend and neighbor Becky from the nearby JBC ranch signed us up, and Nancy and I did our best, although this is not exactly what we train for.  (When asked if she runs, Nancy usually points out that she has been known to run a bath). But we were able to complete the course in about an hour including all of the tasks.  We did fail the roping event, so we had to do extra hay bale burpies.  All in all, we had a fun Saturday morning.  And we raised money for Harmony Farm Animal Sanctuary.

The JBC Ranch Team, Nancy, Becky, Teresa and some guy in jeans

Team JBC hard at work stacking hay bales!

And the ever important skill of hauling rocks and firewood!

After the obstacle course I went out for a 3 hour jog in the woods, making it my first 4 hour training day of the year!