Ron Lichty: Let's Cure Cancer in 2008
(Follow my training: latest update below:
March 2, 2008)
I can't quite believe it, but...
I've signed up to go for a fifth cross-country ski marathon to benefit curing leukemia and lymphoma and myeloma.
Will you help me, by making a contribution to fight these heartbreaking diseases, as many of you have so generously over the last four years?
I can't quite believe it because when I finished skate-skiing 25 kilometers last year, my toughest challenge yet, I not only swore it was the hardest thing I have ever done, but wondered how I could possibly set a bigger challenge. I wasn't even feeling motivated to ski again.
Then I told one of my coaches' friends how hard it had been. Paul told me that a few people were roller skiing at Shoreline in Palo Alto / Mountain View every week -- he suggested it might give me the long cardio, ski-specific work to extend my reach. By June, I was roller skiing weekly on the asphalt trail along the bayshore for two hours at a time on borrowed skis. By July I owned a pair of my own.
Initially, my technique was abysmal and my heart rate was sky high. But over the course of the next few months, my ability improved, my heart rate came down dramatically, and I began to map out a goal:
I intend to skate-ski a 40-kilometer marathon in March '08.
You might be asking, what would make me even think of doing another? In part, of course, the answer has to do with this being one of the stellar experiences of my life, not to mention the camaraderie we all feel as we try to do our best at something physically very hard for a cause that means so much.
But my overriding motivation is the scourge of cancer. Each season we have all-team honorees who have battled a blood cancer. Last year, one of them lost her battle just days after the rest of us skied our hearts out. Brenda left behind her husband and two young sons. It put a lot of things -- not the least the VERY tough season I'd just had -- into perspective.
So did seeing my friend Carolyn, now a widow and single mom to her young son, after her husband and the love of her life died 18 months ago of a rare lymphoma, diagnosed only after Peter had gone into a coma from which he never even fully regained consciousness. Carolyn and I were born the same week onto Iowa farms just down the road. We have been friends our whole lives. It's tough seeing her anguish and grief from losing her partner.
And you all know that my best friends in Iowa lost their son to leukemia at 11, and that my kids a decade later lost their step-sister at almost the same age.
I know, even with the roller ski training, that skate-skiing 40K isn’t going to be an easy thing for me to do. As many of you know, I have asthma, bad knees, a questionable back. But I think I can do this. Brenda and Peter and Clay and Karen and many others died too young. I wish with all my heart that there were no letters to write and no marathons to undertake because no kids (or adults) were still dying from cancer. Each day researchers do get one step closer to finding a cure. With the HUNDREDS of Leukemia & Lymphoma TNT events that happen every year…we help make that possible. There are treatments today that would not have been funded but for the $800 million that Team in Training athletes have raised over the twenty years of its existence.
I have set my goal to again fundraise $12,500 for this event. And I have set a goal to ski one more Anchorage marathon, this one skate-skiing 40 kilometers, March 2. We need to fundraise our money by the end of January. So if you can, please donate to help find a cure for cancer... because you know that if there is progress made in research for any cancer it will truly help all cancer research. If you know anyone who might want to donate, please don't hesitate to send my email around.
You can donate online, if you're feeling moved, at the top of this page.
Or if you'd prefer to write a check, mail it to me at:
Ron Lichty
155 Forest Side Ave.
San Francisco, CA 94127.
Make it payable to: The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society
Your contributions are 100% tax deductible. Tax ID#13-5644916. The Leukemia Society will send you a receipt.
If your company has online matching, let me know and I’ll send you easy instructions.
I’ll be blogging my training and the event right here on this page. Please don't hesitate to follow along, whether you contribute or you don't. Check out the workouts I've been doing all summer to break through the barrier I felt at the end of last season, when skating 25K seemed like the limit of my endurance. Join me in discovering whether the roller skiing regimen that has already delivered dramatic results on flat asphalt will extend my range to 40 kilometers in the mountains, where the base turns to icy snow and the trails turn steeply upward.
Finally, thanks. Thanks if you join the team -- we'll get to see a lot of each other. Thanks if you contribute -- you're making an investment in fighting heartbreaking disease. Thanks if you follow along -- I'm glad to have you with me. And thank you to all of you who have helped me raise over $40,000 over the last four years, which is absolutely amazing! Your generosity, support and friendship not only helped get me to the finish line but, more importantly, you have helped to accelerate cures for leukemia, lymphoma and myeloma and bringing increased hope to the patients and families who are on the front lines of the battle against these diseases.
Thank you so much!
Ron
p.s. If you would like me to train and compete in honor of someone you care about who has or has had leukemia, lymphoma, Hodgkins or myeloma, let me know, send me their name, tell me their story.
I wore 58 names on honoree bracelets last year. Their names and their stories inspire me to train harder and pulled me through the tough parts of a hard marathon to the finish line.
--------------------------------
Training Log
--------------------------------
Nov. 1, 2007
Preparation
If it weren’t for two dear, dear children who died of leukemia, I wouldn’t be doing this.
I know, some of you followed my training last year, and some of you have followed it for the past four seasons, and you surmise that I’ve always been an athlete. Nothing could be further from the truth. I have exercise-induced asthma -- have since I was born. I’ve carried a medihaler since they first became available when I was a kid. Everywhere. Still do.
I actually did work through the asthma once before, in my 20s, but my knees sent me a clear message that I had to stop. I walked the track most of my first ski season, four years ago, only at the very end tentatively breaking into short sprints and trying out the stadium stairs. I really do get a thrill feeling the wind on my face running a very occasional hundred-yard dash. But I never would have tried running again and certainly would never have made running stairs a biweekly thing and now, carefully, a weekly one, except for those two kids, and the rest of our friends and families, who have taken a hit from these blood cancers.
It no longer surprises me when someone I’ve known for a short time thinks I’m an athlete. But I’m always amused when people I’ve known for a decade or even most of my life think I’ve always been one. The truth is that my self-image never included “athlete” and my motivations never included endurance training. So I don’t quite believe it, and friends have understood much quicker than I that, in fact, I’ve become an endurance athlete.
I’ve come to the realization slowly, too, because I never, ever imagined or intended it. The first time, four years ago, when after decades of contributing to leukemia-related causes I got an invitation to participate myself... It just felt like it was my turn... my turn to use my body to help end these heartbreaking cancers. But it didn’t seem “natural.”
And at the end of each season, after pressing myself as hard as I’m able, it’s been the thought of doing a little more for the cause, to fundraise a little more, to make a little more difference in the battle to cure cancer, that has motivated me to push myself over the spring, summer and fall to feel, in November, like maybe, just maybe, I might just be able to exceed my all-out effort the previous March and to ask for your support in doing so. That’s how I went from striding 25K in 2004 to striding 35K in 2005 to striding 50K in 2006 to learning to skate-ski and skating 25K in 2007, each a stretch from the previous goal.
But I came off the skate-skiing marathon last March deflated. Skating taxed my cardio in ways I hadn’t imagined. I’ve jokingly said I didn’t really learn to skate until I was skiing the marathon in Anchorage -- but I wasn’t really joking. I came home from Anchorage close to ready to hang up my skis. I just didn’t see where or how I could do more.
It was a sentiment I was expressing out loud, a sentiment that, when they heard it, two acquaintances offered to try to disprove -- to show me I could do something about it. They offered, in fact, to put me in roller skis on asphalt for a few weeks until I decided if I thought the things would benefit my training enough to justify the $700 to get my own.
Beginning roller ski training in Mountain View in May
So I picked back up running stairs at Kezar, and picked up the frequency from biweekly to weekly. And I picked back up rowing ergs (rowing machine) every Sunday morning at the Lake Merced boathouse. Over time, I picked back up getting in one or two elliptical workouts a week, plus weights. And I added a weekly eight-mile roller-ski.
The results were dramatic. My first time out in May, the 8.25-mile roundtrip took two hours and five minutes, part of the time due to having to take increasingly frequent breaks to breathe and recover. My heart rate was, at times, near max. Five months later, in October, I could cover the same course in just an hour and 17 minutes with a 20-beats-per-minute lower heart rate. And the dramatic improvement was spilling over to lower heart-rate counts when spending an hour on the elliptical trainer. It was working.
Mind you, I’m roller skiing on a very flat stretch of asphalt. And rubber wheels make a very solid edge to push off the skating motion from. I expect skiing on icy snow, part of it seriously uphill, will be significantly harder. But this has been such strong improvement that I’m encouraged that I can increase my goal from the exhausting 25K last March to 40K this coming March...
--------------------------------
Saturday, November 3, 2007
Kickoff
TNT kicked off its winter season this morning. Kickoffs are really big rallies, combined with team members getting to meet each other and their coaches, mentors, captains and team managers. They play videos that are a combination of TNT participants becoming athletes and making the connection with the cancer patients we're trying to help, along with stats, stories of drugs developed under the sponsorship of Team in Training raised funding, etc. The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society was founded in 1946, when the survival rate from the major childhood leukemia was zero. A set of parents who had lost a kid to it thought "zero" was an unacceptable answer. It was those parents who founded LLS.
I have to remember to pack a handkerchief to these things. I get teary-eyed multiple times.
--------------------------------
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Training: Week 2
I Remember This...
Unbelievable. I have to be in the best shape coming into this season I’ve ever been. But week 2, and the coaches managed to find muscles that haven’t been worked.
I remember this. Muscles all up and down my arms and legs (and occasionally through my abs as well) from long Saturday workouts and drills: the ache on waking Sunday morning, a crescendo rolling out of bed on Monday, still hurting on Tuesday...
We’re in the dry land phase. The first week’s Saturday training was fine - a fairly flat hike out of Crissy Field and around past the Golden Gate Bridge, plus a fairly easy introduction to new balance and ski-specific muscle drills. No problem.
Then this Saturday, in our second week, we did a steeper hike in Redwood Park behind Oakland, and stiffened up the drills.
I was sure I wouldn’t have to remember this...
--------------------------------
Saturday, December 1, 2007
Training: Week 4
No Snow!
No snow! The mountains are still bare. First snow training has been postponed, replaced today with a third team hike, this one up Mission Peak behind Fremont.
Most uphill hikes are “stepped”: as the trail angles overall up the hill, there are flat or even downhill sections of relief. Not Mission Peak.
Unrelenting. The trail we were on four years ago didn’t have a single break. Today’s trail had just one, a saddle high on the mountain, as it cut across to meet the other trail. Otherwise a relatively steep incline the whole way to the peak at 2517 feet.
Great cardio push.
--------------------------------
Saturday, December 8, 2007
Training: Week 5
Snow!
One big snowstorm Thursday and Friday, and a couple feet of snow have settled on what were bare mountains just mid-week -- enough snow to cross-country ski, at least on the meadows -- more than we had last year at this time. The storm has blown through. The skies are blue. The trees, heavy with snow, glisten in the sun.
The snow is new, slow, soft.
The temps are cold. Ten degrees as we click into skis at the Bear Valley trailhead. Skiing is warm, especially in the sun, but clouds soon crowd the sky and blot the warmth, and by noon a wind has picked up. As long as we keep skiing, we stay warm. Skiing generates to much heat! But stop skiing and first fingers get cold, then the urge to get moving again quickly arises. It’s colder, today, than we’ve grown to expect in the Sierra.
We divide into groups: beginning striders, experienced striders, beginning skaters, experienced skaters. I’m in the latter group. I’ve skated a season. I’ve skated a marathon event. Coach George has us put down our poles, demonstrates four different hand placements, then shows us a couple drills to practice with our feet while skating without poles. After each demonstration, he has us ski up and back using the technique. We practice the various strokes (v1, v2, v2 alternate) first without poles, then with them. After two hours of coaching, we’re off.
I am benefiting enormously from the summer’s training on roller skis. The difference in my technique from last season is enormous. I’m on one ski and then the other. I’m very often getting long glides.
But the effort quickly has me gasping. Is it just the altitude? Where are all those cardio gains I thought I’d won?
After a break for snacks and clinics on the cause (curing cancer is the point, after all) and on blisters and foot care, we ski for the afternoon.
I meet up with Larry, our head coach, at an intersection and I’m quickly reminded just how truly amazing a coach he is. Larry tells me that he’s going to first ski behind me, then when he has watched me for a bit he will ski around in front of me. “When I do that, watch how I ski. I’m going to ski like you ski. It’ll be like watching a videotape of yourself, but you’ll be able to watch and do at the same time.” A quarter mile later, I’m following Larry mimicking my skiing technique. I ski straight-legged -- I can see watching him that I need to bend my knees and ankles more. And I can see from how he is poling that my arms are too far apart when I stroke with my poles. “You put your hands together to climb a rope. It’s the same with poling. You get power with your hands coming from the same point.”
It’s really quite amazing. Larry is a remarkably gifted coach. And he’s already off looking for another teammate to share his gift with, and then another, and then another.
I ski 10 or 12 kilometers in the afternoon. I’ve skied less than four hours on relatively flat terrain and I’ve used all my fuel. I’m exhausted.
I clearly have work to do, to prepare for my goal this season.
Right now, it’s time to drive home from the mountains and rest everything I’ve just pushed.
--------------------------------
Sunday, December 9, 2007
Training: Week 5
Skating, the other cross-country technique
The way our coaches put it:
You have 2 choices of technique: striding or skating.
I’m skating for my second year. Actually, I’m skating for my fifth year, I just couldn’t “get it” the first three.
When people talk about cross-country skiing being one of the most complete workouts you can do, they're usually thinking classic skiing (also known as "striding"). Parallel tracks off into the sunset. Skis that glide over the snow -- but when you "kick" there’s a patch of wax or a fish-scale pattern in the center of the ski that catches and holds and pushes the other ski forward.
People think classic skiing because it’s been around for hundreds of years. While there's another kind of cross-country skiing, it's only 20 years old. It's called skating. While classic skiing has for centuries had a reputation for being a complete workout, skate skiing requires a leap in aerobic fitness that makes classic skiing look almost like it doesn't provide a workout! Striding can be done at any intensity from walking to sprinting. Skating demands that it be done at least at a running intensity level.
I've been trying to learn to skate since I joined TNT. It's beautiful to watch. It's a lot faster than classic skiing. It requires skis that are entirely slick on the bottom (no patch in the center) and slightly longer poles. While the skis are almost as long as classic skis, the motion looks like ice skating, except on hard-packed snow, typically “groomed” about a traffic lane wide.
If you're still wondering 'What is ski skating?' you can check out this skating video from YouTube. The skier in the video makes it look easy...
--------------------------------
Sunday, December 16, 2007
Training: Week 6
Two days of training
I'm no natural skier.
I'm reminded of that every year. Every year there are teammates new to cross-country skiing -- or now that I'm skating, that -- who in their first times striding or skating show better form than I've managed after several seasons.
The one thing I've got going for me is tenacity. I'm willing to train harder and longer than almost anyone else at my level.
I improved a lot since our first day on the snow last weekend. In fact, I improved a lot during the day yesterday. I ran into former coaches Guy and Mindy while skiing. Guy helped get me to bring my heels together and gain the efficiency of falling on each ski close-in. Mindy coached me to start poling from a position I could use my core most effectively to power with. Coach George reminded us to align nose, knee and ski with each skate. Coach Larry last week had pointed out how much more power I could get by keeping my hands together as I started each stroke.
End of day, yesterday, Coach Larry skied along behind for a minute and told me I looked entirely different from when he'd coached me just a week before.
One of my challenges is that I tend to go out too fast. In both yesterday's training and today's ski of the same loops, I paired up with a teammate about the same level. And I led. I go out too fast in part because I don't want to be in the way. Passing is hard, the trails narrow for passing. But both yesterday and today, I was out in front, winded, when I looked behind to see that I had managed to get way out ahead. When we came to a trail junction and stopped for a minute to talk and hydrate (drink water) and in my case breathe, I suggested my teammate -- yesterday Meghan, today Patty -- lead. Both are good at setting a sustainable pace. Both kept going longer than I might otherwise have, pushing my cardio development and making us both proud of how far we'd skied without taking a break. I've grown fond of skiing with a teammate in this way.
While I'm disappointed not to feel more aerobic benefit from the roller skiing over the summer (I may just have had unrealistic expectations), I am seeing dramatic benefit in technique improvement. I'm skating much better, much more relaxed, with much more balance, and much better weight shift, and much more efficiency. And besides skating, today I double-poled a long section, part of it uphill, that I never would have thought double-pole-able. That was all roller skiing's doing.
After a morning of coached drills yesterday, Meghan and I put in 14K. Today, after some warmup drills with Patty, she and I did a loop, then I did another on my own, for another 15K today.
I'm still expecting this season to be hard, but I'm making progress.
--------------------------------
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Training: Week 7
Hills
Ron at Orvis Meadow, Bear Valley
Giddy with accomplishment (while sober to the challenge).
That about sums up my off-schedule, up-and-back training day Thursday at Bear Valley with teammates Meghan and Caytie.
We skied our first real hills of the season -- and everything that was open except the black diamond trails. Bear Valley has gotten lots of snow. After starting with drills up and down the Runway, we skied the hilly Stanislaus Lookout, Aspen Forest, and Bjornloppet trails and up to Scenic Vista, in addition to doing all the flatter trails that had been open earlier in December. I estimate we skied 20K in the 3:40 we were out.
I'd have to guess that I'm skating, just four training days in, at the pace I finished last season's marathon in March (3 1/2 hours for 28K in abrasive snow).
I'm skating at a much lower heart rate. I did get into the 150s at times. But in the second half of the day, while still frequently out of breath (and at the end of the day very tired all over), so stopping to recover, I would grab a quick look at my Polar* and find my heart rate running at only 147 or 148, with peaks only in the low- to mid-150s. The best I did last year skating was in the 150s, and at this point in the season my cruising heart rate was 159 with peaks typically in the high 160s and even to mid-170s! I'm hoping the out-of-breath part is mostly altitude. I can get that back with more days at altitude, and in spades in Anchorage, at sea level.
It was the end of January last year before I'd skied 19K in a day -- and looking back, I recounted, "I'm not sure I've ever been so physically tired in my whole life." I didn't ski 20K until Feb. 5, and it was an off-schedule training ski Feb. 17 just two weeks before our race when finally I skied 26K. While I did do Aspen Forest in January, it wasn't until that last big training day that I took on Bjornloppet, and I never did go up Scenic Vista last year.
By the end of the day, my skiing was sloppy. And I was stopping not just to breathe but to let worn-out muscles recover from serious oxygen debt and fatigue. But I was feeling giddy about my terrifically improved heart rate, our early-season distance, and having successfully taken on Bear Valley's hills still in December! Raising 20K to the 40K I want to complete in Anchorage this year remains a sobering challenge, but seems within my grasp.
* Polar: A couple years ago, after borrowing Mike's, I bought a Polar brand heart rate monitor. There's an elastic strap that goes around one's chest that takes heart rate readings and broadcasts them to the paired watch. So at any time, I can look down at my watch and find out how hard I'm working. There's a whole science to endurance training, the essence of which is to do a lot of LSD -- long slow distance -- which should be done with the heart working no faster than 80-85% of one's maximum heart rate. (Finding max is a different challenge, and max decreases over one's life, so the max I got via full-on treadmill tests at Apple 15 years ago is no longer applicable.) What I did all last year was not LSD but long hard distance -- I was too inefficient, skating, to get my heart rate below 85%. That compounds the challenge, since what technique and coordination I had last year would fall apart when my heart rate exceeded 80%, making it a vicious cycle -- the harder I worked, the harder I had to work. Stopping to settle my heart rate was really the only choice, particularly at the beginning of last season.
--------------------------------
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Training: Week 8
Ramping Up
Wow, wow, wow...
I just skate-skied 29K -- longer and farther than I've ever skated -- longer than last year’s marathon in Anchorage -- and I skied everything open at Bear Valley including the most advanced black diamond trails. Just last Thursday, after considerably less distance and time, I was beat. This is fast improvement!
Christine, one of my teammates from my very first season, volunteered to come along for the long drive and ski with me. We left at 7am and got home at 11pm. And in between, we were out on skis for five hours, skiing at least 4 1/2 hours of that.
Today was the first warm day I've skied this year. Fast, as warm snow can be. But there was fresh snow on the downhills to give our all-composite skis (no metal edges) something to hold against on the steepest downhills. (Icy is dicy, snowy is flowy.) Still, there comes a point on steep downhills when our skinny skis won't hold and you point 'em straight downhill and hope for the best. In one of those cases, coming down the very long all-downhill trail from Osborne Ridge, doing a pretty good job balancing between braking and riding it out, I skied around a corner only to realize I was virtually on top of the intersection I wanted to make a right turn at -- to stop meant that I took a butt-plant in soft snow piled at the corner beyond, my one "fall" of the day (is an intentional butt-plant a fall? it's listed in the ski instructor's manual as an official means of coming to a stop!). Temperatures were probably 40 when we went out, expected to reach 50 mid-afternoon, guessing 40 or below by the time we came in, at the 4:30 closing time, as the sun was dropping beneath the horizon -- we could feel the air grow colder on our faces for the last hour.
Getting up high at Bear Valley: Super Scenic
Paul Peterson, Bear Valley's owner, gave me a coaching tip after he watched me ski in at closing time: treat my torso as a "panel" and keep the panel upright as it moves to the left, right, front and back. (He had watched me lean as I weight-shifted from ski to ski -- letting my shoulders provide some or all of the weight shift, instead of getting my core fully over the ski.) There's just so much to getting small amounts of efficiency!
I am just happy to have enough efficiency to be enjoying this season. A year ago, for the first two months of last year's season, I was frustrated and unhappy. I've definitely got my mojo back.
--------------------------------
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
Good Health!
I heard great news from another of my honorees this week.
Bob is doing well. “The doctor even used the ‘R; word, as in ‘remission,’” Bob’s wife wrote. “The treatment, via chemo pills, was supposed to work for 12-18 months but he is still at the low level of cancer presence after 22 months! I KNOW that it is the support, the prayers and good thoughts, the telephone calls, letters, and e-mails, the invitations to lunches & dinners, and all the other manifestations of care that have been helping.”
Honestly, I find myself holding my breath every year. It is one of the hardest parts of doing this, wanting to check in with friends and colleagues regarding them or their friends and colleagues and loved ones, hoping for the best, but never sure what I'll hear.
While outcomes are somehow overwhelmingly positive, even just one that's not is hard to hear and hard to share in.
And cancer doesn’t stand still. The email continued, “A good friend of ours, another Bob, was diagnosed this summer with the same cancer, multiple myeloma. We still can't believe it as this is not a common cancer.”
It’s both hard to share in and it’s the motivation that has got me out doing something for five years.
Last year, we were cheering on the team’s friend Lior, awaiting a bone marrow transplant at Stanford to treat her lymphoma. Lior had been a four-time survivor of lymphoma. As it happens, the chemotherapy drug that had saved her life was researched and developed by grant money raised by TNT athletes, starting long before I signed up, but perhaps with some of the dollars Marilou and I contributed to other TNT athletes earlier on. Lior came up to Bear Valley two weeks ago. She couldn’t risk skiing -- she can’t risk falling -- the harsh treatments have left her bones brittle and breakable. But looking good and full of smiles, she came to see us and to cheer us on. And to share hugs all around.
I ran across a quote from someone named Kim Alexis that I really liked. She wrote about running, but it seemed to me to describe the Team in Training experience as a whole and that I could paraphrase it to speak to my ski team experience: “I ski because I can. When I get tired, I remember those who can't ski, what they'd give to have this simple gift I take for granted, and I ski harder for them. I know they would do the same for me.”
Everyone who does one of these races, whether for blood cancers or breast cancer or AIDS or lung cancer or something else must feel the same. Motivated and inspired to push themselves by so many, many people who have been pushed against their will to the edge of survival. I skied last year's race on behalf of 58 honorees. I wore their names. I'll wear all of them again, and as many more as we have. As many as I have to.
As I’ve said many times, my fervent wish is that these diseases are soon as close to extinction as whooping cough, scarlet fever, smallpox and polio.
Thank you to all of you who have shared in this experience with me, whether by skiing with me or by cheering me on or by contributing to this cause or another like it.
On this first day of a new year, it seems appropriate to wish all of you reading this the incredible but simple gift of good health.
--------------------------------
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Training: Week 10
Continued Improvement
I’m putting in the distance I should be training at, at this point. I had opportunity for a mid-week up-and-back to Bear Valley Wednesday and skied 27-28K. Then yesterday with the team at Tahoe Donner I skied 20K. And did that again today with a group of teammates. To do 40K in the event, my goal this week was a minimum-20K day of continuous skiing. While I took a short break each of Wednesday and yesterday, I got the continuous skiing in today.
I’m also putting in the time: 4 1/2 hours Wednesday, the same yesterday, and 3 1/4 today. I’m a little concerned about correlation between time and distance: not one of them is as fast as I skied Anchorage last year -- especially perplexing because every other indication suggests I’m skiing stronger, better and faster by far than any time last year.
I’m especially pleased with the continued improvement in technique. There’s not a team day on skis that I’m not coached to improve something, and not a day on skis when I can’t name a significant improvement I’ve made.
Wednesday, going up with teammate Mary Leigh we started with Coach George’s drills from my December training group: we skied a bunch of out-and-backs, first without poles, then with.
Taking a break on the climb to Osborne Ridge
Being very different speeds, Mary Leigh and I split up for our long ski. I took on all the newly opened trails -- the meadows were the first to open given snow settles there, so these were more mountainous: Headwaters, Granite Roller and the black-diamond-rated Equipe. And I went up the black Osborne Ridge trail again. I didn't skate a single "black" trail all last year, by the way. It had been hard enough powering up blue trails, my first year attempting to skate.
I suspect the terrific ski day I had Wednesday had, in part, to do with watching a short segment of ski-training video the night before. After roller skiing the first weekend in January, Paul, who had launched me into roller skiing, had loaned me a skate technique video. I'd watched skiers weight-shift from side to side, nose-over-toes, long glides. I suspect their rhythm was still in my head.
My dramatic improvement Wednesday was to make the climb from Lodgepole Loop into Aspen Forest, all the way to the Bjornloppet intersection then all the way out Bjornloppet and around and up to the far Osborne Ridge intersection without having to stop for recovery! I doubt I've ever skated even the Aspen Forest portion without at least three recovery stops. I have needed additional ones getting up to and then skating the length of Bjornloppet. Not to mention needing recovery on the uphill on the back side. Going up steep Osborne Ridge, though, I knew I was on the last segment of my 4 1/2 hours: I found myself repeatedly stopping, sometimes to breath, others just to let oxygen seep back into my muscles.
Mary Leigh and I talked on the long drive home about how dramatic the improvement we see in our skiing each day we put in on skis. Like me, she’s become an athlete in mid-life, but she’s a multi-sport athlete and noted that she just doesn't see this kind of dramatic improvement each time she goes out to swim or run or cycle. I had to add rowing to that list. I asked Coach Dave about it. He pointed out how skiing seems to be a unique combination of fine nuances of technique combined with entire-body physical challenge -- a more full-body workout than about any other sport. The result is that small tweaks in technique dramatically effect the power-to-outcome ratio.
I have also been pleased in the last 10 days to be step turning at faster speeds than ever before. Step turns are more or less skating at higher speeds -- they're about being on one ski at a time while turning. And I'm feeling comfortable being on just one ski in ways I hadn't expected. As Coach Guy extolled three years ago, "skiing is really a one-footed sport" -- it's about being comfortable gliding on first one foot and then the other. "Being able to balance on one foot at a time is so critical to everything in skiing," he said back then.
One of the things that made it difficult for me for so long to make progress skating is the speed of gliding on a single skate ski, even on flat. They're fast! The technique feels fast. I would just start to get the feel of skating only to panic from gliding that fast on a single skinny ski over unpredictable snow. I've had to overcome that fear almost to skate at all. So I've gotten a thrill since Christmas, step turning through steeper downhill turns and feeling much more comfortable being on one ski and then the other. It is really a measure of how much better I'm skiing.
The trail down to the Euer Valley
One of those thrills was yesterday at Tahoe Donner, skating down the Last Roundup trail's long descent into the Euer Valley. I’d been skiing with Meg, and I followed her onto Last Roundup. I was sort of astonished to see her, just ahead of me, skate the downhill. So I followed her lead and tried skating it myself. I had read advice in Cross Country Skier magazine to practice skiing down hill on one ski at a time -- taking long, long glides before stepping onto and gliding on the other ski -- but out on the snow it had never occurred to me to try something so foolhardy -- zipping down a hill balanced only on a single ski/foot/leg. Not until I saw Meg ahead of me, flying down Last Roundup. I followed, skiing aggressively. I was ready.
Almost ready, anyway. Guy, one of my earlier season’s coaches, caught up with me this past December to coach me that you're not committing to each ski if you don't fall from time to time by going right on over the outside of the ski. That's what I did on that long downhill. Twice. To my surprise, I was not only on the outside edge of my ski but beyond it. I punched the snow twice on the long, straight descent -- but felt pleased to know I was committing!
And then I rounded the corner for the biggest thrill of all. The last piece of trail to the cookhouse seems like not a downhill at all. But it assuredly is. I was feeling (relatively) under control and flying down that last section to where Meg had joined Dave and Sigrida and Tracy!
Earlier in the day, I'd gotten tips from Coach Sigrida to extend my kick more to get more glide on uphills and flats; to pull my arms in tighter when going downhill; to try skating more bow-legged and less knock-kneed to get onto the outer edge of each ski; to pole differently to turn an uphill herringbone into a flying herringbone -- forcing glide on the steeper uphills by aiming my poles more to the side (more in line with the angle now required of my skis).
Sunday, back at Tahoe Donner, I saw dramatic improvement again: Coming back up Last Roundup was still a chore of chugging and stopping, chugging and stopping, but toward the end I managed two hills in one piece, getting just enough recovery in the flatter section between them to keep going through the second. I grabbed minimal recovery there, then did the remaining shallow but long, unrelenting ascent of Last Roundup in one piece, not stopping until I got to the Pony Express trail. And without a break, I turned up Lion's Leap, for the first time making it to the top of its long incline -- the picturesque view spot out at the mountain’s edge -- without a stop.
Just off the snow, Meg and I recounting skating into the Euer Valley to Coach Dave
I finished Lion's Leap and turned up Sundance. And realized I was finished -- or felt like it. I was in serious fatigue, feeling the weight of two days' hard skis. But I kept slogging to the Tumbleweed trail’s turn-off, and delighted in the curvy downhill. With twenty more minutes until our group's 2pm meetup time, I forced myself to ski 3K more.
My ski days are still totaling lengths of only 20-something kilometers, but they feel better and I feel stronger and I'm taking on harder terrain. I'm just at that spot where, with six weeks left, I see progress that I hope will be enough.
--------------------------------
Saturday, January 19, 2008
Say a prayer
Even as much news is positive, as I reported in my New Year’s Day post, some is downright sad. As the team was preparing for training this morning, Tracy read a section from Victoria’s blog. Victoria is a ski team honoree as she was last year. Her body had shown great progress fighting leukemia over the past two years. But this month it came back.
Tracy read an entry that Victoria wrote in her blog just yesterday, after hearing her doctor’s action plan. She described the chemo treatment plan, and then she wrote, “I don’t like percentages but I will tell what he said because it is important for me to say this out loud. There is a 10% chance of this working.... So there you have it the truth, the plan, the surprise of the year, the story, my life, my fight, My prayer. Thank you for everything for the love the continued prayers and light, for everything.”
If you believe in the power of prayer and love, and maybe even if you don’t, say a prayer for Victoria and send her love today...
--------------------------------
Sunday, January 20, 2008
Training: Week 11
More Technique
Waking up this morning in a cabin in Truckee, I wasn’t at all sure I wanted to ski a second consecutive day. I’d failed to take an ibu before bed and I’d tossed and turned from achy muscles in my legs and arms. They were feeling worn out.
Yesterday I put in 26.5K at Royal Gorge, with hill coaching in the first third to tire me out even more. We were down below at the trail system’s Van Norden area, and for the first time I skied the steep 2.5K trail down from Summit Lodge. Our coaches were discouraging any but our best skiers from taking it. Remarkably, I seem now to be in that class -- not fastest, not by far, but confident and skilled to handle the steep downhill fine. I also handled the backside of the aptly named Herringbone Hill with aplomb this year -- the scene two years ago of my one (and, thank god, only) full-on, headfirst face plant into the snow.
For our first loop -- the coached loop -- Coach Dave had us ski slowly, trying to keep heartrates low and work to a minimum, then ski distance without poles. That first loop was fairly flat, but with small ascents that I suspect would have stymied me last year. Dave then had us focus on skiing on each ski for first one and then two seconds at a time. I’m looking back on last weekend and realizing what an incredible advance I experienced, following Meg down the long descent into the Euer Valley, skating that descent, getting three or four or five seconds on a ski, balanced, on top of the ski. (Except, of course, the twice I dumped!)
In the hill work, Dave coached me to keep my poles closer together on my uphill V1. And he had us try a full-on V2 up the hill that was remarkable! I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t tried it.
Coach Amy advised I try laying my skis down with tails literally on top of each other to get the full benefit of the skate. And she suggested trying to set each foot down on the little toe -- trying to edge “out” tends to result in laying the ski down flat -- lots more glide.
Today, I experienced yet another major advance -- or evidence of major advance. I may have woken up not wanting to ski -- wondering how much I could even do. But our carpool headed back to Royal Gorge for more. We did Big Ben’s 2 1/2 K to warm up. Then Dave coached us in step turns for probably an hour: facing down the fall line, staying in the athletic stance, turning in small steps to stay stable, bringing skis back to parallel each time (not turned in to snowplow!).
Mike and I skied long for the next two hours, a 15K run, down Palisades, around Stagecoach, out Wiesel, returning on Satellite and Kidd Lake, to finally head up the long ascent of Yuba, the trail I’d come to hate last year. Yuba was, last year, a constant ski-a-little, stop-to-recover route. Tired from yesterday and tired from having most of 3 1/4 hours of skiing already behind me today, I expected no better. And yet I skied without a stop from the bottom of Yuba up the long, long ascent to the out-and-out uphill where Royal Gorge runs a rope tow for those skiers less determined, herringboning to the top of that! Only at there at the top did I run out of gas, my lungs heaving and my muscles demanding oxygen and fuel. Incredible advance, actually, which I attribute to finally balancing and weight shifting onto one ski at a time.
Nonetheless, I envy Mike’s stamina on the long, steep uphills -- stamina and just enough better technique to keep going on the couple hills that did bring me to a halt midway. I’ve come so far, but I still have a long way to go to good technique!
I’ve now put in five 20-or-more-K days. But I’m feeling a little nervous that I haven’t yet exceeded 30, given my 40K goal.
--------------------------------
Sunday, February 3, 2008
Training: Week 12
30K!
I put in 30K of skating in a snowstorm yesterday.
Interesting training day. I can't remember another ski day when it was both cold and snowing. My sport drink bottle turned icy -- slushy -- midday (I use a mix that includes electrolytes -- sodium and potassium -- which should have a lower freezing point, right?); teammates reported having their camel-back water tubes freeze up.
Unlike the big wet snowflakes of a usual Sierra snowfall, these weren't wet at all. The stuff didn't stick when it blew against you, it just settled onto your head and shoulders and backpack and other horizontal places.
My pant-legs weren't getting wet, so I never put on my rain pants. I wore the jacket I bought in Anchorage when temps there hovered near zero, a jacket that I hoped would protect me from not only cold but wet. Though 4 1/4 hours skiing in a snow-shower did eventually make my shirts and jacket pretty damp all through, the skiing kept my core warm. What was cold, in my last hour of skiing, were my fingers: I think my gloves got wet; the poles they were holding were aluminum and COLD.
The snow had pretty good glide. The challenge was that with so much snow coming down -- inches of it while we were out, on top of inches and feet of soft snow from virtually every day previous for weeks -- skis would unpredictably sink. Soft snow just seems to absorb your energy when you're skating.
The snow tended to get deepest on a couple sections that were more in the open. And slight downhill sections like Stables from the trailhead were mostly ok as you placed each ski down and glided from ski to ski, but when the trail turned uphill the weight shifts required just enough more push that you could find yourself burying a ski. It was interesting, with each glide, not knowing where the "bottom" would be. Good for balance work, but it sure made 30K tougher to get in. I made it 4 1/2 times around a 6 1/2 K loop made up of trails named Stables, Indian Rock, Stanislaus, Headwaters Bridge, Lodgepole Loop, Orvis Meadow, and Ted's. I was pretty darn happy with that distance. And pretty darn tired.
But I'm still 13K and only four weeks away from the 43 or so kilometers that they call "40K" in Anchorage (the race director gets creative and extends the last "5K" to be at least 8_!). I've logged the kind of distances in the last month that make 40K seem likely, but I'm also very aware that I'm not there yet.
The coaches ski by repeatedly to see how we're doing, during our training days. Dave caught me on my fifth time finishing Stanislaus which, with the section of Runway and Ted's Trails to get home, would get me my 30K. When I told Dave all that, he said "keep having fun" as he skied off. It kind of jolted me. Having fun was not how I would describe how I felt. I was talking funny from my face having been numb for some time. And my hands... Dave had me windmill my arms to warm them, but my shoulders popped each time around, so I reverted to back-and-forth underhand.
Earlier, not quite so tired, but my face stung by snow and my eyes squinting to distinguish the trail from the equally white landscape, I was nonetheless reminded that no matter how cold or inclement the weather, being in the mountains on skinny skis on the snow is better than being just about anywhere else on earth.
Later -- coming around a long flat section for the fourth and fifth times, when just lifting one leg (and ski) and then the other left me exhausted -- I would come upon a photo of one of our honorees being used to mark our trail -- and I would be reminded that whatever exhaustion and ache I was feeling is a hundred times easier than doing chemo. It's a cliche after five years of Team in Training, but it is still both a compelling reminder of why we're working so hard, and a motivator to keep going. I resemble how one of my teammates differentiates skating from striding. The advantage of striding, he says, is that he can always put one foot in front of the other regardless of how tired he is. But when he's skating, it seems like he always eventually hits a wall where the effort required to keep moving is just too much to contemplate.
Was I having fun on that last half-loop? No, not really. But was it satisfying? Very.
It's odd. I have these two disparate thoughts fighting for space in my brain at once. One is that I've got a shot at a 4 1/2 hour 40K in Anchorage (an entire hour off my 25K pace in Anchorage last year!). The other is the question of whether I can finish 40K at all...
--------------------------------
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Training: Week 13
40K or 25K?
40K or 25K? 40K or 25K?
That's the conundrum.
It's the countdown. I have to decide by Tuesday. 40K or 25K. I have to ski it in just three weeks, on March 2.
I've now done six ski days of between 26 and 32 kilometers. But nothing touching 40K. I have three ski days lined up with son Mike in Western Washington on Thursday, Friday and Saturday this week -- a 40K is possible but seems unlikely -- and then taper. If I sign up for 40K -- race form due Tuesday -- it looks like it will be the first time I've attempted a marathon without skiing the distance first.
At the top of Equipe trail, Bear Valley
The short of this week: I skated almost 32K at Bear Valley last Tuesday in 4 hours, 28K at Royal Gorge yesterday in 4 3/4 hours, and a 20K race today at Tahoe XC in 2:18. On the concern side, I had significant discomfort and faced down possible injury in shoulders and feet that have me wondering just how far I can push.
I had bruising on my right instep for the last Ks of my 28K yesterday -- the inside of the foot was very sore overnight. (Not bad today, though, after skating considerably less distance.) The foot pain may have been compensating, perhaps, for long stretches of giving my shoulders a break by skating without poles? I skated two 14K loops to Royal Gorge's Wiesel warming hut, the second time carrying both poles in my right hand from the trailhead all the way through Palisades and Stagecoach trails and almost to the hut before enlisting them on the last three uphills on Wiesel, then using them a fair amount on the long uphills back to the aptly named Summit Lodge.
Not using poles really forced me to skate and skate well. But that right instep -- will it take 40K?
And then there are my shoulders... I managed to go skiing midweek on Tuesday at Bear Valley and put in my longest distance skating ever, 31.5K, in about four hours. I felt good when I got home. But I awoke Wednesday morning with pain in my left shoulder -- enough pain to call my doctor about it.
I had started off Tuesday with the timed loop that we'd done the previous Saturday, this time with a few-minute warmup before starting, a more measured start that I could better maintain, and a puff of asthma inhaler before starting. (And better weather, more solid snow, and Saturday's four-plus-hour technique and cardio improvement to build on.) The result was a 41-minute first loop, compared to 46 minutes the previous Saturday -- the paradox of starting slow to go fast. I then skied a lot of Bear Valley including the black-diamond Equipe, Osborne Ridge and Ridge Runner trails, after the hilly Indian Rock and Headwaters loops.
Great day, except for waking up the next morning with rotator cuff ache. Overuse was my first thought. Then I remembered the hard fall I took on my elbow on the steep downhill into Walden Meadow: I was a bit amazed I hadn’t damaged my elbow, so I imagine I could have jammed my shoulder. My doctor by phone thought I hadn't torn anything, ok'd continued training, advised backing off arm effort to the extent I could, and prescribed ibuprofen and ice.
Coach Larry laying out his plan for our day at Royal Gorge
It did seem to be improving each day, but I felt some dread going into yesterday’s team ski day, let alone at Royal Gorge with its massive uphills. Seeing how much I could accomplish without poles seemed the plan for the day (followed by the ice-and-ibu's treatment). Skating without poles certainly forced me to skate better than I ever have. (One of those blessings in disguise, right?)
Miracle of miracles, I awoke this morning with the least shoulder pain I'd felt since Wednesday morning, along with reasonably recovered feet. So I headed off to do the 20 kilometer Alpenglow race at Tahoe XC with Dave and Paul and Barry. Twenty kilometers of their hills about took it out of me. I was last to finish at 2:18. And beat. And skating really poorly (except I did a wonderful dash to the finish the last 50 yards!). And wondering how much the “poorly” was Saturday's 28K, how much Tahoe XC’s hills (much harder than Anchorage’s), how much the not-waxed-for-the-day skis, how much the skiing without poles (I skied a bunch of the race without poles, as well -- or did that help me do better than I might otherwise have?), and how much the 7,000-foot altitude? (I still live at sea level. Anchorage is at sea level! Yay!)
Can my instep stand 40K?
Will my shoulders continue to recover and then hold out?
While I'm truly skeptical there could be 50K skating in my future... I'm certainly the strongest I've been in this five-year odyssey.
40K? 40K this year? 40K in three weeks???
Wow. Can I finish 40K?
We tend to think, in Team in Training, of drawing courage and strength from our honorees. We got a useful reminder yesterday, before going out to ski, that more than one of our honorees has drawn strength from us. We heard it again afterward: we have several survivors skiing on the team with us, and one of them pointed out that chemo is a bear, but that this is the hardest thing she's volunteered for. There were tears in her eyes when she thanked us for volunteering to do something this hard to make it easier for people facing something they have no choice about.
I'd really like to finish whichever race I start.
--------------------------------
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Training: Week 14
Skiing Western Washington
Cross country skiing in northwest Washington is different:
* different from the California Sierra where skiing is at 7,000 feet
* different from the Wyoming feather-weight powder at 5,000 feet I first learned to ski in
* different from West Yellowstone, Montana's forested mountainsides at 7,000 feet
* and different from skiing greenways through the city of Anchorage at sea level
It’s different, and I can report, firsthand, that it’s wonderful.
Around Christmas, when our son Mike suggested I join him in Seattle for three consecutive days of skiing Western Washington’s Snoqualmie Pass, Methow Valley, and Leavenworth, we quickly realized that Thursday through Saturday this past weekend, just two weeks short of the marathon in Anchorage, would be our only opportunity to connect our calendars and make it work.
It was perfect timing, as it turned out. I'd wrenched both shoulders ten days before and needed to understand the impact in varying conditions and terrain, to assess my current skill level, and to "feel" my endurance given the longest I'll have skated going into this marathon is almost 10K short of my goal. I'd sent in my race form on Tuesday, checking the 40K box, but with misgivings, and I needed to know as much as I could learn about how far I'd come and if in targeting 40K I was making a foolish mistake.
Plenty of snow at 2,500 feet near Snoqualmie Pass
Our first stop Thursday, after picking up the rental skis and poles I'd reserved at REI, was the Cabin Creek sno park, just over Snoqualmie Pass less than an hour out of Seattle. At an elevation of 2,500 feet, Cabin Creek was the highest of the three areas we would ski. Amazing what latitude can provide in the way of snow at lowered elevations! And 4,000-plus feet of elevation advantage over the Sierra sure make breathing easier, even though the alpine feel of the area and the hilly feel of the course strongly resemble Sierra trails.
Washington grooms a number of its sno parks, this one in concert with a nearby ski club, though the recent snowstorms had dumped so much snow -- 150 percent of normal, we heard at one point -- that the trails were soft and the skiing a bit slow even in the iciest and in the most protected spots. We parked in a large lot on one side of interstate I-90 and walked over it to the Cabin Creek trails. We skied a hilly 6.2K loop that skirted wetlands at one point, then skated another 4.6K out "The Road"and back -- flat as you might think. That bagged all the trails that weren't marked as "black". We decided against the 14K Mt. Amabilis roundtrip, given it was Mike's first day skiing this year, opting instead to do another 2.2K on the inner loop to give us 13K in around an hour and three-quarters.
From the two times the sun broke through the clouds for about a minute each time I learned the Washington term "sun-break."
We were still over three hours from our overnight destination, the Methow Valley to the north. To get there, we continued southeast, jogged north, turned southeast again just short of Leavenworth, followed the Columbia River northeast to Pateros, then turned northwest toward Mazama, cruising through Methow (pronounced MET how) and Twisp. We were nearly to Winthrop and our overnight lodging, but we let check-in wait a bit longer, as we turned left up the south flank of the valley to the ridgetop and the Sun Mountain Lodge. Mike had last spring savored the best filet mignon of his life there, and that was what we came for and what we both ordered. We were disappointed by neither food nor view. We ate at a window looking out on scattered lights twinkling below in a valley of snow that reflected the light of a half-moon, a valley only a few miles wide before the north flank rose to a ridge-line across the way.
Friday morning I awakened with stiff, sore shoulders -- I'd deluded myself the previous afternoon to believe I didn't need ice and ibuprofin. I wouldn't make that mistake again.
After a leisurely breakfast, we bought trail passes at the Mountain Sports store in Winthrop, where we discovered that the new issue of Cross Country Skier magazine was out with my article "Mid Life Athlete" and the big sidebar to accompany it that I wrote about the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society's Team in Training program ("Mid Life Athlete", Cross Country Skier, Jan/Feb '08 issue, p. 50). The photo that the magazine had picked was one my daughter Jean had taken during the season she did TNT's ski team with me, my second.
The Methow Community Trail follows the Methow River upstream...
While the skiing at Snoqualmie had been ok, the Methow Community Trail that winds up-valley from Winthrop 33K to Mazama was a dream, even after it began snowing at a point we'd been skiing only a half hour.
I'm in deep envy of the folks who live on the Methow Community Trail and can walk out their doors to ski it every day all winter long. The grooming was stellar.
We skied about 14K up-valley, and I took the first 5K without poles, first following the Methow River out of town, then winding through fields past combines and steel-wheeled irrigation set-ups, between resort lodging and second homes, through small stands of birch, back to the river, powered up a 200-foot switchback when the riverbank shrank, and finally skied through stands of pine, at the highest only at 2100 feet.
...and across fields and farmland
Aside from the sweep up from the river and a couple hills in the woods, the trail was remarkably flat, and the skiing like roller skiing Shoreline, but colder, with a thick pad of groomed snow to glide through and more coming down. When I glanced at my heart rate monitor, I was astonished at how low the numbers I was seeing.
With the overcast, when we were out in the open the trail became a whiteout, impossible to distinguish the grooming and the bumps and plunges of the terrain. It must be the bright but shaded sunlight bouncing back and forth between clouds and snow, but it made features of the trail just disappear. I skied by feel, and on an exceptionally groomed trail, that was enough. We were tired but exhilarated when we arrived back at the Winthrop trailhead three hours after we'd left. I threw handfuls of snow into a ziplock and iced my shoulders on the way to lunch in Twisp and again after, on our way to Leavenworth.
We skied Leavenworth during a sun break...
Mike has a bunch of college and kayaking and mountain biking friends in Leavenworth, so after checking in, walking gingerly across an icy drive to soak in the outdoor hot tub, and then showering again, we met up with two of them, Rob and Kelly. While Mike has made many pilgrimages to Leavenworth over the years, he'd never skied it, so aside from the camaraderie, we were looking for direction. They gave it. There are three areas to ski around the edges of town, each about 8K. They advised getting up early to get to the relatively flat Icycle River loop while it was still fast and firm (aka icy). We could go from there to the hilly nordic offering at Ski Hill, or do the rolling loops on the Golf Course area, which would be closing at the end of the weekend.
They made us believers. We were on Icycle before 9am. We found Kelly just arrived. The 8K course, a loop along both sides of one leg of Icycle Creek, was as fast and fun as he'd predicted. Kelly is only in his first year of skating but was inspirational to follow, except that after every start he was out of sight in about 20 seconds. "I had great teachers," he said, pointing out that his skis were hand-me-downs from an Olympian. I'll give him that, but clearly he's also a natural athlete, doubly benefiting from being able to ski trails groomed fast and firm daily. Inspirational.
Mountains rise from the valley plain in Leavenworth (as they do in Methow, as well)
Mike and I made the Golf Course trails our second stop... and our last. Set along the Wenatchee, we were skiing yet another stunning Washington landscape. We did the more challenging 5K loop first. But the south slopes were softening up in the sun by the time we came all the way around, and were softer still on our second, the easier 3K, loop. Still, I glanced down at my heart monitor at one point to see a 130, the lowest reading I've ever seen while moving on skis, a just head-shakingly phenomenally low heart rate that can only be a tribute to the training regimen, technique coaching, and cardio conditioning this year and over the past five. And it wasn't like I was fresh -- I was only a K or so from completing 16K at that point. Only a few K before, I'd been thrilled with the 136s and 137s I'd seen then, and now here was a 130!
Mike and I drove by Ski Hill. Its tubing hill with its tow line had filled the parking lot with SUVs. Still, we might have been alone on the hilly nordic course, but I opted not to press my luck with my shoulders. The previous day's icing and ibu's had worked. But taking on the most challenging hills in town on softening snow after already putting in 16K seemed excessive.
Leavenworth skiers are working on piecing together a trail down to Wenatchee to equal the Methow Community Trail from Winthrop to Mazama. When they do, I'll want to move to Leavenworth as much as I came away wanting right now to move to the Methow Valley.
--------------------------------
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Anticipation
The race -- the Tour of Anchorage -- is Sunday.
I'm feeling an odd combination of feelings:
- Confident that I can -- I've never been better prepared or in better condition.
- Not sure I can -- it's a good 10K longer than I've ever skated.
- OK if I can't -- it will be injuries that would stop me, of most concern being my shoulders.
- Optimistic about my shoulders -- if I can just hold back the adrenaline early in the race to keep lots in reserve, I think they'll be there.
- Excited -- about the course, the first 15K of which I haven't seen since I was striding two years ago -- about skiing in Alaska again -- about skiing at sea level -- about seeing my sister Julie and niece, who are flying out to watch this time -- about my teammates, who are also stretching themselves -- about the nearly quarter-million-dollars we've raised to cure cancer this season -- about skiing with another TNT team for the first time (Anchorage has a team this year!)
--------------------------------
Sunday, March 2, 2008
Anchorage
The short of it: I finished. And while I'm still far and away among the slower skiers, I finished dramatically better than I'd expected -- better, even, than I'd thought possible.
Having never in my life skated 40 kilometers -- my longest barely 33K -- I had reason for uncertainty. I was also concerned that I'd jammed a shoulder all too recently, and was now for some reason finding both shoulder joints aggravated. And yet I felt ready in so many other ways. As I wrote just four weeks ago, "It's odd. I have these two disparate thoughts going in my brain at once. One is that I've got a shot at a 4 1/2 hour 40K in Anchorage. The other is whether I can finish that distance at all... "
So it really surprised me when I finished in under four hours. And it surprised me, too, that I still felt strong at the finish line and after.
I'd told my sister Julie and my niece Josie they could track my ski-trip -- finding the next cheering spot by car before I arrived there on skis -- based on my expectation I would likely take 5 hours to ski the 40 kilometers -- but that if luck went my way I would be absolutely thrilled to complete the race in 4 1/2 hours.
So I was confused, a couple minutes after I crossed the finish line, to look down at the elapsed time on my watch and see a "3" in the hour position. "I broke 4 hours?" I asked Julie, quizzically. "Oh, yeah," Julie said enthusiastically. "I kept asking Josie to be sure it was 4 1/2 hours you'd said was going to be your best time -- you were flying out there -- you were way ahead of 4 1/2 hours!" It finally sank in. The smile on my face from finishing burst into a humongous grin. "I broke four hours!" I screamed ecstatically.
To be exact, my time was 3:51:54.9. That's still by far a slow time, as 40K ski races go. But it was a real breakthrough for me, nearly 40 minutes faster than I'd thought my absolute fastest outcome could possibly be, and just 21 minutes more for 40K than my 25K time last year. I was flabbergasted.
-------------------
The other short of it: You've helped me raise over $11,600 of my $12,500 goal, and over $50,000 in my five seasons with TNT. The ski team has so far this season raised over $230,000 toward curing cancer and helping cancer patients and their families. With the fundraising of the newly formed Anchorage team, cross-country endurance skiers have this season raised over $250,000. I wish a quarter-million-dollars were enough to cure cancer, but it sure helps.
I invite you to imagine... ... a time when the vast majority of blood cancer patients will be CURED, and those that aren't cured will have treatments that result in a good quality of life. This is the vision of the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society for the year 2015. Impatient as I am, I am blown away every time I see it, say it, hear it. Now, in March 2008, over 830,000 Americans are afflicted with leukemia, lymphoma or multiple myeloma. Every 5 minutes someone new is diagnosed with a blood cancer and every 10 minutes another blood cancer patient dies. With our help, the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society advances a bit more toward making their vision and their goal a reality by 2015.
If you'd been thinking of contributing but haven't, it's easy -- just look in the upper left corner of this page. (Checks are fine, too; please make it payable to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society and send to me at 155 Forest Side Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94127. If you want to do either, please do soon. It's definitely not too late, but they'll close fundraising on the page I'm guessing beginning of April.) Whether you contribute or not, I appreciate your letting me share all the fundraising info with you in addition to the challenge and training and results, and I thank you for your thoughts and encouragement this season and always.
If you have even the slightest interest in trying this out yourself and you live in the Bay Area, just let me know you're interested. In September or October when the team is forming, I'll email you how you can join or at least find out more. You don’t have to be a skier already. Every year, half our team has never skied before. Not cross-country. Not downhill. Every year, every single participant finishes at least 25K. Those who are experienced sometimes set larger goals like 40 or 50K -- or learning to skate-ski. Our coaching is amazing at getting people to their goals. And you can’t beat the camaraderie and the carpools!
For those of you interested in reading more, let me tell you the long of it...
-------------------
Susan Butcher's husband, David Monson, spoke to us Saturday night, the eve of our race.
"I think it was Tennyson who said, 'A meaningful life is to inspire others,'" he noted. Earlier that day Alaska's governor signed a bill declaring the first Saturday in March (the traditional start of the 1,100-mile Iditarod sled-dog race) to be "Susan Butcher Day."
Most of us had watched the ceremony and this year's start of what is billed as "The Last Great Race." We had been inspired by the melding of musher and dogs into a team, a single unit of cross-species collaboration and teamwork.
Susan Butcher was not the first woman to win the Iditarod -- she was the second -- but she remains the only person to win three consecutive Iditarods, and the only one to win four in five years. Only one musher has won more than the four Susan did. But Susan lost her fight with leukemia 18 months ago, the autumn after our Team in Training ski team raced for the first time in Alaska. We'd watched the Iditarod start that year, too, with heightened awareness that this athlete far beyond our capabilities, diagnosed just a few months before with one of the cancers we fundraise to cure, was struggling for her life. When she lost that struggle, we remembered her courage and her example by making her a team honoree. Last year, when her cousin Amy joined our team, we felt yet another connection, and this year Amy, a long-time skier and ski instructor, is one of our coaches.
I carried these honorees with me, in addition to fhose from previous years
Now we were in Anchorage again. This time we would ski our race with the 10 members of a newly formed Anchorage team, our teams together having already this season raised over a quarter-million dollars. On the eve of our race, we were preparing our bodies with carbs and our souls with reminders of why we were doing this, so that if (or when) our races turned tough, we could reach deep into reserves of fuel and inspiration to keep going. Susan's husband had honored us by contributing to our inspiration, as Susan and Susan's example have heartened so very many. My eyes welled at her loss, at all the losses.
Back in my room, I made bracelets of the nine plastic straps inscribed with 77 names of honorees I would carry with me in my race -- my personal honorees, and those of yours, my friends and family and colleagues. Too many. Far too many.
-------------------
The Tour of Anchorage, the second largest ski race in North America with as many as 2,000 participants, nonetheless welcomes our small TNT contingent of mostly slow skiers. One of the ways they do that is to provide an early start for those of us who might not otherwise finish before they shut down the finish line and the announcing platform: for a bunch of us, the race started early, at 9am.
We were few, so the start was relatively quiet, the shouts of encouragement coming from a small scattering of teammates and friends. The 40K/50K start is at the southeast corner of Anchorage, at the base of the Chugach Range. The 50K skiers would do a loop into the mountains before re-joining our 40K route: * north through the rolling hills of an enormous regional park; * northwest smack through Anchorage on greenbelt ("whitebelt," in winter?); * following the Cook Inlet shoreline, west, around the point, and then south, literally skiing around the Anchorage Airport with planes landing and taking off overhead; * finally, turning back east for a final 5K of mostly climbing Kincaid Park's trails; and * finishing in its stadium in front of an announcing stand.
It was surprise and delight to find myself feeling good for so much of the race. My race plan was to ski the first 20K easily, gently, efficiently -- and only then to look for the pace I could hold to for the rest of the race. My determination was to prevent the adrenaline from taking over -- to avoid going out too fast. Last year I'd trashed my arms in the first 5 or 6K, then by necessity skated 15K without poles hoping to save enough of what little was left of my arms for the final 5K of Kincaid Park's notorious hills.
14K into the race, skiing with Christine and Patty
I fell in behind Meghan, Christine and Patty, who shared my strategy. While it felt like we were going slow, the first 5K nonetheless sped by. The "35K-remaining" mark had seemed to come too soon. Surely, breathing this easily, we couldn't have covered 5K already. It must have been the oxygen at sea level. The 7K feed station, with warm sports drink, banana segments and Oreo cookies, came up reassuringly soon after. At 14K we went through a second feed station -- and there were Julie and Josie, shouting and cheering.
For the first 16K of park and greenbelt, we skied almost by ourselves, on pristinely groomed snow at a pace not only gentle but a joy. It felt easy. Perhaps we really were conditioned for this race and this pace.
At 16K, now on the Anchorage greenbelt, our race met the beginnings of the 25K trail, with its 1,000 racers. The trail changed from pristine grooming to thrashed snow in less than the length of a single ski, proof that hundreds of skiers had already passed this way. More were charging up the trail by the minute. Still fresh, they cut in and around us, not always safely.
The effects of so many skiers on steep downhill grades is to churn snow into piles that can trip up a skier who tries to ski through. In the congestion, I tumbled over a skier in front of me whose ski had got caught in the churned snow, and jammed up my shoulder. Not far down the trail, when we passed striders skiing in a group with faster skiers bearing down on us, in my scramble to get around and back to the side, I went down again. Not long after, one of our group was plowed down by an out-of-control skier. It had become a crowded scene. We took a few minutes off the trail, and later at the popular Westchester Lagoon feed station a second similar break. Otherwise, Christine, Patty and I continued on through Anchorage at our deliberate pace, crossing over and under major roads via snow-clad overpasses and tunnels, to the Cook Inlet shoreline, where the trail hugs the coast and skirts the airport for 10 or 15K.
At 20K I found my pace. It was quickening; not adrenaline-charged, just faster. I stepped out from behind my teammates.
Along the coast, still skiing west from the mountains
And then I was skiing alone. Aside from some ache in the shoulder I'd fallen on, my arms felt ok. For five years, Dave had coached us to use our "arms like ropes": they shouldn't get tired. But mine always had, especially here last year. Then two weeks ago, skiing with Mike in western Washington's Methow Valley, I had found myself behind a skier skiing home, her arms just part of her rhythm, easy, flowing, smooth, swinging but not pulling. When Larry had coached us to remember our most relaxed ski, I'd visualized that time with Mike. I was skiing faster but I was finding my own easy rhythm.
The coastline flew by, as planes took off and landed at the Anchorage airport. Just as skiing the greenbelt reveals little of the urban character surrounding it, skiing through the woods along the sea revealed little of the airport but for the occasional roar of jet engines. When the coast ended at cliffs above the sea, I took the long uphill in stride. Later, when the cliffs dropped back to shoreline, I took the downhill slowly enough to maneuver safely through the piles of snow churned up by the thousand-plus skiers ahead of me.
And then, at 35K, I was past the airport and turning away from the sea, east into Kincaid Park. The going turned difficult, as it had last year, proof that the fact that it looked flat was really an optical illusion. I'd thought, last year, that the snow or my skis had changed. I'd been wrong. It was "just" uphill.
I was tired but still skiing rhythmically. I was ok with the uphill turn. And ok with the park's long heartbreak hill, a short section of it truly steep, but hard mostly because we'd already skied almost to our limits.
Now we were higher, and there were rolling hills. I like rolling hills a lot better than long inclines -- while the uphill sections can be hard, the downhills are all blessed recovery.
And then I was skating the final hills of Kincaid Park, tiring quickly but taking them in stride, too. Even these last hills weren't demanding recovery and making me stop. I came up the final hill very tired but pushing still, skated into the stadium, slogged over its annoying nob of a hill, then made a final sprint for the finish that felt energized and great!
I was relieved to be at the finish, but surprised to be in such much better shape than last year, when I'd been certain I'd just completed the hardest physical thing of my life, and better, in fact, than after completing any previous year's race.
As I had realized two weeks ago, returning to the Sierra's 7,000-foot elevations after skiing at 2,500 feet in western Washington, I love oxygen. Like skiing in western Washington, this year's ski at sea level in Anchorage was a breeze after all our Sierra training.
Double-poling across the finish, 40K accomplished
Last year, I crossed the finish line wondering how I could possibly ski more than the 25K I'd just barely finished. This year, at the finish line, I thought for the first time ever that I might be able to skate 50.
Stay tuned. (Or join me and we'll do it together!)
And thank you all for your support, for your support of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society and the cause of curing cancer, for your donations, for your interest and for your best wishes.
