Cyclocross, Again

Last month I won a race that I didn't expect to win.

I first fell in love with cyclocross in January of 2007. I had joined the university's cycling club and there was a big CX scene in the Triangle area, so I borrowed someone's bike, got a hasty barriers 101 lesson, and raced. It wasn't great, predictably - there's a special kind of hectic disorder that comes with being in a crowded field, trying a new discipline, making what feel like race-ending mistakes. That's become my most salient piece of advice to people who are trying it out: stay relaxed the first couple of laps, because the chaos will subside.  

Race one of many

The next season, after buying a used Redline that I was really excited about (I spent the first evening of ownership bopping all over the urban trails and back alleys of Chapel Hill, a trend that would continue in every town I lived in), I raced most of the NC series and got addicted to podiums and cash purses. After I moved back home I focused more on mountain bike racing (and road, against my will) but still traveled occasionally for cyclocross. 

That's the face of a girl who really loves podiums

My dad got really into it too. The only time he ever spent in cars for a decade or so was driving to races around western NC and eastern TN, equipped with a thermos of coffee and a tupperware of oatmeal, listening to Sound Opinions. He started doubling up days by racing singlespeed and masters, and obsessed about handlebar widths and gear ratios and embrocation. 

There was a cross course in Teton Valley and a race series when I first moved there, but it dwindled down to nothing when no one wanted to take on the burden of organizing the event. I went to one race in Boise and was reminded how great it was, but that was my last showing for seven years. (I appreciate that every half a decade or so I write a blog post about loving cyclocross.) 

Moose Cross in front of the hometown crowd in Idaho

I'm better at it than any other discipline. Forty-five minutes to an hour is my sweet spot for effort and I can go pretty much as hard as possible in that time; any longer and I start to blow up. I also like racing among people, because I can ease up or push more depending on other riders' strengths or weaknesses. If I'm left alone on a course, I lose motivation. It requires good bike handling skills but none of the bravery of an enduro or even a techy XC race, and seems to attract roadies more than mountain bikers so I usually have an advantage there. I know my actual CX technique would hinder me against an elite field (my barrier form is garbage) but I would be intrigued to do a real race again and see where I stack up. 

We've had a few local cross races and while I'm so grateful and happy to be living somewhere with a series that I don't have to travel for, the turnout for women is a little disappointing in such a bike-obsessed town. I wish any of the mountain bikers I know were interested in trying it out, because I keep promising them it really is an addictive sport. My friend Gina is the only one I've managed to convince so far, and she enjoyed it so much that she signed up for a second race right after her first one. 

Racing on a BMX track three miles from my house? Yes please 

I kind of sheepishly have won a few races and taken a bit of shit for it. (What am I supposed to do? I don't want to race in the men's field.) Yet I had to be convinced to head down to Seattle for what was billed as the biggest cyclocross race in the country - last year it had over 800 registered riders and blew that out of the water this year with over 1,100. I was afraid I'd be humbled in a real field with sponsored riders, but I did want to witness the spectacle, and snagging a ride down in a minivan full of Bellinghamsters instead of having to drive cinched the deal. 

I wore my old college skinsuit because no matter how much mockery they inspire, skinsuits are the absolute best for goin' fast. After the girls leading the series got called up to the front row, I settled in all the way at the back because I wasn't comfortable elbowing my way forward when I didn't know where I stacked up (even though I always tell women to line up higher than they think instead of letting themselves by handicapped by their own insecurity). 

I looked down and noticed the woman I was directly behind was only one cog down from her easiest gear. Yikes, I thought, and shuffled away from her so I wouldn't get caught behind her in the first sprint. I still had a really bad start, off the back - the video is hilarious. The pace was high but a lot of the girls rode tentatively through the muddy off-camber chicanes and there was a long-ish uphill section in the middle of the course, so I made up a lot of ground cornering and climbing, and started clawing my way through the field with aggressive passes.  

I latched onto the wheel of a woman that someone had warned me was fast, and rode behind her for a lap. When we hit a paved section, she slowed down, which I assumed was a request that I share the burden of setting the pace instead of sitting on her ass, so I took the lead from her, but then she fell off my wheel. 

Flying the colors of the old alma mater

Gina, cheering on the side of the course, told me I was in second. Oh shit, I thought. Cool cool cool. Then I caught sight of the woman I supposed was probably in first. Spectators yelled her name and ignored me (understandably - I was an unknown) as we battled through the barriers. I eventually attacked her on a hill and smashed the pedals to extend the gap in the final laps. 

Every time I passed through the start/finish I noticed that the race announcers, who had been very communicative in earlier waves, were looking me in the eye but not announcing my name or that I was (maybe?) the race leader. 

Their surreal silence made me start second-guessing my position - there was probably a woman or two so far off the front that I never even saw them. Around five minutes after I finished, I saw another women roll through and the announcers called out that she had "just snuck through to do one more lap." Everyone finished on the same lap as the elite men, who had lapped me once, so I wondered if she had been so dominant that they hadn't lapped her at all (turns out most of the women's field was lapped twice).Then I pulled up the live results and saw only four finishers, myself not among them. I learned a couple days later that due to a computing error the announcers didn't even have an accurate start list of the elite women's field pulled up in front of them, which explained a lot. 

At the awards ceremony, the race organizers asked for participants in the women's race who "thought maybe they were in the top three" to please come up for a conflab. They asked me and I posited that I was perhaps second place. Then they announced the women's podium and I strolled up to claim a spot, but the supposed first place finisher looked confused, and we locked eyes. "Oh, I beat you," I said, the realization dawning that I actually had won. 

Still love podiums, even when they're surprise podiums

And thus ended the saga of the most anticlimactic and confusing win I've ever had. 

Why am I fixating on the minutiae of one non-UCI cyclocross race? I don't know. I was really, really surprised to win. It's been so long since I've lined up against serious cross racers, so I'm curious how much of my success was fitness and maturity and how much of it was a not very strong field. It made me want to try a higher stakes race, but there are only a couple UCI races anywhere near this side of the country, and they're early in the year, so I probably won't get the chance. 

Fortunately there are two more local races, and I'm going to continue proselytizing (crosslytizing?) to everyone I know until someone shows up and decisively kicks my ass. 

Among the Larches

We are sitting in the McDonald's a mile from our house, having a quick lunch before hitting the road, and I am grumpily texting my mom and sister about an uncommunicative job prospect. Then I check my email one last time and see that the bosses will be making a decision on Wednesday, and it's like all the irritation and fear lifts up off my shoulders. They're interviewing other people, even though it felt like they were desperate to hire me a week ago. Fine. We shall see. I don't have to make any decisions or bear any hurt until Wednesday. Let's get outta town. 

East slope stuff

We arrive at the busy trailhead but, luckily for our friends who are joining later, we are ahead of the "let's leave after work" crowd and snag a spacious campsite next to the vault toilet. For the rest of the night, loaded-down Sprinters, expensive trucks with camper shells, and hybrid city cars alike do the slow hopeful roll through the jam-packed camping circle before giving up or ducking into some less hospitable corner of the day use parking lot. 

A couple that we sort of know from the Tetons but mostly from the internet, both writers and skiers and mountain bikers, recognize our Idaho license plates and amble over to our site. In the past we had maybe thought they were too cool for us, but we strike up an amazing conversation. She is someone I had wanted to seek out for advice - she has been freelancing for four years and I wanted to talk pros and cons and get advice. Even the twenty minutes we spent chatting made me feel glowy with bliss, like she had been sent to me with the sole purpose of making me feel better about this professional turmoil I've been in for six months. 

Camp stuff

Our friends trickle in. These are newer friends, as friends go, but the conversation flows easily and we look forward to the morning's activities. We agree on an early start, to my and Cy's great pleasure - we know this is a destination trail and have heard of around ten separate groups planning to ride it tomorrow from among our Bellingham cohort alone, and judging from the crowded gravel lot everyone on the western seaboard from Olympia to Anacortes made the same call. 

I wake up chilled - we're up at 5,000 feet, back in the fall morning frost we left behind in Idaho - but I know it'll be warm the second we start climbing, so I commit to shorts and short sleeves from the get-go. Others do not, and inevitably must shed layers after the initial mile. I devour the first 3K of climbing, happily chatting with a woman I haven't ridden with before but whom Cy had assured me I would love. She is good to talk to and just as strong as I am on the climb. This is a rarity, I am learning. The trail is the perfect gradient to spin up with enough technical features interspersed to keep it interesting. Our group of eight reconvenes at an alpine lake ringed with larches, the signature selling point for all the coastal residents who travel to the eastern slope of the Cascades in autumn. Cy and I, the most recent transplants, see two other groups of people we know at the lake. This becomes a running theme, because it turns out we know a shit ton of people. 

I eat my brie and salami baguette while sitting on the soft ground next to the water. The group lingers a bit longer than I would like at every stop, but not too terribly long. I'm not sure what's wrong with me, why I get so impatient and anxious with big groups and with people who like to take their time. I often have the excuse of a dog locked in the car at the trailhead, so I'm always afraid she has barfed or pooped or is dying of heat stroke despite the windshield coverings and fan circulating pleasant alpine air, or an overzealous animal lover has smashed our van windows to free our abused dog and now she's wreaking havoc on the entire campground. This is what I picture and it adds to the high-pitched twang of my nerves as people move slowly and enjoy their day. But if it wasn't the worry about Jolene it would be something else. I try not to seem on the outside like an incurable toe-tapper and I don't say anything to hurry the group on, but I am secretly unbearable. 

Inside I'm seething with impatience for no reason

It's a beautiful day and we're making great time for such a big group on such a hard ride - twenty miles and 5K of vert over tough trail. Cy is really hurting, his second brush with Covid proving as bad as the first. He describes a restricted top end, pained breathing, heavy sweat. I can only make sympathetic sounds, because I feel light as air and strong as a cobra, passing everyone as I slither muscularly up the rocky slope. This may be the fittest I've ever been. 

But then I am the weakest descender of our group and I take my place at the rear for the downhills, chasing the other girls, my wrists hurting from the jarring hits on a stiff bike. It's okay though. No crashes and I'm going way faster than I would be if it were just Cy and me riding a big backcountry loop. 

So scenic

We rip down the long descent in a chaotic train of strong riders, politely yelling greetings to the dozens of hikers we encounter, and then back at the trailhead we try to rehydrate while also guzzling beer and cramming chips and salsa into our faces. Good talk and bad jokes flow. This is exactly what Cy and I were looking for when we moved. Throughout the weekend I feel gratitude and disbelief that we have actually gotten here, already. 

The evening is predictably excellent as we tend to the campfire, figure out the next day's adventures, eat apple crumble hot from the Dutch oven, and engage in a long discussion about Dolly Parton and an even longer one about the concept of cuckholding. 

Best camping buddies

In the morning Cy and I break camp very early (it's easy when all you have to do is toss your chairs and cooler into the van) and head down the mountain to town, beating everyone else by over an hour. We excuse our premature departure with the convenient "gotta get coffee ASAP" line, but that's not really it. We both experience the same tangle of restlessness and foresight and anxiety about things like crowded bakeries and busy narrow gravel roads in our wide van and an ever-present need to keep moving forward. It's why we're together and why we love each other - there's no lollygagging in this relationship.

Our friends eventually trickle into the rendezvous point, during rush hour of course, and then over cinnamon twists we finally figure out our next move, which turns out to be another big bike loop, but on smooth easy trails rather than chunky ones. 

It's a great ride, again, with proper climbing and following ladies into moves that scare me. It leaves me so surprised and happy with where our life has taken us. The terrain feels like the hills outside of Salmon, one of our frequent haunts in central Idaho, the same distance away from home, but with bike-specific berms and features. On the drive back, when we are an hour from the house, still winding through a corridor of vibrant fall foliage and sweating rock faces dappled with moss, I tell Cy if we were driving home from Salmon we'd be in Menan (pronounced with a nasally men-Anne), an exurb of Rexburg known only for its one big butte, a shooting range, and the ability to see the white spire of the Rexburg Temple in the distance across the dun-colored sagebrush expanse. 

When we near the city and see the freeway signs listing Bellingham exits, I hit him on the knee. 

"Guess what," I say. 

"We live here," he guesses. 

Exactly. 

The Best Possible Limbo

I'm in a weird place right now. I'm still unemployed, working casually on small freelance pieces and slowly chipping away at the book but fixating an unhealthy amount of attention on a job that I applied for in April and haven't heard back about. At the same time, I'm seizing the day so hard and finding everything that I want outside of work, everything that prompted us to move here, the recreation and community and culture. 

When the job posting popped up I lost my mind with excitement; it felt like the description was written with me in mind. They had to hire me. Who else could possibly fit the bill? But as the weeks have stretched on, with only a few perfunctory back-and-forths in which I try to hide my enthusiasm and neediness, I've lost the confidence and certainty that this is my job. 

My family is blue collar stretching back generations, at this point very financially comfortable but still a little dismissive of work that isn't manual labor. Although they were completely excited about and supportive of my journalism career, I've always been sheepish because, as my parents liked to remind me, they never had paid holidays or company email addresses or jobs that could be stolen away by AI. Now that my generational wealth has enabled me to take a long and ever-lengthening sabbatical, I feel extra queasy about work and my lack thereof. I'm paranoid that my peers think I'm rich and lazy and privileged, and I worry that even Cy is getting sick of my unproductive days spent around the house. But it's more like I'm frozen in place, looking constantly at job postings but never applying for any besides the first one because that is the job that I want so badly that I can't even consider an alternative until I get a definitive answer.    

The reason I say this is the best possible limbo, however, is that in the meantime we are absolutely living life to its fullest. We've crammed several years of local experiences into less than two heady months. Sailing, a sunset ski tour, farmers' markets, pond skims, the Ski to Sea race, the Whatcom World Cup, the Washington Endurance Series, Bellingham Idol, a trip to British Columbia, a baseball game, poke bowls on the beach, drag shows, a Green Day cover band, cliff jumping, runs on urban pathways, errands by bike, adventurous gravel rides, scary bike trails, dig days (with women!), group rides (with women!), jump sessioning (with women!), a queer ride, a downtown naked ride, breweries, Russian dumplings at night, free yoga on the bay, and showing our friends the decadent life.  

Even though constantly checking my inbox for a follow-up email is a bit frustrating, I'm going to try and maintain this momentum for as long as it's sustainable. 

Friday update: After weeks on tenterhooks I finally heard back that the company is postponing the candidate search but will reevaluate in a month or so and I remain in the game if interested. It's closure, sort of! This week I also received a possible offer of copy-editing work from another publication so I am feeling way less dour than I was when I wrote this blog. 

Driving Away

On the kamikaze fourteen-hour drive from eastern Idaho to the northern coast of Washington, my only company the dog curled up in the piles of bedding jammed into the Subaru and Cy's voice on the radio as he piloted the van in front of us, I thought about the other times I've driven away from an old home toward a new one. 

When I left Brevard, two goodbyes stood out: the one to my withholding and not very good boyfriend, which was sad but lackluster, and the one to my father, which felt emblematic of becoming a grown up. When I left Tahoe, I drove away from a crowded hotel room at a casino in Reno, where we had celebrated the end of another season in fittingly hedonistic fashion. Everything and everyone was transient in Tahoe so it didn't feel noteworthy to leave, although I was going to miss some of the people I had met. But my partner was waiting in Idaho with a new life ready for me, so I headed east. 

This time, I was driving away from my home of ten years. In Teton Valley I became fully actualized, changed a lot, grew a lot. I had a deep sense of community, like I had in Brevard, but stronger and earned on my own rather than through my parents' business. I had a husband and a career and a house and adult friendships that made me feel so fortunate I could cry. 

My winter of goodbyes was drawn out and peaceful, because I had the privilege and luxury of leaving my intense job in November and only dabbling in work through April. It was an amazing winter with tons of good skiing and opportunities for adventures with people I care about. When I wasn't skiing or volunteering at the food pantry or listening to podcasts or typing away at JayP's book, I was slowly purging the house and tidying up loose ends. When it came time to pack, of course, we discovered I hadn't purged aggressively enough, but isn't that always the case. 

We filled our final weeks with as many hugs and drinks and walks and skis as possible, but I still didn't feel like I had done my friends justice. But they all quickly lined up with dates that they wanted to come visit, to spring ski and mountain bike, so none of my goodbyes were forever. 

Regardless, I cried often in the final week, almost as sad to be leaving my beloved little house in town as I was to be leaving my community. 

I thought I remembered writing on my blog in 2012 that, as I drove west away from the Blue Ridge, all my feelings were packed away in a box buried under other boxes in the car. It appears that I didn't write that after all, but I definitely thought it, and on my next big drive west, to Washington, it was exactly the same way. After the ceaseless churn of sadness, once I was in motion the feelings went into their little box, to be stored and forgotten somewhere in our new rental. 

Here, I'm not sad, just a little restless, waiting for life to start, waiting to accumulate friends and experiences and knowledge all over again. 

It's been amazing to ride from the house to the tangled web of trails and remember what good dirt is, when Teton Valley mountain biking is still months away from prime season. But the ride that really cinched the decision wasn't on trails, it was on pathways. A friend of a friend took us out to tour some of the city on gravel bikes and the sheer density of back alleys and greenways and bike lanes and singletrack cut-throughs filled me with joy. This place has arteries and veins crisscrossing the whole body to serve the beating center. And being able to ride safely and quickly and on scenic byways to the grocery store is a major factor in quality of life. 

The path to the grocery store looks like this.

Die A Little Death: Fat Pursuit, Skinny Skis

 Look at all this room I gave myself to blog about the race itself since I already wrote about the preparation. Huh, maybe I should do this more often.

I cruised up to Island Park on Friday night with Harrison and Kate in the back of Diego, a sketchy old SUV, and crashed at the volunteer house. Maybe the best part of the Fat Pursuit was dipping back into the Teton Valley bike world and talking to friends I made almost ten years ago and rarely see anymore. As seasoned veterans of the Fat Pursuit, they all had their own important stuff going on, documenting the 3 am finishes of the first 200K racers, re-upping the Coke and PB+J supplies at the aid stations, making sure JayP ate something during his sleepless multi-day race directing stint. 

I took two pictures over the entire race and the internet hasn't provided any yet. 

Just like the old days 

At the start line I posted up near the back, not sure how to handle the chaos of a hundred nervous bikers while I'm on awkward edgeless skis. I started conservatively but the first stretch of trail was slightly downhill on partially-groomed mashed potato snow that looked challenging for the riders and was perfect for skiing, so I was effortlessly passing riders and made it up to the first third of the pack, in sight of two skier guys in skin suits. 

We crossed the highway. I had realized the day before, looking at the course map, that I would have to remove my skis for several road crossings, and bikers definitely had an advantage there. We traversed a chilly meadow on a very fast track and then entered beautiful, snow kissed woods. 

I had been a little leery of sharing the trail with bikes but the riders gave the strange hairless two-legged creature a wide berth. They regained time on me but I was in heaven, relishing that first ten mile euphoria that always hits. I was having a ball, convinced it'd be good times the whole way, plotting how to help Jay market this as an endurance XC ski race because more skiers should join in on the fun! No matter how many times my happy haze slams up against the reality of endurance racing, I still can't help but think at the start of every race that the whole event will reflect those first hours of cheerful excellence. 

The conditions began to get a little sloppier as we left the track that had been groomed only hours before the start. Island Park is the land of slednecks, with miles and miles and miles of wide trails devoted to snowmobiles, and heavy sled travel churns up soft snow and leaves it variable and rutted. We had the best possible weather, just below freezing and no precipitation after 9 am, but even then the track proved challenging for me, requiring that I pay attention to each ski glide and tack across the trail to find the best skate surface and use all the little stabilizers muscles in my feet to stay upright and keep my skis flat across the washboard. This is what Jay had said, that I should train on snowmobile trails, but I figured a few days of skating on tracks with four inches of fresh snow on top of corduroy was adequate. Not the case. 

Fat bikers continued to pass me on their single ribbon of tire-firmed snow on the edge of the trail, while I worked hard to keep moving forward. And yet I didn't ever wish I was on a fat bike - I watched the earthworm squiggles of their tire tracks wherever they deviated from the single firm line, washing out in soft snow and having to walk their bikes, or just mindlessly pedaling down the broad, flat roads. 

I never had the luxury of being mindless, engaging every muscle in my body in this never-ending cycle of pole-push-glide-pole-push-glide. 

The low point came around mile 22, after the route passed a beautiful lake with sapphire blue sky above, then spit us out on pavement. Oh dear. At first I tried skiing on the whooped-out sled track on the bank above the road, but the constant ups and downs and narrow tracked out ruts proved to be extremely slow and fatiguing to navigate. There was a skiff of plowed snow on the shoulder of the road, just wide enough to skate, with occasional large ice chunks threatening to catch my skis and toss me off my feet. Sometimes I had to take off my skis and walk. Many bikers passed me. 

Along some lovely little body of water, no idea I was about to ski down a road.

Fortunately, after over a mile of this nonsense, the road section ended at an aid station. After a pickle, a cookie, and some ginger tea (maybe someday I'll learn to eat enough during races) I set off again, knowing that I was starting up a long "climb." The course had barely any elevation gain, 1085 feet over 35 miles, but even a 400-foot climb felt like a lot in choppy mashed potatoes. 

I felt pretty shelled and kept getting passed. Harrison, who had stopped for multiple tokes and a visit with his girlfriend and dogs at the last aid station, leapfrogged me for the final time. Another rider, as she passed me, said "I think you're working harder than I am," a point I had to concede. I would've been at least an hour faster on a bike, but still wasn't wishing that fate upon myself. Even though I was in a gloomy place, I still had the presence of mind to marvel at the act of skiing, and notice that every time I put effort toward using good form, it made me faster. 

I was mostly using V1 by the end, the first-gear style of pole planting used for climbing. V2-Alternate had served me well at the beginning when I was moving faster, but the surface was never smooth enough for me to try out my nascent V2 skills. I had to switch primary pole sides in V1 because my left arm and shoulder were complaining by mile 20. 

I finished the climb just as the political podcast that I had put on to dull my brain ended. I switched back to music (this was the first race I've ever used headphones for, and it was essential) and braved a glance at mileage. Only two to go! Okay, I thought, here goes. The final miles were down a windswept meadow where I could see for eternity, but it didn't really drag down my spirits as much as a straightaway usually does. I put my head down (only in the figurative sense; I had to concentrate the whole race on keeping my head up) and churned to the finish line. 

Jill Homer always picks a song as she finishes races to set the tone for herself. I didn't have the wherewithal for that but The Beths song "Little Death" came on as I was pushing on the final stretch. Ignoring that the song is about lust, I appreciated the words as I was feeling dramatic and was pretty certain I was dying little deaths. 

 
My legs support a little less
My tongue becomes a little mess
My lips are longing to confess, uh
My lungs they catch on every breath
My heart beats harder at the cage inside my chest
I die, I die a little death.

The extent of my aerobic and muscular fatigue wasn't clear until I had to lay down in the snow at the finish, and then wandered around unable to get comfortable standing up or sitting down. I quickly changed out of my sweat-soaked socks and hateful boots (everything hurt but my feet definitely hurt the most) and regained my composure, some, so I could go cheer for others at the finish and hang out. The second place female skier didn't come through until we were packing up Diego to leave - she classic skied, which seems way slower but also probably a lot less painful. Harrison pointed out that I was operating at a higher intensity than the bikers the whole time, like basically running 35 miles, albeit with more elegant equipment. But yeah. It was really hard. I was afraid I had built it up too much beforehand to myself and my friends as a big effing deal but finishing felt like a major accomplishment. 

I had wanted to hang out and share the camaraderie with the finishers and volunteers, but my whole body and my stomach hurt so much that when my friends said they were taking off, I was content to hop in the car and head home. After twelve hours of sleep and a huge breakfast, I felt recovered enough to go for a ski tour with Dan and the dogs - not even sore, but missing my top end of speed, unsurprisingly. 

And now I'm looking at the registration page for some of the local XC ski races, because once you've skated 35 miles of sled track, 20K of corduroy starts to sound pretty relaxed. 

Fat Pursuit Preamble

I never write pre-race posts because I like knowing the outcome first so I can adopt the appropriate tone in my blog - insouciance or wry resignation or casual swagger, it all depends on how I finish. And when I was younger I was so calculatedly apathetic about race preparation, often to the point of self-sabotage, because it wasn't cool to try, and it was cool to do well effortlessly. 

But with the Fat Pursuit, I wanted to write about the run-up to the race, just as I've wanted to set myself up for as much success as possible, ever since I got the wild hare to register.

This came about because I'm writing a book with Jay Petervary, another scary admission that, by putting out into the world, holds me accountable to really do it. It seemed essential in order to capture the JayP zeitgeist that I finally attend the Fat Pursuit, the winter event he's been putting on for ten years. At first I figured I'd volunteer, because I like volunteering and because I have very little patience for fat biking. At its best I find it kind of boring, and if the conditions are bad it's an interminable slog. 

But then I jokingly posited to myself that I could skate ski the 60K. And then I asked Jay and he confirmed that skates are definitely the appropriate ski choice over classic, which is good because I don't classic ski. And while the Fat Pursuit, in particular the 200K, is notorious for rugged conditions, negative 20 or two inches of snow an hour or 30 mph wind or sometimes all three the same awful year, Jay said the new 60K course is more protected from the elements and is almost guaranteed to have a pretty decent groom on it (in other words, ideally it won't be 35 miles of wallowing through deep snow on improper equipment). 

So I registered. Committing was made easier by a very healthy coupon code.

Sitting with Jay for hours at a time learning about his experiences in the ultra-endurance world and his psychological inability to quit ridiculous races makes me feel sheepish that I've treated this paltry event with such single-mindedness and nervousness, but we're not all full of sheer New Jersey cussedness, I guess. 

I haven't done a ton of miles because the backcountry skiing has been phenomenal, and because our groomed tracks are pretty short so distance skating requires aggressive hamster-wheeling, but I did polish off an 18-mile day last month and figured if I could finish that just feeling a little sore and sweaty, I could probably schlep my way through double the distance.

Since I learned to skate in 2021, I've been watching Youtube to try and improve my still amateurish form, and this winter I started doing fifteen push-ups a day because my poling sucks. Chrissy is the only person who will skate with me, and is willing to listen to me talk about technique ad nauseum. 

My equipment is old and screams rental gear, and I haven't gone out and bought XC-specific apparel, the wind-paneled tights and streamlined hip pack and overkill insulated leather gloves, so I just wear what is essentially my skinning outfit. Skating is way too hot of an activity for the cute little beanies and puffy jackets people wear at the track, so I wear a ball cap and t-shirt and bike gloves, and weather-resistant vented softshell pants that seem more versatile than tights, I guess. And I'm bringing a skimo race pack, with loud neon Dynafit accents, for emergency gear.

To sum it up, I look like a waddling baggy dork but that's kind of how I ski too, so I've resigned myself to not fitting in at the Alta track, land of 65-year-old speed demons. 

Fortunately, there are very few skiers signed up to race, but one woman whose Instagram bio includes "cross country skier" is coming, so there goes my shot of a calm cool and collected start, not that that was ever likely - I am and have always been a first-ten-miles hustler who always blows up after three hours. I'm usually able to recover, enough, and this summer and winter have marked some of the fittest seasons of my life, at least out west, so it's fun to lean into that old lady strength I've been accruing. 

The Island Park forecast looks surprisingly good, gentle snow through the night clearing up to an overcast day just below freezing, but, as JayP warns, you can never trust the forecast in eastern Idaho. So I'm packing all the necessary outerwear as well as some ingenious (maybe?) skins for skate skis, thanks to Cy the inveterate tinkerer and preparer. 

All in all, I'm in no way apathetic about this. I'm really excited to take on a challenge that I'm not sure I can do, because isn't that what makes sports so dang rad?