The White Mountains 100

On Sunday I started the White Mountains 100, which turned out to be, hands down, the best and funnest race of my life.  The following was my Facebook post explaining how it all happened; edited somewhat to remove a few typos, make tenses agree, and to clarify a thing or two:

The People probably crave an explanation of how a back-of-the-pack skier like myself came to get second place in the White Mountains 100 this year, and I'll see if I can deliver. 

This is the 4th year for the race, and my first year doing it. It was my first 100-mile race, and my second "ultra", the first having been the 100-kilometer Homer Epic the week before, where I delivered a decidedly un-notable performance. That race is groomed for skating, and I hadn't done much skating during the winter, so my quads were quivering by kilometer 40. It was downhill (but only figuratively) from there.

Bob Gillis and I carpooled to the start line of the WM100. "I'm kind of hoping for difficult conditions," I told Bob greedily, "because I think it'll affect me less than it affects other people."
"I was kinda thinking the same thing." Bob admitted with the earnestness of a genuinely, exceptionally nice guy who is admitting that he's hoping that everyone but him has a shitty day.

The White Mountains trail is a backcountry trail groomed for multiple use by the BLM. In many places the trail is narrow. Traditionally, badass skiers plan to skate the whole 100 miles, double poling when the trail is too narrow to skate. The weak, the slow, the timid and the cautious classic it. I classiced. So did Bob. Classic is much more of a sure thing in the Whites. Two years ago, in perfect conditions, Rob Whitney skated the course record in something like 11 hours. Even atheists begin to Believe whenever they discuss The Time Rob Whitney Skied The Whites.

My toes were already numb by the time I walked to the start line. The previous night was cold and windy, and the snow was slow. Skate skiers were struggling right away, and in the first 20 miles there was lots of drifted snow and soft snow. But I didn't think much of it - typical day in the Whites. It was only on the approach to Cache Mountain Cabin, at around mile 38, when Drew Herrington told me that it was "by far the worst he had ever seen", that I learned that conditions were bad.

Cache Mountain Cabin was a party scene. People were hanging out and cracking jokes, and it was a great backdrop for how badass and fun this race is. I inhaled a delicious baked potato with bacon and sour cream and shredded cheese and Chips Ahoy!s and M&Ms and Coca Cola and for the first time in my life I didn't wonder where in the hell all that entry fee money actually goes. Taking advice I had gotten from Matias Saari, I hurried out of there, racing against food coma.

The next section - I'm not sure how far, maybe 10 miles? - is an uphill slog to the Cache Mountain Divide. I had been down this section two weeks before, and knew not to expect much. I slogged up the hill, taking it easy and going steadily. I had over-eaten at the cabin, and racing would have caused me to toss my hard-earned potato into the snow. I passed one other skier, John Shook, on this section as he changed layers (he was putting his tuxedo back on). It had started snowing.

The sudden emergence into the alpine at the Divide is awesome, and I was met there by my friend Mark Simon, who is one of the race medics. Having an ER doctor, who would also be perfectly capable of doing the race himself, as a volunteer medic for the race is an excellent analogy for how badass and well-organized this race is. (I think some of the other medics are equally badass, but I don't know them and so am not sure of their credentials.) Mark and I high-fived, and I kept on keeping on.

After a few more miles and some overflow I arrived at the Windy Gap Cabin, frozen into my ski binding (after this point I would be frozen into my binding always, so I won't mention it again). I was ready for food and a break. The only people in the cabin were skiers from Fairbanks. Everyone was a friend or a friend of friends. Ed Plumb, the badass race director, was there and he commented that it was more like a cabin trip with friends than like a race. I had a bowl of delicious meatball soup pushed at me by a wonderful lady and some Pringles and some more coca cola and it was an excellent painting of how badass and friendly this race is.

...but, upon taking inventory of the people in the cabin, I fatefully asked Teresa Hollingsworth, one of the top-notch volunteers, what skiers were ahead of me on the trail. Mike Kramer was long gone, but Bob Gillis and Matias had just walked out the door. And Matias was skating, and that was clearly not going well for anyone who made that decision. Steve Taylor was making moves toward the door, but he was skating too. Brian Young was also making threatening motions, but he was also skating, and for him nearly everything was going wrong, including broken equipment and damaged body parts. "YOU MEAN I'M IN 4TH PLACE?????? AND MAYBE NO ONE WILL TAKE THAT AWAY FROM ME?????" was my mental dialogue. I tried to play it cool, but my pace quickened. 

As I was packing up and putting a coat of kick wax on my skis another cohort of racers came in; people with whom I had mostly shared the trail from the start line to Cache Mountain Cabin. They included Tom Moran, Christie Haupert, Drew Herrington and Kristen Rozell. I regard these people as "my people", and consider myself to be about their same ability level. But they were struggling more with the conditions than I was. A competitive fire, long neglected, lit up in my chest. I saw glory in my future. (As an aside, I returned to work today and was reminded that nobody in the Real World gives the least bit of a shit.)

I had eaten dinner, it was now night (I left the cabin at 9:40pm), it was snowing, I was on a new-to-me section of trail (that I knew was 20 miles of gradual downhill), and I felt fantastic. I put in my iPod for the first time and put on my AllDivas playlist and I remembered that I love to ski. Steve Taylor passed me skating fast on some overflow, but not long later he got bogged down in soft, slow snow, and I passed him back. Then he passed me when I stopped to dig in my pack. Then I saw his headlamp in the distance, and one other. He and Matias had stopped at the junction for with the Fossil Gap trail. Passing Matias, an Alaska endurance-racing legend, felt a bit like raping a nun. I genuinely felt bad for him, but I didn't want to stop there, I felt great, and kept going. I wouldn't see them again until the finish. A little later I passed Bob, who looked to be slowing down. 

Mostly, up to this point, my position in this race was luck. I don't for one second think that I'm a better skier than Matias or Brian or Steve or John Shook, but they were skating, and so they were hosed. Drew and Tom and Bob and Christie and Kristen are all more experienced with ultra endurance and are generally fitter than me. But my stars were aligning. I had gotten all my food and clothing right. I was comfortable and all my systems were working (experience plays into this some, but very experienced people get this stuff wrong sometimes, too, so luck plays a role as well). After Windy Gap I had mostly quit eating real food and had switched to mainly gels with one clif bar and a couple of bars of Halva that my mom had given me (the Halva was delicious and awesome, fyi). I also started dosing myself heavily with caffeine, which partly explains my energy level and excellent mood.

Another thing that worked well for me was - I'm slow. I ski slow. It's what I do, and what I train for. I live in Fairbanks and ski all winter, and I even kinda like skiing in the obscene cold because I find a certain elegance in it. When the other racers complained that conditions were bad I genuinely didn't know what they were talking about. It seemed normal enough to me. If conditions had been great, I think I would have been only a tiny bit faster - and much farther back in the final standings. It was turning out to be a year tailored to my strengths.

I arrived at Borealis, the final checkpoint at about mile 80, at 1:40 in the morning. I made it clear that I did not intend to stay. The volunteers there were awesome, but I knew I needed to run away. They offered me food. I declined. They offered me candy - gesturing towards a Costco-sized bag of Skittles - and I wavered. "...no," I said apologetically, "it's just... my tummy... and I have food ...and I should get going. Actually, I'll take some of those gels there." "Oh!" said the surprised volunteer. "Those haven't been very popular."

I ducked out six minutes after I entered. Bob showed up right as I was leaving. I gave him a fist bump.

I felt like a hunted man after that. I wanted my second place, goddamnit, and I didn't want Bob taking it from me. I skied out of there, looking over my shoulder the whole way, looking for either for Bob Gillis or The Devil. I knew the trail from here back, having done some of it two years before and the last portion three weeks before.

Halfway between Borealis and the finish is the Trail Shelter. It's not a checkpoint, and you're not required to stop. But I had only a liter of water accessible without taking my pack off, and I knew that that would get me to the trail shelter. Stopping there for more hot water would be quicker than taking off my pack.

I arrived there at about 3:40 in the morning. There was one guy standing out there. It was cold, it was snowing, and it was 3:40 in the morning. He was friendly, encouraging, and great. I only got his name as Jim. He is an excellent analog for how the volunteers for this race are badass and devoted. Doing the race is tough, but the volunteers are tougher. I filled up on hot water and split. 11 miles to go.

The first few are flat. Mentally, it was more of the same. I got passed in here by a biker. She scared the life out of me, because I thought she was Bob when I saw her headlamp blazing toward me. I kept looking back at the figure I was certain was Bob, but Bob was moving fast with a perfectly quiet upper body. I thought that maybe Bob had become a vampire.

Then I finally realized it was a biker. 

The trail is in a low creek valley here, and I chased her all the way to the base of the "last" major climb in the race, the Wickersham Wall. There was a lot of overflow in this section - just enough to keep icing up the base of my skis - and I was skiing panicky and badly through here. Some combination of the fright Janice gave me and the legitimate need to hurry crossing the overflow caused me to ski the way you would imagine that a giraffe might the first time it tried skiing, and I nearly fell once as she and I crossed section of wet overflow.

Apparently she is a badass rider from Anchorage - last year's winner - that was just having a terrible race and had stopped to sleep. I could tell she was good by how fast she was going on the flats. I also figured out that she was having a terrible race by how slow she went on the Wall. I passed her early on in the climb and didn't see her again. (obviously, skiing up hills is much quicker than pushing a bike up them.) 

In the pre-race meeting Ed makes a big joke about how the final six miles - the only trail that you repeat in the race - will seem new to you on the return. Everyone laughs, because, sitting there in the Schaible Auditorium, it's funny. It wasn't funny. I was even ready for that phenomenon, since I had done a long training ski here a few weeks back. But suddenly small hills were never-fucking-ending. And steep climbs appeared out of nowhere.

It was also beginning to get light. At first it wasn't obvious, since the overcast night had been lit by an appreciated-but-never-seen full moon. Eventually, it became obvious that day was breaking. I had been running from Bob. Then I was racing Janice. Then, mentally, I wanted to finish before it got light. I revised my goal from "before it got light" to "before the sun rose". But I kept racing something.

I had also been chasing Kramer all this time. At Borealis they said he left two hours before me. At the Trail Shelter Jim said the same. I mostly had no ambition of catching him, since I continued to see his tracks - which told me that he was still skating - all along. They were also filling with snow, which clued me in to the fact that he was a ways off.

I don't know Kramer. I've never met him. But everyone else on skate skis had given up and was putting on kick wax, climbing skins and frowns, but Kramer was still skating. It had to have been a Herculean effort. This is a man with a fire deep in his chest. I wondered if I was seeing the shreds of an athletic performance of Ancient Grecian proportions, and if those ski tracks were the sound of a gigantic tree falling in the forest; a sound being muffled as the tracks filled in with softly falling snow. But after the trail shelter, I could see that he was tired. His tracks were shorter and closer together. Sometimes I could see that he was double-poling. Sometimes, out of curiosity, I matched my own poling to his tracks, to see if I could glide as far as him. I couldn't. 

Between the trail shelter and the finish, however, I gained an hour on him.

In all my talk about my result in this race being luck and a fluke, the one thing that I can't take away from myself is that, right to the bitter end, I felt good and was skiing well. So though I'll never be fast, I got a strong second wind at mile 60 and it lasted until mile 100. Maybe I'm an okay ultra-racer as long as conditions are bad.

In the vagaries of pre-dawn light, the trees came alive. At first I saw buildings I knew weren't there. Then I scared the shit out of myself when I saw a couple of moose right on the side of the trail that were actually just willows. Then the trees began to appear as mythical or cartoonish animals. Sometimes tiny little helmeted soliders. I've never hallucinated before, but this was as close as I've come. At first I found them irritating or terrifying, but I learned what people mean when they start to enjoy them. Eventually, I started saying hello.

In the car on the drive up Bob and I discussed that we were hoping for bad conditions, since it would help us. I got 2nd place, and Bob tied for 3rd with Matias. But we also talked about how much we love the final downhill getting to the parking lot. Little did we know, we sounded like those Tea Partiers that wave the signs saying "keep your goddamn government hands off my medicare." The snow was so slow that I had to actively classic and double-pole down what is usually a gentle, effortless cruise. It was the first time in the race that I was really miserable.

But finally, there it was.

(a special thanks to Drew Herrington who told me not to be a pussy and to do race, and then gave me lots of very useful notes on strategy, including the suggestion that I perish the thought of skating the course.  And of course thanks to Bobby G and all the other skiers - you guys are what made it fun.)

This is not really what it looked like, but there is nothing about white balance that my camera can't get wrong.  And it's pretty, so I'll leave it.

Patrick Sartz skis ahead on the first leg - I had met him once before, one drunken morning a little over a year before.   

Me pulling into Checkpoint 1.  I was walking up this hill, which was a mile long, but began skiing for real when I saw the camera :)  This is how the day really looked.
This photo is copyright Mark Conde - you can see his entire race album here: http://zubenelgenubi.smugmug.com/Events/WhiteMtns100/28614422_zJRbKN#!i=2426883655&k=psCsjXG and you can find his contact info there as well.

At the checkpoint.  I was laughing because I had joked that they should have the race in late March instead of early February, and someone else commented on the irony of having a professional weather forecaster as the race director.  Then another guy said that he was interested in "control, not prediction," which I thought was pretty funny.  This photo was taken by a checkpoint volunteer that liked my frostache, but unfortunately I'm not sure who it was.  I stole the photo from the WM100's Facewaste page.

Rolling out of Checkpoint 1, eating a cookie.  Once again, this photo is copyright Mark Conde.

Again, this is not the way the colors were.

I think that this is Tom Moran, on his way down to Beaver Creek on the 2nd leg.

Kristen Rozell.  For the first two legs every time I turned around, there she was - cheerful and reminding me to keep on my toes, 'cuz she might be dangerous.  Kristen ended up winning for women!  Nice work, Kristen!
I edited this photo to fix the color, but it still wasn't good, so I'm leaving it.

Skiing through the woods between Cache Mountain Cabin and the Divide there wasn't much to take pictures of, so I shot a self-portrait.

This is me, arriving at the Cache Mountain Divide halfway into the race.  Mark Simon sent me this photo, but I think it was probably taken by Katie The Medic.  Thanks, Katie!

Me and Dr. Mark at the Divide.  This is the last picture I took since my camera froze and I knew it would be dark soon, so I didn't bother trying to thaw it out.

This was taken by the race volunteers at the Borealis Checkpoint at 1:40 in the morning, at mile 80. I look like Santa Claus.

At the finish line around 7am.  I don't know who the other person in this photo is, nor do I remember talking to him.  I think Andrew Balser took this photo.

Look at me! Look at me! Look at me!
I received an award for "one of a kind" because I was skiing on mismatched skis and poles, which attracted a lot of attention.  But I always wonder what other people do with the survivor when one ski breaks?

I was also mouthing-off at the checkpoints.  I should clarify that I was NOT talking shit, but rather explaining that Steve and Matias had given up on going fast and that that was why they weren't beating me.