A Chilling Experience.

The marathon in Antarctica is the hardest physical feat I have entertained.  Catalina Island Marathon had over 4000 elevation gain and shoe sucking mud.  Midnight Sun Marathon in Alaska had miles of trails, gravel, and a moose that charged us. Paris Marathon was wall to wall people on miles of cobble stone. The Hepthalon and 400 hurdles at the World Championships was pure performance pressure in front of a full stand of people.  But Antarctic was…. well, freezing.

We had been rolling, swaying on the open ocean for days and now a new storm was stirring up the bay we were to make our LANDING for the marathon.  The temperatures had been dropping ever since we entered the convergent waters circulating Antarctica.  Just getting the zodiacs with the quad runners ashore to set up the course proved heroic. High seas, wind, and snow delayed them by half a day. We circled in the choppy bay for hours and finally the One Ocean crew and Marathon Tours brazenly forged a landing despite the chilly spray that slammed into their heavily loaded zodiacs.  They knew the marathoners were here to run the race no matter what.  We had all fought just to get here, years in the planning, a month in the delay. They HAD to have a marathon. That was fact.

The course could only be what Antarctica is…terrain.  A terrain that cemented into whatever mud groove formed during a much warmer month. Thom, the Marathon Tours director said the course was hilly.  I asked him to describe hilly.  He looked me in the eye and said .”HILLY!”.  I should have trained running ravines, gullies, maybe abysses… hopping over ponds on ice skates and thrown in running miles atop of metal grates.  The caterpillar treaded vehicles they used to get around from the science stations left the dirt road rutted in exact width to twist ankles.  It required precision strides on top of the ridges. 26.2 miles of this tip toeing, tight tapping foot work while slipping and sliding down hills turned this into a marathon that would require being out longer than normal.  Typical marathon times of 2 hrs and 30 minutes up to 4 hrs and 30 minutes became 3 hr and 50 minute lead finishes to 6 hours and 30 minutes.  Humbling.

We slid up hills and down hills and cracked through ice.  Many fell including the lead runners. Knees, elbows, and chins were bloody. The course was a figure of eight  of three loops to keep us crossing a check point. It  allowed us to continue the camaraderie that had developed on the ship.  We could hooray each other coming and going.

And yet, we were alone on this vast land for much of the mileage.  I had a lone runner ahead of me possessed to run it in a penguin suit. We were reduced to a waddle just trying to tip toe the terrain, deal with the ever dropping temperatures, and keep that one stride going in front of another.   Being there later than normal, this would be the coldest marathon yet.  The two lead runners were rushed to the Russian station minutes after their finish, both in full stages of Hypothermia. Our oldest competitor, at 78 years, wisely knew to come in after only the first lap.  This would not be the year to be the oldest finisher on this unrelenting continent. It was so cold we watched a lake freeze before our eyes.

Antarctica is incomprehensible beauty with life sapping consequences.  Winter, a 14-year-old prodigy, who traveled here to be the youngest finisher ran with purpose. With the balanced backing of her mother, she started competing for prostate cancer research after losing her dad who  did not live to his 41^st birthday, leaving behind a wife and four athletic, energetic children. Whether the weather bothered this young girl, she did not show it.

For me, I never got comfortable.  Go figure.  I had lived the winter out in Jackson, Wyoming to test out and determine effective clothing layers and pit my body against the elements.  I had set my alarm at 5am many a day and ran right out into storms.  But today.  I was actually dizzy.  The ground seemed to be rolling like the ship, coming up to greet my knees and stomach.  I was LAND SICK. And that rolling did not dissipate.  Having been redirected to California and Maui prior to the event, my limbs were confused now as I forced them to function in the cold.

I fumbled with the gear I so tediously bought.  The Gortex jacket was too concealing. By the third mile I was drenched in dangerous sweat.  My craft windstopper leggings that had been so perfect for skate skiing, were tugging at my knees and pulling my wool core layer down every stride I took. The borrowed ‘flat thing that plays music” that my daughter laughingly reminded is called a nano ipod was stuck on one song.  There must be a mode that allows you to repeat a tune over and over again, say for an aerobics routine.  But hours of the same Black Eye Peas song?! I pulled the ear plugs out.  My double layered gloves were too hot layered and too cold with only the first layer.  They went on again, off again, and I continually dropped one and had to turn back and pick up a lost mitten. It was even more time-consuming to try to use the camera.  It required removing the gloves, begging a fellow runner to take a quick snap ,than trying to zip it back into a pocket with gloves in the teeth.  I inadvertently unzipped the vent to the Gortex jacket thinking it was a pocket, stuffed the portable snap shot camera in, and lost it somewhere on that frozen, grooved road. Every frustrated focus on the pants, jacket, gloves, ipod, and camera put me behind the pace pack and forced me to surge like a tortoise and the hare race.  I devised a plan to make up the distance on the down hills.  Here, I have to say, is where the training in Jackson came to reward me.  I could run terrain.  Hard, frozen, uneven ground.  Pick, pop, step, jump, twist, turn, run and not fall down. This was not any different that say running Cache Creek or the Elk’s refuge.   I was deftly confident of footing on this icy surface. Hooray.  But the downhill gain wasn’t equating to the mounting minutes dealing with my gear.

In sheer agitation, I stripped off all the layers at the check station only 8 miles into the marathon.  Now I was running in my wool base layer!  Go figure. Working the fall at Skinny Skis in Jackson so I could get the techy gear and I was running in my underwear.  I at least had on my favorite Patagonia pull over with its hoody and whisking ability, but was now all dressed in black.  I grabbed a funky Saucony hunter orange beanie out of my gear back and declared my very funky fashion statement.

Easter SUNRISE.

Does this even need words?   Is it the axis the Pole is on that makes the sunrises and sunsets last for hours? The hues cast and glow in an unearthly, more heavenly way.  Well done, Creator.  AWE.  REVERENCE.  RESPECT.  Quieted.  Humble. Stunned.  Everything in our overly hassled lives… STILLS.  And you just GAZE.  GAZE.  And quietly gaze.

Pictures speak louder than words

Before I story tell you about Antarctica, I want you to feel it…somethings words just do not paint the full, vast, immense, luring picture of a place.  My mother was a professional photographer. She always wanted to be a writer, but died of cancer before she could offer her gift in words. But she enstilled that eye of wonder in me. And I just think I was born with that heart of wander.  I grew up capturing life at angles and, in dedication to her, hope to put this place it into words.  But just enjoy its moods for a moment.  Antarctica…the ice EDEN.

How to explore Patagonia in two hours…seriously

I have ALWAYS, ALWAYS wanted to explore Patagonia.  It is the Southern Hemisphere’s equivalent to Alaska and seems to me to be even more untouched and worthy of exploration.  So to be chasing the hours and minutes away before this boat would voyage to Antarctica from Ushuia was grippingly disappointing.  We would land at the southern most tip of South America only hours prior to having to board the ship.  Ferret mode was activated and I literally RAN past town and up a hill to get pictures of the glaciated mountains that backdrop this quaint town of so many trucks with so little place to go. I than sprinted back into town, eyeballed king crab restaurants, bought goodies from a bakery, picked out a tiny stuffed penguin christening  him with the name of Tux so I’d have a photo shoot buddy, bought and mailed postcards, met people who would be on our boat, took pictures at the end of the world sign…”fin Del Mundo”, and got on the boat with my bikini still underneath my running sweats. ”Hi, all you new people I have never met!   Hope my luggage made it cause this bikini is not going to cut it where we are about to go!”

I took a picture of a little yellow flower, actually a weed poking through the pavement.  It would be the LAST living plant we would see for a long time.

A pod of girls that were reunioning days they had met while in the army made sure they brought an army load of wine and spirits aboard, and with them a great spirit of adventure, teasing, enjoying, and girlish fun.  Also among them was a beautiful gal whose email read ‘fitbrit’. There would be South Africans with their almost national  athletic, boyish spirit and a guy named Martin that would tell me ( the one with the blond hair that already confuses everyone’s names anyway) everyone’s wrong names.  Daves became Steves, and Bobs were Johns and it took me the sail across the Drake to rearrange them right.

And, I think I never did get them all rigth, but names aside, I got their personalities.

A PRICELESS JOURNEY

The email and txt read, “URGENT TRAVEL ALERT. POSTPONED”. I was zipping up the suitcase and about to head to LAX.   The 2013 Antarctica Marathon was put on hold?  What?!!  Most of us had been on a waiting list for three to four years. No regard, our ship had hit an iceberg requiring it be  towed back to Russia for repairs.  We would have to wait until the end of the fully booked excursion season.  We would be one of the last boats out there before winter.  We would have to all totally rearrange out lives, rebook flights, and stayed trained, which we all seemed to know to do.

When Antarctica got postponed advice had been to bail…except for the two I knew whom already accomplished a marathon distance on Antarctica.  I heard a hallo sound in their voice as they both separately said, “Priceless.  There  is no price tag on the experience.  We cannot begin to describe to anyone what you can only fathom from being there in person. “  So I listened and looked like a desperate fool trying to change all those tickets and get events covered. BUT they would be right.  Antarctica did become that EPIC JOURNEY almost too deep for words.

Follow me as I try and take you where most never go.

A straight line from Maui to the tip of South America?

Every time I have the privilege to time a race in Maui, I ALWAYS intend to take a few extra days and enjoy the heck out of the island…and never get to.  Something important always comes up.  In this case, the rescheduled Antarctica expedition to run the marathon.  So Maui was left to be enjoyed by my staff Nick and Laurel.  I raced from the race to the airport, landed in San Diego at 1pm on a delayed flight.  Pedal to the metal, I drove to Orange County where I left my truck full of supplies for the Rabbit Run…easter eggs, bunny suit, registration materials.  My son met me on his only day off and drove me to LAX via grabbing my camera equipment from my brother.  Than I was off to Lima, Peru.  Landed past midnight.  I KNOW that the looming Andes are out there, but I miss them in the dark.  I land in Santiago, Chile in the middle of the night.  Hi, Chile.  Never been here before.   The connecting flight bounces wildly over the high Andes Mountains heading across to Buenos Aires, Argentina.  Remember ALIVE… I land in Buenos Aires in the morning and have just a day to be in Argentina.  So…I learn to TANGO!  And I learn that Buenos Aires has a LOT of traffic.  So I took to the double decker bus and toured the city for a few hours.  I had this great family adopt me for the bus ride.  They were  from a vineyard town I think is called Mendoza in Argentina .  Thank you for letting me be a part of your fun and have my few hours in Argentina convince me that really nice people live here. 

Taking a poll…rate the sunglasses contest

 

Don’t choose a Life set on THE SPIN CYCLE

When I was around 4years old I crawled in the dryer to hide.  I made sure I left the door slightly ajar to let light in and so I could peak out. Someone walked by and bumped the door shut. Bam.  Activation button on. I got tumbled.  I was told our family dog, a little Dachshund, started barking and jumping on the door of the dryer.  My mom found me purple, but still breathing. Needless to say, I didn’t like crawling into small places for a long time after that. The situation sure changed when that door shut.

So many things can inadvertently bump the door shut on what we think are our cozy places. Try a terminated marriage! For some reason  Antarctica getting postponed sent me tumbling. I like volume.  It suits me to do 10 things at once.  I liked being in different places, working with different people. I, in hindsight, do not like not having the volume my So Cal calendar of races gave me.  Go figure. I worked hard to free myself up for these new adventures and I am fretting over not having the thing that was robbing me of all my time and creativity. I question Jackson, Wyoming. Did I crawl into another dryer in life by venturing to Jackson ?  It seemed like a cozy place to curl up for awhile.  Somehow, Antarctica getting postponed has stalled out an additional month and… bam shut the door on my well proposed plans to run on ice, than time an event in Maui, than stage a race in California, and spend Easter Sunday with my kids. Instead, I worked out the race details in California, flew back to Jackson to at least coach a week of High School track, scrambled to get people to cover my race in California, changed a LOT of airline tickets, flew to Maui just to time the race, gave my condo nights to my staff, and connected across South American airports arriving for a few hours in Buenos Aires and in Ushuia only hours before the boat departed.  Definitely on the Spin cycle!

I did take advantage of a freed up month by signing up for the USA Track & Field Level II coaching academy.  I took a Water Safety Instructors course and begin renewing all my recreational requirements for First Aid, CPR, and Lifesaving. I decisively am going to provide the western region with a cause oriented, affordable, precise timing service. The summer calendar is filling with timing contracts for ITz ABOUT TIME. I did come back to California and see my son and daughter.   I took the time to visit with good business associates, mentors, and friends.

I moved myself for more leg room and plopped on the outer seat of an exit row.  I wasn’t heading to Antarctica.  I was heading to Maui, squeezing in a race I had contracted to time.  The man peering out the window was surfer tan with sporty, surfer blond locks.  He was fit.  He had been a ski pro, a pro surfer, and was now a pro coach for our national paddle board team.  He shared he had made great money as an athlete and was very suited to handle the chaos that comes from that demanding of a lifestyle.  But that he had recently gone through a divorce. “Go figure.  Win at all that and lose the one race in life that matters more.” We flew in silence.

Not FROZEN in Time

Good thing we ebb and grow. I am still wondering where I should take my next career steps in life.  But for now, I have freed up myself to concentrate on something more than the volume I was doing in Southern California.  There is a WORLD to tell you about. a BIG GRAND WORLD of opportunity.  Let me first let me catch you up to speed with me. One, I turned 50 this year and with it lots of changes, including those few blue moments that come with swinging hormones.  Luckily, they are rare and few, but feel identical to the same swings that came when I hit puberty and the monthly periods began.  You get this once a month day that, not matter, the world feels like it is falling apart from the inside out and you scramble to attach it to something that could possibly make you feel so emotional.

So, to move on from there,  here is a moment to applaud the accomplishments and meaning life does have.  I have two very competent kids tackling college.  I provided them with a home in a resort community, life on a lake and winter snow skiing.  Private school, trips abroad…adventurous, my style places.  I attended a community church, coached the High School track and cross country teams, and one season of volleyball.  I cooked once a week for over 200 people to help a church mid-week get together.  I took hosting classes to be competent in front of the camera, a good experience.  I remodeled a 944 Porsche with a good relationship.  I have a Warlock demon ski boat purchased for the sole opportunity to have an outlet that I enjoyed my kids and their friends in. I ran an incredibly complicated and successful timing business with trucks, trailers, warehouse, high tech computer systems, and great staff.  Did so for 20 solid years.  I am in incredible shape for a women my age.  I am making the opportunity to get in better shape and plan to train for the World Track & Field Championships in October 2013 after my bucket list check off of running the marathon in Antarctica.  I love the outdoors and have a great mountain bike, top of the line road bike, and dirt and paved bike paths in all directions to ride them in Jackson.  I am enjoying yoga, trail running, and will be coaching the Jackson High School track team this season, as well as attending the USA Track & Field Level II coaching academy.  I renewed my WSI, Lifesaving, CPR, and first aid to help me in the process of getting back into recreational administration.  I secured a Masters in Public Administration during all this busyness of running a business.  And I spent a summer managing the kitchen for that fantastic camp I was a camp counselor, activities director, and  waterskiing and climbing instructor during my undergraduate college days.  I ran track in college, road races and triathlons my mid years, and am back on the track as a masters athlete.  I am excited about my adventure based timing company ITzabouttime.com.  It will take me the choice places I love to travel to, plus give me something I can give back to the community here in this Jackson region.  I have more years of experience in timing than any company out there. I am also starting up a production company called SUNRUN PROUCTIONS and a track training camp company called TRY TRACK, in which, I will include the magic of  good  summer camp fun with the skill development that will help youth be accomplished track athletes.  But underneath all this, I have wander lust.  I think I may end up in the ends of the earth helping others enjoy the ends of the earth.  I want to guide adventure based opportunities for a while.  That’s what I really want to do.

Our home was open to anyone that needed it.  We had Japanese exchange students, troubled youth, and 5 Hispanic boys that we have come to consider as our sons.  They went to Belmont High in downtown Los Angeles as newcomers, but rode the metro and spent all their time off the track at our home training or working for our timing company.  All five went on to colleges and universities on running scholarships despite the odds against them.  It is an amazing story I will share with you.  It is one I am in the process of writing a book and screen script about.  (came to Jackson to do so, but have been too distracted by all the great outdoors, surprisingly winter outdoors…that I have written far less than hoped.  Better get on that.  Am now treating it like a job that I have to put the hours in for.)

And I need to after our most recent episode in my boys being young men without a country.  We got them student visas, but the day they graduated they went back to being ‘illegal’.  One of our ‘sons’ has a twin sister and mother he has not seen in 10 years.  He knows he has limited time left to get to see his aging mother.  He chose to marry a women that promised to help him get his papers.  The wedding plans and living with this women, whom had three teenage children became a real home for our son. After the tedious and expensive wedding, he constantly told us all the things they planned and did, that they bought a bar b que and a backyard pool.  He fell easily into the position as father to the kids and enjoyed the new found family. And I constantly asked him why he had not filed for his papers.  His excuse was that his money had to go to paying rent and bills.  I finally told him I would give him money to put in a special account just for filing for his papers, not to be used for this woman’s family.  I get a collect call from a jail in the middle of the night.  He is scared, confused.  He said he went home and everyone was gone and oddly, so was his computer.  He txted the kids who always came home at this time from school.  Odd, not response.  Than the police showed up to arrest him for spousal rape.  The gal trumped up a cause to get him put away and sent back over the border.  Apparently, this is not the first guy she has done this to.  Like, where is the father if her kids? And our unsuspecting, bewildered son is in a bad, hard to prove innocent situation, plus broken hearted.  He actually loved his new family.  And his ‘hood’ family is ready for revenge.  Life is hard enough.  They can’t allow someone to mess with them that way.

This struggle to get my son out of jail  all took place while I am trying to time an event in Mau, Hawaiii and get down to South America and not miss the boat I have been on a waiting list to go for four years!  So what went with me to Antarctica was that heart felt heart for those that struggle as people without countries.  Maybe, I finally realize that it so keen to me because I was raised by a mom who was half Cree Indian.  My grandmother, in her teens, had hitch hiked to California from Oklahoma and once there, discovered she was pregnant in a day when unwed women were not.  My beautiful as any model mom had a hole in her heart from being left at and raised by a home mill of unwanted children.  A hole that never could be filled until I watched God’s grace bring her own mother to her bedside and tenderly mother her as she fought and lost her battle with cancer. Two of my Hispanic boys had been left orphaned in Southern Mexico by their mom.  They spent 6 years putting coins in a can to get coyotes to get them across the border just to find their moms.  Family is strong.  It is an innate  need and drive in us. 

People were asking what indigenous people was I to meet in Antarctica….the penguins they would joke.  Yes, the penguins were worth meeting, but very few people know about the Russian crew in the belly of the whale of a cruise ship.  Those were the ones I wanted to learn from.  What’s their story.

Into the Wild

Stranded in California I guess isn’t the worse thing. In fact, it is a beautiful thing.  It makes me realize the privilege I have had to live in great places.  I have to keep up the mileage and find hills.  Though I loathe mileage, I love the adventure of finding new trails and new places.  I ran above Baseline in Claremont, parking near Webb High School.  There was a creek and a bike path and I just started to run.  Ran past a park and saw trails leading up a hillside. ran up the hillside that lead to a fire road that lead to power towers that lead to a view and a sign pointing toward Johnson’s pasture that leads up another set of hills that overlooked the valley and had Mt Baldy looming in the background.  There were 6 deer grazing in a meadow and a hawk hovering overhead.  Than I ran in Dana Point…up from Doheny Beach past the Charthouse and onto the park paths and across the crest of the hill kept as an open preserve.  The views from the POINT are the POINT.  Awesome.  Than I ran behind Concordia University in goopy mud that they say will be in Antarctica.  The goop glues onto the bottom of the shoes and feels like you are running in high heels.  This ought to be a challenge of a lifetime with miles and miles of this!  A storm was finishing up, so the clouds and the panorama made a spectacular sunset.  Next day, I picked a ridge in Aliso Viejo in Orange County they dub Top of the World.  Another world-class view to see and I was panting up with all the mountain bikers.   On the descend, in my own little world of thoughts that I will share with you in the next blog, I made a wrong turn.  All of a sudden, I became aware that I was descending all too rapidly and ending up in a canyon, ravine that was nowhere near my parked truck.  I took a creek trail and came through meadows and was quite impressed that this wild of a setting was so close to housing tracks.  Than I got to be more impressed.  There was a deer.  And a half mile later, a bobcat stalking a bird,  and a mile later a pack of coyotes howling .  It was approaching dusk and I was still completely LOST, not in a Wyoming wilderness, but in citified Orange County, California  Go figure!  I got to my truck in the dark, having run for close to four hours.  But it was as much an adventure as Wyoming wilds.