Poker face

We've already walked circles around each other,
passing over-the-shoulder glances until our tread

formed a Venn diagram clearly defining what's mine
and yours but especially where we keep mixing up

the point of holding these cards so close to our chests,
biceps strained to deny that photos are worth their weight in gold

like that elementary trick where palms pressed against a door frame, 
suddenly released, give arms a mind of their own to feel

the fleshy figments of imagination shuddering, in real life,
from the simplest massage: wrung out forearms.

Photos are worth a thousand words, but only a fraction
of the action freely translated senses can take.

See two sharp jawbones with bristled clenched
fists advantaged with emptiness you fear are revealing the

Feel of air displaced by one jawbone onto mine, kinematically conjoining
hands to ears to stop the words you can't keep from explaining

Hear what I'm saying about the fingertip tracing
to rouse you back to your photos.

Swoop them up and pivot each just right. These photos are worth their weight in the gold we seived over leaf-matted fingers. Not worth much, so pretend I never saw those.

Water rights

Pretend this is a story about getting my Master's degree.

In reality, I've stopped thinking about it as a big person job. Coffee cups and personal spotlit office desks aren't fooling anyone.  It is a servitude to my unflagging synapses. It is true it is the most fun I've ever had. Someone also once told me it is the best running I'll ever do. Hear me say "I agree" as I sit here with an unrun jelly knee. For example, I realized this week while mapdreaming that I nearly connected a third of the trails on my two National Geographic maps on backyard runs this summer. 

In this story, people and places are fictionalized and sensationalized. Any resemblance to persons or places living or dead is purely coincidental.

Tucked north of the Colorado, engulfed a vineyard of wrath, lays a Steinbeckesque valley, though only in character. In person, it's only shrubby dry land with squat little valleys. This land can be taxed as agricultural because its mostly sageland, rangeland and weedy hay fields. In character, the valley is weaved with silty roads leading to gleaming well pads riveted for permanence and economic dismemberment, or houses unplumbed by wind and winter. These are the homes, respectfully, of the man with the upper hand and his minions.

That's not very fair. Not minions like farmer ants, blindly following some scent, blazing some unforeseen trail. People with families, hard jobs, smart minds and belligerent self regard. Like you, and especially me.

The "man" with the upper hand should also not be misconstrued as anything different from his subsidiaries. Same family, hard job, smart mind, and belligerent self regard, just a bigger pay check to dress it with.

It's easy to dislike this guy, so delay the temptation. He towers like his machined blazing chimneys, but his disposition is no where near as hot. His good nature can be trusted, if only based on his signature spotless leather hat. His worn leather cowboy boots leave tenderer footprints than the cement ones he supervises. For months after we met, I could not relax around him until I discovered he obsessed over fluids other than the semi-gas he siphoned from earth's pitch.

Water! Water rights! You can't fix stupid! He was always says that last one. We became our own exclusive book club, teasing out embarrassing facts about water history and legislation. To him, water is the fruit of the loom dangling over the line we crossed when we sunk our teeth into this apple. Proof that it isn't his natural gas that made him owner of the land and its people.

Thanks to the book club, our conversations moved beyond land, past water, and onto ourselves. He told me I indulged too much, I told him he worked too much, we both agreed we spent time alone too much. He at least had an excuse. It is not easy to make friends if your job is to legalize and sanctify all human behavior. I just thought it was confusing making friends. We'd debate if our passion for solitude made us a wild beast or an Aristotelean God. I said he could be the God. Him, standing cast under the shadow of his leather-rimmed hat in his ropey artery watershed. All I saw when I closed my eyes was a stock chopped slide show of increasingly resolved topography.

Here is an interesting fact about surveying rivers. You can keep right and left bank straight in your head by facing downstream because you have to work upstream. That is how I arrived at my final site. Face down working against a current. A small current. These are only 1st or 2nd order streams. But still. I looked around at the pinnacle canyon walls that encompassed my last site, and saw my water was borne through a hole in the wall.

My River Continuum

Us crazy ass humans can be thought of as a continua of patches and kinetic aggregates.

Such an image is particularly appropriate to streams. Generations of fishermen have visualized streams as omnivorous gradients of species assemblages, adjusting its insatiable appetite according to physical gradient and landscape morphology. We call this the River Continuum Concept. Population density and gross domestic productivity measures metrics of humanity's successes and tribulations across a landscape. The River Continuum Concept describes the structure and function of communities along a watershed.

Headwaters are perched on a high shelf in clear cool round jars. Inefficient unproductive oligarchies with a sense of slipping place but no sense of purpose. So they fall, don't shatter, and ripple instead. Spreading wider through grout valleys of linoleum I swear will be granite one day.

Lakes were once thought of as microcosms. It was assumed if the world outside underwent an "annihilating event," lakes would feel the effects decades later. Apparently language like that isn't used in research papers any longer, which is probably why no one has stopped to consider lakes as microcosms of their own annihilation. 

Jars fall off shelves to prove a point. Pursuing a passion with simple minds geared towards the least resistant path. Taking opportunities as they come with increasing velocity, though their free fall trajectory approaches undefined. But the depravity of gravity is headwaters leave that mountain high to seek autonomy in a less corroded valley, weakly spreading thin on the littered floor, only to lose the shelter they started with. A puddle weakly gaining ground, growing big with tributaries from other jars so inclined, cannot help but feel honed to precision.

Glamping in June.

Some call this a "mini Hardrock 100," but I would like to point out that we would need to squeeze in another 4,000+ ft climb to be stoichiometrically correct. Hat's off, Hardrockers.

How Not to Train for a 50 Miler

Get plantar facistis.
Stop running.
Run an average of nine miles/week during the three critical weeks you should be running closer to 65.
Run 30 miles in two days less than two weeks out. This is in order to test the foot's resistance and resillience...and to panic train.
(DISCLAIMER: "How Not to Train for a 50 Miler" may or may not be coach endorsed.)

How to Train for a 50 Miler no one, Including Yourself at Times, Thought you Would Start

(Same circumstances, different list)

Get over your fear of cycling.
Ride an average of 120 miles/week during the critical weeks, ending with a 20 hour week of "moving" (sensu E. Forsberg).
Stay consistent with 2 hrs/week of core (ie core, physical therapy, plank, push up, weight routines).
Be the best you can in every moment (sensu L. Hawker).

But mostly, I just glamped.

June 02, 2014, Lamoille Canyon, Ruby Mountains, NV

Urban Dictionary defines glamping as (v.) shorthand for glamorous camping.

More Rubies

I stayed outside, since that's what I like doing.

June 04, 2014, backpacking 35 miles of the PCT with my Ma and Murph, Carson Iceberg Wilderness, CA

June 05, 2014, More PCT

June 07, 2014, more PCT

Eventually, I had to stop glamping. I spent my first week of graduate school reading about the outside. Reciprocal subsidies, the difference between stream metabolism and and energy budget, Google Scholar stalking scientists.

Then I blinked, and we were glamping at Lake San Cristobal, and the Front Ragers were few and far between, and the San Juans overwhelmed me like I my glamping binge had been akin to ascending something like Dante's Inferno, and I was running 50 miles.

San Juan Solstice, near mile 12

SJS, near mile 14

SJS, near mile 24, PC: ever-loving John Fitz.

SJS, near mile 25

SJS, I don't know same area

SJS, near mile 46

My foot is fine, although I wonder if the sheer amount of hiking spared me. I felt good, then I felt really bad. Short of breath, and my breath's shortness was filling with nausea. The last 2,000 ft climb at mile 41 I spent leap-frogging uphill with another man as we took turned trying not to puke on the side of the trail. I walked some, I let gravity run me downhill some, and then it was over.

12:34, 8th woman for the day, 1:36 back from female winner Kerrie Bruxvoort. Nothing to be too disappointed with. Onto the next.

Glamping on the Solstice's eve, Lake San Cristobal, CO

When asked who inspired her, Ann Transon replied, "happy trail dogs."

It is illustrative to imagine a giant's finger tracing the Earth's surface. Feeling a skim of liquid across the oceans, ripples over the grand canyons, bristles of patchy burns, and braille peaks of the tallest mountains. Velvet farms, spongy lowland, sandpaper poles. Strokes of cities catching like the barbed side of Velcro. A giant could tilt the world in his fingertips, peer closer, and watch a city's pulse.

There would be other pulses, like the sporadic gaseous blemishes exhumed from Earth's infernal core. But cities pulse in tune with human-paced entropy, in diurnal rhythm no matter the speed a giant spins a globe. Regardless, a giant fingertip skips over the intricacies of a season's pulse, or feel the pressure of living in that pulse.

Injured because I'm obsessed, or obsessed because I'm injured.

Midafternoon, after my Zion 100k ended, I unzipped my tent, stared at the mesh wall, and listened to all that kinetic energy in my head. Energy from mucus squeezed out of my throat from its cheesecloth lining. And the next day adding more energy by tinkering with good old ΔPV = ΔnRT driving home over the excruciating great divide.

My mind raced over treadmills trails powered by mucus energy and the paranoid feeling my mind was still in the race but my body was not. Within days, I figured out how to fix this. I spent the winter exploring each open space park in Jefferson County (around 10 since I was counting only the sizable ones, and minus Apex since it's mostly closed). So next, I would do a 42 mile solo run around a desert Wilderness in southern Utah.

Can you understand my thought process? I signed up for a bajillion races this year so I could explore my new surroundings, why not do it outside racing too? So many people at races, makes me want to hide! I will go hide in the wilderness.

Man his dog and the city.

Throughout the month after Zion, as my scabbed head finally cleared up, my foot began niggling. This has brought a little realism to my newest obsession. A stiff foot reminds you there is no logic in living to run, running to be outside, therefore running all day everyday outside.

I haven't been injured for close to three years, when I used to be plagued with shin splints for a couple months of every year. In a way, I am grateful for it. Before Zion, I told myself I would give my body a break from running and ride my bike more. I would need some recovery before San Juan Solstice. And now, look what I am wholly having to commit to? Injury is always a learning experience, so much more mind blowing than the most epic of runs.

I talk as if I embrace injury with a sun salutation. There were a couple mornings I spent crying, frustrated, and cooped in my room until 2pm. Luckily, my puppy's pawpaw, my love and my best friend quadruples as my coach. Even if he had no idea what he was talking about, he would still be subjected to hours of discussion about thoughts in my racing head. By definition, "runner" is a synonym for neurotic masochist, so it is important to have a soundboard for irrationality.

Here are some fortune cookie thoughts that help me remember that runners are not defined by the act, but by the desire.

Because being injured can make you feel like soaking sobbing pathetic crazy person.

Listen to your body and embrace your journey, not others'.

Plans do not become stories until they are past.

Stay focused, commit to what you can.

Devote yourself to something new. Experience the learning curve.

Repay loyal companions.

Change what's been wrong and do what's been good more.

Weights, to remind you of your strength.

Physiotherapy, to remind you of your weakness.

I like to roll hair balls out of the carpet between rest intervals.

Savor extra time with your loves.

Savor each step of every run.

Photo credit Myke Herms

What are you waiting for to be afraid of?

Is it running into resident ghosts of the landscape, or is it never running into water? Both sources watch from their ancient dwellings high in the canyon walls, trickling down so you can find each other on the floor, not alone anymore in your anxious solitude. You think the resident beings are eerie too. The Puma concolor pounce off the canyon walls, not trickle, but they are just as spooked by your mousey passing. 

Besides running dry, you fear the storms too. I know, just as the metronomic pitter patter begins to feel like a rhythm you have to find a new one. But remember: storms manifest wind chimes and lull us to rhythmless sleep. Besides, those storm clouds brewed in the mountains are not as ominous as they appear. It would not surprise me if they had fears of leaving their towering roots for the deep abyss of the plains.

So what are you waiting for? What you are afraid of? Make enough plans and there is nothing to fear. You love planning, even though I think you just need the distractions. It’s fine. Making plans is a creative process, where you add structure to the imaginary story we are slated to act out.

Zion 100 recap: about my veins.

I was not watching from my brief requiem, in the soft pink of dim florescent, pulsing orange monitors, and neon green exit signs. I could sense another pair of lenses in the room besides my dad’s thick bifocals. My eyes snapped open as the shutter’s snapped closed. What are you doing?

My dad said he took the picture so I could never forget what I looked like. I’ve never seen the picture, but I haven’t forgotten. The feeling, at least, of liquefying after trying to overdose on something as stupid as Aleve and alcohol. How tight they wrapped my forearms that I never bothered bandaging before.

I’m writing this because it amazes me how we are the same changing person throughout our lives. I was 15 and determined to destroy myself as slowly and inefficiently as possible. I never slept well because at night gravity would overtake my meticulous calculations and weigh on my flesh. Thin flesh so I could not lie on my back or my bones would grind and puncture.

Eight years later I still think that irrational voice is in my head.  The voice used to command me to sit staunch and unfeeling in front of a room full of my tear-streaked family and a plate of food. Voicing opinions about making cryptic cuts like how the Indians used to gird trees through the phloem. The difference now is I learned to work with this voice, and I do not deny it is the same voice that commands me to run all day. Where before I would run three miles and shake my way through a futile family dinner, my body and mind in direct opposition, I’ve learned to make my body and mind work in conjunction.

Hanorexic (n.): nickname middle schooler's daub Hannah's hovering around 100 lbs.

I didn’t realize how well that voice and I started working together until I started working at the coffee shop in Golden, CO. As someone who’s adopted new methods of movement to hide my scarred arms, the comments I get from customers surprise me. No one sees my scars. They ask if I climb or what I do to get these veins. The same veins once traced with razors, that I worried showed my weakness, tell a story of strength. 

Little guy just resting.

I don’t regret dropping out of the Zion 100k. I maybe regret starting. My mind tried to coach my body along, but I know when a body is useless. My throat was so swollen that my breathing turned into a wheeze, I couldn’t cough, and I wouldn’t talk. I’ve gotten a lot better at listening to my body, eating intuitively and not running through injuries, but toeing the start line sick was a new one for me.

I was terrified of finding a clown on course because I was afraid he would do this to my esophagus.

I wrote this because I guess it is not that amazing we are the same person throughout our lives. I hear of family and friends battling their own irrational voices and I hope they learn to listen. What sounds like self-destruction might just need to be spun around on a baseball bat and sent in a different direction.

Scumbaggin' (verb): If running ultras doesn't make you feel scummy enough, camping sans showers and plumbing might do it for you. 

Virgin River, around mile 16. 

Gooseberry Mesa, around mile 30.

Both a bunch of dropped pants, trying to make John smile about it.

We both got sick two weeks before Zion, thinking how lucky we were. So many siestas in my near future again.

Virgin River below River Rock Roasting coffeehouse, the best for caffeine and calories.

In between dreams.

She is a high energy thing, although quite small and shapeless. Her body is undefined by conventional anatomy, and her hair defies movement despite constant pacing. More importantly, she lives in a stark black world. The black horizon and zenith equally as black as the horizontal and vertical. This phenomenon makes it appear she perpetually paces over a point fixed in midair. She paces impatiently, faster and faster until she collides into the next dream.

      With the approach of a dim and blurry nightdream, her body takes shape and dons vague clothes or still no clothes at all depending on that nightdream’s atmosphere. These nightdreams lapse her physical and mental control, yet maintain her cognitive sense of wakefulness. Most of these nightdreams evoke anxiety, like the sinking feeling she missed differential equations for the third time. Sometimes she snaps quickly out of a nightdream, back to her lumpy floating world, awoken by her laughter or screams. Other times she gradually awakes from the exhausting success of using windmill arms to fly or whirling legs to run on the dream's frictionless surface.

      With fists clenched and body slanted forward like a balanced egg she charges through achromatic eternity. More often than a nightdream she finds daydreams. Her body always embodies the same girl, but with different clothing styles enfolding a body of varying ages. Sizes. The girl in the dark world embodies her during states of desperation and exaltation, wrought with aspirations and adorations. Daydreams in desperation are equally as searing and dark as her stark world. Other daydreams she embodies the girl cresting a pass in some mountains high above a desert. Anticipation of this array of daydreams motivates her through the inky world, even at the risk of running into nightmarish nightdreams.

      After dropping out of a daydream, her simple world increases in monotony. Frustrated again she enables movement in only enough fibers to power forward motion and tenses every muscle.  Rarely she encounters inbetreams in the darkness, and those are the best. During these dreams she achieves a state of immobile waking, watching clouds run across the sky like a blanket sliding or walls flickering like streetlights through boxcar slats. Inbetreams portray themselves as daydreams until the girl questions herself. Like when the sunset reflected off every window, no matter its orientation, with dancing colors like light waves of the same ubiquitous television show. In inbetreams she might pass people relaxing into trees or run for hours from thick grey clouds botching the trail like an eraser. Unlike tense movement in the stark black world, in dreams she can move with weary ease through any intricate landscape. 

There is post race depression, when hours of training per day for months cease, and the world becomes lame and aimless. Getting accepted to graduate school is a similar feeling, except the euphoria more explosive and downfall more bottomless. In my case, I raced a 55k and got accepted to CSU two days later, so I really hit rock bottom. In another month or so I'm sure I will have goals to shoot for, but for the time being I am left feeling haphazard.

For the last five years (...one year, ten years, when this dream started) my goal was to earn a Master's, and all of the sudden I'm in. I moved to Colorado anticipating I would get into graduate school. In the Front Range, of all places. I found a job at a coffee shop, determined it would be in the name of nostalgia and not failing my career goals. I banked on my skills and got where I needed to be, but now what?

There is nothing left to do until I get to work in creeks and call myself an ecologist again,  

except play with Murphy.

except work on making my latte art look less like male parts, more like leafy parts.

except to train for Zion 100k on April 4th, almost a half mary further than my leggiweggs have ever carried me.

except disappear from my reading spot to the Wakonda Auga River.

Dukes up against the conventional race recap.

John got me a new cactus, we named him Kruggel. He reminds me to put my dukes up. 

I find most race reports painful reading material. Many describe the course, or the bodily reactions to the course, in excruciatingly fine detail. Race reports, or "recaps," magnify the relevance of the euphoric or dystrophic moments during a race.  This approach neglects the rapturous or dour moments that occur before and after a race. For the sake of writing, I will admit that a race serves as a useful point to stop and reflect. For me, however, the performance of racing feels less like the climax of a story than the conclusion.

The amount of running done in a 50k, 50 mile, and even 100 mile race is minute compared to the amount of running done leading up to the event. Ignoring these important runs is like saying it takes no icing to layer a cake. For instance, when I think of my build up for the Moab Red Hot 55k, I think of bashing my body on ice, the salvation of Massive Attack and Poliça three hours into four hour runs, and following Muprhy's spotted butt along these new Front Rangian trails. Two weeks before Red Hot, I also found myself back in the weight room, a weekly habit I fell out of after graduation in May. I received compliments on my weight room antics from two meatheads, said "Thank you have a nice day," and cooly proceeded down the stairs to the locker room, feeling less cool when my legs seized up on the second step. Lastly, I found myself dangerously close to the too-many-treats threshold while working at the Windy Saddle. I am proud to say I maintained my weight, but ashamed to say I ate approximately 1.5 treats per shift worked.

Photo by  Myke Hermsmeyer

In the grand scheme of things, a 5.5 hour race is insignificant compared to 1-4 hours, depending on the swing of things, of daily training. Few moments during my race stand out as hardly momentous. I started my race out strong by introducing myself to Jenn Shelton, a runner I idolize the most, by saying I started following her on Instagram. I spent the rest of the race berating my awkward self. My thoughts finally drifted to more relevant topics, such as not falling on my face while still managing to run fast, when the terrain became harder than pavement and the slickrock slanted to the right 40˚.

My good friend Myke let me demo the new Ultimate Direction handheld. I enjoyed the luxury of being able to stuff as much as I needed in one handheld, minus squeegeed gel packets which I have a habit of stuffing my bra with. The crinkled tin flatters my physique, but more importantly I could not get this demoed handheld dirty. As compared to the zipper-covered canvas of my usual handhelds, the silk fabric of UD's handheld appealed to my habit of whipping my sweaty forehead and crusty nose. But again, I was looking out for Myke. Beware, the UD bottles act like a spontaneous high-pressured tit upon the introduction of Hammer Fizz.

After the race, I struck up a less awkward conversation with Jenn and felt better about smoothing that over. I found out about John's race and how he skeeee-ooooed each sponsored runner he passed and beat for a solid 7th place. We ended our trip with a short hike to Delicate Arch in Arches National Park with Myke and Ed, then high-tailed it back to Denver to disentangled Murphy from his new girlfriend Kona. I don't think he will be so excited about my small hiatus from running the next week or so, but luckily John is more resilient than I. Moab Red Hot was the first of seven ultras I signed up for this year, compared to the four ultras I've done in my life. I've got to recover and train smart if I want to make it to the start line for the next six, not to mention cross my fingers hard that chasing career goals doesn't get in the way.

Photo by Myke Hermsmeyer