I Promise You Won't Suffer

I Promise Not To Suffer: A Fool for Love Hikes the Pacific Crest Trail by Gail D. Storey
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

You know this book has to include some suffering, despite its title. A memoir of hiking the PCT would not be complete without some major hurting.

The trail starts in California at the Mexican border, and ends 2,663 miles later at Washington's Canadian border. That number speaks for itself: my feet are sore just thinking about hiking that far. Add in walking through desert, climbing alpine heights, crossing ice fields, and fording raging streams. And bears!

The PCT hiker's interior journey can be just as full of pain as her physical experience. That's why I keep reading memoirs of the trail. This author had a lot going on in her head before she started the trip, and her time on the PCT brought many anxieties to the surface.

On this list is her dying mother, who had promised to be alive when the author finished the trail. Another is her husband, whose dream inspired the couple to sell their house and live on the PCT for six months.

One question I have when I start one of these memoirs is, "Will the author finish the trip?" I won't answer that question here, for fear of spoiling it. I will say, that in the end, the journey's weight is in the author's interior transformation. It's a good addition to the list of Pacific Crest Trail memoirs.

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Other memoirs of the Pacific Crest Trail include:

• The Cactus Eaters: How I Lost My Mind -- and Almost Found Myself -- on the Pacific Crest Trail, by Dan White (which I read and enjoyed)
• Wild, by Cheryl Strayed (here's a link to her interview on NPR)
• The Trail Life: How I Loved it, Hated it, and Learned from it, by Julie Urbanski
• Skywalker: Highs and Lows on the Pacific Crest Trail, by Bill Walker

Those last three are on my to-read list. Have you read any of these? Or better, hiked a part of the trail? Been a thru hiker on the AT, or attempted any journey like these? I'd love to hear about your experiences, first-hand or otherwise.

Rain, Mud, and Sugar Cookies

Five muddy miles, done!

It's been raining here for five days straight. A tropical storm and a nor'easter met in the skies above us and decided to settle down together. Waves of rain slosh down, dreary skies become the norm, and the kids don't want to leave the house.

The girls say they don't want to go outside and stomp in puddles because they don't have rain boots. When did they start to care about keeping their feet dry? These girls used to stomp in puddles all over town, in the least appropriate footwear.

For entertainment, Taryn has been baking treats. She googled a recipe, and, on her first try, made the best brownies ever to come out of our oven. Next up were "green velvet" cake pops. I took a turn with "apple pie" muffins, which were meant for breakfast but didn't last that long. Today, she and a friend made sugar cookies with orange icing and black sprinkles.

I think I haven't been setting a good example. I didn't run outside in Thursday evening's deluge, choosing the treadmill, a DVRed episode of Top Chef, and dry feet instead. In fact, our only outside time has been the dash from house to car, to library/dentist/friend's house, back to car, back to house.

If a race hadn't been on my calendar, I wouldn't have gone out into the weather this morning, either. I would have missed out. In the woods, I felt like a kid again. I got my feet soaking wet, I was covered in mud, and I loved it. Seriously, [I am addressing you, Taryn and Kathy] you don't need rain boots if you want to get wet.

At home, I hosed down before leaving for the dry sauna at the gym. The cold had a good grip on my toes and fingers, and was hard to shake off, even in 175 degrees. I baked myself in that cedar paneled room and thought about what made this morning's race so fun. Being on home turf was easier than driving an hour to the starting line. The camaraderie on the trail was great, with two friends in the race with me, and another volunteering at an aid station along the way.

But the secret ingredient? The special sauce was the experience of sloppy mud, the shining rocks, the flowing creek, the sound of wind in wet leaves. All thanks to the rain.

On the next rainy day, Taryn and Kathy, let's go on a walk with the intention of getting wet. I will make you hot chocolate when we get home, and you won't miss having rain boots.

VentureQuest: mountain biking mayhem and a shocking finish

Running is my exercise of choice. Mostly I run on my own, sometimes a route from my house around a lake, sometimes on the treadmill while I catch up on DVRed shows. I usually run a couple of local 5K races each year. The occasional 10K sneaks onto my calendar too. I like my running routine, but sometimes I need to bust out of the usual and do something my body does not expect. 

This morning I woke up at 5am to hit the road for VentureQuest, an adventure race with a mix of orienteering, trail running, mountain biking, and canoeing. I was one of three on a co-ed team of racers, each with our strengths, and all of us with one weakness: mountain biking.

My lovely steed on the left, with orange transition bag beneath

We signed up for this race months ago, so we had time to practice biking off-road. We just never got around to it. This wasn't the first adventure race for two of us, so only one third of our team could claim to be a complete novice. It shouldn't have been any kind of surprise that the mountain biking leg would be the stone in our path to finishing this race.

Stone in our path. More like the railroad tie in our single track. Followed by a steep downhill hairpin turn with a ravine one the other side.

I never shifted out of my next to lowest gear, yet time and again I pushed that bike up a hill. Worse, I rolled it down hills. Worst, we resorted to something we had promised ourselves not to do: bushwhack with the bikes. 

When we should have been making progress on the trail, we started having déjà vu. That darned railroad tie reappeared in front of us. How did that happen? We continued on, only to encounter it a third time. I won't speak for the guys on my team, but I was close to crying. It was disheartening. We were lost with a map and a compass, on marked trails, and we couldn't find our checkpoints. Our allotted time had run out half an hour ago, and we were losing points with each passing minute.

I'll skip to the end, where we emerged from the woods with grunts of relief, dropped the bikes in the transition area, and spent our remaining energy trotting to the finish. I was a mess, with bloodied hand, arm, knee, and ankle, but getting off the bike felt great. 

We had not completed the race, as we missed three checkpoints. We were forty-four minutes late, at the cost of five points per minute penalty. Whatever. There was watermelon, pizza, GORP, and the best Coca-Cola I'd ever tasted. We had arrived in the middle of the awards ceremony, and I cheered in between bites as I chowed down.

"Third place in the sport level, three person, co-ed division goes to Beer Guts in Spandex." 

What? I looked at my teammates, both with beer guts and wearing spandex, true to our team name. 

We laughed our way to the podium, where we each received a beer glass -- "3rd Place 2013" -- and a fleece beanie with the racing company's logo. We congratulated the other teams that placed ahead of us, and I showed off my wounds as I smiled big for the picture.

Team Beer Guts in Spandex: done is good. Let's go home.

***

A note on EX2, the company that put on this race, and orange wristbands

I've done a lot of races with a lot of different race management companies, and EX2 stands out. They have put on the absolute best races I've participated in. 

One of their longtime volunteers suffered a catastrophic injury while downhill biking with his family. In our group pictures today, we wore and showed off orange wristbands as a tribute to "Scud." To read more of his story, and to support his recovery, visit the family's blog, www.scudfries.org.