The Covid-19 pandemic blew up everyone’s plans for… well, everything. In my adventure world, that meant athletic goals/races in particular. So in July of last year, I signed up for a challenge through my favourite 5 Peaks trail running series called the Virtual Canadian Crossing. Basically, you had one year – from Canada Day to Canada Day – to move your body the distance of crossing Canada: 4800km. I had a few friends sign up for the “on foot” version, which meant that they would have to complete the distance exclusively by running/walking. I knew there was no way I’d be able to rack up that kind of mileage as a single parent in a pandemic, so I signed up for the “multi-sport” version, meaning I could use any self-propelled activity to complete the challenge including cycling, cross-country skiing, paddling, etc. I had absolutely no idea if I could do it, 4800km was an unfathomable distance. It breaks down to averaging 13km/day for 365 days. That’s no mean feat! But I thought, what have I got to lose? We’ll see how far I get!

In order to track your progress, you have to link whatever app you use to track your activities to an app called Challenge Hound. I *thought* I did this, but sometime in September, I said to my best friend Janelle (who, btw did complete the challenge ON FOOT, ’cause she’s awesome) “hey, how do you know how far you are in the Great Canadian Crossing?” And she replied “you should be getting an email with an update about your progress every time you do something!”

Uh, I was definitely not getting updates. Something was clearly not right in the linking process. I made a mental note to look into it, reasoning that as long as I was signed up they’d have to count my activities whenever I managed to get it connected. It then fell to the bottom of the to-do list for (this is embarrassing) several more months. Around Christmas time, I started to stress about it. In fact, I think it was when my amazing sister-in-law Kirsten COMPLETED the multi-sport challenge, halfway through the year (because she’s so awesome, she’s training for Ironman), that was the kick in the pants I needed to actually get on my computer and look into it. 

Finally, I managed to get Challenge Hound to sync to my Strava, but my total kilometres and number of activities was much lower than expected. Some further investigation revealed that the system was programmed to only “backfill” 60 days of activities. Now the end of January, that meant it was not counting FIVE MONTHS of activities. After several panicky emails to 5 Peaks, I finally got this fixed as well (thank goodness they let me still count everything!).

Then I received my first email, which read something along the lines of “Splendiferous work on your 9.6km run. You are -653km behind pace.”

ACK! That’s a long way behind (I’m not even exaggerating). This should not have been so surprising. After last summer’s misadventures in mountain running (see my two previous blog posts), I got to explore some trails around Vancouver in September that resulted in a badly sprained ankle and several weeks off running and months of physio/rebuilding. Late fall brought its usual slump in motivation and strength work of any kind, so my mileage was even lower than normal for the last few months of the year.

Never fear, I had recently hatched a new goal for myself. I would be turning 42 this year, and since that is the distance of a marathon (in km), obviously I should run a marathon. It may surprise you to know that I’ve actually never run a marathon – not an official one anyway, despite having successfully completed several ultramarathons and many runs of similar distance. But New Year’s 2021 brought a bleak-looking quarantine and socially distanced-looking future. I wasn’t sure what there was to look forward to – usually I had plans for trips or races to motivate myself through the winter, but it seemed impossible to plan for any of that. So instead, I decided I would run a marathon-distance run every month of the year. And maybe, if Covid conditions allowed it at some point, an actual marathon.

January’s marathon hurt. I had done a few bigger runs in the 25k ballpark around Christmas time that had gone ok: my knee that gets achey was achey, my hips were tight, all of the usual winter running problems that tend to crop up every year when I start to increase my mileage again and haven’t got the strength training to go with it were there. For the third year in a row, I gave myself a stern speech about next year, doing better in the fall so this wouldn’t happen. But I assumed that like the past few years, eventually I would out-train and out-strengthen these issues as spring and summer approached.

Turns out I was wrong. But I kept on running. February’s marathon handed itself to me – my friend Jen planned a 38km run for her (yep, you guessed it) 38th birthday, so I tagged on to that one and added a few km by running circles around the others a few times and at one point in the day veering from the group to add a couple of km by myself.

What this picture doesn’t show was how sore my grumpy knee was getting. Instead of settling down, it was getting more achey and the pain was getting sharper and in a new spot – upper left outside corner of the knee instead of the usual patellar femoral (kneecap) pain aka “runner’s knee” I’d been dealing with off and on for the past couple of years. I knew I should probably get this checked out, but life was busy, so I carried on.

Another really amazing run opportunity was in the works: my friend Tess was organizing a run circumnavigating Pigeon Lake. That’s right, on the ice! It was a roughly 50k loop, and though I originally thought maybe I’d do a marathon in March in addition to this run, by the time it was getting close I knew I’d have to count it and then go see my physiotherapist. At this point, every time I started to run, I was in pretty excruciating pain and having trouble not limping. However, usually after a few minutes, the pain would subside back to a manageable level and I’d be able to keep running. 

The run around Pigeon Lake was amazing. And exhilarating, not always in a good way. The ice was still plenty thick, but sometimes the layers of freezing would shift underfoot and it would creak, and bubbles of liquid would move, and everything in my lizard brain would scream “NOT SAFE!!” This was more adrenaline than I really needed, and isn’t an experience I’m keen to repeat, but we completed the full loop and felt pretty satisfied with ourselves. There was also more beauty than you might expect:

The knee pain was more constant during this run and after. Still, I kept pushing. Just one more run, I told myself, knowing at this point that I wasn’t listening to my body and that probably my physiotherapist was going to yell at me. Not really, Tyler would never yell at anybody (half the time his voice is so soft I have to ask him to repeat himself), but I felt the guilt of defying imaginary orders and common sense all the same.

The “just one more run” (ha, I accidentally typed “fun” – that’s appropriate – “just one more fun”) was to tag along with a group of my friends who were tackling the “David Goggins challenge”: running 4 miles every 4 hours for 48 hours. Only they decided that wasn’t fun enough, so they were adding things like running mostly 10km laps instead of the equivalent 6.4km, many of them with themes. I joined in on a “rave run,” where, decked out in glow sticks and neon brights, we ran around downtown in the dark. This included going every which way in a scatter crosswalk and pumping rave tunes out of a speaker as we ran down Jasper Ave. It was so interesting to see people’s reactions: everything from incredulity to cheering to people who obviously thought they were missing out on something. It was pretty awesome. I did a couple more limpy runs with them over the course of the weekend, but I knew this was it. The pain was no longer going away while running and was now waking me up at night. I was going to have to take a break.

I finally went to physio and now, frightened by the pain level, followed instructions to the letter. No running for 3 full weeks, slow rebuild. I did my daily exercises faithfully. Unfortunately, 5 or 6 weeks later, I was back to the same place. I tried to do a short run with Trevor’s best friend for Trevor’s birthday, and had to walk half of it. I just couldn’t push through the pain. My lizard brain simply said “STOP” and I’d find myself hopping and limping, that part of my brain screaming not to put my foot down again. This was not healing.

My physio sent me for an MRI and then to a physician specializing in sports medicine. From the MRI results, we learned that there was some cartilage damage/degeneration in my knee. I thought that the origin of this had been a hard fall on my kneecap during my first official Ultramarathon race – the Black Spur 54k – but I recently checked my photos and that was the OTHER knee. So I don’t really know why it’s happened (frustrating), just that it’s not really fixable and something I’m going to have to learn to live with. I’ve had moderate success with getting an injection of something called hyaluronic acid, which was explained to me as being like an “oil change for the knee joint,” but it looks like my running future might not be what I had hoped it would be.

But what does this have to do with getting across Canada? Well, the better question is, what does all of this have to do with my mental health? Not running was initially a relief from pain, and I could take a few weeks to be mellow and go for walks and ride my bike on the trainer in the basement, which perfunctorily serves as “exercise” but just doesn’t confer the same emotional benefits. For awhile, this was ok. But as the weeks turned into months of low activity, I started to not do well. I’ve joked for years that running is my antidepressant, but I didn’t know for sure until now that it was actually true. By the beginning of May, I was having trouble getting out of bed in the morning. I’d get up moments before I’d have to wake my kids, scramble to get them ready and lunches packed, and take them to the bus stop still in my pajamas. It was the day I saw a client online without having showered or brushed my teeth, having only changed into a decent top (they can only see me from the chest up on my computer screen anyway) that the alarm bells got loud. I know lots of people did this during Covid lockdowns when working from home, but I never had. This was not a good sign.

I didn’t feel overly sad, but nor was I happy. I was blah. There seemed to be nothing to look forward to. I know a lot of people felt that as the pandemic dragged on this spring, but that wasn’t the whole issue. Running is also the centre of my social life, and I was becoming more and more out of the loop by not being able to join any group runs or go for long runs with my best friends so we could have those great, long, deep conversations that seem to happen better on the trails. My best friends were still checking in and even going for walks with me, but it just didn’t feel the same. I knew I was sinking and in trouble. I started to worry that if I didn’t do something, I might not be fit for work.

With May came the clearing of streets and warmer temperatures and, still waiting to see the sports med doctor and knowing I needed to do something so that I remained a functional parent to my kids and therapist to my clients, I turned my focus to the bike. I could get some friends together to go for group rides, and feel a bit more a part of things again. For me the magic antidepressant elixir seems to include some proportion of sun, outdoors, nature, friends, and physical activity combined. Cycling could accomplish all of this.

I’d heard about Highway 1A being closed to traffic and set my sights on biking from Banff to Lake Louise and back on the May long weekend. What a fabulous day! By the end of the 115km day, I was lagging behind the group, being somewhat out of shape given the previous few months of zero training and with a bit of discomfort in my knee. But I felt more like me than I had in a couple of months and I cruised into the parking lot with a huge grin on my face: mission accomplished! I then uploaded this activity and got the Challenge Hound email “Fantabulous work on your ride. You are -1137km behind pace.”

Hmm.

Was this still in reach? Could I bike 1100km in 5 weeks? I broke it down, and it worked out to about 32km a day. That was not going to be possible every day, but if I did a long ride every weekend, and biked to and from work (a ridiculously short commute – only 3.5k, which, the first time I did it, made me wonder how I’d been in this office space for the better part of a year and NEVER ridden my bike to work), it might get into the realm of possible.

Something inside of me perked up. A goal. Something to focus on. My motivation crawled out of the cave in which it had been slumbering. I rode to work every day in June. I went for walks. I walked on my treadmill during my online writing class, much to the amusement of my fellow writers, who were highly encouraging. I planned long rides with friends and even started to think about another bucket list goal: biking from Jasper to Banff. This wouldn’t happen in time to count for the Canadian Crossing, but gave me something else to look forward to as the races I had registered for continued to be deferred yet another year due to Covid (which was now a relief as there was no way I’d be able to run them anyway).

“Having” to do long rides was also a good excuse for some fun adventures. One Friday, I bike-commuted the kids to school, rode to Devon for coffee and a donut with a friend, and then rode back to pick up the kids. I admit I cackled to myself about the privileges sometimes afforded by being a grownup. They’d been in school all day, and I’d spent the whole day cycling in the sun.

I also did multiple amazing rides through the city. I rode from my house, out to the Henday on the north east end of the city via bike paths, and then to the Henday on the south west end of the city and back again in >30 degree Celsius weather (we had to stop 3x to buy more drinks!) I rode to Beaumont to visit my Grandpapa’s grave (riding MS Bike in his memory was how I discovered how much I enjoy cycling). I even rode 36k around a track, very slowly, from the middle of the night until after sunrise, keeping my best adventure buddy Janelle company as she completed her 24-hour Survivorfest event. The worst ride was an early morning one while my mom was visiting, so could be there when the kids woke up, in the wind and the rain. I think that was the only day that was really hard as opposed to uplifting. The other rides were physically challenging, but always still enjoyable.

As the end of June approached, I knew I was going to finish the Canadian Crossing. Biking was feeling like a part-time job (it WAS a part-time job, that’s a lot of bike hours) and I was looking forward to being done. But I was also feeling so much better. It made me realize how important it is for me to have something to work towards, focus on, look forward to. It also made me realize that my active lifestyle outside and with friends is a necessary ingredient to my well-being. It turns out that the Virtual Canadian Crossing was the event that would help me survive the pandemic.

I included my kids on my “victory lap” – the final 6.5km. It was the day after school finished, so I thought they’d be feeling victorious too. They were not as enthusiastic as I’d hoped about going for a bike ride – it was already 25 degrees at 9am that day, but I bribed them with pains au chocolat and they grudgingly agreed. And then, it was done. Virtual finish lines definitely lack fanfare. But awhile later, I got my enormous medal in the mail with a congratulatory note. “You did it!” So what did I do next? I signed up again for this year of course. Some days it feels like pressure to put on some miles, but maybe this is just a good way to stay on top of my mental health. Sometimes, to keep going, all you need is something to focus on.

I didn’t have a lot of big race plans nailed down for this summer after soloing CDR last year, but in these strange Covid times, it still sucked to have what was on the horizon taken away. At some point, my best adventure buddy Janelle and I decided that a few good long mountain runs were in order. I made a plan to spend the week of my birthday in Calgary with the kids, and it quickly made sense to plan something epic for the day of my 41st birthday (August 6th). Janelle suggested the Canmore Quad – we had attempted last year and a time-sucking mis-navigation of the summit of Grotto mountain resulted in us still having an epic awesome day but not meeting that goal. I was initially a bit reluctant about this plan, knowing I was nowhere near top mountain-climbing run shape after months of socially isolating and single parenting and, well, not running very much. Perhaps this is why I wasn’t as disappointed as you might expect when I found out two days before my birthday that Lady Mac was closed. Janelle and I quickly devised Plan B: it began as a run of the Northover trail in the Kananaskis backcountry, and was eventually edited to also add a loop of Upper Kananaskis lake, making it a figure 8 and ultra-distance of about 47km.

We set off the morning of my birthday and were treated to a gorgeous sunrise en route. With zero traffic, we were at the trailhead earlier than planned. We started off around the lake seeing very few other people (which would have been unusual but for the time of day). The calm water mirrored the mountains. Janelle and I grinned at each other. This was our favourite playground.

This blog post SHOULD have been about all of the awesomeness of the day. And there was plenty of that – in fact, 80% of the day was exactly the kind of adventure Janelle and I thrive best on, and the best 41st birthday a girl could ask for. I’ll give you that part in photos:

At this point, it was approaching 4pm. We were already late on our time estimate for the whole day (mountain runs are often like that – we hadn’t fully accounted for the difficulty of the terrain, or the rain as the forecast had been 25C and sunny, which had slowed our pace considerably), and Janelle joked that she told her husband Kirk to call Search and Rescue if we weren’t out by 6pm, but we figured from here we should be able to cruise down and out before then.

I came around a bend and looked up. A tall but thin waterfall fell above us, and then disappeared below some snow and came out further down – we were going to cross over the water on a patch of snow. Some part of my brain noted that this is the sort of thing that could be unsafe (is that snow stable? The water is running under it!), but there was clearly a trail of muddy footprints across it so without further thought, I began to cross. In hindsight I should have maybe done something to scuff up the snow to give Janelle more traction as she’d been slipping on other patches of snow earlier in the day, lamenting her choice of shoes, but that is really the only thing I can think of that might have changed what happened next. From behind me Janelle says “is this snow going to hold us?” I don’t answer because this seems like a mostly rhetorical question, and then I’m not sure what Janelle says (maybe “I’m slipping!”) or what noise she makes because I look back at her and our eyes lock, both growing wider with terror. She is lying on the snow on her belly, slipping off the trail. She tries to claw her fingernails into the snow to stop herself, but to both of our horror, she begins to slip faster and then it all happens so quickly. Picking up speed, she slides about 20-30 feet and over the edge of the snow feet first where it has formed a cornice over the water, (which at that point is a rocky creek). I later estimate that the drop-off was about 8 feet.

“Janelle!” I yell, moving forward on the snow. My next thought is “Don’t hurt yourself getting to her!” and then “JanelleJanelleJanelleJanelle!!!!!!” My next memory is looking over and seeing her crouching in the stream, holding her head. Then to get to her I have to work around and lower and she disappears from view as I scramble as fast as I can. When I get close to her I can immediately see that her head is not intact. I say “fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck!” Blood is pouring down her face and onto the snow and there is a big gaping hole in her scalp. I can see about 3-4 square inches of her skull (but only process that is what I am looking at later). She (weirdly) hands me her bear banger, which fell out of her pack and she had the presence of mind to retrieve from the stream (!!!!!). I pocket it. She looks at me, touches her head, looks at her bloody hands, and says “did I just basically scalp myself?” This is NOT a question you should say yes to. Some part of me knows this but I am too stunned to think of a lie faster than I can nod yes. “Kinda” I say, to soften my assent. I jump into action because she is standing there looking at me and I can see panic creeping in. In a split second I do a mental inventory of what we are both carrying (bandaids! moleskin! – might as well be sparkly unicorn stickers, in other words totally useless to me…) and I rip the Buff off my head and start to put it on her, wrapping it from below her chin over the top of her head. I pull it back as far as I can while she winces. I do this quickly and without much fussing or careful examination. This is going to be makeshift and I know I am way out of my league to do anything real to patch that big of a wound. I’m not sure the buff will stay so I rip off my (already well-loved and super useful but WHO KNEW THESE COULD BE AMAZING BANDAGES!) Earthgroove sleeves and knot them together, wrap them around her head like a bandana, readjusting so the knotted up part isn’t hanging in front of her eyes, and tie them as tight as I can on the other side. That’s all I’ve got, but the bleeding slows already. Janelle takes a few wobbly steps forward. “Do you want to sit down?” I say. “No,” she replies. “I want to get out of here.” Right. I look around. She shouts with some panic “WHERE THE FUCK IS THE TRAIL?” Right. We are not on the trail anymore. This is a problem I can solve. I look around and see the next switchback about 30 feet below us. Between us and the trail is the softest mossy hill (where was that when we needed it?). “There!” I say. But it’s still steep, so I reach for her hand and lead us back to the trail.

If you have ever taken Wilderness First Aid (I have, about 20 years ago, turns out it all comes back when you need it), they will tell you that rescue/getting out of a situation in the backcountry can take hours. This fact works itself back into my surprisingly calm and clear brain and I quickly settle in to the idea that we are going to be out here for hours. I don’t like it and would much prefer an escape hatch, dramatic helicopter rescue, ideally teleportation directly to the ER, but I don’t dwell on any of that. As we start moving I think a number of thoughts, though don’t really register any of them until later. Janelle is walking. I backtrack on my first aid ABC’s and rapidly tick off that she is breathing, talking, alert and conscious (and never lost consciousness), and moving. Miraculously, the rest of her seems fine. As we start to work our way down, I ask her if anything else hurts, how the rest of her body is, and she sort of looks at me funny and says “I’m not sure” but her behaviour suggests that there isn’t anything else that’s major. I don’t take time to double check. I do scan for other sources of bleeding and there aren’t any. I worry that she could go into shock and so my mission at this point is to get us as far as I can before anything changes or gets worse. After a few more switchbacks (the trail is still really gnarly scree slope), Janelle looks around and starts to hyperventilate “WHY ARE WE STILL SO HIGH UP?” It’s true. The majestic views of the lakes below – Hidden Lake and then a little further, Upper lake – now seem like cruel jabs into my being. They are still a long way down. And we are still on the wrong side of the lake even when we get to them. In an instant though I realize that panic has actually become our primary enemy at this point. “It’s ok.” I say, in my most calm and assertive voice (not fake, I genuinely felt calm and assertive. I’m actually feeling 100x shakier and anxious writing this out than I did while it was happening. Stress hormones and survival instinct are powerful, amazing things). “We are going to get there one step at a time.” And that’s what we do. Most of the way I actually narrate our steps “Up up, down down, little root here, watch out for that rock, we’re going up a bit, just a few steps down. That’s it. You’re doing great. Good job.” (Repeat. x2000) because I think that the sound of my voice will hopefully keep Janelle present and calm and that is what I most need her to be. It also keeps me present and calm and in the moment. I briefly contemplate how badly I want to see another human, how far we still have to go. At one point, maybe 15 minutes later, my arms suddenly go all tingly and for about a minute I’m not sure my bowels will hold. But the feeling passes. I notice that I am incredibly dry-mouthed and thirsty. I realize that I can meet that need without slowing us down so I sip some water, though doing something this normal feels wildly inappropriate. But is quickly countered with some thoughts about needing to take care of myself at a basic level so I can keep taking care of Janelle.

After a long time of hiking down, we finally meet another human. A moment of relief hits me. Help! I shout “Hey! We could use some help!” and this probably slightly younger man says “Sure. What’s up?” and I say “Where are you parked?” By now he can see Janelle and her gruesome, blood-soaked face. “Interlakes.” He says. Shit. That’s where we are parked. There is a closer (or so I thought at that point) parking lot on the other side of the lake, and that was what I was hoping he’d say. I look at him in his hiking boots and huge backpack and my stomach sinks. Finding another human isn’t going to help us. He can’t get to help any faster than we can doing what we are already doing. “Ok. That’s ok.” I say, to him, to Janelle, to myself. The realization dawns that even if we see more people, unless we find another runner, we are probably still the most capable people out here. So we pass him and keep going. At some point my watch vibrates and I look down and shout “hey! It’s an ultra! We’ve done 43km!” And then I rattle on for awhile about how this trail around Hidden lake is WAY better than I remember it, as I had been regaling her earlier with the tale of my first ever backpacking trip up to Aster Lake when I’d had to climb over a ton of downed trees with a huge pack on and at one point had fallen off onto my backpack and been unable to get up, like an overturned beetle.

Eventually we get back to the junction with the main trail around Upper lake. I desperately don’t want Janelle to look at the signs telling us how many km to the parking lots, thinking that she might have a panic attack. And yet we’ve already come so far and I say so out loud, as often as the thought crosses my mind. With dismay I read the sign and realize that the parking lot I thought was way closer is actually only .6km closer than the car. In a split second I decide. “It’s better if we walk to the car, then we can for sure get out.” After only seeing one other person – it’s now dinnertime on a Thursday, people are NOT heading out backpacking now – I am afraid that we would get to the other parking lot and there wouldn’t be anyone to help there either and then we’d still have another 3k the long way back to the car. Weirdly, another wave of calm washes over my sinking realization that it’s still 6km to go. We are moving at a surprisingly good pace – Janelle is still power hiking like the wicked strong and amazing ultra runner that she is. This way, we aren’t dependent on anyone else to get out of here. I feel some relief at being in control. Also, I know the trail well from this point back, and finally I can envision us getting there. Janelle is even making the odd joke, like how she owes me a birthday present now, and a new Buff.

We start moving again. I continue to narrate, although the trail is easier now and I probably don’t need to tell Janelle if we are coming to a little bit of up or down, roots or rocks. The sound of my voice is keeping us both on track. We make our way past Point (backcountry) campground, as I mentally query whether it would be worth looking for help. I reason again that no one else will have reception either, or really be able to do anything we’re not already doing, and keep going. Beyond the campground we do start to see more people hiking. I realize that Janelle is scary looking and I start to worry that people might react and that might make her panic. So I say “Uh, there are people ahead. You look pretty scary. They might freak out.” Surprisingly, besides one older woman who shouts “Oh my God!” as we walk by, most people look us over, a few say “Are you ok?” and I find myself reassuring them almost cheerily “We’re good thanks! We just need to get out of here!” or as we’re coming up to them “We’ve had a rough day but we’re getting out!” One couple is too busy kissing on the side of the trail to even notice us and for a second I am aware that we are the only ones having this crazy experience. At one point we meet a couple with two adorable, clean, sparkly little girls. I tell Janelle to tuck closer in behind me, I do NOT want to make any kids cry in fright here. But their Mom looks us over and then says “Do you need help?! I’m an emergency nurse!” Again, I quickly assess that there’s nothing she can do that will do better than what we’re already doing. “Unless you have a way to get us help faster” I say, as she explains that she does have a SPOT, but that all that will do is send out a beacon for help and coordinates. That would turn us into sitting ducks, and now I can smell the barn. “No, thanks, we’re good!” I shout, and we keep moving. Janelle asks me if I have a change of clothes in the car. I say “no” and then I say “you’re not changing anyway. We’re going as soon as we get there.” And she says with a slight pout, “you’re bossy!” and I reply “I can live with that today. Call me Bossy Boots.”

We get to the parking lot and I absurdly push the save button on my watch. 48.66km for the day. “49k!” I shout, rounding up. Janelle makes one last feeble joke “maybe you should run around the parking lot to get to fifty.” Hell no. I load her in the car. I tell her my plan is to go to Boulton Creek Trading Post and call for an ambulance. She argues weakly that I should just drive her to Calgary. I am distantly glad that she doesn’t seem to have fully grasped the severity of the situation: mission accomplished. I have the sensation of living on borrowed time, in some ways I can’t believe our luck in making it this far without anything getting dramatically worse and I think that now that we’ve stopped moving, it’s pretty likely Janelle will start to go into shock. Her hands are already icy and she starts to shiver as I tuck her in to the passenger seat with a blanket. I drive to Boulton Creek as fast as I dare on the curvy road, knowing also that Janelle gets motion sickness and definitely not wanting to make things worse. I put on the hazard lights and sprint inside, finally letting my own panic rise as I run in and try not to scream “I need an ambulance!”

Amazingly, the ambulance only takes another 15-20 minutes, which seems like nothing at this point. They do an assessment and are able to tell me that it really looks like aside from the major soft tissue injury to her scalp, she is probably fine. I call her husband. I call my worried mother. I follow to the hospital, though I never get inside as by the time everything settles, Kirk has arrived and takes over. I sit on a bench outside and check my phone: 36 Happy Birthday text messages, generally along the lines of “I hope you had an amazing, wonderful day.” I have no idea how to respond.

The next evening, I am able to visit Janelle in the hospital. By then she has been sewn back together and while it is clear that this adventure is going to leave a significant mark on her body, she seems completely herself. She asks how I am doing, apologizes, thanks me, all of which feels a little absurd but is so completely who she is that I find it all very comforting. We exclaim how lucky she really was, that things could have been worse in so many unthinkable ways. She is also already saying she has no regrets. That even if she hadn’t made it off that mountain, she is happy with how she is living her life. That she hopes I will still want to run mountains with her. I am feeling a bit more gun shy, but I can also see my path back, and of course I still want to run mountains with her!

We both still have some processing to do, but I have faith that we’re both ultimately going to be fine, stronger even. One outcome of this would be to get scared and stay home, to try to live in some kind of overprotective bubble hoping that bad things will never happen to me. But I made a very conscious choice after Trevor died not to do that. That isn’t what he would have wanted for me, and it’s fundamentally not who I am. I made the choice to travel across the world months after 9/11 as a 21-year-old with the same logic. I’d rather live a shorter, full, well-lived life than a longer one with many regrets and opportunities not taken (but for the record, I’m fully intending to live to be 100). I feel more alive and vibrant and ME when I am in the mountains pushing my body and connecting with my people than I do anywhere else – whether that’s a short hike with my kids or a long run with my adventurous friends. It’s not the life that others would choose for me, but it is the life I am choosing for myself. Risk is everywhere. On the highway home from Calgary. On the icy sidewalk outside my office in the winter. In the germs on every public surface out there. I will be reflecting further on what other risk-mitigation might need to happen for my next adventure, but there will absolutely be a next adventure. Hopefully involving at most bandaid-level first aid.

The introduction to this race actually begins with how I got into trail running. In 2009, my husband-to-be Trevor introduced me to his lovely friends Kamren and Karina Farr. Kam was in the process of getting the 5 Peaks trail running series off the ground in Edmonton. I said “I like running. I’ve never run on a trail. But I like hiking on trails. I think I would like it?” My first race was at Sunridge. I ended up on the age category podium with bloody knees from bailing down a hill. I was hooked.

The next year, Kamren planned to solo the Canadian Death Race, so a bunch of other running friends made teams. Karina and our other friend Iva convinced me to join their “Run Like Girls” team on Leg 3. We went out to Grande Cache to train on the course and I was able to preview my leg – I came away feeling humbled and possibly in over my head – what was all this downhill rocky stuff? The pre-run was the mental preparation I needed however, and I ended up crushing my leg and passing 70-80 other runners (suffering soloists in the middle of their run, now I have much more sympathy). Kamren finished in about 16.5 hours, a couple hours past his goal time, but an impressive time by any standard. He came across the finish line and said something like “Fuck! That was hard!” I had mad respect for Kam, but at this point I really saw people soloing as some other level of athlete, some other brand of crazy. I knew he’d been training for 8-9 months and I just couldn’t imagine wanting to run that much. I thought the training sounded like torture.

By 2011 I was starting to feel at home in the trail running scene. I was asked to join a “fast” ladies team sponsored by 5 Peaks. I was getting stronger but I still had major imposter syndrome. I trained to run leg 5, but one of the other women on the team who was going to do 3 and 4 was having some health issues. Some tiny voice in the back of my head secretly wanted to do something harder, more challenging. So I ended up running Leg 4. A similar outcome followed: I felt in a little over my head but I met/exceeded my own expectations and successfully crushed Mt. Hamel. We were the top ladies team that year. This stuff was kind of addicting. By now I had seen a few other friends complete the solo event and watched some elite runners (Ellie Greenwood!) set new course records – inspiring stuff! The little voice that wants me to push and challenge myself gained some volume and I brazenly, flippantly said, “this race is always the weekend of my birthday… maybe when I turn 40 I’ll solo.” Easy words for a 32 year-old to toss around.

The intervening years contained an unexpected amount of Life. Motherhood x2 and Widowhood x1. But those words never left my mind. There were years in the middle when it felt like maybe my life was taking a different direction, I got sucked into the vortex of young kids when running more than 8-10k seemed impossible. But after Trevor’s sudden death in 2017, running was the only thing that made sense. We had an incredible trail running family that circled around me and held me up. Interestingly though, when I started racing again, I discovered that I didn’t actually know many people at races anymore. Other people’s lives had moved on too, I guess. It was just another way that my own life no longer seemed familiar to me. But I kept showing up and putting one foot in front of the other, the same way I did in the rest of my life in those grief-filled first months. I didn’t know what else to do. The running community honoured Trevor’s memory with a number of Spirit Awards and my need to be a part of that remained strong. Slowly, I made new running friends. My life started to take shape again. I started racing again and found myself occasionally back on the podium. These successes felt so good. It gave my life some direction. And the words remained: “I’m going to solo CDR for my 40th birthday.”

As it happens, Trevor and I had planned to run CDR on a relay team in 2017 with our friends Matt and Denise (who had never done anything like this before) and Trevor’s sister Kirsten. After Trevor’s death, we decided to run the race in his memory. In the end (after a few injuries to other potential runners), Trevor’s good and very speedy friend Andrew Forrest filled in for Trevor’s leg 4, and we WON the relay race that year! Standing at the finish line with Andrew (and possibly under the influence of a glass of prosecco) we chatted about my future race plans and I realized that soloing CDR in a couple more years was no longer a far-fetched goal. “You could totally do it” Andrew said. I think I replied something like “yeah, I probably can.”

I also started to think about something my friend Joanna said about her second and successful CDR solo, which was that the training was at least as much fun as the race, that the process or journey had been as significant as the destination. I can honestly say that this also ended up being the case for me. Training to solo this year was anything but torture. It was exactly what I wanted to be doing with my life (ok, well there were a few 4 am alarms on Sunday mornings that I might not have chosen without the push towards this goal… even though those runs ended up being enjoyable too). I don’t actually know if I would be here soloing CDR if Trevor was still here. It’s a weird question to ponder. I know he would have been supportive of whatever I wanted to do, and he certainly thought I COULD successfully complete an ultra, but if I hadn’t needed running to cope, I’m not sure I would have been physically ready in time or if I would have met the people that have been instrumental in reaching this goal. My social life now revolves primarily around running, and I have had so many great adventures shared with wonderful people as a result. I recently read another blog that said the race is actually just a celebration of all that you have accomplished. This really resonated for me, and while the race was still a big deal, it did feel like arriving at the end of a very enjoyable journey. Or maybe more accurately, one of the main stops of a big adventure (because I certainly don’t think this is the end of the journey, I’m just not yet sure about where these feet are going next). Running is a celebration of being alive. Every run. This one is just a little more epic, to satisfy the part of my brain that wants to know just what I AM capable of at 40.

Over the past 10 years as my “career” in endurance running (and a little road cycling as I attempted MS Bike and then participated for 5 years in a row to date) has developed, I have intersected from time to time with people who do triathlons. My reaction to the idea of a triathlon has always been the same: *giant shudder* “ugh, but you have to swim. No thanks.” I happily discarded any thoughts about triathlons not related to other people, laced up my shoes, and hit the trails.

However, after you achieve a major goal, as I did this summer by successfully soloing the Canadian Death Race ultramarathon (I am writing a big blog about that too, it’s coming, thank you for your patience), you inevitably are faced with a slightly terrifying question: Now what? I’m still in the brainstorming stages, but my emotional makeup leads me to conclude that the only appropriate answer to this question is something “bigger.” Does bigger mean a longer distance? A multi-day event? More running? Or does bigger mean something else? A duathlon of cycling and running? Do those even exist (they do, although I’ve yet to find one that has distances I like the sounds of, and combines road cycling with trail running, my two faves). A… triathlon? Imagine me saying that in the tiniest, squeakiest of whispers, while scrunching up my face and trying not to look. A few weeks ago I was camping with my friend Vanessa, a fitness coach who is just starting to train for a half-ironman. I asked her about the distances required for each portion of an Olympic, half and full ironman. For each of them I heard my internal reaction “pfft. I could do that. Except for the whole swimming thing.” But for the first time I questioned myself. Why am I so scared of the swim?

Let’s back WAAAAY up. I’m pretty sure I actually remember my first day of Red Cross swimming lessons. Yellow (the levels had colours back then). Thornhill community pool in Calgary. I would have been 5, maybe 6 years old. I’m pretty sure there were tears. The water was freezing. Groups of kids everywhere. I have strong sensory memory of the surroundings. I didn’t want to leave the safety of my mom’s arms. But somehow I managed to learn something about swimming and progressed fairly seamlessly through Orange and Red badges at the next sets of lessons. I even gained a little confidence. Maybe this swimming stuff wasn’t so bad. I sure liked swimming at Skaha lake every summer. And then I got to Maroon. Now what kind of effed up rainbow has maroon? Followed by blue, green, and… is there a purple? Or was it grey (seriously, Red Cross, you don’t know how to rainbow). I don’t know, I never made it that high. Maroon was where the rainbow ended for me. One of the things you had to do in maroon was a somersault off the edge into the pool. Somersaulting underwater is totally disorienting. I hate it. Water gets in your nose. You don’t know which way is up/where the surface and that delightful stuff called air is… Anyway, somersaulting into the pool resulted in disoriented me hitting my head on the edge of the pool. Not catastrophically, but hard enough that when I was told to try again, my body said “nuh uh, no way, we are NOT doing that again.” I spent much of the rest of this set of lessons crying on the edge of the pool. My instructor, I’m pretty sure her name was Danielle, was lovely, and worked with me the best she could. In the end, I met all of the other requirements for this badge except that somersault and they took pity on me and decided to pass me anyway and send me on into Blue. I think I then did Blue 3 or 4 times, unable to get any further. Not only couldn’t I somersault, but I couldn’t front crawl all that well, I couldn’t keep my ears out of the water while treading water for 2 minutes, etc. But now looking back, I’m sure there was no physical reason I couldn’t do these things. I’m getting teary thinking about it, but I think what happened was that I decided I was a Bad Swimmer. And part of me gave up. By the end of elementary school, I also needed glasses and so swimming meant that I was unable to see properly. As soon as those mandatory school-based swim lessons stopped, I stopped swimming. I could still enjoy splashing around in a lake, and I knew I could probably save my life if I had to – I wasn’t afraid of the water – but I wasn’t ever going to be a Swimmer. Case closed.

Recently my main running buddy Janelle mentioned she was considering doing a triathlon. She hates swimming too. She actually kind of hates water, period. But she said that was exactly why triathlon was appealing – BECAUSE it scares her. After the camping weekend and some self-reflection, along with getting recovery advice from multiple professionals and not-so-professional but life-experienced runners that I should do some low-impact activities for awhile to let my body recuperate from CDR, I decided maybe I should face my fear of swimming. So I signed both of my kids up for swimming lessons, bought us all goggles, and attempted to swim some lengths while they were with their instructors for the first time last weekend. I swam 25m (one length). Holy, I can’t breathe. I swam back (50m). My heart was pounding out of my chest. Crap, how do people do this? I paused for several minutes to catch my breath. I did another set. Panted at the edge for a bit. And repeat. The kids’ lessons were 30 min long. I managed to swim 350m. I then proudly brought the kids over to watch me swim another 50m so I could say I swam 400m. Running 400m would take me… 2-3 minutes? That’s not even a warmup. This was a serious workout. I was thirsty. My legs felt like jello. My lungs felt like I’d run a race. Good grief. And yet my body felt strangely totally fine. Is this what a no-impact workout feels like??

The kids and I then spent another 90 min in the pool, splashing around. My daughter (7) is getting really comfortable in the water and loves it. She did a camp this summer with 1/2 days of swimming and a neighbour kid showed her how to do a somersault underwater. So she showed me her (flawless) underwater somersault. “Watch mom!” My jaw dropped open. Before I could edit my words, they came out of my mouth “I can’t even do that! Maybe you should teach me.” She liked that idea a lot. Why did I say that? I stalled, made excuses. The pool was too shallow. I had to watch my son (5) too. Finally I said “ok, I’ll try one.” I did. It was just as disorienting as I remembered (I have a sensitive vestibular system, even the swings make me feel woozy. It’s getting worse with age), but maybe not as scary as I remembered. Water went up my nose. But I was ok. I found the surface. And I was so mindful that I had to not show any fear, which might actually have made me feel less fear. She tried to give me pointers and get me to try again but I said “that’s enough, maybe next time.” But it really made me think. What if this fear was really just all in my head? If my 7 year-old isn’t afraid, maybe I shouldn’t be either. I certainly know a lot about the “head game” of running and life in general. What if I could get my head around swimming?

I had some time before work one day this week, so I decided maybe I should try more lengths. And then I discovered that at the Kinsmen, there is a drop-in program called “swim training” where an instructor will give you technique tips. Perfect! I parked the car and realized as I was walking in that I was way more nervous than I am before a race. I questioned myself: what AM I afraid of? I’m not afraid of drowning; I am capable of swimming across the pool. I’m afraid… of what people will think of me? Of looking like an idiot? That’s sort of it, but really I am afraid to admit that I don’t know how to swim properly and that I need help. I had a rush of empathy for my first-time clients. Now, as I write, I realize that what really scares me is that feeling of being a Bad Swimmer. The one who sat on the side of the pool crying and couldn’t pass Blue and lost any kind of swimming confidence. That belief is what I’m actually up against.

By the time I got out to the pool deck my teeth were chattering, and not only from being slightly cold and wet from the shower. The instructor took one look at me and said “you look nervous.” I’m sure I was super pale. I said “I haven’t had a swimming lesson since I was 12. I mean, I can swim, but I probably have zero technique.” He smiled, introduced himself as Lincoln, and said “you’re in the right place.” He explained the etiquette of the lanes (I felt good that I knew that already). He told me to jump in the closest lane and start swimming. We’d do 300m, or 12 lengths, to start. He then said to the others “we have fresh blood. Be nice!” The two elderly ladies in my lane with me smiled and said “don’t worry dear, stick with us and we’ll have you swimming in 3-4 months.” 3-4 months?! What is their definition of “swimming”? But they were clearly veterans so I nodded and attempted a wobbly smile. The instructor then spoke to a woman in the next lane “did you get inducted into the Hall of Fame Marjorie?” Omg. I’d seen this on social media. Marjorie Anderson, a synchronized swimmer, was inducted into the Masters Swimming Hall of Fame this past weekend. I was swimming with someone who was swim hall of fame worthy. My stomach dropped a little further. But I knew that if I walked away now, it would be so much worse. I got in the pool.

After a couple of lengths Lincoln said “runner?” I nodded. Apparently it was that obvious… After 10 lengths he pulled me out of the pool. For a split second I thought I was in real trouble. “That bad huh?” He explained that my body position was the problem. That I was trying to use my legs like I was running up a hill. That’s not how you kick underwater apparently. He also said I needed to relax my core, keep the top of my head more in the water instead of panicky pulling myself out after every stroke. He had me pegged. Every breath was a tiny panic. No wonder I was winded! I got back in. The others were doing something else but I tried what he suggested and it felt dramatically different right away. I sucked in a bit of water but started to find I could make it back and forth without feeling like my heart was going to beat it’s way right out of my chest. Something was working! He said “that’s way better already!”

After this he did a half hour of teaching and drills with the whole group. We worked on just kicking and the timing of kicking, the arm stroke, we even did a length with only one leg and opposite arm (that was brutal). I tried my best to keep up, but all of the drills just felt completely confusing because I couldn’t connect them to the basic feel yet. That was ok. I swam 1200m in total. Again afterwards I felt both like I’d done a lot and like I’d done nothing at all. My usual markers of having worked hard are muscle tightness, soreness, fatigue. I didn’t really feel any of those things and yet I knew I’d worked hard. I can’t even describe it, it’s so different I don’t even have the words yet.

I left feeling incredibly satisfied. I had done something that really scared me. I still feel like a newbie, I’m not sure I’ll feel much different next time I go, even though I stopped on the way home to buy a swim cap after joking with one the ladies “so the cap must keep your hair from getting in your face?” and she replied “well I think it also keeps your hair out of the pool.” Gross. Sorry pool filter. I’ll look the part next time. Mostly though, I’ve had this epiphany that maybe I’m not a Bad Swimmer. Maybe I’m just a person who doesn’t know how to swim very well. And that can be changed.

I am still not sure that I will do a triathlon. The goal at this point is just “learn to swim properly (and see if maybe I don’t hate it).” But the idea no longer sounds impossible. The thing about “bucket lists” is that when you cross items off, you inevitably add others…

After sneaking out of the hotel room shortly after 4am trying not to wake up Janelle’s sleeping family, we drove the hour back to the Canyon (no traffic this early) while eating breakfast and listening to good tunes. Getting out of the car near the trail head, we were pumped but it was freezing! It was also very very dark, though a bit of navy blue was starting to appear in the eastern sky. Because we were rushing to get started as soon as possible, both to get warm and to have as much time as we could, I managed to leave all of my charging cords in the car in the dark, which would result in my watch dying at about the 50k mark and my phone somehow limping along with 4% battery life for much of the day (but I still got lots of great photos!). I’m always a bit disturbed to realize how much this bothers me when it happens, but it seems important to have some actual objective record of doing these epic things!

It took us a few minutes to find the trail head, and as soon as we did the awesomeness we had been waiting for began to reveal itself. The sky grew lighter by the minute, so that we could already see and feel the magnitude of the canyon appearing out of the darkness as we started to run down… steps? (The whole trail is basically giant dirt steps – well built and maintained to host millions of tourists hiking per year… amazing, but makes it hard to get a good running rhythm) Birds began to chirp, and we switchbacked down into the splendor of one of planet Earth’s magnificent features, stopping every few minutes to say (or shout) “WOW!” and “This is AMAZING!” and snap photos. At one point I skidded to a stop out of complete instinctual reflex, causing Janelle to gasp loudly and crash into me from behind. It wasn’t really until after the half dozen deer hopped a little further up the slope that my conscious brain made sense of what I was seeing. Suddenly uncamouflaged, they looked at us with their soft brown eyes and went back to chewing plants.

Other than this, it seemed like we had the entire canyon to ourselves. It wasn’t until much further down that we started to see the odd hiker making their way back up from one of the campgrounds at the bottom. One of the pleasant surprises was the availability of bathrooms at regular intervals. I packed TP and I didn’t have to use it! However, just short of the first bathroom (or maybe the 2^nd?), my nose started to bleed, which was a little disconcerting. I’m slightly prone to nosebleeds, especially in the dryness of Alberta winter, but reflected that I hadn’t had a nosebleed in a long time. “Maybe it’s the change in altitude?” Janelle suggested. This would be an annoyance that recurred 3-4 more times throughout the rest of the day… and it’s hard to run with a nosebleed. But I also didn’t want to have to stop running because of my NOSE. Around this point we passed a sign that said “Down is optional. Up is mandatory.” At the time we chuckled a bit self-righteously, knowing that we were doing more that most people do in a few days, let alone in a single day, way more than is generally advisable, and knowing that we were fit enough and skilled enough to attempt it. I would no longer be thinking this was funny when we saw this sign on the return trip…

I’ve mentioned our time estimate a couple of times, and I’ve thought about this a lot since that day. Why was I so stressed about time? It’s not like it was a race, there were no prizes for finishing more quickly. I think the self-inflicted time pressure came from a couple of places. One is that I am fairly competitive. I knew that Courtney Dauwalter’s time wasn’t going to be possible because she’s a superhuman runner, but frankly I wanted to keep up with the friends I knew who had done it. But even more importantly, I knew that my mom was going to be growing a grey hair for each half hour that we were late. Who am I kidding, she was probably growing some just because I was out here and out of cell service (and she’s probably growing more reading this blog – sorry Mom). The night before leaving Phoenix I’d heard a quote that “worry is the misuse of the imagination” and I left it for her on a note. But there I was, worrying about my mom worrying. A lot. Apple not falling far from the tree and all of that. It was an immense relief to me that when we reached the North Rim, there was cell service and we could send out an update (that also said “this is taking longer than I thought”). Even if I hadn’t known my mom was worrying, I guess I think I have enough people in my life who care about me that someone else would be (albeit maybe less acutely). So a semi-urgent feeling of needing to keep moving never went away. Later it was about the lack of water (see below), and eventually about just needing to be done. 

After only 2-2.5 hours we reached the Canyon floor and the rushing muddy Colorado River. We had descended 1320m or 4340ft and covered 15km. It was warming up, but we had been cruising downhill and had barely had anything to drink when we reached the water tap at the Bright Angel campground and saw a sign that said “No water at Cottonwood.” According to all of our pre-trip intelligence, Cottonwood was the last place to get water before the North Rim. Even with this in the plan, our friend Keith had recommended carrying an extra empty bladder to fill up there and stash part way up the North Rim to have some extra water for the return trip. So we both had an extra empty 1L bladder in our packs. I could have made it work to carry mine, it would have made my pack super heavy and probably awkwardly shaped, but Janelle’s pack couldn’t even accommodate the jacket she’d taken off, much less another liter of liquid. Some small voice in the back of my head said something about how this was a potentially serious problem, but in the early morning state of being still cool and well-hydrated, I just couldn’t conceive of running out of water. And frankly, I just didn’t do the math on the distance that meant we needed to cover with what we had on board. I topped up my bottles, but I did not fill up the spare bladder. It was a careless and stupid decision, and I should have clued in when it started to nag as a bit of a worry in the back of my mind as we ran the next section. Instead, we settled in to the beginning of a very long and very gradual, runnable climb. The views changed as we wound our way up the Bright Angel Canyon and looked back towards the impressively massive wall of the South Rim. A picturesque daytime moon hung above it. It was lovely.

By the time we reached Cottonwood campground, the day was heating up. We put on some sunscreen (out of a baggie!) and chatted with a family who had spent the night and the dad who had hiked up to the North Rim the day before. He described the amount of snow, but it didn’t sound too bad. They confirmed there wasn’t any water. The alarm bells in my head got a bit louder but I said nothing, there was nothing we could do about it now anyway. It was interesting to get reactions from others on the trail. Some people just looked at us strangely. A few communicated that they were impressed and in awe but could not see themselves ever attempting such a thing, didn’t believe they were fit enough, etc. I wanted to give them pep talks. I don’t think there’s anything so special that set us apart from any of these people. With training they could probably do it too – or maybe it’s easy to say that from inside my own experience. Part way up the North Rim, we passed a group of younger people who cheered for us and told us we were their heroes! That was pretty cool. We would meet them again coming back down (they were doing what we were doing but over 4 days and with packs), at which point they would fawn all over Janelle when they found out she was training for a 100-miler. Of everyone we met, I suspect they were the only ones who might attempt to run it one day. Also we passed two other runners – single guys on their own. I wanted to talk to them and find out how their adventures were going, but they were intent on running, probably feeling their own version of the pressure to keep moving (they were also coming down and we were hiking up, so they were probably in the speedier rhythm that downhill allows), so we only exchanged a few words.

I loved climbing up the North Rim. As we aggressively regained altitude (and then some, 1750m or 5740ft to the top), the views were pretty spectacular. We got closer and closer to the snow (which still didn’t seem like that much). The colours of the canyon in the sun were fabulous. There were little waterfalls from the snow melting above that made gentle showers on the trail. It was warm (but not overly hot, which I appreciated!) and we were climbing, and so walking through these felt amazing! I also remembered Keith telling me that if I was wet, my body wouldn’t have to sweat and I wouldn’t need as much water to stay hydrated. At one point we heard the distinct sound of rocks falling nearby. This was quite terrifying, because we couldn’t see where they were and realized there wasn’t anywhere to go if they were coming down towards us. We then came around a bend and there was a young woman sitting on the trail, which was way more startling than it should have been but I’d just been flooded with rocks-are-falling adrenaline. She was a park ranger and explained that they were blasting to clear some winter-induced debris from the pipeline going up to the rim. Sure enough, a few more switchbacks and we could see the workers and also the falling rocks. They were remarkably small for the echoey sounds they were making, but they would have done damage if they’d hit a person down below. About 400m from the top (although I didn’t know that at the time), there is a tunnel in the rock – this was one of my favorite pictures from the day.

Janelle was not enjoying this North Rim as much as I was. She mentioned she was running out of water as we reached the first patches of snow. She stopped to fill her pack with snow and I naively thought “oh, this will be fine. Snow = water!” But that last 400m took a long time. The “snow” was big coarse granules that was slippery to hike on, occasionally gave way below your feet, causing you to sink up to your knees, and also highly abrasive on the skin. In many ways it still didn’t live up to the dramatic descriptions of “there’s SO MUCH SNOW on the North Rim” that we had heard (my Canadian bias is showing), but we were anxious to get to the top so that we could start the return journey and have a sense of how much time we would have for it. Finally, we arrived at a sign. It had about a foot and a half tall snow cap on top. “I guess this is it?” we said, exchanging high fives. There appeared to be a road beyond. It was a bit anticlimactic. There wasn’t even a big trailhead sign, and there was barely any view of the canyon at all from here. Two guys rode by on a snowmobile, which seemed very strange given how warm it felt. I wasn’t impressed by the amount of snow, but later Keith would say “did you see the picnic tables?” and I said “what picnic tables?” so maybe the snow pack was deeper than I realized. We snapped some photos and sent a few text messages. Janelle opened her pack and we realized that there was no way the chunky ice-snow was going to melt into water fast enough to drink it. I still had some water in my pack, so I split what was left with Janelle, thinking that my water might melt her snow. I didn’t question doing this, sharing what water was left seemed necessary to continue. But the alarm bells got louder when I saw how much water was left. Not much. And now I knew exactly how far we had to go to get back to a water tap. Really effing far.

We slogged back down through the snow, sliding and post-holing. It was at this point that I realized I was missing all of my charging cables and spent a bit of time feeling bummed and beating myself up for not checking that they were in my pack. We found a waterfall that was more than a shower of droplets and I was so relieved. “This waterfall looks delicious!” I joked. I never drink untreated water. But it was clear to me that the risks of drinking this water were vastly outweighed by the immediate risks of not drinking it. Janelle filled her pack. I drank a belly full and filled up my bottles. I did not fill up my almost empty bladder. Or the spare bladder. Again, I don’t know what went on in my brain here except that I felt so relieved that we’d found water, but was a bit skeptical about its cleanliness so maybe I thought I could make due. This was a very poor and regrettable decision. 

Another major lesson I learned on this trip was about food. I had packed a number of items that were leftovers from last race season: a Larabar, these nut-butter-based squeezy pack things from MEC, and some gels. The gels were fine, but all of the things with nuts in them (I think there were three) had the following effect: First bite “yum! Nutty goodness!… wait… does that taste weird?” Second bite “hmm… definitely a bit off.” Third bite “this is kind of rancid. I don’t think it will hurt me though, I probably need the calories.” Fourth bite: “yuck. Ok, maybe I’m going to pack the rest of this out” (I think one of them I consumed in its entirety because it was going to be too messy to carry it half finished) And then spending the next little bit of running paying extra attention as to whether or not my stomach was bothered by it. Note to self: DO NOT CARRY OLD FOOD. Throw out anything left at the end of race season. Start over next season. Also, last year I’d found a brand of gels that I didn’t hate (Huma, chia based gels), but for whatever reason, I could barely stomach them this day. Consequently, as the day went on, also in seemingly pretty typical ultramarathon fashion, the calories I was carrying became less and less palatable. I’d saved one of my energy balls – my favourite running snack, for the uphill climb at the end. By the time I got to it, even that tasted and felt horrible in my stomach. Without any aid stations to offer something different though, I knew I had to choke it down. It did cause me to start dreaming about what I might want at the aid stations of the bigger races I am planning later this year (savory stuff!).

Buoyed up after the waterfall find, I settled into a speedier downhill rhythm. It felt great to see the miles cruising by, but every time I looked behind me, Janelle had dropped from view. I’d stop to let her catch up and keep going, but it kept happening. Finally when she caught up again, I could see that she looked a bit miserable. “What’s up?” I said. “Chafing” she said. Ugh. Another ultrarunning body nemesis. We rummaged through our supplies to try to deal with that, and I think after this she must’ve made up her mind to not let it bother her so much because she picked up her pace and I started to be the lagging one after we passed the ranger’s cabin at the bottom. At this point my nose started bleeding again, slowing me down and at some point just past Cottonwood campground again I ran out of water entirely. I’m guessing it was about 10k that I ran without water, I’m not entirely sure about the distance or the time it took because my watch was just a sweaty bracelet at this point. As I sit here at my computer, I can reflect that I run 10k without water all the time, but after having already run 50k and being out all day (probably already dehydrated), and possibly made worse by the emotional panic that it was causing, I did not handle this very well. I kept running but this whole portion of the run (the rest of it, in fact, so about 1/3) has this flavour of desperation and hardship in my memory. Finally we reached Phantom Ranch. The water tap was still about another 800m down the trail. Janelle beelined for the outhouse. I have never been so annoyed about having to wait for someone to use the bathroom. Biting my lip and hopping from foot to foot like a crazy person, I tried not to let it show on my face. We then ran past the canteen for the hostel and the campground; it was dinnertime and from every direction came the smells of cooking food. This might have seemed worse but I was so focused on getting to the water tap that I didn’t have any attention or energy left to be disappointed that the snack shop we’d heard had great lemonade (and maybe dream-worthy chips?!) was closed for the day. In any case I’d started to feel slightly nauseous and the cooking food smells weren’t so appealing. Finally, finally we reached the tap. I filled and chugged an entire 500ml bottle of water. Then I sat down and breathed a little. Sighed some relief. I was not going to die of dehydration (Ok, I never thought I was in actual danger of death… but I had been scared). I filled up both bottles and my big bladder this time. Mixed up some electrolytes. Had a snack. Washed my hands in a bathroom WITH RUNNING WATER. This seemed more than a little jarring after the day we’d had. It was around 6pm. The sun was definitely on its way down. We had about 15k to go and it was straight up. Now that I wasn’t so thirsty I started to notice a bit more how tired and sore my body was. But it was “only” 15k. The end seemed to be in sight. My spirits lifted. “Still think this is a good idea?” Janelle asked. I grinned “Hell yeah.”

We crossed the river and started to climb. Now the time pressure was governed by the sinking sun. I just kept thinking I wanted to get as far as possible before dark. Unfortunately it didn’t take long before the kilometers my body had already done caught up to me. Running up any of this ascent, even the gradual parts, now seemed impossible. Janelle was now the one running ahead and waiting for me to catch up at intervals. This zig-zag section was just as beautiful going up. The colours of the rock as the sun set were fantastic. But boy was I tired. And it just kept getting steeper. I could not keep up with Janelle. I power hiked as best I could and smiled wanly at her as I caught up again. “I’ve got no run left” I told her. The sun disappeared and gradually so did the view. Bats flew overhead and I smiled again, thinking about how much Trevor enjoyed bats. I extracted additional layers of clothing from my pack, my headlamp. We made it back to the Indian Garden campground as the last traces of light left the sky. People here were getting ready for bed! I briefly toyed with a fantasy about knocking on tents and asking if I could bunk in for the night, climb out in the morning. All backpackers are friendly, right? But my worry about my worried mom kept me moving forward. Janelle said at this point that I could lead so that we would stick together and she would just go my pace. I felt bad that I was slowing her down, and I was getting slower by the mile. My legs felt like I could barely lift them, all my muscles screaming. My feet hurt a lot and I could feel that I was developing blisters on the bottom from having gotten them wet repeatedly crossing small streams. I actually wished for spare dry socks. None of this was unexpected and yet I’m not sure I’ve ever felt this level of running pain before. In addition, although I now had more than enough water and had been drinking regularly, I was feeling nauseous. The energy ball I’d been saving tasted awful and I had to choke it down. The stairs on the trail became increasingly annoying. At one point I recall lifting my leg to go down a step and then up a few feet further and involuntary tears sprung to my eyes. Oh boy. I was about to start crying about having to lift up my own legs. This was not good. Not good at all. I took deep breaths. “Hey Janelle!” I said “What songs get stuck in your head when you’re running?” “Ugh!” she replied “I’ve been song-free most of the day! Don’t start that now!” I made a face. “I need a song or I’m going to cry” I said. She looked at me carefully. Realized I wasn’t kidding. “Ok!” she said “singing it is!” So we halfheartedly went through our mental playlists. My personal favorite, from a West Coast Trail scary moment, is “Ain’t nothin’ gonna break my stride/ Ain’t nothin’ gonna slow me down/ oh no! I’ve got to keep on movin….”

It was pitch black and all we could see was the path right in front of us now. The canyon was gone, we were in a small tunnel of light. We could see lights up in the sky – actually from the El Tovar hotel perched on the edge of the Canyon. They did not seem to be getting much closer and would periodically disappear due to switchbacks. At one point I stopped and shone my headlamp straight down in front of my feet. “Do you think that’s a scorpion or just a bug that kinda looks like a scorpion?” I asked Janelle. We observed the shape in the dirt. It seemed almost transluscent. I’m pretty sure it has gotten larger in my memory than it actually was – clearly it was small enough that some part of my brain thought it might be “just” an insect. “How about we keep going and don’t find out?” Janelle replied. I saw a few more of these but refrained from pointing them out. They didn’t move and I imagined that my headlamp was stunning or blinding them so that they would not.  We climbed back past the sign that said “down is optional, up is mandatory” and this time I thought “ok, I get it now.” By this time I was also getting a headache. At first it was kind of dull and I assumed it, like the nausea that wasn’t dissipating, might be a leftover effect of the dehydration I’d suffered earlier. But it got sharper and sharper and settled in around my right eye/sinus area. It was the weirdest, stabbing headache I’ve ever had. More worry set in: is the altitude causing some kind of terrible thing to happen inside my head? Janelle suggested Tylenol, which took the edge off the rest of the body pain but did not touch this at all. Part of me wanted desperately to stop. To lie down and curl into a ball and not move for awhile. But I knew I would freeze if I did that, so instead it just became an inner urgent plea of “I have to get out of here” arguing with some other part that said “but it’s the Grand Canyon! You don’t want to be wishing to get out of the Grand Canyon and this incredible experience!” Oh, but I did. I was done.

The hidden gem of this climb was that at one point we stopped and turned off our headlamps. For the second time in a year (both times while running up steep things in the night), I saw how incredible the stars actually are with absolutely no light pollution. A blanket of tiny twinkles that words cannot even remotely describe. The longer we stood without our headlamps, the better it got. But also the colder. And there were potentially more of those scorpion-things kicking around… so we kept moving. Finally, finally, we reached the top. I think we high-fived and “woohooed”. Maybe. Maybe not. I was so relieved. We got to the car. SAT DOWN. Turned on the heat. Called my mom. My weird stabbing headache vanished as suddenly as it had come. We stopped at one of the lodging places to use the bathroom and change into dry clothes. My feet looked grey and dead after being wet for so long. We hobbled and shuffled painfully to and from the car, also realizing that everything was basically closed up for the night. We weren’t really hungry, but knew we should probably eat something. My stroke of genius was realizing we could probably get Mr. Noodles at a gas station. It was the best crappy soup I’ve ever tasted. Showers. Advil PM. Sleep. We made it.

The next morning I picked up my phone and the first message I saw was from Sheryl Savard. It said “apparently running is safer than taking pictures” and there was a link to a news story. While we had been running, a tourist from Hong Kong tripped while taking a selfie and fell into the Canyon to his death. I think had I heard about this even a few days later it would not have affected me so much. But I could still taste the incredible difficulty and the edge of fear of that climb out, and the accompanying realization that I was not invincible. It’s like being asked right after giving birth if you want more children. I could still hear the sound of my own inner screaming, so to speak. It just added another layer to how humbled I felt about my relative size and power compared to colossal mother nature. We are but tiny beings on this big beautiful planet. I’m squeezing the most living out of my life… but it’s just one little human life. Fragile.

In the aftermath of this I thought a lot about the difficulty of it. Up until this experience, I had been pretty good at estimating how I will do in races because I usually have a pretty good sense of the terrain. I also typically know about where I am in the field of competitors. I have experience from which to draw. This was uncharted territory. My biggest error was perhaps assuming I had any clue how that would go, and naively assuming that on some level it would be comparable to other hard things I’ve done before. It was by definition stepping out into a giant unknown – both in terms of distance for me, and also in the terrain, which is unlike anything I’ve ever done with the reverse elevation/heat profile. On that climb I also had too much time in which to think (and panic a little) about my next adventure: soloing Canadian Death Race, which is 125km. It did not feel like it would have been possible to keep going for another 50k. However, 4 days later I managed to come in 4^thplace at the JAJA marathon. I had no idea if I’d even be able to complete a portion of this race, and I managed to keep going on super tired and sore/stiff legs, and by just keeping on keeping on (and trying to stay ahead of a few peers I have friendly competition with), I totally surprised myself with the results. More unchartered territory, but this time, I felt pretty tough. So I came away from that feeling comforted, and also reflecting that all of this had been a huge growth experience. You don’t grow by being comfortable. I scared myself. I found an edge. I got uncomfortable. I learned A LOT. I would do it again. I don’t know that I will. There are so many corners of this big world to see. But do I still think it was a good idea? Hell yeah.