Rim2Rim2Rim Part I: The preamble

I’ve started but not completed a few “race reports” in the past year, either because I got busy and then a lot of time oozed by, or because Janelle, who I’ve been doing a lot of running things with, blogged about it so perfectly that I felt like the story had already been told and for me to write about it would be mostly repetitious. But after reading Janelle’s blog about running Rim2Rim2Rim in the Grand Canyon with me over spring break, I realized that this time, I was going to have to write my own version because I have a different story to tell.

After a fabulous four days of sun/warmth and touristy adventures with my kids and Mom and Stepdad in Phoenix, I rented a car and headed up the highway to the Grand Canyon (the GRAND CANYON!). On the way I tried to drink a lot of water and eat some extra snacks, knowing my body would need these calories the next day. I also listened to a Billy Yang podcast featuring Courtney Dauwalter and Cameron Hanes in which they discuss running Rim2Rim2Rim in about 11 hours. This is important because it skewed my estimated completion time, which in hindsight is ridiculous because I am NOT Courtney Dauwalter (if you don’t know who she is, she is a record-destroying ultramarathon runner). They talked about it being both awesome and challenging, and described getting to the South Rim and looking way off in the distance and seeing the snow landmarking the North Rim. This added to my excitement. I’m turning 40 in August of this year, and decided that this would be the first of four bucket-list adventures (4 for 40, one per season). When I was a bit younger, I scoffed at people making a big deal about turning 40. It is, after all, just another number in a sequence of numbers. I have also never really been of the opinion that getting older is something to have a breakdown about, but rather something to celebrate. However, when my husband Trevor died two years ago, three months before his 40^thbirthday, the significance of turning 40 skyrocketed for me. When I started to write this (April), I was a few days shy of being the equivalent age that he was when he died (weird math that keeps a widow brain up at night). By the time you are reading this, I will have outlived him. This is bizarre, heartbreaking, weirdly euphoric. I’m not happy I’m going to outlive him (for his sake, or from a grief perspective), but I’m ecstatic that I’m going to outlive him because I have SO much living left to do!

Getting close to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon is a strange experience, because there really isn’t anything (besides signs) to indicate the grandiosity that is nearby. In fact, you have the distinct sensation that you’re traveling into very remote bush. Then, suddenly, there are massive parking lots filled with vehicles and tour busses. I found myself a spot and got out of the car – brrrr! I’d left Phoenix at 30 degrees, stopped in Flagstaff for a tea and made fun of the locals in their puffy coats (~20 degrees), but here it was decidedly chilly. I threw on a sweatshirt and tried to guess which way the rim was. I guessed right and HOLY $#!& I’m standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon!!! This is where there really aren’t any words to capture the magnitude of what that view is like, except to say that you can feel in every cell of your body that you are standing on the edge of something huge. Your brain almost doesn’t believe your eyes. There’s a reason this is one of the seven wonders of the world. I snap a couple of enraptured selfies, text them to a few people, and note that I can, in fact, see the snowy North Rim waaaaay off in the distance just like they said in the podcast. This. Is. Going. To. Be. EPIC.

Now this part all felt a bit rushed. The Grand Canyon is in fact kind of a long way from anything. We were staying at a hotel in Williams, which I discovered was a full hour of driving (serious high speed highway driving) away. I had to scope out the canyon, figure out where the trailhead was, and get all the way back to Williams in time to eat dinner with Janelle and her family and pack our gear only to get up at some ungodly time, turn around and get back to run. So I jogged over to the visitor’s centre and – the universe aligned – made it in just as the park ranger-type guy was saying “we’re closing in 5 minutes.” Yikes! I needed a decent map! I spoke to the woman at the desk – whose job was clearly to try to scare me out of doing what we were going to do – got a map, and decided I had about an hour to see what there was to see and figure out where we needed to park in the morning. I power-walked along part of the South Rim trail, thinking I could easily walk to the trailhead and back and see the town in the process. Wrong. The canyon is huge. Things on the edge of the canyon are not as close together as they appear. I made it to Yavapai Point and Geology Museum, and after a few minutes of reading and looking at the wealth of geological information (long enough to realize I didn’t in that moment have the patience or the brainpower to get through it or absorb it), I looked at the scaled down model of the canyon and mentally planned our run. This was going to be a long run. It would be my longest continuous run to date. I knew that, but something about the model and being on the edge of the canyon made it start to actually sink in. I started to feel a little intimidated.

I also stopped to take a few more photos among hordes of tourists. There are a few viewing areas that are fenced in and they were packed. Earlier in the week my mom had asked me “why do you want to do these things?” (She was referring to this, and also to soloing Canadian Death Race this summer, which is epic adventure #2 for my 40^thyear.) My immediate answer had been “because I can.” And then, “because it makes me feel alive and in the moment.” But it had been bothering me all week that this answer seemed not to fully capture my reasons, and that I wasn’t better able to describe them. As I stood there watching tourists take pictures in the fenced in area, and then walked on and saw people gambling with their safety by sneaking close to the edge (and a few out on to rocks I definitely would not have risked) to get pictures taken, I realized that I already felt unsatisfied with “just” this experience of the Grand Canyon. I was now itching to get into it. To see all of it. Well, as much as I could see on my own two feet in a day anyway. And I realized that I do these things because this is the way that I am squeezing every last drop of living out of my life. Life is precious. Losing Trevor burned this fact into me. Living life to the maximum possible amount feels like an imperative. 

I had an eerie awareness as I was heading back to the car that I was heading into uncharted territory. Not so much the canyon, which was well charted where we were going (though uncharted by me personally), but also in my life. Trevor and I had been planning a trip to Phoenix with the kids when he died, and I had briefly looked into how far away the canyon was because it had been on my bucket list prior to that (though not to run), and vetoed the idea of going because it was too far to drag kids aged 2 and 4 who wouldn’t appreciate it anyway. Running Rim2Rim2Rim (or even one Rim) had not been on our radar. People tell me all the time that Trevor would be so proud of me, and I don’t typically have any discord about that. I know he would. But this was the first time where I felt like maybe, if Trevor was watching me in this moment, that he might start to think I was becoming someone else. That he might not fully recognize me. That Grand Canyon Tania would be a bit of a stranger to him. And he’d be right. Before he died I never would have predicted I’d RUN across the Grand Canyon. An odd mixture of emotions washed over me. Moving forward is necessary, welcome, and yet also kind of heartbreaking. And at that moment I realized I’d parked in the “Raven” parking lot (the lots are named after animals so you can find your car). Ravens are one of my “signs” or things that make me think of Trevor. He thought ravens were especially cool birds, and I like to think if he could peek in on me somehow, he might do it from atop the soaring wings of a raven. I took a picture of the sign and chuckled to myself. Maybe he was trying to tell me it was ok to move forward after all.

Back in my car, I did a lap through “town” (a small collection of “mountainy” hotels) and located the parking nearest the trailhead for the morning. The sun was now going down and had dropped below the clouds. I couldn’t resist. I pulled the car into a “no parking” zone in front of the El Tovar hotel (I’d learned some cool history about this earlier in the week but that’s another story) and hopped out to see the light hitting the rocks. Magnificent. Oh this was going to be good. Driving back to Williams was the most spectacular sunset I’d seen in a long long time. I actually pulled over to take a picture. “Red sky at night, sailor’s delight” I said to myself. I’ll take all the good omens I can get.

Back in Williams I found the hotel, Janelle (and family), some food, and then we organized our gear. If you read Janelle’s blog post about this, you’ve heard about how this was also uncharted territory for us in being a completely unsupported run. Even lengthy ultramarathons have regular aid (aka food) stations, water refills, and bail out points. There was going to be water, but not everywhere because it was early in the season and some taps were still turned off for the winter. We had to carry enough calories for the run and enough emergency supplies to sustain us in case we needed help. I’m sure that had this happened, what we were carrying would have been completely inadequate, but we maxed out the volume of our packs and turned out the lights, debating about whether we should get up at 3 or 4 am and settled on the latter being a more humane start time. I also (arrogantly – or perhaps naively) estimated that it would take us 13-14 hours to complete the run, so starting at 5:30 or 6am seemed reasonable. However, in classic pre big run fashion for me, I managed to lie awake pretty much all night and kind of wished we’d decided to get up at 3 since I was just waiting for the alarm to ring anyway.