day one - Goretex Transalpine Run

Day One - finished! Germany to Austria in 34k and nearly 2100m elevation gain. In lieu of a polished blog, take a summary in two parts:

The Ugly

Somebody always wants to hear the "real story" so here are the ugly bits for you... feel free to enjoy at my expense. 

It was SO HOT that I, who have never downed a salt pill in my life, swallowed nine (including two from a new German friend), took water from two random farmhouse trough taps, and sat in the middle of the trail multiple times clutching my cramping quads. Tried to help my partner, Rene, stay cool by reciting cold things to letters of the alphabet, but didn't get much past "a-ice cream" (I'd spell it how it sounds but then you'd think I'm talking about something else), big blue sea, caramel ice cream and dolphin ice cream (a questionable flavour found in Oberstdorf). Apparently, I wanted ice cream, but I instead found myself standing at an aid station with a piece of unchewed watermelon in my mouth with my eyes closed until I snapped to. Not sure I totally woke up again until we sat in the river at the finish line and iced...well...our entire bodies. 

Cramp time - aka photo op for Rene

The Joys

We finished, Rene and I. And we finished together, after doing everything we could to take care of one another. I don't know that I've ever had a day where both my partner and I have suffered so much at the same time - and have worked through it, pulling out every solution in the book. Couldn't have done it without her. After all, seven of those salt pills were hers.

Other people kept us rolling too, and I'm thankful for the positive people that races like this attract. I got to shout hello to Nathan from the mountaintops, and so many new friends from Brazil, Germany, Sweden and Switzerland kept us encouraged - and salted up!

For a laugh

On a big climb, we passed an old couple whose comment in German gave everyone around us a good chuckle. One of our new friends politely asked us how our German was - to which we sadly replied: negligible, unless we're talking food. So he explained: the German couple had taken one look at Rene and I, struggling up the mountain in our matching fluorescent running skirts, and said: well, they're sure not the fastest, but they are the prettiest.

Day One chain of runners. 

Rene checks out our climb... 

Classic.  

Shirt from my office mates, who are working overtime this week while I have extra dessert. Not lost on me!

why am I running that crazy Alps race again?

Perhaps because I have the wardrobe to do so. Four colourful accordion running skirts with matching tops, matching trucker hats (yes, four matching arty mountain trucker hats), and - wait for it - a whole set of matching skirts, tops and trucker hats on my running partner, Rene. 

Or perhaps it's because I look forward to running into a well-stocked aid station, where Rene fills our hydration packs and selects the best looking cakes (in Germany, they lay out at least four kinds of cake at an aid station), while my dusty hands pick through the nut mix for only cashews, my buddy's nut of choice. 

Or maybe I just can't wait to do that silly laugh we do after about four hours on the trails, where we straighten our backs, tuck in our chins, lean back Muppet-style, and chuckle deeply - then continue chuckling at our own chuckles - which we imagine must be echoing throughout the land. (Actually, between you and me, other trails users have been known to mention our echoing laughter. Disrupting owls and herons. Clearing out the bears.)

That crazy Alps race, officially known as the Goretex Transalpine Run (TAR), certainly garners some questions. Not just from my friends, but also from my acquaintances or friends of friends, wonderers, prospective racers. Tell me about the race, they say, I have things I want to know.

Few people want to know what it feels like.  I guess when you read the stats – 8 days, 4 countries, 268 kilometers, 16,000 meters of elevation gain – you know it’s going to feel like your legs are two puffy and unrecognizeable bags of pick-up-sticks. What more is there to say? So instead, people fixate on the logistics: do you bring fresh running kits for all 8 days?  Do you carry a change of socks with you on the run?  How do your bags get from town to town?  You they feed you lunch, or do gels and energy bars sustain you?  Are you afraid of the cows roaming at high elevations? 

All of these are legitimate questions, but it’s interesting to me that these are oftentimes the only questions people ask.  As if by packing the right number of socks and energy bars, a girl can be assured that she may finish the race.

There is one question nobody has ever asked me, one that I consider to be the most important - in fact, the very reason that I run: what does it mean to run this race with a partner?  Considering TAR cannot be run alone, it fascinates me that nobody has ever asked me this.  Is it that we assume that running solo couldn’t be so different from running together with a partner?  Is it that runners are so accustomed to competing alone that we don’t consider what it means to complete a race in tandem? 

Certainly there are TAR runners for whom the partnership doesn’t matter.  They want to experience the race, and they sign up with anyone in order to accomplish their goals.  I see these runners out there – running alone.  Faster runners camp out at checkpoints in the shade with energy bars, waiting to check in with their teammates.  Partnership means nothing to their transalpine journeys, with their teammates simply enabling them to participate.

For me, it’s the opposite: partnership is the race.  I love to run the mountains – but I love to do so with a partner and friend. Not going to lie - I do love the matching skirts (and oh, the trucker hats), the snacks, the laughs. But I also feel like I've hit on that kind of partnership that makes the race.

Running together (physically running) is certainly part of it. When I fall in with Rene, I really fall in - she's like an old pair (no, not old. nuanced?) pair of running shoes. We definitely have different strengths - she disappears downhill with the wild abandon of a cheese wheel while I roll along the flats. But somehow, we share a vibe on the trails, adjusting our pace intuitively, sharing water and coke bottles with precise timeliness, and finding the best bathroom spots (side-by-side with a valley view - the only exception being Day One last year, where we found ourselves squatting amidst stinging nettle). She's the power and I'm the calm that balance any adventure, whether we are maneuvering a rocky downhill in the snow or breaking down a 50k stage into five 10k races.

Like the nuanced shoes, I can trust her with any condition on the trail (and off, for that matter). When I hyperventilated once last year, at the top of a steep climb on Day 6, she held me up by my shorts and helped slow my breathing... until we we tipped down the other side of the mountain, towards our next alpine village. She's run quietly beside me on days I was so tired I barely noticed the beauty of cliffside trails that later evoked terrified Facebook comments from both our moms. She's shared her jacket with me in five minute intervals when midsummer breezes took a nasty turn. And she's let me do the same as these for her - which is sometimes the even harder thing to do.

I've seen it all out there at TAR: partners being left behind, shoved, abandoned at dinner, given the silent treatment, or criticized for being slow. While sometimes it takes a little imagination to figure out how best to help one another (feed her a gel? tell a funny story? recite things that are warm to letters of the alphabet until the rain passes? walk for a minute?), of one thing I'm confident: Rene and I have got each other's backs. 

This is why I'm going back again this year. That, and the gelato. Spatzle. Wood-fired pizzas. Four kinds of cake.

tale from a gravel parking lot at 1750 metres

A BMW rolls in hot to whoops of we made it flapping out the windows on the wind. Everybody in the lot turns to stare – which is me, crouched in the back of a Pathfinder hatch, and a dozen mountain bikers with Aussie accents.

Two girls flop out of the car and flip open the hood to the tune of overheating and WTF, when next I hear a squeal. Followed by: RAT!

No longer casual observers, the Aussies and I saunter over to the Beemer and peer alongside the girls at the twisted rat atop the engine – source of the overheating. Everyone stares aghast, the rat is tossed into the bushes with a couple of sticks, and I’m back at my post in the hatch – where I spent nearly four hours that morning.

Not many people have the luxury of spending half a day overlooking mountain peaks (and a gravel lot) without distraction – no agenda, no cell service, no company but the horseflies. When an injury causes you to turn around on a trail with nothing but a car key and some bear spray – while your friends go on to run a beautiful ridge line – you can either sit down among the huckleberries and cry, waiting for the bears to overtake you so you can die a wild and news-worthy death, or feel yourself akin to all-inclusivers who pay big money to spend hours without stimulus.

Or do a bit of both, like I did.

Pretending that nothing was wrong with my calf but that I’d indeed chosen to spend the morning solo, I made my way out of the bush back to the parking lot and thanked my lucky stars I wouldn’t have to listen to all those chipper trail runners talk about ridge views, sing the Sound of Music and swap trail mix recipes. Then, camped out in the hatch of my friends’ car, I stared and the rocky skyline across the valley, and tried to imagine that I had shelled out a few months’ savings to spend my hours staring at the sky. I closed my eyes, imagined my soft flask of lemon electrolyte to be a salty margarita, and soaked up the sun…

… until the horseflies drove me distracted. I poked around the car, repeatedly checking the glove compartment, console, and under the seats for a pen and paper to sketch or write. Though my efforts revealed nothing, I tried again every few minutes: glove compartment. Console. Seats. Nothing. I turned my cell phone on every few minutes to see if Telus had popped up a new tower at the Mica Dam (postal code: middle of nowhere) while I waited. I leaned back, curled up, swung my legs, crossed my ankles, and closed my eyes again, pushing my injury from my mind, hoping to recreate all-inclusive bliss…

… but I’m not good at doing nothing. Desperate for stimulus, I became acutely interested in the comings and goings of others in the parking lot. The Rat Girls were only the beginning. I watched the Aussie’s prep their mountain bikes to the melody of their tour guides replaying what sounded like an age-old marriage tune: – You should really wear sunscreen, you know. – Oh yeah? Well you should quit eating red meat. I nodded mindlessly to an Albertan's comprehensive overview of the trail networks between Canmore and Fernie for 45 minutes while he waited for his (lost) friends to find the appropriate logging road and show up in the parking lot with his bike. I endured a finely-researched lecture from a Swiss mountain biker on the backcountry advantages of the Rockies over the Alps. Finally, I borrowed a stranger’s lawn chair and added to my repertoire: lean back, curl up, switch to chair, stretch out, switch to hatch, curl up…

… and when my friends ran into the parking lot, flush with sun and victory and views, I high-fived, listened to their stories and heart-ed photos (when cell service allowed me back on Instagram). Even though I hadn't run with them, I loved how much they loved their adventures – and smiled when they said it was a smooth and rolly, Carrie-style run.

Injuries bite as bad as horseflies – maybe as bad as bears – and take a little imagination to manage. Heading back into town from the gravel lot, I wished my calf injury had been left behind like the toasted rat. Instead, it came with me – bringing more moments of all-inclusive bliss and boredom. Lean back, feet up, glass of wine, laptop, sit up, switch to desk, type it up, more wine, press publish.