This post missed publication last year. But as I look over my blog I’m happy to share it now. As the dry, warm weather quickly settled the season’s below average snowpack, Mark, Parker and I were excited to venture into the high country for a bit of ski mountaineering. Parker is usually our main partner for ski mountaineering, but we don’t usually get to see him much outside of April and May. Living closer together this winter, however, we had gotten to see a lot more of each other. Even so, getting out for the first spring ski with Mark READ MORE
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Arizona Trail Race 300
A race this long almost never goes exactly to plan, but usually I end somewhere near expectation. This race was different. I actually had a stress dream the night before that foreboded the reality awaiting me. In the dream I finished a day later than planned and I could not remember why I had gone so slow. In reality I finished a little less than a day behind my goal time, but I know why I went so much slower than I anticipated. As I made my plans and researched the course, I set an ambitious time goal in the READ MORE
Colorado Trail Race 2025
12:20pm, day 4: a stop to pee turned into a 20 minute nap when the grass nearby looked too soft to pass up. I was just ahead of the women’s record dot when I left Leadville an hour before, but the weight of my eyelids was making it too hard to stay awake even after another nap earlier that morning. I had not slept well the night before; the smoke had wrecked my lungs and sinuses again, and I spent half the night blowing snot rockets and hacking up the sticky flem that settled into the back of my throat READ MORE
The Grand Loop 2025
Photos by Greg Dunham A Few Thoughts I read about the Grand Loop for the first time last Spring after the race’s completion that year. At the time I was preparing for my first mountain bike races, a summer schedule that was designed to build up to the Colorado Trail Race. By the end of the season I had successfully completed the CTR , Vapor Trail, and a few other one day events, and I was already planning more races for 2025; I put the Grand Loop on my list. When registration opened for the event a month prior, I READ MORE
A Cold Day’s Work
As the weather has turned arctic the last couple days, I have finally made time to do some writing. Although the single digit highs make it hard to venture out, I am happy to have an excuse to put some energy into a blog post. As I reflect on the last two months of skiing and work, I am reminded of how ephemeral winter is and how lucky I am to be spending this winter here. After riding our tandem bike through a never winter, Mark and I jumped into this winter happy to be back on the snow. Day READ MORE
Vapor Trail 125
One of my friends had been handed an entry, and talking to him about the race, Vapor Trail 125 sounded like good fun. I was coming off a strong ride on the Colorado Trail Race, and two weeks after my winning finish, my legs were feeling surprisingly spry. The registration had been full for month’s, but the word on the street was that people were “dropping like flies.” Indeed only 98 of the 125 registered participants started. Only 58 of those finished. After learning that there were still a few entries available, I emailed the race director and asked nicely READ MORE
Colorado Trail Race 2024
Time: 5 days 12 hours 21 minutes Total miles ridden: 544.24 Elevation gain: 74,533 ft (22,717 meters) First woman to cross the finish Line! 10th(ish) overall (there were a couple of DQ’s in the men’s field, but I’m counting them as finishers) I went into the race with the hopeful goal of winning the women’s field. Being on the other end, having accomplished that goal, nevertheless feels a bit surreal. Reading about the race and the finishers has been a favorite hobby of mine since I learned of the event, and it seems odd to finally be writing about my READ MORE
Post-Trip
Mark and I landed in Albuquerque to be greeted by the warm, dry air and my parents outside of the aptly named Sunport. Noel had flown in on a different flight the day prior, and after a month traveling together, we missed her in the final days getting back to the US. Mark and I were tired from the hours of being on planes and in airports, but we were happy to see my family and start our reintroduction into our social and work lives. Right now we are back in Carbondale, and I am happy to have a few READ MORE
That’s a Wrap
“Beautiful, but harsh,” is how a resident of the area described Patagonia this time of year. Indeed we have found that to be true. While we were elated to have arrived in the mountains after a long stretch in the Argentine desert, we knew that the fall weather could spell the end to our cycling. Indeed a storm spell rolled in and set up shop, sleeting and snowing, leading us to our decision to end our trip. We only had a couple hundred kilometers between us and Puerto Montt where we have bought return tickets to fly out May 2, READ MORE
Not Over Yet
Long days on the bike gives us lots of time to pontificate the meaning of life and entertain one another with dumb what if questions. A classic has been, “what if our bike breaks irreparably?” Would we buy single bikes and continue on? Return home? Continue the trip by backpack/bus? Set up shop in a cool city and take Spanish courses for a few months? Thankfully, we have not ever had to answer that question. Mark has spent countless hours maintaining our bike to keep it runnable, but since we decided to ride a clown bike for seven months through READ MORE