Plants.

Lets just say that green thumb I have not. I find it very challenging to keep anything alive in my yard except for my rocks.

Tom and I are on our way to killing our brand new cactus. I don't get it...why are you dying little cactus in a red pot? I try not to water you too much, I speak gently to you, I feed you when you look thirsty...do you not like your new home you little succulent? Maybe you would prefer to go back to the store you came from..(ungrateful little twerp). Whatever, I am over you.

The bouganbilia bush loves me though. It grows ridiculous amounts in half a day. It's thorns are nice and healthy and strong.

The Plan for Four Peaks

***Warning: Scared mothers need not read further. ***

Research is commencing for this weekend's big expedition. It is the kind of trip where I will inform some friends at home that if we have not arrived back into the Valley of the Sun by midnight on Sunday night, they should contact some rescue personnel. Anyone have a extra SPOT I can borrow?

We are attempting the Four Peaks Motherload on Sunday. I talked about this hike here where we climbed half of it and here where I described it. Except its not really a hike since there is no trail for 90% of it, more of an adventurous trek into the unknown.

The plan is to drive the 2 hour dirt road out to the base of the hike on Saturday late afternoon. and camp near the Browns Peak trail head. start hiking at around 5 am. From the trip reports I found on AZ Hiker, most people who successfully conquer the motherload are hiking from anywhere from 10-14 hours. Chose the wrong route and 2 hours of bushwacking seems tame. Choose the really wrong route and you will wish you were able to bushwack instead of clinging to a cliff face.

We have researched the topos, read various routes that people take and planned our attack. I am still considering if we should bring one harness and a rope to use as a safety clip for exposed climbs. It is all terribly exciting. There are a lot of quotes on the trip log page that fall into the "this is the hardest trek in the state of Arizona and I would never do it again" category."

Excellent. Bring it.

Extreme Heat Coon Bluff AR Race Report

Monika cruises along the adventure tubing portion of the race.

Well, they say the first time is always the hardest. I hope that is true.

In my first competition of any type since my knee surgery, I was a mess. A hot, slow, out of shape and out of breath, nearing the edges of my limits mess.

Looking back over my list of goals, I will say that although I didn't die, cry or get Montezuma's revenge, I am not sure I accomplished everything on my list. I don't think I was all that intimidating in warm ups (mostly because we were super late getting there and didn't warm up) and unfortunately, I wasn't all that awesome at the navigating part either. But I did eat a huge breakfast afterward, and we beat exactly 12 women's teams (out of 18) and 28 teams total (out of 50) so #8 was accomplished. I also had people ask me if my brace was good to run in which I emphatically told them NO, it sucks! Cause it did. But mostly, I did accomplish #9 which was to have fun. My teammate Monika was great and overall, even during the painful times, I had a blast. So mission accomplished I say.

It's hard to simulate the fitness needed for sprint adventure races without just doing sprint adventure races. But if I had to guess, running would be a good training technique for next time. I make lots of loud noises and boisterous claims about how I am just doing this for fun and that I am going to suck and blah blah blah, but really inside, I usually refuse to believe it completely. There is a part of me that is convinced that I will be magically awesome. This when I do completely suck, I get really mad like it was unexpected.

So the race...it was hard. The course was so similar to last year, but the way I felt doing it, not so much. It started out with 5 checkpoints all close to the TA. I can jog at a medium pace for about a minute before I slow down to a slow pace, so quickly Monika and I tried to find a pace that I could maintain. We knocked out 1 - 5 pretty good, including one steep hike up a loose trail which required all my concentration to run down. I could feel that my bionic knee brace was definitely changing my running form and I could feel my hamstring in that leg starting to cramp very early in the race.

After the first quick five checkpoints, the race spread out with some further trekking points on some surrounding mountains. Being that I was not able to run much off trail, I decided to try a shortcut bypassing hiking over ranges via the river. I knew that we could swim down stream for awhile and exit very near the next checkpoint. A valid method which failed miserably. Firstly, we had to exit the river in a swamp. It took us three tries to find hard enough ground not to get sucked into the muck. Next, we had to decide which one of the two washes (at a v), was the correct one...we picked wrong. Third, we quickly ran into a pack of wild pit bulls which blocked the only passage forcing us to stop and wait and then eventually retreat. I am not joking, angry pit bulls guarding their hood were blocking us and every time we took a step they growled. It was crazy.

We ended up climbing up a mountain, realized we were now close to another checkpoint. Grabbed it, grabbed the next, doubled back to grab the first and then had one more ridge to climb. It basically meant we climbed an extra ridge...oh well. We came back into the TA much slower than we wanted to and by this point, I could do a slow shuffle jog, but was really starting to struggle. We zipped through a couple of easy mystery events (walk with a golf ball on a tee) and then pumped up our inner tubes and put on our life vests for the long jog to upriver to the checkpoint that would start the river tubing.

This part of the race was my least favorite: jogging up hot blacktop with a backpack, life jacket and a black tube. Uggh. At the TA, we noticed that the teams that were surrounding us pretty much looked like teams that I was not really willing to finish behind. Our obvious struggles on the earlier trekking had put us back in the back. We determined to start picking people off. Problem was, I was in a world of suffering. My knee was at a continuous ache (not terrible but not pleasant), and my lungs were dying. I was super overheated because I think jogging was pushing my heart to the max (just not used to it). So Monika grabbed my tube and I held on and she pulled me up the road.

She was a total stud really and for her first adventure race, really quite the amazing partner. We passed maybe three or four teams on the road, then one more on the 1.5 mile trail run to the water. By the time we got to the water, I was barely able to jog, it was more like a really fast walk but the cool water immediately refreshed us. We figured out a pretty effective way of river running while leaning on the tube that was much faster than paddling with your arms and ended up picking off a couple more teams in the river. The best part of the whole race was the wild pack of horses who were drinking on the side of the river as we floated by. There were a couple of foals that were beautiful and the horses did not spook at all as we quietly went by. These horses are famously known to reside in this area but it is always a total honor to see them.

We ended the race in the middle of the pack with our fellow teammates cheering us on. Team ODP (our women's AR team) entered two 2-person teams and we were pretty pumped to hear that Team ODP #1 (consisting of Angel and Laurie) came in first in the women's division and fifth overall (out of 50 teams). That is awesome for us as a team and totally made my day. We are trying to build a name for our team and first place finishes are great for that. Plus they only lost to a couple of well known pro teams sponsored by companies like Monster. Not bad for some girls who drank way to much and stayed out way to late on Friday night.

Reflecting on the race, I am glad I did it. Although I was not fit at all for it, I think I was physically ready. The gimpiness during the running is from lack of running, it takes time to build up your body's ability to handle the body weight. It will come. I love the sport of adventure racing and even though I was hating life during parts of it, I immediately want to do more once I am finished. The next race is in one month and is trekking and mountain biking (haayo!) in my regular training grounds and I intend to be in much better shape for it.

*Everyone asks us what Team ODP stands for...but seriously we could tell you but then we would need to kill you. It is top secret and even the hubby is not privilege. Also, some people were confused when I said that I learned from Primal Quest that there is no crying in adventure racing. While watching the updates on the website this year, this was this awesome video of a women who was riverboarding the crazy Gallatine River and she was sort of sobbing as she went along. Someone yelled "are you okay" and she sobbed "I am fine, there is no crying in adventure racing". It was pretty awesome. [Update: I found it here]

Goals for the Extreme Heat Coon Bluff

Top 10 goals for my "adventure race" tomorrow.

1. Not die.
2. Avoid accidentally drinking the water in the Salt River like last year, which subsequently forced it's way out of my body in the dreaded form of Montezuma's Revenge.
3. Look really really scary and competitive before the race begins so as to scare the other teams. This can be accomplished by various yelling exercises and crazy warm-up drills, possibly tackle practice.
4. Get three different compliments on my bionic knee brace. Enumerate to said complimenters about how the brace actually makes me better than human. I would not be able to try out for the adventure racing Olympics with this puppy.
5. There is no crying in adventure racing. That's is what I learned during Primal Quest.
6. Navigate the hell out of this course in order to remain competitive without the ability to run persay. Running is for people who suck at navigation right? Wait, what if I suck at both? Something to be pondered...
7. Get a good enough workout in that I have earned a huge breakfast of eggs, bacon, potatoes and grease. This is to be stage two of the adventure race. This stage is by far the most important of the stages. In the words of rugby, if you can't win the game, win the party.
8. Beat a team. Maybe more than one, but if nothing else, I want to beat the team that thought this was adventure bingo when they boarded the bus from the old folks home and got confused. That or the team of 5 year olds who can run all day, but haven't learned to read yet.
9. Have fun... the kind only pain and suffering can bring. Laugh once every 30 minutes. This may be accomplished by falling down dramatically or running into a tree.
10. Really really not freaking die. Vomitting is okay, cessation of heartbeat is not.

Sweet. Just making this list makes me realize that I can totally accomplish my goals if I put my mind and my mouth to it. Team ODP is back in business..whoop whoop!

Not afraid of me? Well, you should be...here I beat on my wimpy younger sister.

Camping at Knoll Lake on Mogollon Rim

July 4th has come and gone, and like most good things, the anticipation lasted longer than the event. We spent three nights camping and playing under huge trees alongside of Knoll Lake on the Mogollon Rim northeast of Payson.

We left Phoenix at 3pm on Thursday and hit the dirt road along the rim in around 2 hours. Then came the fun part winding along the rim with some amazing views and a nice dark storm rolling in for fun photographing. In 1990 there was a huge fire up here and there was still a lot of evidence of it. I usually find fire damaged areas very strangely beautiful. The rim is actually the edge of a large plateau which drops precipitously 1000 feet. Our camp site was on the top of it.

We finally pulled in to the campground at around 6:30 pm and met up with 4 other friends only to have the skies open up as we were setting up tents. We did manage to get a tarp up so we had a place to hang out and cook some dinner and have a couple of beers. We had an early night.

The next morning, when we woke up, our awesome friend Josiah had already arisen at the crack of dawn to go catch us 5 rainbow trout. They soon became our lunch. Yumm.

Friday July 4th, we were really quite lazy. I rode the 1.5 mile dirt road down to the lake a couple of times and did some exploring around the woods. In the early afternoon, another major storm rolled in and this one brought something special for us Phoenicians...hail. It was a pretty cool thing to watch the hail start to fill the ground all around us. Nothing like camping with falling ice and a makeshift tarp house.

During the storm, we decided to drive out to the rim to watch the storm foll over the edge (about 4 miles away). Pretty cool really.

Later that day we created the coolest woods frisbee game ever: couples frisbee golf. We used a regular sized frisbee and would take turns picking a random tree 200 meters away. You had to use various throws to wind through the trees (each person taking turns) to get the least number of throws before hitting the tree. Believe me when I say it was fun. Tom tees off below.

For dinner Tom and I grilled chicken kabobs (we had previously grilled the chicken at home) and we had an quasi-illegal campfire. The signs said no fires in the dispersed campsites (only in the campground) but seeings how it had just hailed, we weren't too worried.

Saturday morning, I awoke in time for the early morning fishing trip with Josiah. Mon & Josiah brought two kayaks, so while Tom and Josiah played manly hunter and gatherer, Mon and I took the kayaks out for a beautiful early morning paddle. We then switched places and Josiah caught some fish from the kayaks also.

This little lizard must have been sick because he didn't move much when we picked him up to give him a belly scratch.

While the boys took the kayaks, Monika and I decided to hike around the lake. It ended up being much larger than it looked (in a wishbone formation) and we did a bit of climbing and rock scrambling to get around it. Being spontaneous meant we had no water for the two hour plus hike in the sun.

Sometime that day, I also jumped on my bike for a off trail woods ride. There was no underbrush so it was easy to roll over the logs and rocks in the trees without a trail. Unfortunately, for no apparent reason, as I was shifting my right rear derailor, the SRAM shifter just completely broke off (metal snapped). Suddenly my bike became a single speed which I just don't get the concept of yet. I kept riding, but it always seems too easy or too hard. How do people ride these? Poor whitey wrecker...she is in the shop getting warrantied as we speak.

Later that afternoon, we went for a swim in the lake. We may or may not have brought amazing dollar store floaties.

Later that night, after playing more frisbee golf, eating some delicious spaghetti, and drinking some brewskis, we had one last enjoyable camp fire under the chilly stars. Great weekend by any standards.

Sunday morning, we got up early, packed up and took off with the plan to stop in Christopher Creek for a swim on the way home. Tom somehow sprained his ankle while peeing behind a tree (seriously, he thinks he is getting old) so we didn't hike the canyon the whole way through but we did make the one mile hike to the box canyon for a swim.

What is this blog thing?

I plan to blog about my Fourth of July Escape The Heat & Fireworks 2K8 adventures, but in the meantime I thought I would at least put up a post to let the peoples know that I am alive. I have had a hard time finding my blogging time lately. Stop cheering, it doesn't mean the posts get any less lame, there are just less of them.

I hiked Camelback Mountain tonight after work with some friends. I felt strong, fit and almost normal on the both the ups and downs. I am tired of giving constant attention to the knee and it felt great to just forget it and go. It also felt downright cool due to some really big winds. I would guess it was still around 95 to 100 degrees F out, but that felt cool compared to the typical 112 degree 6pm workouts. In life, everything is relative.

Sunset on a mountain overlooking a major metropolis, still feels remarkably peaceful. Love it. Today, I can do anything.

Team ODP in training for this weekend's AR.

RIght here, right now...brain is spweing.

I just wrote a big sob story about how I am stressed because of school, my knee, lack of time, etc. But then I deleted it because it made me sick. Whining doesn't accomplish anything. I do have a lot of emotions swirling lately, and have had to come to certains realizations recently.

With my current schedule, I just have to understand that my knee rehab is not going to be accelerated. I can't make the progress I want without 2 hours a day 5 days a week of dedicated gym centric exercises. And I don't have time for that. I can barely get a workout in, and when I do, I just want to do something that is going to release stress: mountain biking, hiking or even my pathetic attempts at running. Basically I want it to be outside and not feel like a workout.

I did this knowingly when I dedicated this year into getting into PA school. I have a bunch of competitive desires floating around in my heart, but they are going to have to wait. This is not the year I win an AR or really start to race mountain bikes. Maybe next year... but this year is about getting into school and getting my knee slowly back into where it needs to be.

On another topic, I have very mixed feelings about whether I will get accepted to school and if I was a betting woman, I would bet on not. I just don't have the medical field experience that 90% of my peers will have. I know that I would be a damn good PA. But getting your black and white application selected for one of 200 interviews out of 1200 applications is going to be tough. But I will deal with whatever happens when it happens...life isn't about what you are dealt, it's about how you deal with it.

It may seem that I am having a down day, but I am actually not. I am calm and reflectively thinking about realities. I am nothing if not realistic, always have been. I am actually pretty excited because in about 3 hours, we are leaving for a three day trip to the mountains to camp by a lake, play on bikes, kayak, and do a little canyoneering. I may do a little lakeside anatomy homework/study, but I am pretty caught up at the moment so it shouldn't be that bad.

The bottom line is that my life is perfect for me. The things that matter are awesome and I know that. I can't think of anything I would really wish to change, other than winning the lottery..hahaha. I wouldn't mind dropping that 8-5 obligation that I have, but hey, it makes me a smarter, stronger person every day. It is a tough environment where I have learned my strengths, learned to stick up for myself, and learned to be as efficient as possible. Plus all the PhDs I work with use big words and explain weird things like how mirrors work at lunchtime.

Hiking Humphrey's Peak

Just as I suspected, topping out on Humphrey's Peak was a nice case study in rising too quickly in altitude. We left Phoenix on Saturday morning at 5:30 am and after ascending 7000ft, we arrived at the mountain. After driving partway up the mountain passing suffering road bikers riding in some sort of race to the top (crazy), we parked at 9000 feet at the ski resort parking lot. It was an absolutely heavenly feeling with the crisp mountain sunshine. Wearing pants never felt so good.

My knee was actually a bit sore starting out on this hike due to some weird pains acquired during therapy Friday afternoon but they were mostly felt during jogging, not walking. It added to the feeling of excitement and trepidation I was feeling. Going up is always fine, it is the coming down that I get worried about.

We started across the bunny hill and into the woods, leaving civilization behind. When moving to the desert, you can not imagine how much you will miss tall trees. I forget all about their pungent delicious odor until all of the sudden I am back in them and then it just feels heavenly. The first couple miles of this hike wind up deeply forested switchbacks with some glimpses of some views to come. We were hauling along and the knee feeling fine, but I decided it might be a good idea to pick up some walking sticks (might as well use these guns). My sticks were much cooler than all the fancy shmancy trekking poles that everyone else had. Okay, I admit, I was lusting after those lightweight poles. My gnarled sticks weighed like 3 pounds each.

We felt like we were hiking fast, passing groups left and right. The mountain seemed pretty busy really, but the atmosphere was good as the people hiking were all committed lovers of the outdoors and not the bozos you get on really popular but easy hikes. Once we hit 11,400 feet, the trees became much more scarce and all of the sudden, the heart started pounding a little. We topped out at the saddle in about 1.5 hours.

After the saddle, the hike immediately started up the steep exposed Arizona tundra. Most of this is old volcanic rock and due to its crumbly nature requires some concentration. My knee brace went on at this point. It bionic appeal started to get many compliments.

There are something like three false summits on this hike, but knowing this, I wasn't really caring if we were at the top yet, I was just enjoying myself. It was getting progressively more tiring with less effort as oxygen got thinner, but really, wasn't all that bad. Slight headache, feeling of head pressure, but really it mostly just felt like hiking a mountain while sipping on a nice cabernet. Quite pleasant really.

Since we had no hurry, we stopped several times to prevent heart spontaneous combustion and take some pictures of the snow. Snow? SNOW!!! Okay, I didn't get to get skiing this winter due to crappy knee tearages, so I missed out on my snow.

At a little less than the three hour point, we reached the summit. Ate some snacks. Drank some Diet Coke (for the electrolytes...that is how I roll) and signed our names is the little book. Here is our group of Martin, Sarah and I at the top, 12,670 feet above the sea.

We thought we would be much quicker down, and for the top portion, we were. We reached the saddle in about 30 minutes, taking an hour off our way up. But then as we hit the endless switchbacks, we became delirious and for whatever reason, it took forever for us to get down. I definitely slowed way down and my knee did the violent uncontrollable shaking thing most of the way down. No biggie, just weakness leaving the body people.

We finally got back to the car and drove our butts back to sea level pronto. Pretty cool little day hike. Not all that ridiculously hard, but I won't lie, I was ti-ti.


*Some photos (the ones with me in them) were snapped by Martin.

Altitude Aspirations

Yo. How you doin [head nod]?

Fridayyyyy. Mucho intellectual suffering this week (very little physical unfortunately)... but it is the weekend now and that means I get released from my cage and get to go fly around for awhile.

I am very excited that the weekend is here because tomorrow we are going to climb Humphreys Peak. For us lowlanders, ascending from the 1200 foot above sea level in Phoenix to 12,300 foot summit of Humphreys is an exciting challenge indeed. Humphreys is the highest peak in Arizona and I am told still has snow patches on the top.

I am doing a research paper on altitude sickness for my anatomy class right now and I am interested to see the effect that it has on us. A 11,300 foot rise in 5 hours (2 hrs drive, 3 or 4 climbing the 4k foot trail) is guaranteed to give us headaches, dizziness, etc. Very cool. Let the real anatomy lab/research in action begin!

I will bring my GPS and plan to record changes in my body for every 1000 feet we ascend. The things I am forced to do in the name of science and getting an A...I tell ya.

Well kiddies, gotta run. Physical therapy on tap for this afternoon.

Adventure Racing.

Primal Quest has started. I am so addicted to reading about expedition adventure races. I don't have time but I just don't care. More info here. There is also a really cool tracking site that allows you to follow teams real time due to satellite feeds from SPOT devices. My advice, pick a team and start cheering. It seems like the big dog teams are at the front so pick the one's with the best bio to root for.

In other AR news, I will be toeing the line at the annual summer Extreme Heat Coon Bluff adventure race on July 11th. Pretty excited... Now I KNOW I am going to be very slow. And I KNOW that I will not be running down loose mountainsides like last time. But who cares, I am just excited to be doing something! Only problem is, my taper started way too soon in the form of "damn it I have no time to work out...ahhhh crap".

But I figure that I will near my knee brace so that everyone knows I am a gimp and doesn't wonder why that athletic looking chick is so freaking slow. By the way I got a new even more bionic knee brace which is meant for "bikers" so that means I really committed myself to the to the sport. Hah. A thousand dollar commitment (thanks insurance) means nothing in the biking world...did you know bikes cost a lot?

Well off to ride in the 113 degree balmy evening. This Tuesday is my only night off for two weeks so I am pretty pumped to get to ride.