Confessions of a Skirter 2

Devil’s Lake Parking Lot: Thirteen of us arrive at Devil’s Lake for the 2008 version of the Skirt Run. This is up from a record attendance of six last year. We have a ways to go before reaching Tour de France-type popularity, but at this rate next year we are gonna need a Forest Service Special Use Permit.

And we are Special. No doubt about that. The skirts run the gamut from way too short (Tom and Mark) to way too colorful (Rob’s flowery pink print and T-Mobile’s blue sequins). John P. wins the Most Disturbing Garment Award with a see-through blouse that left way too little to the imagination.

Devils Lake to Sparks Lake: We travel the pretty trail around Devil’s Lake, then expose ourselves, so to speak, for a couple of miles along the Cascade Lakes Highway. This stretch is dedicated to adjusting various straps, nervous twittering from the first timers, and T-Mobile waving to every passing truck with far too big a smile on his face.

Sparks Lake to Green Lakes: The trail up Fall Creek is absolutely beautiful. Charlie takes off like a bat out of hell and misses the photo op on the log across the creek. It takes three tries to get a picture because John P. can’t get the camera set up and make into the frame before the timer hits zero. Most of us are taking it easy over this stretch, telling stories of past escapades. Adjusting more straps. Some of us know what’s coming and the rest are wondering.

Green Lakes to Nowhere: Skirting Green Lakes, we take the trail to the ridge above and cue up for another photo op (this run is ALL about photo ops. Otherwise, who would believe it?). This one only took two tries because John didn’t have to negotiate his way through any brush to get into the picture. On the first try the camera fell off the rock.

At this point we leave the trail and the route falls to loose interpretation by a bunch of old guys with honeycomb for brains. I don’t trust any of them (because I am one) and start veering to the right, with T-Mob and Charlie in close pursuit. No one else is there. After awhile T-Mob says “Tom, I’m confused.” I think, “No shit you’re confused, you’re running around in the mountains in a blue sequin skirt.” What he really meant was “Tom, YOU”RE confused.” But that should have been obvious, too. Charlie is more direct, but I can’t print what he said. To make a long story short, I take us too far to the north and cost us a mile and hundreds of feet in elevation. We arrived at the lunch stop in the saddle between South and Middle Sister 25 minutes late. John Carter, J, and Tim (aka Da Navigator) are waiting there after leaving an hour earlier. I have just enough time to pump some water, shove food in my mouth, and pose for another photo. Everyone else looks disgustingly well-rested.

Nowhere to Pacific Crest Trail: We string out again running and walking the snow and scree through the Saddle to Chambers Lakes. John Carter goes so high to left that no one can see him at first. When they find out where he’s gone they start running the other direction so they don’t have to take any responsibility and go back to recover his broken body when comes down the really fast, unhealthy way. He’s my hero.

We hit the trail again in the Saddle. Bill plays Twenty Questions with a group of backpackers, trying to lead them to a rational explanation of why thirteen men are parading by in skirts. He’s a natural-born teacher, that guy is. The trail starts hard downhill toward the PCT. This is my least favorite part of the run because my Vitamin I is wearing off and the steep descent drives my ailing knees somewhere up around the vicinity of my hip sockets. Bill has to stop to make a deposit into the local nitrogen cycle, then all of us regroup at Red Bull Meadows for the traditional hit of energy drink. Half of us gripe about how lousy the stuff is, but there’s a lot of peer pressure to drink up when some of the guys have carried cans of that noxious stuff for 14 miles. Tim even had the temerity to bring Red Bull Lite--half the calories and all the bad taste. Rob had to tie Steve’s shoes for him (I’m thinking “No problem buddy, after all, you only have ten miles to go”) and he didn’t even look up his skirt. I eat one of John Carter’s mustard sauce sardines. I like sardines.

Pacific Crest Trail to Wickiup Plain (aka Plains of Doom): I’m running along minding my own business, trying not stare at anyone, and as near as I can tell I tripped over some dirt in the trail. Fortunately I land in some soft stuff that only took part of my skin off. I curl up in the dirt in a fetal position, and everyone behind me thinks I’m getting ready to die. All I'm doing was sucking enough air up around my diaphragm to swear appropriately. I mean real honest-to-god swearing, not just play around cussing. Travis helps me up, someone comments on my dirty skirt, and I take off fast down the trail trying to torch off some of the excess adrenalin.

The PCT winds through Mirkwood Forest with no views or obvious landmarks for miles. Travis, Bill, and I are running together, going hard down the hills and walking the small amount of uphill. Eventually the trail crosses a meadow with a pretty creek and I know there’s a mile or more of uphill coming up that ends at Wickiup Plain. We walk the whole thing. That sardine is lodged somewhere around my diaphragm, all the mustard sauce digested off, a fish reborn and trying to decide in which direction to swim.

Plains of Doom Time Trial (aka Time Trial and Tribulation): The three of us mill around at the beginning of Wickiup Plain trying to muster enough spunk for the traditional Mile Time Trial and Tribulation. There are several reasons for this insanity:we’re covering the hottest, dustiest part of the trail, it’s on the part of South Sister that has been bulging in recent years, and we are delirious masochists. This is not a piece of landscape that you want to hang around on. Especially in a skirt.

Charlie and John C. pass us while we’re dallying and Charlie hurls his most articulate insult of the day (it sounded a lot like “F__k you guys,” but I’m sure he must have done better than that). We take off. The Tribulation is downhill for about two minutes, then flat for a bit, then uphill, all with nothing but soft pummy sand underfoot. When we start up the hill Travis goes from full run to something even a walker would call a jog, all in the space of about 15 seconds (no offence Trav, but I’ll never again have the privilege of seeing you melt like that during an interval, especially running from behind you with that cute sarong on). Bill and I go hard for 8 minutes and I think he would have continued except that I start making gasping sounds and grabbing at my throat. We stop and I’m bent over with my hands on my knees laughing and gasping for air. Bill says it was fun.

Plains of Doom to Devil’s Lake: Bill and I stop at the trail junction before heading downhill for the last two and a half miles to Devil’s Lake. Charlie, Travis and John Carter catch up and I tell John how impressively he’s running. He doesn’t answer, instead giving me a disturbing sideways glance that I imagine a cougar gives a deer just before it rips out its throat and laps up its blood. Then he takes the lead and we’re all happy he’s up there where we can keep an eye on him. He’s definitely operating on another level now.

John sets a torrid pace, but eventually Bill and I go around him. Bill says “I just wanna to get this over with.” Yeah, I recognize that comment from last year. It’s runner code for “If you think you’re tired now, just wait until I run your sorry, skirted ass into the ground over the next two miles.” And he does. We are flying down that frickin’ boulder-strewn trail at under 7 minute/mile pace, leaping over and landing between the rocks, hoping to god there aren’t any surprises awaiting our foot plant. I can’t remember the last time I was in oxygen debt running downhill.

Finally we jog into the parking lot. The kick was worth it I guess. We finish in 7 hours and 29 minutes, an hour off our world record time of 6:26 a year ago. Still, we are at least as cute. I jog and walk back up the trail to cheer folks in. First Charlie, then John C. Travis hasn’t recovered from the Trial and Tribulation and is trying to use “The Secret” to visualize more glycogen into his muscles. Maybe it’s just me, but doesn’t look like it’s working. The rest straggle in, all in various stages of disrepair, some relieved, some euphoric. One more photo op. Then off to Elk Lake for a swim that was more of an ice bath. We refuel on Terry’s soup and Cristin’s brownies, all washed down with beers and John Carter’s excellent roll yer own pinot noir.

The quote of the day came on the drive home from none other than the Master Architect of this madness, Terry “T-Mobile” Froemming:

“It’s hard to imagine life getting any better.”

So true.

Dirty Genes

Confessions of a Skirter

Why am I doing this? There are way too many zeros in my logbook this summer for me even to think about the skirt run. From May through August I averaged 21 mi/wk, and a lot of that was walking or biking. Great base. But one Saturday morning at the bakery and I’m sold. So here it is, 7 am at the Devil’s Lake parking lot, 32 degrees, and I’m stoked.

Tim and Jay and I head out and it’s soooo easy. We jog, we walk, we talk, and after awhile my hands have feeling in them again. Trout are rising in Green Lake as we go by. It still feels good but then it’s time to leave the trail and start scrambling. Why cannot I remember where we went wrong last year? It’s like my mind has erased the bad parts. Tim keeps saying the gps track is down there, but my mental track says up here. We can’t go too far wrong though, with the South Sister up there to the left. Which one is she: Faith, Hope, or Charity? Hope would be the middle, so it’s either Faith or Charity. It she’s Charity she must be sleeping. By the time I get it figured out and find the two lakes where we had lunch last year and where we’re supposed to meet the rest of this year’s troop, here they come. So we all get there together, never mind the fact that they started an hour later than we did. Well, not quite all together, there was the straggling trio of Tom, Terry, and Charlie, arriving a bit later due to Tom’s detour. Words were spoken.

Thank you Tom, for bringing your purifier. I only wish I’d let you fill my water bag clear full. He must’ve been down there at the lake shore for 20 minutes, filling water containers for most of the rest of us.

It was shortly after we left the lakes that I made my big blunder. Rob, Travis, Tom and I went a bit too far up a ridge. They all recognized their mistake and went back down to the trail. Me? I knew that not far ahead was a spot where we had to leave the trail and go up through a rock field, so I elected to stay up, go across a ridge, and head them off at the pass. What was in that sandwich? I got to the top of the ridge and looked down into a deep ravine, with the trail about a mile off to my right, down a few hundred feet, and barely visible. No, I can’t give in now, so it’s down a scree slope, across the snow, and up ridge number two. Repeat. By now I’m saying to myself, if you mess up now, it may be better if nobody finds you, you dork. Actual wording was somewhat bluer. After a couple more of these I emerged on a ridge, looked down, and saw tiny figures wending their way on the trail where I should have been. I hollered, and they stopped. For a few seconds. By the time I got down nobody was anywhere close. About 30 minutes later I caught up with Tim and Jay, who said it was nice of me to join them.

This group needs some sensitivity training. Seriously.

After the short break at Red Bull Meadow, where I fed Tom a big, smelly sardine to try to slow him down, we all headed off, more or less together. It went pretty well, surprisingly, up until the Wickiup Plain. It should have a name more indicative of the heartbreak it engenders in all who cross it. Charlie had followed me up the long hill before, so I charitably gave him the lead as we began. His lead went from 10 to 200 yards in about 400 yards. He and Travis were up there, way behind Tom and Bill, who had saved themselves for a mile-long dash across this miasmatic mess. I was laboring: running on the flat, walking up the hills that kept appearing, trying to keep them in sight. Finally I was by myself, nobody in sight in front or behind. Why not walk? No, can’t do that, would be cheating. Cheating whom? Amazing, the conversations one hears at such times. At some point I came on the four of them, standing by a rock, evidently having a jolly good time. I started to stop, but that didn’t feel good at all and I knew it was only two or three miles to the end, so I just kept going. Pretty soon the trail leveled out, then sloped downhill, and my legs liked that a lot better than that long uphill through the sand on the Wickiup Plain. So I just sort of rolled on home, taking the last swallow of water in my bag when I hit the parking lot. No bandages needed this year. I need professional help to figure out why this is so much fun.

From the mind of John C.

Skirt the South Sister 2008

Another successful skirting with a record turnout, 13 hairy legged skirters! We'll see if we can get any other personal accounts of accomplishment (or anguish) from some of the skirters, but for me it was a mixed bag of emotions. From the heights of joy running along Fall Creek to the pits of despair when the wheels fell off on Wikiup Plain. It sure was great to be with such an awesome group of crazy runners though, no matter how much my quads burned.