Mina Samuels's Blog

As if I wasn’t already thinking about Lance…Armstrong, that is (because who has not given at least one nanosecond of thought to the current swirl of events around cycling’s icon for the last many years); I was reading Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl over the weekend, in which the male protagonist prefers to go by his middle name, Nick, instead of his first name, Lance, because the latter sounds too slick, entitled and, yes, untrustworthy; an apt coincidence given Lance A’s situation.     Until yesterday, I hadn’t given too much thought to what I actually thought-thought about The Lance Events.  My conversations on the topic tended to the anodyne agreement with others, “yes, I think he probably was doping” and “yes, the zeal of the investigation seems extreme, but…” And so on.  But then in the way ideas have of coming upon us suddenly, apropos of nothing, I had this series of thoughts about The Lance Events, which pertain not so much to Lance, the individual, but to sports in general and why we participate in them and what “sport” is about.  So here goes:I am disappointed, though not surprised, to learn that Lance may well have doped.I think it’s true, too, that the investigation into allegations against him was a bit of a witch-hunt.  Although I think the more apt description would be of the restive ruling classes toppling a too-popular king (throw in a little French history in honour of the Tour de F), not ignorant citizens chasing after older, single women with the gift of healing (what witch-hunts usually entailed).  Whether or not the investigation was more zealous than others is both beside the point and understandable.  Lance has been the standard bearer for cycling and it would be wrong to allow a cheater to maintain that status.  The more important question, to my mind, is what is the world of cycling actually doing about the rampant doping in the sport?  More testing?  Harsher after-the-fact individual sanctions?  Those measures aren’t nearly enough, because they do not get to the heart of the matter.  Why do cyclists dope?  What is at stake?  And the answer is, as is so often the case, money.  Lance is not some poor cyclist, carrying his bike down five flights of stairs from his mean garret every morning to hit the streets rain or shine in whatever second-hand gear he can scrape together.  No, he is a super-endorsed athlete, training with the best of the best of everything, not to mention living a storybook lifestyle.    To be at the top of cycling is to enjoy the trappings of the endorsements that come with it.  Sport is big money.  No wonder athletes cheat.  After all, as we’ve seen, cheating is rampant in the financial world, too.  The Tour de France has become a major media event, a spectacle that commands big advertising budgets (it’s not the Superbowl, but still…).  So I have two proposals.First, if any cyclist riding in the Tour de France gets caught doping next year, then the Tour de France will be cancelled for 2014.  Oh yes, I am aware that’s an extreme proposal, but the sport is dirty.  Not every cyclist, but far too many.  Unless there are real sanctions that matter beyond the individual; who can always “redeem” themselves with a tell-all book, salacious television interviews and maybe even a reality show; change will not happen.  Where’s the incentive to the whole sport to get itself clean?  (And this reasoning extends to other sports, of course).Second, the money issue needs to be tackled.  And I’ll provide a spoiler alert here—I am going to get socialist on you.  I’ve been reading E. F. Schumacher’s 1970’s classic, Small is Beautiful , a thought provoking look at the dehumanizing effect of much economic theory.  Cyclists (not just cyclists, people, many people) cheat because money is at stake, because if they don’t win, they don’t earn the livelihood they need.  And the winners, like Lance, need their competition.  They need other cyclists who are top-tier athletes to keep the races interesting.  Yet many of those cyclists are not earning enough and/or the gap between what they earn and what the Lances earns is so large, that it is hard to be immune from the temptation to cheat.  Because if they could just win, then…The solution is to shrink the gap, to spread the wealth, as it were (I warned you!), to acknowledge that cycling needs all its athletes, not just the winners.  All cyclists earning above a certain amount should be required to tithe (a church concept of donating 10% of one’s wealth—and no, I’m not endorsing religion, only the charitable impulse, of which Lance, by the way, is a great example), or contribute some other percentage to their respective national cycling federation and the applicable international cycling body, which money will go into a general pool, then distributed out in some fairly apportioned fashion to the athletes who participate in events throughout the year.  By “earning,” I mean everything they earn by virtue of the fact that they are a successful cyclist.Of course, I recognize that there are many parameters that need precise definition in this proposal.  It is the bones of the idea I’m throwing out for your consideration—that cheating risks the sport, not just self; and that winning and succeeding financially wins for the sport, not just for self.  After all, isn’t that what sport is supposed to be about?—a forum to which we bring the physical manifestation of our highest selves, in competition with other worthy opponents.  Isn’t that what the Greeks and Romans were after with sport?  Sport is about the purity of the physical pursuit, and yes, about winning, but not just for the money (and for the dubious privilege of appearing in advertisements purporting to adore some watch or shoe or some hyper-scientized sports drink), but also for the love of the sport. My proposal both ensures a clean sport and a high level of competition.     Cycling is a beautiful sport at risk of sinking under the weight of its own dirt.  I propose we not let that happen.

As the last weekend of summer approaches, I wanted to offer up a Labour Day weekend beach read to everyone.  Castle Peak is an RLAG flavoured, outdoorsy short story I wrote recently as an updated, woman's homage to Jack London's 1908 story, To Build a Fire.

Hope you enjoy!

And apologies to anyone who got this twice--via blog and FB, just trying to cover my bases.

My mountain bike and I have been getting more closely acquainted lately, and I think I can say that we are becoming friends in a way we never were before.  This morning, as my bike slipped sideways in some sand on a steep-ish downhill, I thought to myself, my bike really wants to stay upright, I just have to get out of the way of my bike’s heart-desire.  Oh yes, a mountain bike deserves anthropomorphization.  I’m not 100% sure where my Rocky Mountain Oxygen’s heart is, but I know it’s there, even when I’m crashing sideways, adding to the colour-burst of bruises across my bum.  My renewed interest was partly fueled by knowing I was headed to Leadville, CO, to support my brother in the Leadville 100 Mountain Bike Race this past Saturday, and by riding with him in the week leading up to the race.  I suppose I should clarify that me riding with my brother is really more me straggling some great distance behind, sometimes on my bike and sometimes off my bike, while he gets lovely rests to enjoy the scenery, the dense mountains, the high altitude meadows and, most special to the area we were riding, the Aspen forests, the trees’ brilliant white trunks, so straight and narrow, creating a dappled, dream-world maze.  Oh the places we can go…    Let me pause here for a short shout out to one of the women of RLAG—Rebecca Rusch—who rode phenomenally well in the Leadville race and flew over the finish line in a course record time for women (beating her own course record by more than 4 minutes).  I snapped the pic above of her as she was making final preparations for the race start.  Watching Rebecca, my brother, oh and also Nicole DeBoom, the founder of Skirt Sports’ husband, Tim, and all the other superb riders was inspiration, but not, it turns out, quite enough to quell my fear.  The day following the race I woke up early, revved up by my spectation (I know—neologism, because it’s just the right word) the day before.  I decided to ride some trails I’d already ridden on our CO sojourn, eager to see how I would do the second time out on them.  Well…the up was all well and good, but on the second part of the down all my newfound enthusiasm went on strike.  A trail I had ridden without much trouble two days earlier loomed up ahead of me in the most terrifying manner.  What had seemed straightforward 48 hours before became squirrely and scary.  Now, I knew, knew, knew that I could ride the trail much better than I was.  Yet I could not.  I knew, knew, knew that the fear was in my head and if I could just let it dissipate, then all would be well.  Easier said than done.   In the end, I settled on being fascinated by the power of my mind to obstruct.  Back here in Truckee, CA, on the more familiar trails I ride, I’ve been noticing more sharply where I’m letting things get easier and where I’m still blocking myself.  Because it is amazing how one day, two big fat rocks seem too close together to ride between, and the next day the gap has widened to a comfortable, slip-through space.    Isn’t that just the way of all things in life?  The biggest obstruction to anything I want to do (you want to do) is fear.  Which brings me around to the Spartan Race—one of the premier obstacle course race series (similar to the Tough Mudder—which I wrote about a few months ago).  I recently spoke to a couple of organizers involved with the race and three of the top women participants in the race series.  The race tag line, “You’ll know at the finish line,” succinctly captures the spirit of a race that presents different challenges every time.  Obstacles are kept secret from racers until they are in the midst of the course.  So although veterans can guess at what they may face, the precise blend of obstacles and order will never be certain.   The race aims to make the racer a better person when they cross the finish line—by facing their fears and overcoming the obstacles thrown at them; which brings the Spartan race goal back around to my earlier observations about mountain biking as life.  The Spartan has a special focus on increasing women’s participation—hurrah!  They call it the Spartan Chick’d program and it includes a closed network on Facebook with more than 5000 women.  The program is working.  Whereas a typical road race might have as many as 60% women, in 2011 the Spartan racers were only 25% women.  In 2012, thanks to their concerted effort to encourage women to give it a go, the race has closer to 35% women now.  And true to their goal, Spartan’s women are changing.  Here’s what I learned from three of the top-placing women.     Margaret Schlachter has always had sports in her life, but for her the Spartan experience “helps unlock an extra piece of ourselves.”  In her case that’s meant that a month before her 29th birthday, she quit her day job working in Admissions and College Placement, as well as coaching a few sports at Killington Mountain School, and is devoting herself full time to the risky proposition of depending on race sponsors, writing her blog Dirt in Your Skirt, and helping other women get active through her coaching programs.For Andi Jory Hardy, the Spartan race tipped the scales at a turning point in her life.   Summer 2011, her marriage was in trouble, the private school she had started was struggling financially, as so many new ventures, and she had to close her dream down.  And 16 knee surgeries had scared her into a sedentary lifestyle.  But enough was enough for Andi, she decided it was time to eat healthier and get some exercise and after doing triathlon in October, she signed up for a “little” mud run.  Famous last words.  She hasn’t looked back.  So far her knees are holding up, but, as Andi says, she never knows when her racing days could be over.  In the meantime, she’s in the best shape of her life at 43; she’s inspiring women of all ages at the races she participates in, and the racing has given her renewed energy for her teaching job with special needs children.  The kids love learning about her training and applying the same principles in their own goals of conquering reading and other scary subjects.  That feeling of being up against wall in her life is gone.  Andi is happy.  Ella Kociuba aspires to be the “face of” Spartan racing.  Although only 18 years old, she’s had way more than her share of obstacles, and that’s before she got hooked on Spartans.  When she was 13 years old, a horseback riding accident, aggravated significantly by a birth defect in which her spine was not connected to her sacrum, resulted in a broken back.  Four metal rods and screws, and a year and a half later, Ella was back on her feet and running, even if it was painful; okay, very painful.  For someone with every reason to blame the physical for any setbacks, Ella still firmly believes that the first thing to break down is the mind and for her the racing is an opportunity to touch her limits, something she finds “very intriguing;” fostering a toughness that will, no doubt, come in handy as life unfolds.  Whether it’s mountain biking, or the Spartan, or something else that tweaks your fear factor, take a moment to notice the way your mind can seize up, cramped with fear, or, alternatively, open up the space between two rocks, so that you have just enough room to pass through on the way to your future. 

This past Sunday I paid money for the opportunity to plunge into a pool of icy water and swim under a wall that divided the pool in half; and I don’t just mean ice cold, I mean water thick with a deep layer of floating ice cubes cozying up against one another (better suited to the inside of a martini shaker), so that when I, in my panic, tried to surface, it felt as if the ice cubes were pressing down on top of me.  I was participating in the Mt. Snow iteration of the latest “physical challenge event” phenomenon—a Tough Mudder.  An event ostensibly designed by the British Military, this particular Tough Mudder involved 10 miles of running, much of it up or down the steep mountain side of Mt. Snow, very often in mid-calf mud, hiding treacherous rocks.  The running though is almost incidental to the event (and it’s running to be reckoned with), which also includes in the neighbourhood of 30 “obstacles.”  I lost count somewhere along the way and, in any event, didn’t even know if some obstacles were official, or just part of the terrain.  The obstacles included the above mentioned dumpster ice bath, crawling on your belly under barbed wire, crawling on your belly in muddy water beneath live electrical wires, crawling on your belly through underground tunnels and then again through metal culvert tunnels partially immersed in water (you’re seeing the military theme by now), slithering sloth-like across a cable suspended just above icy water, traversing monkey bars above icy water, walking a narrow balance beam across a pool of icy water, and jumping off high ledges into…yes, more heart-stoppingly icy water.  The bit where we ran through smoke and jumped over fire was actually a welcome relief from the cold.  It was also Vermont in early May, I might add, meaning it wasn’t exactly hot weather to begin with.  Then there were the obligatory walls to scale, and the grand finale involved more live electrical wire.  Hoo-rah, as many of the participants might say.The event is not a race.  A point emphasized by the organizers and supported by an environment that prizes collaboration over speed, and gamely good attitude over finish time, and that’s all to the good.  The event is about facing down your fears and staying strong in the jaws of exhaustion…and having fun (lest we forget!)  Well…I am a good swimmer, but very fearful of cold water.  I’m not a fan of that feeling of suffocation that sets in when I’m immersed in too-cold water.  Oh yes, I’m sure with a mad amount of training, I could learn, if not to love, then not to fear that feeling.  But how unpleasant would all that training be, and to what end?  These were the questions I asked myself, as I’d just settle into enjoying all the belly-crawling and, of course, running up and down steep hills (which I truly love), when another icy water obstacle would loom on the horizon.  WTF?—Again?  I can do it.  By now I know I can.  And by “it” I mean plunge into icy water when necessary (or even when it’s an unnecessary event I’ve signed up for).  The question is, why? There are things we must do in life; and there are even things that are very good preparation for the things we must do in life, or for making the most of our life.  Anyone who has read a bit about my thinking, knows that I think sports is one of the most efficient and efficacious ways to train in a microcosm of life’s challenges and get invaluable glimpses into how much more we are capable of than we believe.I agree with the general theory that it is a good thing for us to face our fears in some fashion, and that in so doing we strengthen our spirit (and possibly our bodies).  I agree, too, with the general theory that if we never challenge ourselves (which necessarily involves facing some version of fear, be it fear of a concrete thing, like cold water, or fear of failure), then we will cease to grow; that true engagement in the world demands of us a willingness, even a desire, to greet and even seek out challenges.  The question the Tough Mudder posed for me was what challenges ought we to seek out simply for the sake of training our fear?  And where does enjoyment fit in?  Is a challenge a challenge, or is fear really fear, if the thing we fear ultimately turns out to be fun?  To that I’d answer a resounding yes.  In fact that’s the point, I think, to love challenge, to find joy in engagement.  I, for example, will be sleepless before an ultra-marathon, terrified I can’t finish or that I’ll hurt myself on the mountain or that the pain in general might be too much, but I also thrive on that fear and am all the more thrilled when I do finish.  There were many at the Tough Mudder who loved the challenges and derived huge pleasure from the whole event.  My compatriot throughout the event was an energetic, inspiring woman, and the group I attended the race with (including a dear friend) were wonderful spirits and I felt lucky to be among them, so for all that, and for having experienced the event, I am glad I participated.  But…I don’t think I would do it again.  I’ve proved to myself I can do it, and once was enough for that in this particular case.    A little more than a month ago now I took on a challenge at the opposite end of the spectrum, far from the Hoo-rah and aggressive physicality of Sunday, but one which incited at least as much advance trepidation.  I went on a week long silent meditation retreat at the Insight Meditation Society.  In addition to the obvious, no talking, there was also no reading and no writing, and of course no music, no movies, no television, no computer, no nothing really, except me, and the inside of my mind.  Nor did I run, though once there I discovered that I might have. I went for a vigorous walk everyday.  At the Tough Mudder, the intense externally generated focus of the physical activity forces you into the moment, that much vaunted “moment” we are often counseled to live in.  When we are fully committed to the activity, when we have reached the point of casting aside self-doubt and fear, then taking action, doing, may clear away the clutter of our minds and still the chatter, leaving only the glorious feeling of our body in motion, followed by the satisfaction of accomplishment.  An extended period of silence and meditation on the other hand, approaches the same goal from stillness, from an internally generated focus.  And for me, generating the mindfulness that enables me to catch glimpses, to touch, even briefly, the radiant expansiveness of a clear mind, is at least as difficult as jumping in an ice bath.  Seven days alone with the contents of my head and I sometimes felt like my mind and I were barely on speaking terms anymore.  So much muck was in there, roiling around, vying for  my attention, trying to shade reality.  But sometimes, for the blink of an eye, a pause would occur between the thoughts, the mud would settle, and there, for an instant, would be clarity, a feeling like turning myself inside out and immersing myself in a mild effervescence.I’m not sure which I prefer—a challenging physical activity that places me face to face with my own self, or the inward looking stillness of the meditation cushion.   Both have their place.  For me, they are complementary, nourishing each other’s efforts.  What do you think?    

I tried out a new yoga studio the other day. Good girl, getting out of my studio rut. Oh no—mirrors—on two walls, no less. Inescapable. I am partial to the notion that our alignment in yoga ought to come from the inside, from learning to feel when we are correctly aligned, with, of course, lots of help from the hands on adjustments I so love. I tried not to look. Unsuccessfully. Was that really my standing split? My pyramid pose?

Gumby, I am not. I know that. I’m not naturally stretchy; and I’m even less flexible once you add in the compounding factors of running and old hamstring injuries. But that hasn’t discouraged me from doing yoga for the last 18 years and, at least in my mind, I’ve started to understand the poses from the inside out. There are some days in yoga when I feel strong and aligned and, yes, as if I’ve captured some of the grace of the practice in my pose.

Then I looked in the mirror. What I saw was how high my leg did not go in standing split (my poor hamstrings doth protest too much). How my upper body didn’t go past 90 degrees, as I bent toward my legs in pyramid pose (more hamstring chatter). My leg felt higher. My upper body felt closer to my legs. In my mind.

Because here’s the thing: inside of me, I was doing those poses to the highest level of excellence possible for me. But the mirror seemed to be telling me a different story, one that got me a little down.

Later that same day, I was having a conversation with a friend and mentioned that I’d had a big reality check in yoga that day. Here I thought maybe my practice was deepening, and instead I looked like a beginner. I get beginner mind. That’s one thing. But, beginner body? How deflating.

You’re so judgmental, my friend said. Where’s your humility?

What? Who? Me? Not humble? Wasn’t I just being self-critical? Isn’t that humble?

Turns out…not so much.

As my friend so wisely pointed out, who was I to judge what was excellence in my yoga practice? My ego, the judge, was arrogant enough to think it knew better than my body what was right and good for me. Where did my ego get off questioning that little piece of the divine that’s in me, in all of us, that part of us that strives for excellence, that strives to find the perfect balance between all that we are and all that we’re capable of. Where indeed? I guess it’s an ego, so we don’t look to it for humility. Who or what knows better—a mirror, or what my body is telling me it feels about my effort?

My experience with the mirror in yoga was, of course, an object lesson in how ill equipped we are to judge others on appearances. I had all the information about the woman I was seeing in the mirror, and still she fell short of where I thought she ought to be. Imagine how far wrong we can go when we have only the barest sliver of information about other people?

The grace of my practice comes from inside me and cannot be judged based on how closely I resemble a photo spread of, say, Christy Turlington, in Yoga Journal. I'll let you take the next step and apply that same idea to judging other's efforts in yoga and in life.

4:30 a.m. Dark. Spitting rain. Cold. At least colder than I feel like it ought to be in South Africa’s summertime. We are barreling down the coast road from Llandudno, a seaside suburb of Cape Town, to the central market square, in my ex-pat friend’s pick-up truck. We’re cutting it fine to get to the 5 a.m. starting line for the Three Peaks Challenge, a race that defines the South African running sensibility—grueling fun in a gorgeous setting…oh, and if you’re not from here, well you better get familiar with the terrain, because there’s no course map, no actual “course” per se, only checkpoints.

In 1897, so the story goes, with nothing better to do that day, Carl Wilhelm Schneeberger decided to hike up all three peaks, which preside over Cape Town: Devil’s Peak, pointed as a wizard’s hat; Table Mountain, flat and fit for a banquet of the gods; Lion’s Head, the curl of the creature’s mane flowing down its back. In between each peak, he returned to the Old Johannesburg Hotel in Long Street to rest. A friend assisted at the occasion, timing the event for posterity. Possibly more posterity than CWS imagined. In 1927 and again in 1977, two others improved on CWS’s time and in 1997, Don Hartley, who had had an itch to take up the challenge for some 35 years, decided to scratch the itch in an official manner. So was born the Three Peaks Challenge, still run by Don Hartley, now assisted by Gavin Snell.

The challenge is to make our way, via whatever we think is the fastest route, up to the top of each of the three peaks. The object is to scale each peak and return to the Greenmarket Square in between each ascent; a task which sounds benign, until I see the steepness of the roads, and the roads are supposed to be the easy part. For each leg of the race there are checkpoints at the market square, near the base of the main trail up the peak (which may lead to many other possible trails) and on the peak. As we pass through each of the waypoints, our bibs are marked with rune-like scratchings, confirming the integrity of our race.

I am clueless about Cape Town geography. Luckily I have my friend, India as a guide and companion. A devout runner (are there non-devout runners in SA? If so, I haven’t met them), she lives in Cape Town, and did the race the year before, not to mention that the peaks are her running backyard.

At the starting line we’re bundled up against the chill and misting rain. I have on a tank top, a long sleeve shirt and a jacket, not to mention my peaked cap against the hoped-for sunshine. My bare legs would be happier in tights, a clothing choice others have made, but I’m banking on daylight bringing some warmth.

Only 120 runners get into the race each year, 60 new and 60 veterans. Not all veterans are created equal either. Pale blue bibs indicate runners who have earned a permanent number, by completing the challenge 5 times. Orange bibs are the runners at 4 complete, going for the blue.

At 5 a.m. we aren’t the only people on the street. The clubbing crowd is winding down and they stand on the sidewalk, swaying gently, smoking cigarettes and staring at us. The start is collegial, in the way trail races are, at least in my experience, runners happy to be together, simultaneously relaxed and fired, chatting, with the added panache (to my Canadian ears) of the purring South African intonations.

The race starts without hoo-ha, and off we go. Within only a few blocks runners have branched off in different directions, following whatever theory they subscribe to: longer distance and shallower climbs, or shorter distance and steeper climbs. The latter is India’s philosophy, so in no time we’re headed straight up. I can’t tell you exactly what route we followed. I know it involved some trail-stairs past someone’s meticulous, newly planted vegetable garden and barking dog, and then up a steep, gravelly, dirt road to Tafelberg Road, which snakes around the base of the peaks. We can see the blinking headlamps of other runners far off to our left, taking a different route up to the mountain trails.

Light seeps in around us, grey and misty. After the first checkpoint, we start up the official trail, or more accurately, trails, which zigzag up Devil’s Peak. Dashes of red, blue, electric yellow and green spread across the mountainside, as runners fan out to their favoured routes. The mountain curves around us, like a giant coliseum, then nudges up against Table Mountain. Grey-green scrub bushes create the illusion of a soft blanket, pulled up to the mountain’s chin, above which the rock is dark and scrape-y and sharp looking. About three-quarters of the way up, the leaders come flying down the trails around us, with that gaspingly, sure-footed agility the best of the trail runners have. Not I.

The peak is cold and windy. We miscue and end up on a different trail on our way down, the low shrubs scraping along our legs like five o’clock shadow. The damp trails are slick and treacherous. Back through the checkpoint, and down to the market square.

Some people say that down is worse than up. To each her own. Without taking a position on that particular issue, I can say that there is no respite on this course, save the few moments of relative flat along the mountain road, which last less time than it takes to recover from an ascent or descent.

There is really only one trail up Table Mountain, unless you elect to do some serious scrambling. We don’t. The thigh high steps up are challenge enough. The addition of chicken wire covering some of the rock, misted with rain, adds an extra zing to the experience. If you don’t catch your foot on a rock, you can always get it tangled in some chicken wire. There are regular hikers on the trail, too. Girls in thin white sneakers and tight jeans. Mascara and eyeliner. Boys in jeans held up by belts midway down their boxers. Children who look to be 6 years old follow older siblings. Young couples stop for hand-holding breaks, making way for our flow of scientifically clad participants in numbered bibs.

I can’t decide if I’m impressed by the apparent unpreparedness of so many of the hikers, or if it makes me feel diminished somehow. After all, if they can climb up Table Mountain, what’s the big deal in me doing it? Except, I suppose, that I’m going at speed (well, perhaps not speed, but moving determinedly), without breaks; and Table Mountain is number two and three is coming. And in any case, why can’t I own the sturdiness of my accomplishment and the hikers’? What they do and I do are not mutually exclusive. Nor is it even a competition, except inside my mind, which likes to insert itself into the wide-open expanse of a long, long race. But I have India to talk to, and we haven’t seen each other in a while, so my mind doesn’t get as much of an opportunity as it would like to mess with me.

The top of Table Mountain is blowing like crazy. If it were raining, it would be raining sideways. Luckily it’s not. Though not for lack of trying. The air is dense with chill humidity. From below we had seen that there was a tablecloth today—what CapeTownians call the swath of clouds that often hovers atop Table Mountain, draping over the edges like fine linen. Any view is completely obscured by the mist. I put on my gloves and re-don my jacket, which I’d been happy to shed at the bottom of Devil’s Peak. The checkpoint is friendly, despite the less than ideal conditions they’re waiting in for us.

India is crazy for the potatoes with salt and butter they’re serving. I stick to my peanut butter and jam sandwich, cut up into tiny pieces—and yes, I’m that obsessive that I brought my own from New York, from my favourite PB, right down to the particular kind of multigrain bread I like.

The bad weather seems to lift as we head back down Table Mountain. Cape Town is spread out below us, grids of buildings and roads, cozying up right up to the edge of the sea. And by the time we’re heading back up, for a third time, out of the market square, I’ve stripped down to my tank top.

An aside, one lovely benefit of passing through the start/finish twice, is that it’s located at an Inn, with, yes, clean bathrooms. A special treat I avail myself of both times through. Not to mention that I can refill my camelback with water in my gear bag, and load up on more food, if I’m running short. India uses passing through the market square to do a complete change of all her layers of shirts.

The route we take to Lion’s Head passes by the German School, where they are having a huge fair the day of the race. Cars backed up trying to get into the parking lot and double-parked along the streets. Did I mention that the roads are not closed to traffic? One of the many extra little challenges is navigating the ever-increasing traffic as the day blooms into a full-fledged downtown Saturday. There’s nothing quite like trying to sprint through traffic seven hours into a run. And, in my case, deal with the fact that cars aren’t coming from the expected directions—a task that overtaxes my brain late in the race, so that I look like a chicken at every intersection, turning my head back and forth, back and forth, back and forth to verify I’m clear to cross.

Since we are still operating on the shortest, steepest philosophy, the top of Lion’s Head involves chains and ladders. I don’t have a fear of heights. Luckily. And though India tells me a long story about a teenage girl she brought up here on a hike, who fell down the side of the mountain about 30 feet and fractured her arm, I manage to perform the contortionistic mental feat of believing that kind of thing will only happen to other people. Instead, I wonder if the runner behind me has ever had the opportunity to look up another runner’s skirt in an ultra marathon before, even if it’s all very modest and there’s nothing to see. I’m the only woman wearing a skirt (and none of the men are either, which is worth adding, because you never know with the trail racing crowd, I suppose). For me, there’s something about a skirt that creates the right balance between the rugged trails and my maxed out body and psyche. Maybe it’s the reminder than I’m not doing this race to be “one of the boys.” I’m doing it, in some small part, as a statement of what I think femininity looks like.

The peak affords us 360-degree eyeful of views. I wonder if I’m disoriented, because it seems like the ocean is on every side of us. Looking at a map later, I realize that Cape Town juts out into the ocean, like a mini boot of Italy (without the toe), so in fact, the ocean is on three sides. On our way down the chains and ladders, more heart stopping than the up, we encounter a runner whose leg is cramping and shaking so much, India needs to pull him over the top of the ladder he’s trying to climb. It’s my good fortune that the rest of the trail down Lion’s Head is more benign than Devil’s Peak and Table Mountain (something I failed to notice on the way up, when the end seemed impossibly far), dusty, single track, with some rocks and steps, and sooner than I’m expecting we’re back on the road again, passing the cars jockeying for parking, through the city streets, which are, with each return, growing vaguely more familiar.

As seems to be my penchant, I want to cry when I cross the finish line. And, in this case, I breathe an enormous sigh of relief, too. Unharmed. By grace of the universe. The feeling of finishing, of actually finishing such an effort overwhelms me for just a moment. And I get that Proustian feeling, that feeling that I am a different person in some tiny, indefinable way now, sitting on the front porch of the Inn with my friend, than I was when I sat beside her in the truck at 4:30 a.m. racing toward the starting line on the coast road. So that when someone’s three-year old son starts dancing around our table, I join him for a minute, shimmying on my wobbly-stiff legs, my bare feet dusty and wizened from a glorious, long day in running shoes.

This post will appear in UltraRunning Magazine's April 2012 Adventure issue with photos.

Last week a one-woman play I wrote and performed had a two night run at the Cherry Lane Theatre in Manhattan. It was my first effort at playwriting and acting since I was a teenager, so it was a leap of imagination, to say the least, to even think of undertaking the project. About a week before the show was to go on, I started to get nerve attacks at any odd moment. My director had upped the rehearsal intensity and, as the date got the closer, the full reality of what I was about to do flooded my nerve endings. I was going to go up on stage and be a character I had created. I couldn’t even blame the script on someone else.

I cried at strange times. Out of the blue I would be awash in an electrical nausea circulating just below my skin’s surface. I might have thought I was having a breakdown; that I couldn’t do what I’d set out to do.

Instead, I thought, “I know this. I’ve felt it before.” Before big races. As recently as the Three Peaks Challenge in Cape Town in November. The week before an intense, new effort I’ve cried while running, so overwhelmed am I by whatever the challenge is that I’ve taken on. I’ll think, “I can’t do this.” I’ve arrived at the starting line of marathons, of ultra-marathons and thought to myself, “I don’t know how to run.”

But I’ve learned, over the years, that I can do it, whatever “it” is. That the feeling of losing control, of not being up to the task is just part of the process, part of the creation of the just the right amount of nervous energy to fire me when the time comes.

So when I felt “that” feeling again a couple of weeks ago, as I headed into the play, it was almost like an old friend. Uncomfortable, to be sure, but familiar. This was the feeling of preparedness, the feeling that it was time to go, time to go for it.

Thank you, running. For preparing me for all the challenges in my life.

I spoke last week with Bobby Murphy, head of the Vail Ski School in Colorado, where they debuted the Ski Girls Rock program, designed by Olympic gold medalist and World Alpine Ski Champion, Lindsey Vonn, over the December holidays.

Lindsey’s Lessons, as Bobby referred to the program, was inspired by Lindsey’s own experience of particularly excelling at skiing as a girl when her ski mates were exclusively girls. Not that Lindsey couldn’t give the boys a run for their money: but, as she knows from experience, sometimes it’s a lot nicer just to take the boy factor out of the equation. Take out the boy-ballyhoo and the boy ego, which may over-fire in the face of girl strength.

Bobby was extra supportive of the program idea, because he’d just witnessed the boy factor vs. girls’ only effect on his eight-year old daughter, Ella. At seven-years old, Ella had retired from soccer. She had played for a few years in a co-ed program and lost interest. As Bobby says, “it was like she wasn’t really there,” when he’d watch her on the soccer field. The boys were more aggressive, stealing passes from her, running around her, and generally ignoring her. When Bobby and his wife moved to Vail, they decided to try Ella in soccer one more time. But this time there was an all-girls soccer program. “It was as if it was a different sport, or she was a different girl,” Bobby says. Now his daughter is eager to practice her moves at home, and she’s excited to get to the soccer field.

As Wendy Hilliard, New York City Director of the Women’s Sports Foundation’s GoGirlGo! Program says, in terms of boys and men, the aim of the WSF’s program is to model girl strength for boys, so that they grow up in an environment where strong girls are valued, and for fathers to see and understand the impact of real access to sports (which may mean sports without boys) on their daughters. Bobby, it turns out, is that father; and he’s already sharing his deeper understanding of his daughter’s needs with other girls, through Lindsey’s Lessons.

An aside, I met Wendy, at a meeting with the Consul General of Colombia, Elsa Gladys Cifuentes Aranzazu, and Aurys Espinel, director of Asomujer y Deporte, an organization that works on a range of issues related to empowering women through sports. Colombia is apparently very interested in expanding and deepening the sports programs offered for girls, with the specific goal of girl and women empowerment. How wonderful. I hope at some point to have more to share on that.

In the meantime, back to Vail, CO, where the first Ski Girls Rock lessons went fabulously well. The female instructors are clamouring for the opportunity to teach in the special environment of the program. That is—a small group of girls (four to an instructor maximum) between the ages of 5-15, from low intermediate to the most advanced skill levels, working on skill development and race technique in a low pressure, less-structured environment. There’s not so much standing on the side of the trail and running through race drills, as there is honing their skiing in the midst of having a good time with each other. The social aspect, no surprise, is paramount. And if anyone thinks that the fairer sex can’t chat and excel at the same time…they can think again.

Lindsey’s Lessons are an opportunity for the girls to be girls together, have a good time, and, oh yes, shred some, too. And that sounds just right.

"Race what you bring" is the inclusively spirited motto for the monthly races run by the Rwandan Cycling Federation. In July, Angelique Mukandekezi showed up at the race on one of the Chinese single speed bikes that are prolific around Rwanda and East Africa. Just to give you perspective, my bike, which is a pretty good bike, weighs, as I recall, since I tend not to fully absorb bike facts, in the neighbourhood of 17 pounds. Angelique's bike weighed in at around 40 pounds. The race, at Nyamata, drew 84 women participants (in case anyone thinks the women of Rwanda don't want to cycle, that number should make them think again) and Angelique won the women's field. True, the field was not exactly packed with top racers, but Angelique's win drew interest from Jock Boyer at Team Rwanda, who had been paying some attention to the women's field, wondering if he might find the right woman to add to their ever-strengthening team of men (who were profiled in a New Yorker article by Philip Gourevitch).

Jock brought Angelique in for a test, which basically means that she came to his house in Ruhengeri, where the team is based and trains and got on the Velotron, which essentially calculates the energy wattage output of the person riding. Angelique had the highest watts/kg ratio of any woman tested in Rwanda. And so, in September this year, Angelique became the first woman on the team. In October, Angelique's first full month of training, the team paid her 30,000 Rwandan francs (approximately $50 USD) to stay out of the field (Angelique normally earns her living as a field worker) and cycle train exclusively. For perspective—the average annual income in Rwanda is $400 USD. Not quite junior bond trader pay, but Angelique is making pretty good money for a 22-year-old woman in Rwanda.

Staying out of the field means that every Monday, Angelique rides about 100 miles from Bougasera, where she lives with her parents, to Ruhengeri. She trains Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and then makes the long ride home on Friday.

Inspired by Angelique, 24-year-old Janette Uwimana, who had been hanging around the team on and off, more on around the Tour de Kigali the last couple of years (cycling groupies aren't only for Lance), upped her effort and has joined, too.

Being a strong woman in Rwanda is not easy. The tiny African country often feels more colonial than African, Kimberly told me. An already very conservative ethos is overlaid with a strong Catholicism. There's not a lot of music. The women still wear the traditional dress for the most part and are timid and uneducated (as are a majority of the men, too—the uneducated part, not the timid bit). Women work the fields and have babies, while the men, in large part, hang out and drink banana beer, conserving their energy for a round of spousal abuse when their wives finish working.

When Angelique started at the team's training camp, she wouldn't look anyone in the eye. Well that's changing. A few weeks on the bike, getting stronger every day, and Angelique is starting to have fun with the guys, to be part of the team.

A couple of weeks into her training, Angelique encountered her first overt harassment on the bike. About two and a half hours into a rainy training ride, shortly after nailing a tough, technical downhill, Angelique got a flat as they rode into a village. Janette and Kimberly got to work on changing Angelique's tire (something she will learn in the weeks to come). By the time they had finished the job, there were about 50 people hanging around, mostly young men—not unusual when Kimberly stops, since a white woman, especially on a bike, is quite a strange creature to behold. When the three women hopped on their bikes to head off, a man grabbed Angelique's back wheel as she was clipping in. Angelique, still fighting her timidity, didn't know how to react. Fortunately, Kimberly had no such reservations. She screamed at the man to back off (using expletives appropriate to the situation). He backed off.

When Angelique caught up to Kimberly she yelled, in her newly acquired English, "Thank you—Kim!" Kimberly had never heard Angelique so much as raise her voice. Later, Kimberly explained to Angelique through the interpreter that Angelique can and should say no anytime anyone touches her bike, as forcefully as she needs. Kimberly might have added, anytime anyone touches her body, but one piece of progress at a time. And perhaps, for Angelique, learning to protect her bike is the best initial step to learning how to protect her body.

In her first week with the team, Kimberly had "the" conversation with Angelique. No getting married and having babies, if she wants to ride with the team. Not never, but not now. Because in Rwanda, the fact that Angelique has made it this long without getting married, and is still childless at 22, is something unusual already. She has already withstood the typical societal claims on her body for longer than many other women.

Janette, too, is coming out of her shell, getting stronger. Against the prevalent cultural grain, or men preferring women with a nice bit of extra, Janette is losing the bit of weight she needs to shed to be stronger on the bike, improving her diet, cutting out the soda and other junk food, claiming personal control over her body, shaping it to her ends, not to what society (aka men) want.

The next task for Angelique and Janette is to develop their competitive instinct. That was supposed to happen in the Rwandan National Championships on October 30th, where Kimberly was hoping that Angelique and Janette could place first and second, by working together, something they were learning in the last days before the race. Unlike the men, Angelique and Janette don't understand yet how to be competitors on the bike and friends off the bike. In workouts, whichever of the two is lagging will cycle hard to catch up, but just that. Once they are riding together again, neither tries intentionally to outstrip or push the other. To compete is not in the Rwandan women's upbringing, something Kimberly hopes to change.

Making that change is going to be hard. Women's cycling in Rwanda is not exactly top of mind, even for the Rwandan Cycling Federation, which canceled the women's race at the National Championships at the very last minute. Kimberly publicly complained, "I've been training these girls for the past four weeks, spent over $600 on their training, rode hundreds of miles and they are ready and wanting to race and that's it?" She went on to tell me, "I said, I was disappointed in their decision and said it wasn't right to do that to the girls and if they were going to cancel the race that it should have been done weeks ago."

Undeterred, Kimberly says, "This is simply a delay." She and Jock already have plans to put on their own women's race in the New Year, once they've gotten through this hectic period of the African Continental Championships (November 8-11) and then the Tour of Rwanda (November 20-26).

In the meantime, training continues. Progress, being what it is, is never a straight line. One week, about five weeks into Angelique's training, she seemed to forget how to clip in and out of her pedals, cycling for miles without clipping in, and then, when she finally did, tipping over still clipped in, damaging her bike. I won't even mention the tire changing struggles. But Kimberly will not give up on Angelique, on Janette, on the future of women cycling in Rwanda, which she sees as inextricably intertwined with the future of women in Rwanda.

Because Team Rwanda, as you've guessed by now, is about more than cycling. For the men, "we are trying to train them to be not just good cyclists, but also good men," Kimberly says. In addition to the practice of discipline, hard work and adherence to a training schedule, learning to read and write English, for example, is part of the training camp curriculum, an invaluable skill for any advancement in Rwanda or elsewhere in Africa (or outside Africa). Now that there are women on the team, there's an added opportunity for the men to learn to respect their strong women counterparts.

Kimberly's goal is to develop a field of women cyclists over the next twelve months, so that next year at least one Rwandan woman, if not more, will be competing at the African Continental Cycling Championship, a cycling event notoriously short on women participants.

What's good for the gander is in spades for the goose. A survey of landscape of studies on the topic done by the Christian Science Monitor shows emphatically that empowering girls and women is one of the surest routes to economic and social development in a country. The fact that women may occupy political positions in government is not necessarily an indication of women's general condition—certainly not in Rwanda. Women's value and advancement needs to develop from the bottom up. How we empower women may be through education, it may be by providing them with micro-loans, and it might just be by putting women on a bike and teaching them how to ride strong and fast for all to see and respect.

As Kimberly says, "when we ride through a village, the woman on the side of the road clap and cheer for Angelique and Janette. I like to think that every time they see them on their bikes, they see a possible future that's different. Maybe it sounds pie-in-the-sky, but I think that we can change the society for women, one bike at a time."

You can help that change happen. Add your voice to Kimberly's work. Send Team Rwanda (choose Kimberly as the contact person) this note: "I support women's cycling in Africa and hope that Team Rwanda will develop a serious women's team!"

To find our way in life sometimes we have to just quit, and other times we have to just do it. In Kimberly Coats' case, she did both.

In 2008, at 42 years old, possessed of a high paying dream job as business development manager for Sysco, schmoozing the top chefs in Vegas, and generally possessed of all else we are supposed to want to "possess" in a quintessentially successful American life, a house, a car, a husband and such like, Kimberly realized that what she had was not what she wanted. She made of list of things that were important to her: She wanted to travel. She wanted to do something that helped people, to give back to the world in a meaningful way. And she wanted to incorporate her love of cycling into that mix of travel and purpose.

Around the same time, Kimberly read Positive Spin, an article in the September 2008 issue of Outside Magazine about Project Rwanda, a non-profit "committed to furthering the economic development of Rwanda through initiatives based on the bicycle as a tool and symbol of hope." One of Project Rwanda's main initiatives was designing and distributing at low cost special cargo bikes for the transport of coffee (one of Rwanda's key crops). The so-called coffee bikes significantly decreased the transport time to processing plants, so that the coffee berries were that much fresher and the resulting product that much higher quality.

The article released the proverbial bee into Kimberly's bonnet (or cycling helmet, in her case). Six months later, in April 2009, she was on a plane to Rwanda for a three-month volunteer stint with the project. Volunteering turned into paid work and Kimberly got involved not only in the coffee bike work, but also with one of Project Rwanda's other initiatives, a national cycling team, Team Rwanda (which was the subject of a long article by Philip Gourevitch in The New Yorker). When Kimberly's contract with Project Rwanda finished, she increased her involvement with the cyclists and eventually switched full-time to working with the team, which is now its own entity.

The team operates on a shoestring budget. Kimberly earns in a year now, what she used to earn in a month. She doesn't have health care, and she can't count on having water or electricity every day. Her clothing occupies half a shelf. And she and her husband are divorced. As she says, "There's that old cliché that if you follow your heart and passion, then the money will come. Well, I'm doing that, and I guess I have a roof over my head and no debts." Though she adds, "I'm way behind on retirement."

I believe that what that shopworn cliché really means, is that money's importance is diminished in the face of passion. To wake each day with a clear sense of purpose, with a drive separate and deeper than making money, changes our views of what "enough money" means. There is, after all, no absolute benchmark of what "the money will come" looks like.

When I speak with her, Kimberly sounds happy, except that word is too pale by far to describe the fullness she describes. How she sounds is in love, not with someone or something, but with everything. She is traveling. She is doing something that she believes is changing life for the better in Rwanda. And she is cycling up a storm, training with the men, and now the women, on the team, and in the best shape of her life, at 45.

Speaking with Kimberly, I was reminded of a documentary I saw recently about Bill Cunningham, a long-time fashion photographer for the New York Times, known for his candid street photos of celebrities and ordinaries alike. At 82 years old, though he marinates daily in haute couture circles, surrounded by the beautiful, the rich and the powerful, Cunningham himself lives an ascetic life. He has little money. He duct tapes his rain poncho when it starts to show wear, and he has not much use for food, except as fuel. He has never had a romantic relationship. Yet, as portrayed in the film, so steeped is he in his love for his work, that in a world of legendary bitchiness and snobbery, he maintains a DNA-deep kindness, of an authenticity rarely achieved. Cunningham made me want to try harder, to love more. So does Kimberly.

When Kimberly comes back to the US for visits, her friends and family offer her jobs and alternatives. They suggest it's time to finish up with her "African adventure." On the side, some ask her what her secret is, how she did "it." Kimberly says, "The secret of how I did it is…I quit." No secret. It's not headline news that we are attached to the stuff and style of our lives. Nor is it news that when we find the will to voluntarily let go of our supposed needs, that many are happier for it. We make space for love.

And yet…we hang on for dear life, convinced that the next career move with a fat pay raise, the next acquisition of…some…thing…will be the one that assuages all of our desires. And then…it doesn't.

I'm not ready to give up my nice life and run off to Africa, or start duct taping $5 rain ponchos; but it makes me think: What can I do more of? What can I do with less of? I aspire, not to stuff or style, but more love.