Smoke, Sweat and Success

"The Toughest 5K on the Planet" 

"The World's Gnarliest Three Miler" 

"The Best Mountain Runners in the World Can't Crack 40 Minutes" 

SMOKE, SWEAT and SUCCESS. Before we even moved to Seward, we'd visited for the famed 4th of July shenanigans and Mount Marathon Race, dubbed "The Toughest 5K on the Planet" by Outside Magazine and touted as the oldest mountain race in the country. Sporty crazy people running 3000 feet up and down a super steep mountain in record time, often muddy, bloody and exhausted, while crowds of thousands go wild. Simple rules drive a complex race: Start at the line down on the paved road in town on 4th Avenue (our street!), get up the mountain on foot any route you want, round the rock at the false summit known as "race point," and get back down to the finish farther down the paved road. You want to free climb the cliffs? Fine. Drop from roots and slide down waterfall gullies? You got it. Where a costume like a tutu or Gumby suit? Why not. Just train like hell, feel like hell, and get the hell down in one piece.

And this year, ladies and gentlemen, J Leslie got off the wait list for the lottery and entered hell, I mean, the race!

Here are a few pix I snapped from the top of the mountain after race day, so you can try to get some sense of the elevation gain and steepness of the trail.

Near the top of the "race point" - you can see the squiggly trail leading up the final rocky pitch, above the cliff-y forested area. The start and end is near the far right part of town in the picture.

And the down trail, or controlled-falling-down-a-scree-field portion of things. I spy a cruise ship!

BURN, BABY, BURN. Now the race conditions are always unpredictable: a slip and slide mud fest on rainy years, dehydratingly hot and dry on others. And this year was hot. But it also had an added twist: The Swan Lake wildfire. Started by a lightning strike at the beginning of the summer, this fire about 50 miles to our north had kicked up significantly in the weeks leading up to the race, smoke filling our bay and obscuring the mountains. (PurpleAir.com has areas close to us ranked as the worst air quality in the world, right now... wowser). Race officials offered all adults a free opt out, with a secure spot to run again next year, and the youth race (ages 7-17) was canceled within an hour of start time when the air quality index put us slightly too high.

Interestingly, when the Junior Race was canceled, tons of Seward kids said, "we're doing it anyway!" and promptly charged the mountain at the original 9AM start time. 

So what happened? J went for it, of course! Like the wild and crazy youngsters, he'd been training in the smoke, so why not do the thing in the smoke?

Indigo came up with a few interview questions, to get you some of the inside scoop:

I: How was the smoke?
J: It wasn't that bad - it was smokey but it was more that it was hot and that it was smokey at the same time. 

I: Did anyone slap you on the butt?
J: No. 

I: Were you only thinking about the race during the race, or were you thinking about paint colors or something?
J: No, I actually talked, well not talked, but cheered other people on and made jokes and stuff during the race a lot. The nature of the trail is that you have to be focused on the trail, but it's just how I am during these sorts of things. 

I: Were there any points where you wished you hadn't signed up for the race?
J: No, but, and I knew it was going to be like this, but running the road was the worst... it was just awful... because it was super hot out on the road and you just want to get to the trail and start going up hill. And the road is also sneakily up hill. And the road at the end was the hardest part too, because my legs were cramping up and I didn't want to fall over in front of thousands of people. 

Who says Alaskans don't have style? Indigo waits in the unusually hot summer sun for her dad to pop out of the chute (and not fall over).

Kim (sneaking in a final question): What part of the whole experience are you the most proud of?
J: Just that I ran it and finished it. I mean you can train and prepare and all that, but it's the kind of race that lots of things can go wrong and you can get hurt... so just to finish.

J with Mt. Marathon in the background, just proud to finish!

Hope on Summer Solstice

High alpine wild flowers collected in a "Solstice rainbow challenge"

SUMMER SOLSTICE. A holiday mostly passed by in the Lower 48 but celebrated with vigor here in AK. A whopping 19 hours of bright light here on the Kenai Peninsula, before the sun sinks just below the horizon for 5 hours of dusky twilight. We slowly build up to it, so in some ways it doesn't seem terribly dramatic. All the same, we find ourselves having conversations that would never happen in the colder months:

8 PM - J - "I'm going to run up Mt. Marathon, okay? Any plans for dinner later?"

11 PM - Indigo - "Let's go out for ice cream for dessert! ...what do you mean it's closed?" 

1 AM - Kim - "I know it's the good part in the movie, but shouldn't we get to bed?"

Midnight on the Summer Solstice

HOPE. This year we decided to head to the tiny town of Hope, Alaska to celebrate the Solstice with a crew of friends. We camped out, went to hear Reggae legend Clinton Fearon in a grassy outdoor venue, walked the mudflat trails along Turnagain Arm, and hiked up the Palmer Creek valley through wildflower fields and over snow fields quickly melting into raging creeks in all the light.

A town of under 200 people, Hope is a hidden gem of kindness, historic intrigue and wild beauty. The sort of timeless spot that perfectly fits these secular holidays.

Classic front porch in Hope, Alaska

This sweet message inspired me to pick up old toilet paper on the public bathroom floors!

About as simple as you can get - the main drag in Hope, Alaska

THE CHERRY PIE MIRACLE. So Indigo's one request for this three day adventure was to get a tasty baked good - preferably, a slice of cherry pie. (Forget the gold panning, epic Alaskan vistas or incredible music, right? Just give the American girl some pie!) Hope does have a few good bakeries so it seemed a reasonable request. Indeed, the first night Indigo scored a miniature cherry pie for $3 inside the Creek Bend's music venue. Delicious, but just a taste... and the more we talked about it as a group, the more everyone got excited for pie!

The next day we explored a few bakery counters and cases but they were empty; the Solstice shenanigans had turned Hope a bit upside down. That evening, we sat around the campfire and our friend Chris got ready to walk to a second night of music. 

Indigo: "Chris, if we give you some money, and they have one of those little cherry pies left, could you please buy it for me? We could stand on the other side of the fence and you could toss it over?"

So Chris, Indigo and Ty headed off down the dirt road on a pie mission. They figured with $20 and some luck (it was late in the evening and very likely that the food trucks had sold out), they might get a few little pies to enjoy.

A half hour later, Indigo and Ty returned, hands full of little cherry pies! The little pies had dropped to $1 per pie and Chris had bought everything they had! Imagining a torrent of pies raining down over the fence as they were chucked over, I learned that Indigo and Ty received a pie hand-off at the venue gate in civilized fashion. A cherry pie miracle!

Home of the Cherry Pie Miracle