It was late January 2020 when I first heard about the Broken Arrow Sky Race. I had just finished up a run on a beautiful Sunday morning with Mountain View Area Run Club. As a runner, I tend to perform my best in cold weather, and mornings in Silicon Valley during the month of January are typically in the low forties with plenty of sunshine. The sun rises at around 7:15 AM, the air is cold and refreshing, the air quality index is generally very good, everything seems to be greener and more colorful thanks to rain season, and the distant mountain peaks have dustings of snow on top of them at certain times. I call it a California Winter. California Winter mornings are fantastic for running and I was feeling particularly energetic after this run. I sat at a table outside of Starbuck's at the corner of Pear Avenue and Shoreline Boulevard in Mountain View, our usual meeting spot. I was clad in flip flops, running shorts, a warm jacket, and a winter beanie hat, double fisting a dark roast coffee and a cup of water. I had just finished telling the group stories about the St. Croix Winter Ultra, which I had run a couple of weeks earlier. As I finished the story about eating nothing but chocolate chip cookies during the entire thirty-eight mile run, my friend Mariele asked me if I would ever consider running Broken Arrow. After I arrived home later that morning I did some research. A 52-kilometer trail race in Lake Tahoe in June, circumnavigating the Palisades at Tahoe Ski Resort (formerly Squaw Valley) on a course mostly above treeline, with some snowy sections, steep climbs, beautiful scenery, and a climb to the summit of Emigrant Pass at nearly 9,000 feet in elevation? Holy shit...sign me up! When I saw Mariele a couple of weeks later I thanked her for her suggestion and told her that I had signed up. I later found out that she is Mike Wardian's sister, which would at least partially explain her fondness of ultramarathons.
When I received the email that the race would be cancelled, it massively pissed me off. I knew that we were going through a very challenging time in the early stages of the pandemic, but it made me angry. On the morning I saw the email, I had tossed my snowshoes and poles in my car and driven two hours and forty-five minutes out to Pinecrest to get one more snowshoeing trip in before the spring, only to be intercepted by a forest ranger at the junction where the mountain road flanks off and leads to the trailhead. "Okay, no problem. All I want to do is go snowshoeing for a few hours. That doesn't violate any social distancing rules". I thought as I drove forward. "How're ya doing?" I said with a smile as I rolled down my window. "Good, thanks. Where are you traveling from?" the ranger asked. "The Bay Area". "What are you here for?" "Just to do some snowshoeing at the Crabtree Trail before Spring kicks in" I replied. I smiled sheepishly as if to say "look dude, I know I'm not from here, but please let me just go to the friggin' trail for a little while. I drove a long way". I knew that saying this out loud to the ranger wouldn't help anything, so I just answered his questions. He was a polite guy, but my response didn't sit well with him. He proceeded to give me the whole spiel on sheltering in place, no non-essential travel allowed, bleh, blah bleh, blah bleh. Arguing would have done me no good, so I graciously turned my car around and headed home. Annoyed about the fact that I wouldn't be able to have some nature therapy during hard times, I searched my email for updates on Broken Arrow to lighten my mood. The cancelation email was in my "promotions" folder...and it had been sent two weeks ago, but I didn't see it. Son of a bitch. The race was still two months away and I was shocked that they had pulled the plug so early. It just goes to show how little I knew in April 2020 about how big of an impact covid would have on the world. Fed up with the pandemic, races being cancelled left and right, and the overall impact that covid was having on my life, I arrived home, threw all my gear on the floor in anger, and went straight to my bedroom to take a nap. It was really the only tantrum that I threw since the start of the pandemic, but I was just overwhelmed with how things were unfolding. The nap did help, and I calmed down and came to my senses later that afternoon.
Fast forward to September 2021. Thanks to advanced research by top scientists, vaccines, and the actions that people have taken to help mitigate the spread of covid, the 2021 race is on. Despite the recent delta variant surge and wildfires, the organizers deemed it safe to put the race on with a few modifications. The race was pushed forward to October, the course would be slightly modified due to construction on the gondola at the ski resort, and we would be required to mask up at the start line. The nice thing is that even though it wasn't possible to get a refund for the cancelled 2020 event, my entry was rolled into the 2021 race at no cost. Now let's talk about my current situation. It's been busy at work. Like, super busy. My department is transitioning into an exciting new phase that will hopefully be great for my career, but a heavy focus on work over the last several months has left me with little time and energy to run on mountain trails. Most of my training has been on flat, paved paths like the Stevens Creek Trail and Guadalupe River Trail, both of which are very close to where I live. I've managed to get a couple of mountain trail runs in, but with the race being one week away, I'm about as ready as I'm going to be. This race is definitely not going to be a PR. Broken Arrow features 10,000 feet of climbing at high altitude on tough terrain, and I fully expect that this race could take me around eight hours to complete. That's okay though. What matters most is the experience. With that, I will simply hope for the best and see what happens. For now, I'm going to enjoy the final week of training and I'm looking forward to another adventure in one of my favorite places!
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