Month: March 2019

The coach, mom, NOLS employee, and professional ultrarunner attributes part of her success to her hectic schedule

Liza Howard is a podcast aficionado. The 46-year-old professional ultrarunner loves running podcasts like Marathon Talk and Becoming Ultra but also investigative true-crime podcasts, episodes about big political scandals, and series about medical procedures gone wrong—especially series about medical procedures gone wrong. And you can’t really blame her. Instead of setting out on lengthy trails, Howard trains for her 100-mile races by running on the same 2.1-mile loop in her San Antonio neighborhood for hours or slogging up to 40 miles on the treadmill. In all this monotony, it’s crucial she keeps herself entertained. So, podcasts—and trashy TV. “Nothing too serious. It needs to be a guilty pleasure,” Howard says. 

Such is the life of a professional trail runner who works at the National Outdoor Leadership School on weekends and is raising two kids (ages eleven and five), one of whom she homeschools. While some of her peers can dedicate large chunks of their days to training, Howard has to squeeze it in between work, errands, sick kids, math tests, and soccer games. In other words, she’s a lot like most mothers: she’s busy as hell. 

But instead of seeing her career and family as an obstacle, Howard has decided it’s her secret weapon. “I think parents have a high tolerance for putting up with pain and suffering,” Howard says. “And that’s what running ultras boils down to.” This mindset has helped Howard rack up wins at big races like the Leadville 100, the Rocky Racoon 100, and the Javelina Jundred, as well as bag multiple USA National Championship titles, including the 100K Championship in Madison, Wisconsin, last spring that earned her a coveted spot on the U.S. ultrarunning team. Last September, Howard donned the stars and stripes at the 100K World Championships in Croatia.

In fact, Howard may have never found ultrarunning if it weren’t for her busy schedule. Although she dabbled in road racing in her twenties, she didn’t think about ultras until she was 35, shortly after having her first kid. “I was living in a new town where I didn’t know anyone, and had a new baby that was kind of grumpy. Getting out of the house to run for several hours sounded like a good idea,” Howard says. “And honestly, ultrarunning is so much easier than parenting.”

After winning the Cactus Rose 100-miler in 2009—just a year after running her first ultra—Howard kept hunting for new challenges. “Running really long distances turned out to be something I was good at,” she says. “I’m not fast, but I can keep going at the same speed for a long time.” While running the Umstead 100 in 2014, after having her second child, she stopped three times to breast pump—and still set a women’s course record. 

Howard says that coming to the sport later in life has given her a certain amount of patience that young runners don’t always have. The day before the World Championships in Croatia, Howard broke her pinky toe. She ran, but not fast. While some runners might be upset by this setback, Howard remains unfazed. “I didn’t do much to help our team, but it was still an amazing experience,” she says. “The older you get, you have a better perspective and understand that nobody really cares if you place third or first or last.”

But the wisdom that comes with age doesn’t change the fact that Howard is competing against many runners who have more free time and fewer responsibilities. While Howard teaches her son about Vikings at the kitchen table and sneaks in a run on the treadmill after dark, her Instagram is populated with fellow runners traveling to mountain summits and training at elevation. Howard might be wise, but she’s also human. “For sure, there’s envy,” she says. 

At first, Howard spent years being frustrated with the limitations her life put on her running, but she eventually made peace with her situation. “I was tired of being frustrated all the time. I decided to be OK with not being able to do the same things as a 20-year-old living in a van,” she says.  

It’s a lesson Howard tries to pass on to other runners. When she’s not training, raising her kids, or at her job, Howard is coaching private clients in the fine art of ultrarunning. In addition to working on hill climbing and rock-garden techniques, Howard tries to teach her athletes to be kind to themselves. “If you can only squeeze in a ten-minute run on the treadmill some days, that’s OK. It’s like a snowball that builds as it rolls down a hill. Every little bit counts,” she says.

Howard’s advice for staying motivated: set a big goal. “Something that will scare you enough to motivate you to train but attainable enough so you won’t give up when things get hard. It needs to have some romance to it,” she says. (Some other advice: it’s OK to watch trash TV while on the treadmill.) Howard’s own goals for 2019 include running the Badwater 135 in California, which spans 135 miles from Death Valley to Mount Whitney; making the U.S. ultrarunning team again; and trying to set a marathon PR. “Slowing down is on the horizon somewhere, but I’m not there yet. I know I can run a faster marathon, and I know I can run a better race at the World Championships. I have some unfinished business there.”

Liza Howard’s (Kinda) Superfun Treadmill Workout

Howard admits there’s nothing exciting about running on a treadmill, but it’s a great tool for speed and hill work. Here’s one of her favorite routines for the ol’ hamster wheel. 

After warming up on a low speed, start playing with the pace and incline. Every tenth of a mile, increase the speed by one mile per hour until you can’t hold it anymore, then drop it down to a reasonable pace. Repeat. When you’re bored with that, do the same thing with the incline, increasing it by one degree every tenth of a mile until you reach your limit.  

New York City may make headlines for its Vision Zero initiative and its ever-growing bicycle infrastructure network, but the police department’s treatment of cyclists can be downright draconian

Early in the morning on February 4, a hit-and-run driver killed a 72-year-old cyclist with his truck on 8th Avenue near 45th Street in Manhattan. The New York Police Department has reportedly identified the driver, though as is the case with most hit-and-runs, they have yet to make an arrest, so nobody’s holding their breath.

There is one thing New Yorkers can pretty much count on after a driver kills someone on a bike though, and that’s an NYPD crackdown on cyclists in the vicinity of the incident for behavior that may or may not even be illegal. Sure enough, that’s exactly what happened, and the very next day a rider tweeted the following:

Unbeknownst to the rider at the time, the reason the officer had such trouble writing the ticket is because cycling in New York City without wearing a helmet is in fact perfectly legal. Well, okay, fine—kids under 14 are required to wear helmets, as are commercial delivery cyclists. This rider, however, fell under neither category, and as such, was free to wear a helmet, or a dunce cap, or a propeller beanie, or whatever form of headgear or lack thereof he personally deemed appropriate. So whatever your feelings on bicycle helmets may be, you’ve got to agree that ticketing cyclists for not wearing them in a city with no applicable helmet law is complete and utter bullshit.  

Unfortunately, this sort of cyclist ticketing is far from unusual, and there have been numerous reports of spurious helmet ticketing over the years, including the infamous “helmet” summons of 2011. Another similar NYPD tactic is ticketing cyclists for riding outside the bike lane. While technically you’re supposed to ride in bike lanes when they’re provided, city and state law gives you plenty of latitude to ride outside of them when necessary, such as for turning, avoiding obstructions and bad pavement, and so forth. In fact, it’s often impossible to ride in the bike lanes…for obvious reasons.

Nevertheless, not only does the NYPD ticket cyclists for leaving the bike lane, but on occasion, they’ve even taken it to the hors catégorie level by parking in the bike lane themselves and then ticketing cyclists for going around them. It was such a baseless bike lane ticketing spree that inspired Casey Neistat’s notorious “Bike Lanes” video, which to date has been viewed roughly nine-hundred-and-eleventy trillion times.

Of course, not all unpleasant NYPD-cyclist interactions end in a ticket. On one action-packed Wednesday this past December, a cyclist was hit by a driver while swerving to avoid an 88th Precinct van that officers had parked in the the bike lane on Jay Street in Brooklyn. An hour later, the van was still there, and when another passing cyclists asked the officers to move it, they reportedly shoved him instead. In response to the ensuing Twitter squall, the 88th Precinct replied that the intersection was “not in the 88th Precinct,” which, while technically true, did little to explain the photos of the van with “88 PCT” emblazoned on it in NYPD blue.

One hoary criticism of cyclists is that they are “entitled,” and while this is mostly a mischaracterization perpetuated by drivers who see things like bike lanes as a threat to their own considerable entitlement, I can understand how floating the notion that the nation’s largest police force has time to orchestrate and implement a systematic bicyclist harassment program might come off as being more than a little arrogant.

Yet if you ride a bike in New York City, it’s hard not to feel like the NYPD is the older sibling who occasionally grabs you by the wrists and forces you to punch yourself in the face. I don’t know if there’s an official name to this particular brand of traffic enforcement, but a good name for it would be “Stop Hitting Yourself Policing.”

Two days after the bogus no-helmet ticket on 8th Avenue, the Midtown North Precinct was still ticketing cyclists, and were captured on video tackling a cyclist on 9th Avenue. Their explanation:

"The Midtown North Precinct was addressing community and safety concerns in the vicinity of West 46 Street and 9th Avenue," the NYPD's press office said in a statement. "The individual was stopped and advised of his violations, and released without summonses."

According to witnesses, the cyclists being stopped were mostly people of color, at least one of whom was cited for “failure to use a bicycle lane.” (The bicycle lanes in this part of town are probably the most chronically obstructed in the whole city and can be unnavigable.) Activists held a rally in front of the Midtown North Precinct the next day.

Mayor Bill de Blasio has pledged to make New York City the “fairest big city in America.” He’s also declared climate change an “existential threat.” Making it easier and safer for people to ride bikes would go a long way towards addressing both those matters.

If only he’d tell the NYPD.

For some climbing rangers in Wyoming’s Grand Teton National Park, every ridgeline holds the memory of a rescue, every peak a body bag. It’s more than they can handle alone.

“Rachel, where are you?” I yelled into the void above.

A fellow Grand Teton climbing ranger, who I’ll call Ben, and I were roped up in a wet and dirty chimney system on the east face of Teewinot, a 12,325-foot peak that rises more than 5,000 feet above the valley floor. And that was the problem. The standard east-face route up Teewinot is an easy scramble: it’s Grade Two, fourth class. We were looking for a woman who had wandered drastically off route and was now stranded on a rectangular-shaped ledge about the size of an Ensolite pad.

It was August 22, 2015. Three women in their mid-twenties—I’ll call them Kate, Rachel, and Tara—had planned to run up the east face of Teewinot. One of them had been up the face before and knew that, with an early start and some fitness and comfort with nonroped scrambling, they could pull it off. They all had experience hiking throughout the Tetons. But earlier that morning, we received a call about screams coming from just off the standard route. Ben and I were short-hauled by a helicopter to a ledge where we found two women without vital signs. Once we knew there was nothing we could do to save them, we began climbing up toward Rachel.

I looked back down at Ben and shook my head. Where was she? It didn’t make any sense—I couldn’t imagine anyone with a sense for route finding getting this off track. “Throw a pebble down if you can,” I called to her. I thought this would give us a sense of where she was stranded on the wall. “OK, but where are my friends?” I remember her asking. Her voice echoed across the face like a reflection in a fun house wall of mirrors.

“Your friends are down on the ledge below,” I lied. But it was only a white lie—they were still on that ledge 200 feet below.

A small pebble bounced 50 feet away to our left. Ben took the next pitch up a hundred feet and traversed 50 feet to the left. I soon joined him. We were now 40 feet above our stranded climber. A quick rappel brought me down to Rachel’s small perch. Physically, she was fine, but she was clearly shaken. We hardly spoke. I told her only what I was doing and how we would get off the mountain. I built an anchor, tied her a diaper harness with a sling, and clipped both of us in. Ben rappelled down beside us. Next came fitting her into the screamer suit, our cherry red Cordura diaper vest used to package a short-haul patient. The helicopter was inbound.

“Teewinot, this is helicopter Three Five Hotel Xray, how do you copy?”

“Loud and clear, how me?”

“I’ve got you the same.”

“Steve, winds are five knots from the south, we have two short-haulers at 310 pounds ready for you.” 

“Copy, Drew, we’re inbound.”

A 150-foot rope dangled beneath the A-Star helicopter. Rachel and I were clipped together to a master point—the God ring—that we would need to clip into the rope. Steve maneuvered the ship toward the wall, the end of the rope now 50 feet above us.

“Five zero feet,” I spoke into the mic attached to my climbing helmet.

“Copy, five zero,” Steve slowly lowered the ship toward us.

“Four zero. Three zero. Two zero. One zero. Eye level. I have the rope.” It was mind-blowing what Steve could do with that helicopter. 

“Hook up.”  

I clipped our God ring into the end of the rope. Ben quickly unclipped us from the anchor.

“Hooked and ready.”  

“Coming up.” Steve gently pulled us up and away from the wall, two marionettes held by one rope, firmly attached to the underbelly of the ship above. Within seconds we were moving east at 50 miles an hour, dangling in space 5,000 feet above Lupine Meadows and the Jenny Lake climbing rangers’ rescue cache, which served as both a headquarters for incident command as well as a landing zone for our helicopters. Rachel was silent, her face blank. 

Steve set us down on the pad next to the rescue cache and departed back to Teewinot to retrieve the woman’s two friends. Her friends, however, would be making the flight in body bags. Rachel looked around and asked again, “Where are Kate and Tara?”

I could only look back at her and slowly shake my head.

---

That morning, around 11 A.M. on a bluebird day, the group, already off course, had been traversing south on the wall, moving out of a fissure system called the Black Chimney, about 600 feet from the summit. 

The women realized they weren’t on route. All of them started to feel unsafe. Rachel sat down to reassess their situation. Tara, just ten feet away, tried to climb up and over a small ledge to get a better view of their surroundings. And then she slipped. Kate reached out to grab her, and they both fell, one and then two women hurtling through space, alternately bouncing off the just-shy-of-vertical walls and then free-falling before coming to a final resting place 200 feet down on the ledge below.

I still imagine the two screams in my waking hours.  

I still see a sobbing woman in a heap, learning that her friends were gone. 

That evening, I sat alone in the rescue cache in Lupine Meadows, poured a whiskey, and opened my battered and dog-eared copy of Leigh Ortenburger and Reynold Jackson’s A Climber’s Guide to the Teton Range. The Black Chimney route, the route we had found ourselves in, was probably first climbed in 1939 and later rated 5.6. “Abandon the crest of the ridge in order to get into the beginning of the Black Chimney,” read the description. “Above the two chockstones in the lower section… is a steep rotten section that often has black ice in it. After three or four rope-lengths, traverse south out of the chimney onto easier rock leading to the summit.” The route description ends with the comment, “At best, the Black Chimney is a treacherous place because of the rotten rock.”

“Are you fucked up?” asked another ranger, who I’ll call Jason, walking into the rescue cache. I hadn’t even finished my first drink, but that wasn’t what he was wondering. “No more than usual.” I poured him a glass. “You got a minute? I need to talk.”

He had been on his share of body recoveries. “Sure, man,” he said. “I get it, I’ve been there. We’ve all been there.”  

“This one was different,” I said. “Two women on the ledge. It was obvious they had injuries incompatible with life. We had to climb up through blood in the chimney to find the last gal. I’ve picked up plenty of others—friends even—but this one felt … different.”

Karl Marlantes describes conversations like these in his 2011 book What It Is Like to Go to War. Marlantes was a young Marine lieutenant in Vietnam and noted that none of his men ever wanted to talk to the chaplain, because the chaplain had never seen what they had seen. But another soldier, the sergeant, was in his third tour in Vietnam. And one by one, the men would steal back to his tent to talk.

Jason didn’t say much as I spoke. He listened and nodded. I knew he would. This is what we do for one another. He finished his drink and said, “Let me know what you need, brother,” and walked out the front door into the darkness. 

---

Two years after pulling Rachel from the ledge, I was sitting in the back of the room at the main lodge of Snowbird in Utah. In the winter I work as a forecaster at the Utah Avalanche Center, and each fall we have a Utah Snow and Avalanche Workshop. Dave Richards, head of Alta Ski Area’s snow safety and avalanche reduction team, stood on stage talking about mental health and post-traumatic stress disorder. He showed photo after photo of the anonymous frozen and mangled bodies he had recovered over the course of his career. Dave said he suffered greatly from all the recoveries and that, at one point, he had needed to take some time off. I was shocked, but not at his emotional trauma. Dave was talking openly about mental health and resiliency. He wasn’t sweeping it under the rug. Dave comes from a hardcore mountain family—his father is a longtime climber and now retired ski patroller from Alta, and his brother, Cory, is the center of Cold, a documentary about surviving an avalanche while descending Gasherbrum II in Pakistan. But this was a stroke of genius. By detailing his struggles in front of 700 snow and avalanche professionals, Dave kicked open the door for the rest of us to talk about mental health. Like many things, it wasn’t just the message but the messenger.

Mental health is like physical health. Both can suffer trauma. Each can take weeks, months, or years to recover from. Sometimes we never recover at all. Mental trauma can affect different people on the same rescue or recovery in very different ways. We may walk through terrain where we conducted a body recovery or see someone in a crowd who you’d swear was the person from the body bag. Bob Irvine, a Teton climbing ranger from 1963 to 1995, says he can’t walk through the range without seeing places where people have died. On the flip side, another climbing ranger, George Montopoli, who began his summer Teton climbing career in 1977, told me not long ago that for every place he sees a body recovery, he sees another place where we made a rescue. For a time, I too could only look at the mountains and see death and injury. I know countless widows around these mountains. 

The alpinist Will Gadd recently told me: “If you only see death in the mountains, then you’ll never go there.” I know this is how we are wired. We embrace things that nourish us and give us joy, and we avoid things that cause pain and sadness. But the mountains bring about joy, and they bring about sadness. They remind us of the eternal link between life and death—we can’t have one without the other. Understanding this connection is fundamental to our own resiliency. So is talking with others who hold similar experiences. This is often referred to as peer-to-peer counseling. Another crucial part of the path is finally shedding the stigma of mental health and suffering. Thanks, Dave.

Marlantes, the former Marine lieutenant, advises what I would call Pre-Traumatic Stress Management, ways to understand and anticipate trauma before it happens. These may include sitting with others and talking about what it may be like while on the scene. Then, after the event, strive to communicate with vulnerability to friends and loved ones. Exercise. Sleep. Avoid the overconsumption of food, alcohol, and sex. Find time for quiet and reflection.

In the Tetons, at the end of a rescue or body recovery, we’d often wander over to the porch at the large cabin in the meadow just south of Jenny Lake. There’d be a bottle or two on the porch, but often it would go unopened. We’d look past one another, tell a joke about death, look up at Teewinot, listen to Cottonwood Creek and the rustle of wind through the leaves. Sometimes we’d tell stories. What was important was that each of us had been there; we all, in another way, had blood on our hands—we had all shared the same experiences. While always offered, we didn’t need the chaplain. We needed each other.

Drew Hardesty is a longtime forecaster at the Utah Avalanche Center and a climbing ranger in Grand Teton National Park.

The best route to a cheap flight can be treacherous. Here’s a tried-and-true method for finding a great deal.

Trying to find a killer deal on a flight can feel like an endless search with too many options. Every day there seems to be a new app or website claiming to have the best offers, but how do you really know if you’re getting the best one? That’s why I’ve developed systems to easily find the best-value deal, based on the timing before my travel. Do I need to book the flight immediately, or do I have time to research? Depending on the answer to that question, I employ these tools and hacks.  

I Need to Book a Flight, Like, Yesterday

Whenever I need to book a flight right away, I go through the same three steps. The problem with airfare deals is that you can’t just search for a great deal on a single website. Well, you can, but you won’t find the best deal, because airfare prices change minute by minute. The old advice was to search for airfare on Tuesday or Wednesday nights, but that no longer applies now that airlines have become so competitive with each other. 

Step 1: Scan Google Flights

With Google Flights, I can search by destination and the approximate dates I’m traveling, then figure out the best-priced airline-and-day combination to score a deal. Google Flights works with the majority of airlines, and it will give you a good lay of the land, helping you figure out the cheapest travel days. 

Step 2: Use Momondo and Skyscanner

Once I have the information from Google Flights, I head over to Momondo and Skyscanner to search for the best price. These sites compile prices of flights from hundreds of companies, meaning you’ll likely see lower prices and more flight options than you did on Google Flights for the date you searched. You can refine your search to find out prices for economy plus, business class, and first class. 

Step 3: Double-Check the Airline’s Website

After checking Momondo and Skyscanner, I go to the actual airline website and search the same flight to see how prices compare. Sometimes the airline website will have a better deal, and sometimes it won’t. There isn’t an exact science to it, so it’s essential to go through these three steps each time.

One thing to note: often the deals you find on airline-deal websites represent the lowest-price option. What that means is you have to pay extra for baggage (if that’s an option), and you can’t reserve a seat ahead of time. You’ll want to pay attention to these details if they’re important to you and change your search to include a fare with bags and a seat of your choice.

Step 4 (Bonus): Use Credit-Card Rewards 

If you have any credit-card or rewards points, you’ll want to check out those sites, too, and see if you can use miles to help fund airfare. Using your credit-card points is a great way to save money, because most rewards programs will let you transfer your points to an airline or purchase the flight through their website for a discounted price. For instance, I’m a big fan of the Chase Sapphire Preferred card because if I book a flight through its rewards center, I get a 25 percent bonus reduction on the price.

I’ve Got Some Breathing Room

I have a laundry list of all the places I want to visit, so I’m always on the lookout for future deals. 

Scott’s Cheap Flights sends me a ton of great travel deals. This is a membership site that charges $39 per year and, in return, sends e-mail with incredible flight and travel deals that you won’t find anywhere else. Scott’s finds peak-season deals, mistake-fare deals, and other recent deals every day. You can plug in the airport nearest to you, and the site will deliver deals that are most relevant. I took a trip to Europe last year on a mistake-fare e-mail deal and saved over $500. 

Another great resource is Airfarewatchdog. On this site, you can set airfare alerts to let you know when a flight deal is available. Airfarewatchdog also features loads of airfare deals as they come available, and it shops the best deals for you. The site is ideal if you’re not set on a particular day that you want to travel and are looking for bargain when it comes along.

Lastly, Twitter is a great place to score airfare deals. I follow all the airlines I travel with, and often the airlines will post a special deal or code for its followers to use. Even if the deal is only 5 to 10 percent off the regular booking price, it’s still money you’re saving. 

No matter where you live, you have to be prepared when the white stuff starts falling

Folks who live in cold areas pride themselves on their ability to handle snow better than their southern counterparts. However, whether you live in Minnesota or North Carolina, a quick glance at the news reveals a string of wrecks and pile-up accidents whenever snow starts.

Driving in snow is a tough task no matter where you live. The first step to safer driving is knowing what kind of winter weather you'll encounter. Snow is more manageable than sleet or freezing rain. If it is going to snow, will it be a blizzard or a quick-hitting clipper? You’re more likely to wreck in a short, fast moving storm or snow squall, and you’re more likely to get stranded during a blizzard or lake effect snow.

The best thing to do in either case is to be proactive. Here's how.

Don't Underestimate a Light Snow (and Don't Panic)

Most people worry about getting stranded by a foot of snow, but a foot of snow isn’t always what you need to worry about. A dusting of snow can be more dangerous than a thick blanket of it. A thin layer of snow on roads easily melts under the heat from heavy traffic. Subfreezing temperatures can refreeze the snowmelt and turn roads into a sheet of ice. The resulting ice can lead to horrendous traffic disasters, like the ones in Birmingham, Alabama, in 2014 or Washington D.C. in 2016.

If you hit an icy patch, the worst thing you can do is panic. The second worst thing you can do is slam on the brakes. Hitting the brakes when you’re on ice turns you into a curling stone without anyone there to steer you in the right direction. You can easily lose control. 

The simple fact is, you can’t do much when you’re sliding on ice. There’s no real way to bring your vehicle to a stop without regaining traction or coming to rest against something like the guardrail or another vehicle. What you can do is try to keep your vehicle going as straight as possible by turning your wheel into the spin. Keeping the vehicle straight lowers the chances that you’ll regain traction when you’re sideways, which could subject you to a rollover. 

Unfortunately, not everybody is able to keep control of their car when they slide on ice. A wreck is bad enough. A pile-up wreck is many magnitudes worse. Each winter, somewhere in the United States, we inevitably hear about some stretch of highway closed because dozens of vehicles got into a chain-reaction accident.

If you’re ever caught in a pile-up accident, odds are high that people are going to hit you from behind. That could be exceptionally dangerous if the traffic is moving at high speeds. Sometimes the best option is to get out of the vehicle and get away from the road. However, you only want to get out if you have a clear shot to the side of the road or behind a barrier or wall. The most dangerous place to be in a pile-up wreck is a pedestrian at risk of getting hit by oncoming cars or flying debris.

Don't Accelerate Your Way Out of a Jam

In deep snow, it’s common for travelers to get stuck on roadways or even stranded.

If you’re ever stuck in the snow or ice while driving, don’t try to floor your way out of the situation. Attempting to get unstuck through acceleration could suddenly launch you forward or lurch you to the left or right, endangering anyone outside of the car and putting you at risk, too. It’s also not good for your vehicle. Remember the infamous flaming snow car incident in Raleigh, North Carolina, a couple of years ago? That car caught fire because the driver revved the engine too hard trying (and failing) to drive up that icy, snow-covered hill.

It’s helpful to have a couple of simple supplies in your trunk to help you get out of a sticky situation for when you do get stuck. Carry something like kitty litter or a long strip of cardboard to help your tires gain enough traction if they become stuck. Keep a small shovel in your car to clear snow away from your tires. Don’t forget to stock some food and water just in case you’re stranded on the road for the long haul. 

Clear Your Car

The most useful safety advice for winter driving is the one too many people ignore—clean the snow off the roof of your car. There’s nothing more infuriating after a snowstorm than to see someone flying down the road with a roof full of snow, locked and loaded like an icy gun, ready to cause an accident. Slabs of snow and ice could fly off the back of your car and hit the vehicles behind you. The snow could also slide forward when you hit the brakes, completely obscuring your view of what’s ahead. Driving around with snow still covering your roof or windows is illegal in some states and it’s not safe. Invest in a snow brush. It takes a little bit of work, but it’s worth it to avoid an accident or hefty fine.

 

Forget functional fitness. If you want to run whitewater on a SUP, you need focused fitness.

Paul Clark has lived a hell of a life. The 46-year-old spends most of his time paddling whitewater all over the world, but he’s also been a professional sea-kayak guide in Alaska and Baja, Mexico, an Outward Bound instructor, a ski patroller, and an avalanche-rescue dog handler. He’s thru-hiked the Pacific Crest Trail, lived in a snow cave for 83 days, and paddled the 1,000-mile Sea of Cortez solo (twice).

Now, as Clark pushes into his late forties, he’s into stand-up paddleboarding, which he discovered six years ago. He focuses on whitewater SUP and self-supported multi-day expeditions, paddling stout rivers like the Kaituna in New Zealand and the Petrohué in Patagonia. “Solo pedestrian sports have always been my chosen aesthetic,” Clark says. “Whether I’m using a pair of skis, or a kayak, or a paddleboard, the idea of dictating my own pace and moving at my own power has always been my thing.”

Clark, who has made a living from outdoor pursuits for two decades, lives out of his van and spends much of his time on the road, creating content for brands and teaching SUP clinics. This year he’s already paddled 40 rivers on his SUP in Oregon alone. With a knack for knocking out Class III and low Class IV rapids with grace, Clark says that SUP seems to have broad appeal for older, experienced athletes like himself. “I was never comfortable confined in a kayak when running rapids,” he says. “But a paddleboard is different. As soon as I figured out you could load a drybag on the front of the board and actually do a multi-day trip on the thing, I was hooked.” Most of his students are advanced whitewater kayakers looking to avoid the risk that comes with Class III kayaking but still stay entertained as they reach their forties. “It’s not about getting radical. It’s about exploring the landscape,” Clark says. “Paddleboarding gives you a whole new way to learn the river.”

While he and other whitewater SUP paddlers aren’t running tall waterfalls or Class V wave trains, that doesn’t mean the sport isn’t physically demanding. Clark says that whitewater SUP requires a specific style of physicality and mental aptitude that isn’t present in other adventure sports. When his life was dominated by skiing, sea kayaking, and hiking, Clark managed to avoid any sort of regimented fitness routine, relying instead on the adventures themselves to provide the workouts he needed. But as his focus has shifted to paddleboarding in the past couple of years, his attitude has changed. “I see now that if a person my age isn’t constantly active, the body and brain starts to break down. Inertia is a terrible thing,” he says.

Instead of functional, all-around fitness, Clark is more concerned with focused fitness, which zeros in on movements he needs while on the river and emphasizes muscle memory and the connection between the brain and body. Clark always carries a 15-pound kettlebell and a custom-designed 15-pound kettle bat in his van—whenever he stops, he knocks out a handful of weighted squats and lunges, holding a stance at the bottom of the movement and rotating. These exercises are particularly important before he gets on the river, so his body is used to being low and centered. “Whitewater is a slow sport. It’s not like skiing or mountain biking, where you’re approaching a feature at 20 miles per hour. You have to brace and hold a position for a long time. There are elements of balance, agility, and core strength, but really you have to have some specific movements down so you don’t have to think about them,” Clark says. “You want muscle memory to kick in.”

Besides exercises that help lower his center of gravity, Clark insists that developing mental fortitude is a huge key to successful whitewater paddling. “The less you’re in your mind, and the more you let your body just move, the more success you’ll have,” Clark says. “When I teach clinics, I can see in people’s eyes if they’re gonna fall. If there’s fear, if they’re in their head, they’re toast.” 

Board Training with Paul Clark 

Clark has his students run through these exercises as soon as they get on the board. “The idea is to get your body used to staying centered and low,” he says.

In a calm section of river, start paddling on your knees. Peel into an eddy, then peel out. The action of paddling in and out of this placid stretch of water will force your body to work through a range of motions and positions.

Next, move to one knee, with the other foot in front of you. Peel into the eddy and peel out. Switch knees and repeat the process.

Stand in a squatting position on both feet. Try to keep your torso erect but your butt low toward your heels. Your head should be about the same height as when you were kneeling.

The ski mountaineer takes a no-frills approach to prepare for the world’s hardest descents

There might not be a mountain on this planet that 48-year-old Chris Davenport can’t ski. Following a dominant competitive big mountain circuit in the early 2000s, Davenport shifted to mountaineering, launching a pro career that’s enabled him to ski six continents. He’s bagged numerous first descents all over the globe and is part of a select group of people who have skied Mount Everest, ripping 2,000 vertical feet off the Lhotse Face. After becoming the first person to ski all 54 fourteeners in Colorado in one winter in 2007, he later decided to thoroughly exhaust the Centennial State by tackling its 100 highest peaks. He’s explored Antarctica by boat and on skis, climbed and skied 15 volcanoes in 14 days in the Pacific Northwest, and spent days in a dome tent in British Columbia, waiting for the weather to break so he could scout remote couloirs.

“I don’t think I’m slowing down that much,” Davenport says. After he finishes guiding clients all over the world this winter, he’s going to knock out a couple of “mild” ski mountaineering projects in Alaska and Canada. Think: miles of hiking and skinning up Mount Rainier, or ice climbing vertical walls in Denali with all his equipment strapped to his back. I get sore just scrolling through his Instagram feed. 

“It’s nothing groundbreaking. I’m just trying to do some cool trips with friends and create some fun content around that,” Davenport says. “I wouldn’t say the ‘big project’ mountaineering ship has sailed, but I’ve made it this far, so I’m trying to reduce my risk profile. I’ve run the gauntlet of risk, and I feel like I was lucky and I don’t want to blow it.” Davenport has lost friends to avalanches and ski accidents, and has had a number of narrow escapes himself, including the time he triggered an avalanche in Alaska and was swept 1,000 feet by a moving slab of snow.

When I talk to Davenport on his 48th birthday, he’s prepping for a three-day trip to Jackson Hole, where he’ll teach an avalanche safety course for Team Red Bull. After that, he’s off to Japan for five weeks to guide clients through the world’s deepest powder. It’s a physically demanding lifestyle that Davenport has managed to sustain into middle age. But maybe the most inspiring detail of Davenport’s already bombastic career? He rarely sets foot in the gym. “I work hard to keep up with the fitness side of things,” Davenport says, “but as I’ve gotten older, I’ve become less interested in being inside gyms and more interested in being outside and doing things that make me feel good.”

Davenport says the established training regimen of ski racing—he grew up competing in New Hampshire and continued while attending the University of Colorado, Boulder—served him well during freeskiing competitions in his 20s. “I had the fundamentals of dryland training and gym training under my belt. People call it CrossFit today, but that’s the stuff we were doing to prepare for ski races,” Davenport says.

But as Davenport moved from strength-forward ski racing to aerobic-focused mountaineering, his training evolved. “As a ski mountaineer, I don’t need to be able to squat 300 pounds. I need to be able to skin or climb mountains all day,” he says. Instead of plyometrics and squats (the meat and potatoes for ski racers), Davenport spends his off season on a bike, putting in 100-mile road rides along Aspen’s steep mountain passes. During the fall, he mixes in gravity-based workouts, where he’ll load a backpack with 40-pounds of rocks or water jugs and hike up a mountain, drop the weight at the peak and then run back down. He repeats the same process in the winter between trips, but with skis and skins.

Beyond having the lean muscle mass of an endurance athlete, Davenport also tries to stay as limber as possible. But forget downward dog and crow pose. “I’m not a big yoga guy,” he says. “But I recognize that maintaining a certain amount of flexibility keeps me from getting injured, and helps keep me looking and feeling youthful on the mountain.” For 10 to 15 minutes a day, he uses a foam roller on his legs and lower back, mixed in with isolated stretches for his quads, glutes, and hamstrings. Davenport says he’s not doing anything out of the ordinary, but the consistency of his routine—stretching and getting into the mountains for serious cardio every day—gives him baseline mobility that prevents injuries.

It’s a multi-faceted approach to general fitness that he believes translates well to weekend warriors looking to stay in shape for their annual ski trip (and not get hurt). “I consider myself an all-around athlete, not just a skier, and I think that approach has helped prolong my career,” Davenport says. “It’s not rocket science. Do what feels good and makes you happy, and stay away from the things that feel like a grind.”

Make your sweet tooth work for you

If you’re looking for a way to slip more protein into your diet but just can’t stomach the idea of another chicken breast or postworkout protein shake, get creative with your dessert. Protein powders can be mixed into plenty of recipes that will satisfy a sweet tooth while still packing healthy protein into each serving. Here, athletes share their favorite hacks for adding protein into recipes that make recovery easy—and tasty. Sub in your preferred protein powder, whether it’s whey, soy, pea, or collagen, but note that it may change the taste and texture of the recipes, so prepare for a bit of experimentation.

Sasha DiGiulian’s Protein Pumpkin Pie

Rock-climbing superstar Sasha DiGiulian spends her life training and tackling big walls, so she knows that getting enough protein is key to fast recovery. The 26-year-old sneaks her fix into a pumpkin-pie recipe that will fool even the pickiest eaters.

Ingredients

• 2 cups pecans
• 2 tablespoons melted butter
• 4 tablespoons brown sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 tablespoon water
• 1 can pumpkin puree 
• 2 teaspoons pumpkin-pie spice
• 2/3 cup agave
• 2 scoops Paleopro Pumpkin Spice protein powder
• 1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons egg whites 
• 1 can evaporated milk
• Optional: Whipped cream 
• 2 teaspoons cinnamon

Directions

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Place pecans in a food processor, and grind until fine. Add melted butter, brown sugar, vanilla, and water. Continue processing until uniform. Press into a nine-inch pie pan. Bake for ten minutes or microwave at full power for six minutes. Pull out of the oven half-baked, and set aside. Bump the temperature to 350 degrees. In a large bowl, thoroughly combine the pumpkin puree and pumpkin-pie spice, making sure they are very well blended to avoid clumps of spice in the final product. Add agave, protein powder, and egg whites, stirring in between ingredients. Add the evaporated milk and whisk well. Pour the liquid mixture into the pie crust and bake for 35 to 40 minutes or until the top is set and a toothpick comes out clean. Refrigerate to set. You can add whipped cream on top (DiGiulian recommends coconut whipped cream) and sprinkle with cinnamon. Serve warm or cold.

Ryan and Sara Hall’s Classic Protein Pancakes

Professional marathoners Sara and Ryan Hall are always looking for ways to add protein to sweet treats. Their go-to for years has been Muscle Milk pancakes. Top them with a pat of butter. 

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup teff flour
• 3 teaspoons cocoa powder
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• Dash of Himalayan sea salt
• 1 scoop Muscle Milk chocolate protein powder
• Sugar (or stevia) to desired sweetness

Directions

Mix all of the ingredients. Then slowly stir in enough water until your preferred pancake-batter consistency is achieved—a thicker batter makes fluffier cakes. Heat a buttered or oiled griddle over medium heat, pour batter, and flip when air bubbles appear all over the pancakes. Eat them hot.

Reese’s Pieces Protein Cookies

Endurance athlete and former bodybuilder Rebekah Clementson mixes protein powder into an easy-bake cookie. This recipe only takes a minute to whip up and makes deliciously soft treats that are the perfect postworkout snack.

Ingredients

• 4 tablespoons coconut flour  
• 1 scoop protein powder (Clementson loves PEScience Snickerdoodle flavor for bonus cookie taste, but choose your favorite flavor.)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 cup applesauce
• Handful Reese’s Pieces 

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix the first five ingredients thoroughly, portion into seven balls, and place them on a greased cookie sheet. Press two Reese’s Pieces atop each cookie. Bake for approximately ten minutes.

Super Simple Protein Bites

After spending too much money on premade protein bites, California-based ultrarunner Mandie Holmes recently decided to take matters into her own hands. “They’re all the rage in fancy grocery stores, but it’s so easy to make your own,” she says. You can play with all sorts of add-ins and flavor combinations based on what you have on hand, so Holmes recommends plenty of taste testing while you cook.

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup raw or roasted almonds

• 1 cup unpitted dates

• Warm water as needed

• 1/4 cup unsweetened protein powder or collagen powder
• Optional: cocoa powder, cinnamon, fresh ginger to taste
• Optional fillings: dried cranberries or other dried fruit, chopped candied ginger, chocolate chips, or other chips
• Optional toppings: coconut flakes

Directions

In a food processor, coarsely grind almonds into a meal. Add dates and water gradually, and combine until smooth. Add protein powder and optional cocoa powder and blend. Add any chunky fillings, and pulse to distribute. (“I like to add so much that the dough is barely holding together, but that’s just me,” Holmes says). Cover the dough and chill it in the fridge for an hour. Then use a teaspoon or melon baller to make small balls. Roll them in coconut flakes and place on a wax-paper-lined cookie sheet. Freeze until firm, then store in a big container in the freezer. Stash a couple in a baggie and toss them into your backpack in the morning. They’ll be thawed by snack time.

Frozen Protein Popsicles

Not interested in turning on the oven? For a simple postworkout recipe on sweltering days, try these frozen protein pops from physical therapist, coach, and runner Nikki Buurma. 

Ingredients

• 1 overripe banana
• 1 tablespoon peanut butter
• 1 scoop chocolate protein powder 
• 1/4 cup water
• Handful of chocolate chips

Directions

Put ingredients in the blender and puree. Pour into a flat storage container or a popsicle mold. Sprinkle with chocolate chips. Freeze until solid.

A free weekly 5K? What’s not to love.

When it comes to techno-utopianism, it’s hard to top Facebook’s mission statement. Apparently, the company is dedicated to “bringing the world closer together.” Personally, I find the dystopian counter-narrative—that “Big Tech” has us hopelessly atomized—more persuasive, but I’m trying to remain optimistic that the Internet isn’t irredeemably at odds with (non-virtual) community building. One of the more encouraging examples in recent years is an initiative called Parkrun. 

This won’t be news to anyone from the U.K. where Parkrun has become as ubiquitous as our Turkey Trot—except that it takes place every weekend, instead of once a year. The inaugural event was staged in Greater London’s Bushy Park in October 2004. Back then, a few volunteers strung together an ad hoc 5K that was open to anyone who felt like taking part. Over the past decade and a half, the concept has proliferated, to put it mildly. Today, there are over 1,800 Parkruns in 20 countries on five continents. All events are free. 

“The concept of Parkrun is that it’s not a race and therein lies the secret of what we do,” says founder Paul Sinton-Hewitt. That might sound suspect to the class of turbo-jocks who lament the rise of fun runs and other participatory running events, but the beauty of Parkun is that it’s as competitive as you want it to be. The format is loose enough to also accommodate walkers, stroller-pushers, and anyone who feels like joining the procession. It’s still a timed running event, but without the rigid formality of a race. The only requirement is that participants go through a one-time online registration process and print out a personal bar code for timing purposes. Runners receive same-day results via email, while the Parkrun website abounds with nifty statistics that are continuously updated, like a weekly leaderboard of top finishers around the globe. As of this writing, over three and a half million Parkrunners have combined to run roughly 137 million miles.

Despite this global appeal, Parkrun remains a predominantly British institution. Of the three and a half million registered runners, almost two million are in the U.K. where Parkrun grew exponentially after the London Olympics. At the time, a Guardian article touted the boom as a grassroots-style “running revolution,” that drew in everyone from dog-walking retirees to multiple-time Olympic champion Mo Farah. Last year, in a column for the Financial Times titled “How Parkrun Became My New Religion,” London-based editor Katie Martin warmed my Anglophile heart when she noted that one of the perks of the event was that afterwards you could “gather your breath and chat to strangers, sometimes over a well-deserved slice of cake and cup of tea.” Martin added that: “As a cure for the national crisis of loneliness, it’s hard to beat.”

So what about our national crisis? (No, not that one.) In a nation where adulthood obesity is encroaching on the 100 million mark and where increasing numbers of people are also feeling lonely and alienated, a weekly communal exercise event that’s easy to put on, costs nothing to participate in, and has an engaging tech component would seem like an appealing concept. 

That’s what Rick Brauer, who in May 2012 launched the U.S. iteration of Parkrun, thought as well. But the idea has struggled to gain a foothold over here. At present, Parkrun has established itself in roughly 30 locations, scattered across the country. (Most events are small, with fewer than 100 runners.) Not bad, but still a far cry from the 600-plus Parkruns in the U.K. 

According to Brauer, there are several reasons for this. Reached by email, he noted that the U.S. didn’t have the same number of large community green spaces that serve as Parkrun venues overseas. In a litigious society like ours, there are also more bureaucratic hurdles to access the spaces that do exist; Brauer cited the example of one park in Boston where an annual use permit would have cost $30,000. National sponsors were another issue, in that Brauer couldn’t find any. He says he reached out to “anyone and everyone,” from running shoe companies to health insurance carriers to McDonald’s. No dice. 

In Britain, meanwhile, Parkrun has plenty of corporate support. And that’s not all. Last December, Reuters reported that the British government would be investing three million pounds (around four million dollars) to fund an additional 200 Parkruns over the next three years, with the specific intention of bringing in more women and people from lower socioeconomic groups. Imagine that, a national government investing millions to provide greater access to a free running event. 

This isn’t the first time I’ve written about a U.K.-based sports and public health initiative that we could take an example from. To be honest, it’s hard to view the lukewarm reception of Parkrun in the U.S. and not see an implicit cultural barrier here as well—as if there was some ingrained skepticism towards to a free sports event in a country where some charlatan is forever trying to monetize everything under the sun. (Sinton-Hewitt affirmed my bias when he told me that he’d had a tough time convincing prospective organizers in the U.S. to keep things super low-key. “Americans always want to build a gazebo,” he says.)

Or maybe we just like buying stuff. As Brauer put it to me, “In the U.S.A., people are more inclined to pay $50 for a T-shirt and a finisher’s medal plus a number of social media selfies, than run Parkrun.” (For the record, Brauer says he doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with that.)

Obviously, a few free 5Ks aren’t going to magically transform this country into a nation of healthy, well-adjusted citizens, bursting with neighborly love. According to a recent RunningUSA survey, almost nine million people signed up for a 5K in 2017, so it’s not as if there’s a paucity of races in this country. But, as mentioned, Parkrun doesn’t brand itself as a race, so much as a weekly group exercise session. 

It’s certainly preferable to the scourge of “virtual racing,” another trend that appears to be on the rise. This ghastly concept allows you to compete against other runners without the inconvenience of having to be in the same place. Enabled by fitness tracking apps like Strava, the virtual race impressively cancels out the community aspect of running (or at least banishes it into the app-sphere) while preserving the competitive element. You can even do it on your treadmill. 
 
Maybe the tech dystopia isn’t so far off after all. 

The oldest woman to swim the English Channel wants to continue knocking off marathon swims into her 80s

Pat Gallant-Charette is tougher than your average grandma. She’s probably tougher than you. The 68-year-old Maine native has completed the majority of the Oceans Seven, a marathon swimming challenge that has athletes tackling seven of the toughest open-water swims in the world. She has systematically subjected herself to near-freezing water temperatures, strong currents, shark attacks, and blooms of jellyfish during swims that have her in the water for up to 24 hours.

But the really crazy part? Gallant-Charette didn’t get serious about swimming until she was 58. And she was terrified of the ocean for years, after she had what she thought was a close encounter with a shark (it was really a curious seal) when she was 13. “I wouldn’t get in the water above my knees for years,” says Gallant-Charette in her strong New England accent.

But after her two brothers, Johnny and Robby, each died unexpectedly (and 25 years apart), the then-full-time nurse reassessed her life. In remembrance of Robby, an accomplished open-water swimmer himself, Gallant-Charette decided to swim the Peaks to Portland , a 2.4-mile open-water swim that Robby had won twice. She started training at the local pool. At first, she was able to swim only a few laps, but she slowly built her endurance until she felt comfortable swimming across the bay in her brother’s honor. “I was only going to swim the Peaks to Portland once,” Gallant-Charette says. “But halfway through, there was something so tranquil about swimming in the bay. I saw seagulls and lobster boats. I thought, ‘I really like this.’”

She felt good after her Peaks to Portland swim. Really good. Like she could swim farther. Curious to see just how far she could go, Gallant-Charette later swam across Sebago Lake in Maine, more than twice the distance of Peaks to Portland. It took her 3.5 hours, but when she finished, she felt like she could swim back across. So Gallant-Charette trained for a year and knocked out a two-way crossing of the same lake. “I looked at my husband after I finished and said, ‘I think I might be one of those endurance athletes,’” she says.

Since then, Gallant-Charette has spent the past decade testing her limits. In 2010, she became the third-fastest woman to swim from Spain to Africa across the Strait of Gibraltar; seven years later, she became the oldest woman to swim the English Channel. Last year, she knocked out four marathon swims in two months: 28 miles around Manhattan Island, 21 miles across Lake Tahoe, 23 miles across Loch Ness, and 10.5 miles across Lake Windermere in England. In November, she was inducted into the International Marathon Swimming Hall of Fame . “I feel strong. Stronger than when I was a teenager,” Gallant-Charette says. “I want to see what a 68-year-old can do , and then what a 70-year-old can do. I can see myself doing this into my 80s.”

In February, Gallant-Charette attempted her final leg of the Oceans Seven challenge, New Zealand’s 16-mile-wide Cook Strait, after being on a waiting list for three years. (As marathon swimming grows in popularity, athletes have to register for specific windows to complete their chosen swim, for safety reasons.) She started the swim in calm weather and swam strongly for more than 12 hours, but her support crew pulled the plug just three miles from the finish because of dangerous currents. The conditions were so poor that Gallant-Charette’s rescue zodiac was damaged by a large wave and began to sink. A similar situation happened during her previous attempt five years ago, although she only made it halfway (and no zodiac sank). “That’s the territory for marathon swimming. You have to accept that sometimes Mother Nature won’t be on your side,” she says.

Gallant-Charette says she was mentally and physically ready for the swim, having trained all year, six days a week and a minimum of two hours a day, usually in a pool because she doesn’t like swimming in open water. When she does train in the ocean, she knocks out laps close to shore, refusing to swim deeper than her waist. And she’s completely self-taught. Aside from getting a few stroke technique tips from the local YMCA swim teacher, she’s never had a coach.

Only a dozen people have finished the Oceans Seven since it was established in 2008, but Gallant-Charette says her age isn’t a handicap, especially when she’s had to battle constant jellyfish stings or gotten caught in a wicked current. “When you’re younger, you get caught up in it all, trying to be the fastest,” she says. “But when you’re 68, you just want to have a good swim. If you’re successful, great. But if not, eh, you just reschedule and try it again.” Swimming across Hawaii’s Molokai channel in the middle of the night, Gallant-Charette was bumped by either a shark or a dolphin, which sent her mind reeling to when she was a kid, frightened for her life at the beach in Maine. “These are tough swims. So much can go wrong that’s out of your control,” she says. “Trying to swim the English Channel in my twenties would have been overwhelming, but now I realize that it’s just swimming.”

Gallant-Charette doesn’t think she’ll attempt the Cook Strait swim again, but she’s not done with marathon open water swimming. She’s already compiling a bucket list of swims she wants to tick off around the world. She’s halfway through the Still Water 8, a worldwide marathon lake-swimming challenge, and has her sights on the last four lakes in New Zealand, Switzerland, Russia, and Peru. And after she finishes the Still Water 8? “Who knows. I’m never going to retire,” Gallant-Charette says. “After doing a marathon swim, I can do another within 24 hours. Once I get caught up on my sleep, I’m ready to go for another swim.”