I prefer to run alone.

Last week I found every song in my iTunes library that had the word “run” in the title and made a playlist. I was not thinking of exercise when I did it. Whatever wanderlust took hold of me this year has not subsided. The cyclocross season kept me grounded and focused and gave me an excuse to stay in town every weekend. Now it’s mostly over and my feet are itchy again. I get in the car and suppress impulses to hit the gas pedal and hold my breath until I hit Arizona, Colorado… Mexico?

It doesn’t matter much where, it’s a simple thirst for new landscapes. The desire to reach up into the sky and pull down a new backdrop. Instead of driving aimlessly, I often assuage myself by fleeing on foot. Running is more than an act of exercise or a calculated execution of training. Somewhere in the subconscious it’s the motion of escape (and, ultimately, return).

I ran to Laurelhurst Park last week for the first time in months. It’s a short run – two miles to the edge and back, three miles if you throw in a loop around the perimeter. My legs are used to pedaling, so they were happy to take it easy and enjoy the journey. I settled in and watched my feet hitting the pavement below me while the neighborhood floated past.

When I run, it’s as if I have always been running. As if it is my body’s most natural state. The motion feels like a memory.

When I get to Laurelhurst, my legs want to keep going so I turn to make the loop around the park. The last time I did this it was summer and the air was hot and bright. I recall that I rounded a corner and looked up the pathway where a man was standing, looking at me.

Jeffrey. An old friend I’d not seen in years. A young photographer who made me see differently with my camera and later served as my guide in the darkroom.

Since I was already running and he was already standing there with his arms open, I kept moving toward him. The light around me went yellow and everything switched to slow motion and I crashed into him screaming. “JEFFREY!”

I couldn’t hear anything except the loud music in my headphones. I didn’t notice that his leg was broken until afterwards, when he stumbled backward a little and I caught him in my arms. The hug became a rescue and his mouth was open so I could see that he was laughing. When I finally reached up to pull the headphones from my ears, the world around me clicked into place and I became aware of children and picnics and lovers and ducks.

He said, “Heidi Swift, where have you been??”

And I said, “Everywhere, Jeffrey! Everywhere!” which was an exaggeration, but felt true in my heart.

Then we sat in the grass and talked about photography and the best place to source expired film and skateboarding accidents and the way it feels like magic when you put the paper in the final tub of chemicals and your image starts to rise to the surface – as if it’s been hiding in there all along just waiting to come out.

***

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The cyclocross high is wearing off and the hangover is heavy. In January I’ll go to California and get 5 more races in, but I might as well be a junkie at a methadone clinic. I know it’s ending. It won’t be the same. It will just keep me from jumping out the window.

It’s not that I miss the mud or the bike washing or the post-race track hack. I don’t miss the cost of replacing equipment or the pre-race warmups or the 39-degrees-and-raining start lines.

It’s the vortex that I miss.

The 45 minutes of unrelenting focus. A tiny slice of time in which I am reduced to crude physiology – violent circulation of blood, desperate dissemination of oxygen to muscles, a brain attempting to override and nullify notifications about widespread pain and suffering. This isn’t happening. it says I don’t believe you. [Shutup, legs!]

How incredible is it to be able to go out once a week, sharpen yourself into a point and cut into the deep, unpretty parts of your brain. It’s not that we are pedaling away from our troubles, because they’re back as soon as the checkered flag waves and our frozen fingers reach for the brakes to call it a day. It’s not a suspension of reality or an escape – it’s an intensification of everything that is inside. It’s a risk we take. A risk that always pays off, even when it doesn’t.

Last week on the night before my race I sat in a hot bath and studied my legs. Knee swollen and yellow from an icy early morning crash on the nationals course before it had turned into a muddy hell. Scar on my knee still plump and purplish and maybe a little tender from where I went down and jammed a piece of gravel into my flesh during the first race of the season.

My elbow is developing a constellation of shiny arcs and slashes – slivers of damaged skin in chaotic patterns that trace the memory of a fast crash on a bad day in a good town. When it’s cold my left shoulder aches from the inside out. The skin on my left hip is tight and red and angry and reflective in a single line just below the top of my hip bone.

It’s been a long season. Staring down at so much damaged skin and bone, I couldn’t help but sigh. I thought can you do this for me one more time, body? Please? Just once and then we’ll rest? It did it’s best and I can’t say that I blame it for feeling weary.

It’s good that ‘cross is ending. I get that. It can’t go on forever.

Super cheery people attempt to console us by reminding us that it’s time to ski! Or, now it’s time for long, slow rides with our friends! Winter training!

I acknowledge that their intentions are good and their points often valid, but sometimes I feel like my 13-year-old best-friend-love-of-my-life dog just died and they are standing on my doorstep with a puppy wrapped in ribbons and rainbows. It’s not time yet, man. Let me have this desolation for a little while.

I’m listening to sad songs on repeat and mourning more than just the loss of this season. There’s something about cyclocross that makes me a better person. More willing to walk with you to the edge, more willing to put my hand out and connect, more open and vulnerable and humble and terrified and elated.

More everything.

**

[Photo courtesy of PDXcross]

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But hitting the ground the way I did 12 days ago – and what happened in the time that it took me to get to the pavement – jarred me in a way that other accidents haven’t.

In my description of the crash I write about the one million thoughts that happen in the fraction of a second. What I didn’t write about was everything leading up to that moment. How I’d been in an emotional tailspin for the better part of two weeks. How I’d been in bed all day that day, working from my computer but crying intermittently and without explanation. How it had taken three people to convince me to throw a leg over the top tube.

“Go ride your bike right now!” from Sal.

“You should get out and ride your bike… right now!” from Russell.

Then a text from another friend, “Go ride!”

oki’llfuckingridemybike.

The effort it took to pull on spandex and fill water bottles is indescribable.

But sinking my teeth into those first two LT intervals? Masochistic consolation. Yes, there’s something for me here. Yes, this is the right place to be.

I might still pull over and sit on the ground and put my head in my hands but, goddamit, I’m out in the world on two wheels.

I was finished with my efforts and headed to get a pep talk when I hit the deck. Among the other previously described thoughts that went through my head as I went down were these sentiments:

Are you all happy now?

This is fucking perfect.

I knew I should have stayed in bed today.

When I stopped sliding, I remember looking up at sky and tree branches and feeling a great relief.

There, I’d done it.

The physical manifestation of whatever was emotionally kicking my ass. This blood? This road rash? This mashed shoulder and broken bike? I can deal with this shit. I can see it.

This is good.

Going to the emergency room isn’t good. Crashing isn’t good. Broken bicycles aren’t good. None of the specific results of the crash were good. But that fraction of a second when I was moving through the air toward pavement, with so many terrifying questions in my head? That feeling of uncertainty about whether I was going to walk again, be able to write, whether I would scrape half my fucking face off or put my teeth through my lip or ever be able to bathe myself again?

That part was good. It was a twig snapping. A warning in the woods. A split-second wake up call.

It was Heidi Swift don’t make me shake you by your fucking shoulders any harder. Wake the fuck up and snap out of it.

So I did.

Dealing with the immediate aftermath was enough.

Here is your body and it will tear apart in a heartbeat. You’re this fleshy lump of love and passion, so make it count while you’re in it.

Skin torn open is an amazing sight – all those layers and the blood. We’re made up of soft stuff that won’t last. We’re made up of fragile stuff that is hard to heal when it gets shredded.

For three days after the impact, I couldn’t sleep. Pain killers would lull me into a stupor and then I would immediately slip into a falling dream. Stepping off an unexpected drop from a sidewalk. Falling off the bike again. The usual shit. No surprises. But there it was, over and over and over and over again. Peace, peace, peace, peace, peace, PANIC!!!!!!!!!

Bolt upright in bed, heart beating in my chest.

They went away and I found rest. Racing on Saturday, just a few days after it happened, seemed like the only thing to do. I didn’t think very hard about it. I didn’t expect very much. I just knew I had to pedal.

The race course is easy and safe. Predictable loops with soft places to land. Friends announcing my name over the loudspeaker every lap. Teammates to split a caramel apple with after the race. A carpool, adrenaline, a little bit of mud. It felt good. Oh, right. This is bike racing. This is safe. I’m ok. I’ll be ok.

This morning I rolled out with good friends for a day of skills on Mt. Tabor. Slippery fall leaves, roots, rocks, off-camber hairpin turns, stairs and steep little punchy climbs.

We laughed and drank coffee afterward and my legs felt good.

Oh right. This is bike riding. This is safe. I’m ok.

I can still remember everything that went through my head while I was falling, but it all takes on different meaning every time I think about it. It doesn’t matter anymore because the reset button has been mashed and things are clicking along inside of me again.

My well-intentioned friends were right that day. I did need to get outside the house. Outside my head.

And, at the risk of assigning too much meaning to a random event, I might even have needed to crash.

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Beyond amazing coffee, good friends and more than 10 breweries from which to choose, there’s a distinct brand of Quiet.

It’s two days every week when I can go without talking to anyone. When I can sit in a mostly-empty living room and read books without a single distraction. In the morning I open the front door and the back door and let the cold air blow through the place. The cats do not escape (in Bend, the cats do not even exist – a luxury which keenly defies most everyday interpretations of reality). I open the front curtains and watch people in puffy coats pass through Drake Park.

I boil water in my single saucepan because I do not have (or need or want) a teapot. I make a pot of French press with a methodical patience.

I surface clean obsessively. I practice complex and mostly unimportant candle lighting rituals. I light incense. I take hot showers.

And then I read.

Sometimes reading becomes writing becomes daydreaming because holyshitgottawritethisdown, but the main takeaway is that my mind can hit a groove that feels impossible when surrounded by the all-the-time-everything nature of my go-go-go life in Portland.

The kitchen is pink, the bathroom is pink and the bedroom is barren save for the old futon that we bought as furniture (not for sleeping) back in 2003 when we lived in a tiny slice of an apartment in Potrero Hill – a neighborhood characterized by the fact that it either goes exactly straight up or exactly straight down (and so, therefore, do you).

The futon has been our guest bed for eight years and I’ve been told it’s comfortable. I’ve also been told it’s uncomfortable.

Here is what I know about it now: it’s a bed in a quiet apartment across from a river down the street from a charming downtown area in an apartment that serves as a modern day escape hatch.

Comfortable or not, it’s a soft spot for my head in a town that fist bumps my spirit, nurtures my body and is opening doors to some really exciting professional projects.

Here is a widely accepted idea that I have outgrown: you can only live in one city at a time.

I’m going to live here, there and maybe over there some day too. My car is a gypsy wagon. Tally ho.

In the middle of the week there are three hours heading south. Mountain passes now have snow. Long roads cut through them and my car etches soft curves while the landscape shoots a stun gun at my heart. It’s roadtrip quality freedom pangs tempered by a constantly evolving feeling of coming home.

There’s something special out there and it isn’t just the smell of juniper in the air.

There’s something special out there and it isn’t just my favorite miniature cycling buddy, Ms. Tina Brubaker (but damn if sometimes she isn’t the best thing I see when I roll into town!)

Bikes and Snow

Last December I raced Nationals in Bend and lost both my big toenails to mild frostbite.

Last Wednesday I rode up Skyliners to duke out some ‘cross training and found myself shivering on the first descent after LT Interval Round One. Goddam this town, I thought.

There was snow on the ground around me so I took to a side trail and practiced letting the bike move underneath me while the traction came and went. Riding snow is a little like slippery mud. You have to stop riding and start feeling. Trust your bike and follow it. Learn when it’s appropriate to apply power. Focus on finesse. Be sweet and smooth and supple.

Don’t fuck that shit up, because it’s a thing of beauty when you get it right.

Huffing uphill on Interval Round Two I passed Chris Horner, who was coming down in the opposite direction. Chris is a hard man, but he looked cold too. I got an almost imperceptible roadie finger-lift greeting from him and continued my slog up the shallow grade. I made myself keep riding by promising another trip offroad on the way back into town.

And a cup of hot cocoa upon arrival at the apartment.

With Rumple Minz.

I made this for you.

I love you this much. My heart is a chocolate you-loving machine and I want you to have this. You deserve it. Smooches.

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Summer’s been like pow! Yellow rays and warm breeze and wrapped in sweat and light and heat and adventure. So the world lights up with long days and the people come outside and run around crazy-style like they’re let free after a long detention.

It’s madness and the manic suits me just fine. At least for the moment.

I’m in Love

The heat of days comes on strong and in the summer we get tanner and leaner and more beautiful. My head turns in a million directions and at the end I fall hard. Goofy style.

It’s a city crush. A town, really. A little town in the high desert filled with bikes and clocks that run a little slower. Smiling people who drink too much happy water. Rivers full of my favorite Veloforma cycling ladies. Crits that circumvent high schools or downtown blocks or little shiny neighborhoods. Kids in bikinis on sidewalks. Candy shops with double chocolate malt balls and those old-style root beer chewies that you just can’t find anymore.

Business meetings begin with smiles and hugs and end on river park benches.

I can’t tell you why it happened because who can articulate giddiness? Who can analyze elation?

Screw it. Just smile.

Portland’s powerful fierce and filled with smart kids and creative brains and culinary amazingness. But when I point my truck at the big mountain in the east and hang a right to meander south toward Bend, I get light in the heart region.

There’s just something about it.

And there’s more of that something in my future.

A Small Race in a Hexagonal Country

So, there’s this bike race. It happens in France, where – in case you weren’t aware – there’s a place where the women wear no pants.

Anyway, there’s this bike race and it’s full of superhuman boys who are arranged (muscularly speaking) to look like men. They pedal throughout the entire country, attempting to best one another over the course of days.

It’s amazing and very, very long. Every morning I wake up and follow them on a computer screen. I’m cheering, but they probably can’t hear me.

I like the large Norwegian and the one called Jens the best. After that, it’s a Romance Novel Model called Fabian and then a little boy-faced Frenchman named Voeckler. They climb with snaking motions and grace – or sometimes mash their way over cobbles in big gears with mouths agape. Some days they are monsters and other days they float.

Either way, it’s a thing to see.

For all of July, I’ll wake up just to see them move and celebrate and cry.

All Kinds of Summer Touring

I’m out of here. Which is to say that all year long I’ve been hoarding the days of August like some kind of secret treasure. The plan is loose and probably reckless: get on the bike and start pedaling. Stop to eat and sleep and dream and possibly identify cloud-animals in the sky.

Rumor has it my rig will be pointed North, with an eye on Canada. But, truthfully, only the bike knows where we’re going – and she’s not talking.

When I get back it’s cross season.

And that’s all I have to say about that.

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I had a dream that I went on vacation and took the cats with me. I insisted on carrying them everywhere and eventually lost them.

I don’t usually interpret or write down dreams, but this one came after I calculated that I will have traveled away from home this year for 5 out of 12 months.

I have a nomadic heart but when does rootlessness become an issue? When do we need to stop and become grounded again?

Is this soil erosion?

I’m still excited.

My “Real” Job Might Kill Me

Ok, in truth I don’t have a “real” job. But the closest that I get is a regular gig I do for Columbia Sportswear that involves writing 17 cubic tons of product copy. It happens twice a year (Spring and Fall seasons) and involves briefings, multiple cross-referenced spreadsheets, education on interesting fabric technology and a couple hundred hours in front of a computer.

I’ve gotten pretty good at meting it all out in a cadence that keeps me from going nuts, but the final week is – as one might expect – always a kicker.

That was last week. And it kicked. Hard.

Packing up the Gypsy Wagon

Since my head did not explode as I’d worried might happen, I plan to pack up my Sicilian Bicycle Action Figure Boyfriend and drive the big rig south in the direction of cannoli wonderland.

There will be bikes and hiking and maybe sunburns.

There will be manicures and pedicures and probably a mall with Rosie the Shopping Queen.

It’s likely there will also be long runs through flat, suburban neighborhoods followed by big nights out with SF-grade cocktails and sparkly, wonderful downtempo DJs?

Additionally, there will be a pizza party of crazy proportions populated by little people with VERY LARGE VOICES.

Game on.

Summer is my Homeboy

It’s coming. It was hot and bright and downright technicolor last week in Portland. The whiteys came out with their long-assed legs and blinded us all.

We smiled through the eye-shielding because there ain’t much in the world that’s more satisfying than a bunch of Vitamin-D-deprived albinos slurping up an excess of sun-rays.

As the sun rolls in the adventure-planning reaches a fever pitch. There are mountains and rivers and all variety of natural majesty to visit. We have rigged a couple of touring-worthy bicycle machines for the purpose of pushing off into the sunset.

When you get right down to it, I mostly hate summer. So much humanity out in the world, pressing together in sweaty quarters. People start getting up extra early and invading my quiet morning hours (just wait til winter! They sleep in like large hibernating bears!).

The answer is escape. To the open road with heavy bags and roughly laid out itineraries. We’re heading north to the great land of Canada. For a month at least. I think.

That’s all I know for now.

*

*

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Yesterday I also had my chi rearranged by a very capable Amma practitioner. I entered and then fled Powell’s Book Store (disoriented!) and then wrote product copy for approximately 35 pieces of activewear. While I was typing, a man was having his head smashed into the pavement just outside my window.

I heard the initial crash, which sounded like a large object falling. It ended up being the first bottle that was used to knock him to the ground.

The man on the ground – the one with the bottle-smashed, bleeding head – was named Robbie.

I’ll tell you how I know that.

I met him once on a sunny day at the intersection of 50th and Lincoln. I was riding up to Tabor with tan legs straight out of Tucson. He was on a three-wheeler, drunk as a skunk.

He wheeled around in a dangerously fast 360 (his feet were bare and he was shirtless) to look at me.

“Sweet Jeeeeezuz!” he said, “You must have the most beaudiful legs in the whole werlllllld.”

I thanked him and, though he leered a little, felt entertained by the interaction. I was having a good day. It was sunny.

Later on that same ride I met a man in his 70′s riding the original racing bike of his younger days. It had been repainted lemon yellow and had beautiful lug detailing. The old man was called Banks and he explained that it had been custom-made, though he couldn’t remember by whom. Banks and I rode slowly up to the top of the volcano and then did laps together, chatting as we went. My lungs did not get a good workout in, but when I got home my heart felt full and wonderful.

That was the day I met Robbie.

Robbie is a drunk.  Sometimes a cantankerous one. I’ve found him passed out on the sidewalk more than once – shirt pulled up above his belly, 40oz still in his hand. It’s never pretty.

But he’s a good-natured drunk at least. Always smiling a little and maybe joking. Lewd and horrible also, but sort of jolly in his own way.

A week after I met him I saw him again – he was only wearing socks this time and he’d lost the three-wheeler. Yet another week passed and he had a new “old” bike. It went on and on like this. I often said hi to him, even when he was too incoherent to acknowledge me.

Last night two men beat his head into the sidewalk by my house. With their boots. Kicking and smashing.

We heard the escalation and went to the window. My neighbors were closer to the action and had the cops on scene.

A fire truck rolled up. Reports were taken. Arrests made.

Another homeless man was giving a report when two typical SE cyclists rode by on commuter bikes. They passed then circled back and one rolled up to the man who was giving a report.

“Is that Robbie”

“Robe-ee-err, you mean?”

“Yeah, Robbie.”

“Yeah, it is.”

“Is he going to be ok?”

“You know… we really don’t know that right now.”

I sat on the porch listening in the dark until there was nothing else to listen to. I don’t know what happened to Robbie but I reckon he’ll be ok.

Maybe.

I went inside and made a smoothie.

Wrote about water repellent fleece jackets. Made it sound jazzy.

Then I went to sleep and dreamed about Robbie but there was no blood. Only three-wheeled bicycles and forty ouncers.

*

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I have a way with dogs so I talk sweet to him. Crouch down real low. Make the kissy noises.

“Oh, Sammy!” I say when he comes to me and I read the tag.

A woman from the bank comes out and says, “You got him! We’ve been trying for a while!”

Cue a gathering crowd.

There’s a phone number on the cell phone so I dial it, but I’m gonna let you in on something, I was secretly hoping no one would pick up. Sammy would need a place to sleep. Sal would fall in love, the cats would be won over.

There are three of us gathered around now while the phone is ringing. No answer. Nothing. I suck a little breath real sharp in excitement.

We’re going home! I’m rescuing a dog! This is going to be great!

I have almost forgotten the 82-page document at home that I’d been rushing back to.

Just then a man in dark sunglasses walks up.  Total silence, comes right at me. I don’t notice that his cell phone is ringing until he bends over to grab Sammy.

“Oh! Is he yours?”

No response. He just hoists Sammy onto his shoulder and walks away. No “Thank you”, no explanation, no nothing.

“You’re welcome.” I say quietly.

The lady from the bank looks at me and then goes back inside.

Later as I’m driving home I see Sunglass Man throw Sammy into the backseat of a black sedan and drive away. The bumper sticker says, “Dog is my co-pilot.”

*

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All’s Fair in Love and Team Rides

Riding for Veloforma is precious and wonderful and gut-wrenching.

These girls are fast, see.

So fast. Like lightening.

The little one – made of muscles. A new recruit. A girl I worked with professionally in years past and understood to be rock solid. I dragged her out to a ‘cross race with the ladies and we hooked her. She’s 3 parts talent, 1 part Solid Muscle, 1 part Superior Determination. She’s going to be a great bike racer. She already is. I can’t hold her wheel to save my life.

Coming back to the group ride is as painful as it ought to be. We are a mob out in the west hills with all sorts of VO2 everything pounding  and mashing up the steep grades in Washington Park.

I swear to god I’m pinned before we start.

Wait. I’m fit, right? Right?

Right.

So I hang on and manage to be somewhat less demolished than on rides past. Really. I ride with bravery and valiance and I owe myself credit for that.

Still. Kerplow! All kinds of fireworks and legs with aching stories.

I’m amazed by my capacity to be obliterated.

Sal says, “I don’t know what you’re talking about – you rode great today.”

I came home and laid down on the sofa without removing shoes or booties or jersey. I could feel the bulk of my pocket contents poking into my lower back. Cell phone, pump, spare energy bar, and unused gloves forming an uncomfortable lump. I did not adjust myself. I did not move. The cats circled in, sniffing and wondering if I was dead.

“I’m dead, I’m dead.” I told them.

They didn’t believe me.

Cats don’t have much patience for drama.

Later my coach would say, “I can’t believe you set those power records – I didn’t feel like we went that hard.”

I want to stab my coach between the eyes but I probably won’t.

Satin Kegs and Tan Legs

For the first time in my life I am the tan girl.

At the team launch party I’m surrounded by ladies with translucent white skin in sexy evening wear and funny cyclist tan lines. I am the slowest maybe, but – goddamit – I am Golden in your white and shiny midsts.

Why launch a team? Why throw a party? Why walk the runway? (Yes, we walked a runway.)

Because this is fucking fantastic and you know it. Because we are adults unafraid of taking on the risk of going big and losing (or winning!). Because bike racing takes mad dedication well above and beyond the standard recreational commitment.

We take to the roads and try to kill each other. We attack and ravage and suffer and annihilate.

In the middle of a climb I want you dead. At the top of a climb I want to hug you. At the pub with a beer I want to kiss you.

We take sport to new levels by saying we’re going to do things and then making them happen. We do not settle for finishing, we want to break your fucking legs.

So, yes. We walk a runway. We throw a party. We call for a keg.

Let’s celebrate this because it’s going to be a long season.

Let’s celebrate this because it’s above and beyond the call of duty. We do it because we love it. Because we love each other. Because we love the bike.

For the Love of Brubaker

Women can be finicky, right?

I struggled for years to find the ones I liked. They were universally strong-willed, difficult, and shit-disturbing. The pattern did not surprise me.

On this list are women who listen and reflect and engage and inspire.

And then there are women who also explode and light up the sky.

That’s Tina Brubaker, in case you were wondering.

Teammate and friend, local ass-kicker and kick-ass mommy, Grade A Human Joy Assault Rifle (BAM BAM BAM YOURE HAPPY) and general Aura of Amazingness… there is no one quite like Brubaker.

I call myself ten thousand shades of lucky just to get to be around the Tiny Attacker, let alone ride in her presence.  She’s encouraging, hilarious, and fiery-licious.

Let this stand as my official testimony: Tina Brubaker is God’s gift to Oregon. Let alone the world. Let alone the universe.

Thank you, Tina – for being one million times rad-tastic. One million ways amazing.

We love you.

Especially me.

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