1982. I believe that was the year I ran my first fun run. I’m not sure. I kept all the shirts, but many of them back then didn’t have dates on them. Maybe the organizers thought this would be the first and only time this race would be run. Sometimes, it was. The Denny’s Grand Slam Fun Run comes to mind. Then there was the Diet Pepsi 10,000 Meter Series, Cheney’s Cowabunga Road Race, The Bar-S Stampede 10K, KDRK’s Run in the Country, Green Bluff’s Cherry Picker’s Trot, and Medical Lake’s Only Fools Run at Midnight.

Most of these races are no more, but a couple continue. I’ve been holding onto these shirts, some for 40 years. Some, like the 1983 Odessa Deutchesfest Fun Run and the Shadle Park Scot Trot look like a first-time DIY print job. And I love that. The designs have been invented and reinvented; the style and fit have changed; fabric has evolved. My pile of race shirts grew over the years as I underwent my own evolution.

I was a different runner when I started collecting shirts, in more ways than one. Now I am in my 60s—the kids are raised, I don’t work for anybody, I have a lot of time, and a 10-mile run may be the hardest thing I do all week. So, I am running more than I ever have. Just like the race t-shirts, my body and my mind have also transformed.

About six years ago, I transitioned. I made my body match my mind. The beginning of the decision to do this was hatched at an ultramarathon my wife and I were running in the desert of Southern California. Through hormone replacement therapy, counseling, and surgeries, I became the person I recognized in the mirror.

It was a hard time to go through. And it cost me. It changed many things in my life. My relationships with my family and my friends changed. My transition became a news story because I was the captain of a Spokane fire station. What I was doing, what I did, sucked the air out of so many rooms. 

But I kept on running. I ran to work in the morning. Ran home the next morning. It was the constant in my life. I trained for new races. It was really hard.

After my transition, I was at least two minutes per mile slower than before. At the Spokane River Run 25k, my now-more-speedier wife became frustrated with my pace. “Really!? You can’t run any faster than this?!” I caught my breath enough to gurgle a “No. I can’t.”

When I hear pundits and politicians talk about how “men” are becoming women just to win races and medals, I have to laugh. Like so much of their rhetoric about so many things, they couldn’t be more wrong.

These days, I am running farther and farther, seemingly getting slower and slower. And that’s okay. I plod along Spokane’s streets and trails—the same places I have always run. Sometimes I wonder if anyone recognizes me as that guy who used to run by years ago. Whatever happened to him?

I know that the way I now look causes some people to wonder at what they’re seeing. I know that being out there, being visible, being active, living my life, running my miles makes a few angry people even more angry.

Frankly, that makes me happy. What runner hasn’t had to (smilingly) put up with angry drivers having a bad day? Maybe me being out there running gives a few trans people a little hope. I am not going to hide, and if they don’t want to, they don’t have to either. And that makes me happy too. 

Now, at the end of the day, after my miles, I put a new, giant quilt around me. Each panel of the quilt is from one of my old race shirts. A pile of old stuff made into one, new, useful thing. I think about all those runs from decades ago. I think about all the running ahead of me. I feel warm and glad to still be able to run—on the trails, on the ice, on the snow, in the rain, in the heat, on the streets—the same old places I always ran, but now so much better.

An avid hiker and runner, retired fire captain and paramedic Maeve Griffith is the author of a not-very-popular novel and even-less-popular book of poetry. She hosts the weekly KYRS radio program “Out and About” (Tuesdays, 4:00-4:55 p.m., PDT). She lives in Spokane with her wife, Sarah. When she’s not on the trails, she’s either in her garden, or in her studio painting, and is often seen in local theater productions. 

Find more Last Page stories and articles about running in the OTO archives.

The post My Evolution as a Runner as Told in Race Shirts appeared first on Out There Venture.

The closer we get to ski season, the stronger is the pull of a favorable forecast coinciding with free time for a turn of the pedals. Obedient to the call of good autumn weather, I recently rode out of Harrison, Idaho, up the Trail of the Coeur d’Alenes, greeted by e-bikers smiling ear to ear. Even the fish swimming about in the creeks along the path seemed to agree that this was a fine day to be out.

I only made it 50 miles before the call of the sleeping bag dragged me to a halt in Wallace, Idaho.

The next day promised to be as lovely as the first, and I would need all the sleep I could get if I wanted to finish the remaining 200+ miles of my intended route. There was a huckleberry milkshake with my name on it in St. Regis, Montana, and I was determined to get to it by the most interesting route I could find before milkshake season closed out. (Does milkshake season “close”?)

And “interesting” was just what I got the next morning before dawn when the route turned north from Mullan, Idaho, up the Idaho Centennial Trail.

I step-step-DRAG, step-step-DRAGGED myself up to a 6,500-foot ridge that overlooked Lookout Pass on I-90 and the ski hill next to the pass. Farther up the ridge was a breathtaking view of Upper Glidden Lake, a spot I’m definitely eyeballing for the dog days of summer in 2022.

After a quick gas station hotdog in Thompson Falls, Montana, I headed over the next mountain to St. Regis and the aforementioned milkshake. It was a comparatively gentle climb on Cadillac gravel (luxuriously smooth) up to 5,000 feet, with some rather inviting campgrounds on both sides of the mountain.

With the milkshake down the hatch, I embarked upon the Route of the Olympian, a truly delightful rail trail that is often overlooked because it lives in the shadow of the Hiawatha.

The big tunnel of the Hiawatha was closed for the season by a castle gate built to withstand an attack from an army of mountain trolls, so I took the bypass that climbs up to the elevation of Mount Spokane.

A bright and shining moon peeked over a mountainous horizon, guiding my way, though I skipped the rest of the Hiawatha on account of the lions, tigers, and bears (moose, more likely) that my imagination placed in each of the remaining tunnels. Along the highway to St. Maries, I gazed by moonlight upon all the swimming holes that my wife and I had jumped in on a much warmer ride in years gone by.

What I thought was the final push for the finish turned into a quandary about why the sun was rising in the west, ending this late season ramble a little later than I’d anticipated.

But I eventually got there. I think.

Originally published as “Shoulder Season Rambles” in the November-December 2021 issue.

Justin M. Short’s rambles will continue into the snowy months; however, he’s justifiably concerned about sub-freezing temperatures on The Big Lonely, a 350-mile bikepacking race out of Bend, Oregon, that he may or may not have finished by the time you read this.

Find more bikepacking stories in the OTO archives.

To read more of Justin M. Short’s amusing essays, visit the Everyday Cyclist column.

The post Fall Bikepacking Rambles, From Idaho to Montana appeared first on Out There Venture.

As I write this, I’m waiting for a visit from one of my best friends who I met riding a tricycle in a park in Portland 21 years ago. It’s interesting what draws us together as cyclists. Sometimes it’s the places we ride or the random meet-ups on a favorite trail. A conversation turns into exchanged phone numbers and future adventures. 

Sometimes it’s purpose that draws us together, as in the case of GASUP (Get Around Spokane Using Pedals), the local commuter Facebook page where riders post notices and events, discuss advocacy issues and safe bike routes, and engage in good natured, bike oriented banter. That was how I recognized Out There’s Everyday Cyclist columnist Hank Greer when I began having run-ins with him on the morning commute.  

As with the tricycle, sometimes it’s obscure equipment choices that draw us together. In 2012 my wife pointed out a peculiar quirk that had escaped my notice, though I, too, was a participant in this odd behavior: The knowing nod of approval exchanged between riders of road bikes with flared drop bars. On most road bikes, those little flam-dangles that we call “the drops” extend straight down from the brake hoods. Flared drops, on the other hand, flare outward, offering leverage and stability for riding off the beaten path.  

These bars were rare until the recent explosion of the gravel bike, most of which come stocked with flared drop bars. I got my own first set on an early 80s Specialized Sequoia, the first ever production touring bike from a major company, that came with Wilderness Trail Bikes’ first ever production flared drop bars. I got that bike from a second hand shop in Santa Cruz, California, in 1998 and rode that thing all over the West Coast and the Rocky Mountains. Although I broke and replaced just about everything on that bike multiple times—except the bars—I still get a warm and fuzzy feeling recalling those adventures.  

About four years ago I was walking dogs by a house I had previously lived in when I happened upon a shirtless ponytailed guy working on an ancient VW diesel pickup with a flared drop bar touring bike loaded on the back. “I’m gonna be friends with that dude,” I said to myself, or perhaps out loud to the dogs. And that was how I met former EDC columnist Justin Skay, whose enormous Chaco flip-flops I am attempting to fill with my own first installment of Out There Venture Everyday Cyclist column. Those flared drops on his bike led to numerous rides down roads, up trails, and over mountains in the rain, hail, sleet, snow, and blistering sun.  

There’s something intimate about turning pedals with another human being— from two commuters pass in opposite directions on a dark street at an obscene hour to a “soul train” of good friends sailing down a jump line at Beacon Hill mountain bike park. Or it could be a group of riders sipping a cup of bike-brewed coffee with David Jones, Spokane’s own Coffee Outside meet-up organizer, at some excellent spot along the river. Whatever it is, let’s keep those pedals turning, and let’s keep the rubber side down—unless your name is Grant Breshears, who is seen upside down at the jump park as often as he’s right side up. 

Justin M. Short has recently been drafted to write the Everyday Cyclist column for OTO. Watch his “Lockdown Washington Mountain Bike Race” on YouTube—a Stay Home, Stay Healthy-inspired spoof on the 2020 XWA race. 

The post Bike Friends appeared first on Out There Venture.