Health by Heidi

 Bonking.  Hitting the wall.  Lead legs.  Crashing.  Running out of gas.  So many names.  One simple thing.  Most of us have heard of it.  Several of us have experienced it.  It’s that thing that happens when you don’t fuel enough during a sporting event, and suddenly your body begins to betray you.  Everything feels harder than it should. Then things start to feel impossible, and only get worse.  You may know the feeling intimately.  For me, the initial stages of a bonk vary depending on what activity I’m engaged in, but generally it starts with a massive case of grumpy.  If I’m on my bike, I start to get really mad at my hair.  More specifically, I start to hate my braid.  REALLY HATE my braid.   Why won’t this fucking braid stay off my shoulder.  Just stay in the middle of my back.  Why is that stupid braid hanging down my back.   I HATE my braid.   And on and on it goes.  If...

 Any outdoor enthusiast has that one special place.  Whether it’s that certain mountain or special trail or specific piece of road, it becomes the favorite.  We may have other spots that we run or hike or bike more, but this one is the ONE.  We’ve been on it enough to know all its subtleties. There’s that big ponderosa at mile one that I can’t walk by without stopping and pressing my face to its bark, inhaling its spicy vanilla scent.  There’s that bush just beyond the last corner that tells me I’m almost to the top. The rock on the left just fell a few years ago after a heavy rainstorm.  You know that place.  It starts to feel like an old friend. That place for me on my bike is the double pass ride from Sula to North Fork and back.  I summit Lost Trail pass two times.  I love climbing.  Put me on a high mountain pass and my heart soars. Every spring, I wait anxiously for the roads to clear of snow and the road crews to go through and sw...