"Of Sweat, Snow, and Early Season Spirit"

Most Noble SnowShoe Warriors!

I swear I am going to dedicate the rest of my life toward becoming a "United Nations Ambassador of Sport Snowshoeing"! Our beloved sport is just waaaaay too much FUN to remain so unknown to the masses!  Give me one solid reason why Sport Snowshoeing should remain a 'silent sport'!  If freakin' "Ice Dancing" is allowed Olympic Medal Status, why is not the most traditional winter sport of all time deserving of the same sporting status?  Hell, even a 6th Grader knows that entire civilizations of the Northern Hemisphere owe their very genetic survival to our ancient snowshoe athletes - hunter/gatherers pursuing wooly mammoths - wearing native "webs" upon their feet, body hunched against roaring wind and snow, slowly parading like hide-covered zombies across a frozen Bering Strait. Give my heart and mind one reason why Sport Snowshoeing should become yet another forlorn casualty of a nation addicted to easily-televised arena sports hocking their fancy cars and cheap beers. A whole lot good THAT fitness mentality is serving our nation!  How damn cool would Monday Night SnowShoe Racing be on TV?  I can see it now: "Welcome to MONDAY NIGHT SNOWSHOE RACING, Sponsored by the USSSA;  No reproduction or replication of this telecast is permitted except by the value you place on your own sweat and spirit out in beautiful nature!"

Let's face it, we are ON TO SOMETHING with our sport; it's gonna pop soon...it's gotta!  Sport Snowshoeing is one of those activities that take a minute to learn yet a lifetime to truly master.  I still learn subtle techniques each time I strap on my 'webs'!

More reasons to make Snowshoeing more popular are easy to find: Snowshoeing is inexpensive compared to other winter sports. It can be enjoyed in a majority of snow and terrain conditions (ever try "SandShoeing"?...it's a BLAST!). And you can't beat the Health Angle; for a nation dying by the millions from obesity and lack of conscious movement. Well, how 'bout this tidy fact; Snowshoeing burns away at least 500 kcals per hour!  Crossing 'shoers over into the mainstream awareness should be a no brainer; with all the millions of walkers, joggers, and runners that traumatize their joints by pavement each day, don't ya think we could turn at least a few million of these Cardio Warriors onto the LIGHT of SNOWSHOEING?

I think so. Dare to share what you love; Share the sport of snowshoeing this winter with someone you love! I'll be holding High Performance Yoga and Snowshoeing Retreats this winter, come join me!

My original plan was to devote this second edition of "RUNNING ON WATER" to some training information, however, last week I had so much fun snowshoeing, I just have to share the experience with you.  Hey, how about next time you find yourself driving past Flagstaff, stop for a second, give me a holler, and maybe you and I will charge up and down the San Francisco Peaks and throw some snowy rooster tails like comets behind us! Maybe you will even want to attempt to beat my Course Record on a local workout I have come to call, "The Agassiz Ecstasy Workout."  Sound fun? Oh, it is, baby, it is! Here is my Journal from that Workout...enjoy and may your own snowshoe workouts be blessed with the Sacred Sweat of Inner Reward!

Next up on RUNNING ON WATER: 3 Key Training Movements for Snowshoe Warriors!

I bow to you,

Coach Ilg

Dear Diary;

Yesterday; cranked off a high intensity "run/snowshoe/run duathlon" on the Agassiz Peak course. Took a new line from the Ski Basin to SW Spur of Agassiz Peak and back. Car to car in 1 hour and 45 minutes.

Tracked a medium-sized bobcat before startling a mama deer with four young ones feasting upon the remaining autumn grasses in hurried manner.  Deer know Winter like no man can. A little higher up; Elk tracks punctuate the flimsy snow cover. My effort is deepening and so my ego starts complaining and manufacturing myriad excuses not to push myself. Using pranayams (yogic breathing exercises) as a mantra, I stabilize my Chattering Mind onto the rhythm of my conscious breathing. it requires a lot of mental stability to become flexible to pain, particularly as I drive my knees higher and faster up the ski slopes.

11,400':  I leave all tracks behind me as I start chipping the front crampons of my sport snowshoes into a 28% wall of ice, rock, and crusted snow.  My ascent line gives my ego pause. It is an ambitious line, speckled and fractured by a thousand tips of cold, granite boulders.  I assume my patented, "San Juan Scramble" I learned in Durango, Colorado as a kid. This rather ungainly yet effective technique is easily imagined; think of an ape, clambering on all fours, speeding upward on near vertical terrain in frenzy as if with his head on fire! That is me in this moment; man becomes ape!  I have fastened my Soul to the summit ridge and nothing, no fear or discomfort or ungainly technique shall hinder my union of Soul and summit! I've kept my heart rate plastered at around 180 bpm for 45 minutes already. Breath now comes in spurts and establishing harmony with it becomes a matter of will. Training in altitudes such as these amplifies all effort and one must allow time to recover in the days following hard efforts in the high hills.

My yogic breathing produces a familiar and cherished sense of 'laghutva' or 'bodily lightness.' I crave this light, strong, and etheric feeling.  The effort numbs ego. If you ever meet obnoxious folk, you can rest assured one thing; they are only obnoxious because they are not training hard enough.

The cold, pranic ocean around me moves inside.. I relax my side guts where unconscious breathing results in mini-cramps and hinders performance.  breathing now becomes true yoga, true union; I arrive at a metaphysical station whereupon the very lungs of the UniVerse "breathe" me.  Sounds of cleats stabbing snow.  Ice gloved pine needles give whistle to the mountain wind.  From Mother Earth and Father Sky arises a natural chant which seems to purify me as my cleats repetitively tatter away, drum like, upon this tightly stretched hide of steep ice and snow. The steep uphill seems endless. Only rarely on this monstrous, ancient wave of rock and ice dare I look down. One moment of unconscious technique, one moment of paltry focus at the sake of suffering or of doubt and I would become an instant lycra-clad cannonball...a hurtling collection of limbs and screams until my plunging body hit less steep snow, or perhaps, that clump of pines waaaaay down there.  Punching fists into the snow, clinging here and there onto rockbergs which poke through the glossy snow like shark fins. I feel alive, a little scared, and spontaneously empty.

I top out at 12,250'. Below me, clouds wither into the dry southwest air.  Around me, Ravens, dozens of them. Their black-as- pitch wings auspiciously swirl. uncommonly calm air.  Their call notes are quaint; unlike their Ravenspeak at lower altitudes.

Here I feel most at home. whenever I mix high intensity cardio effort with the energetics of high altitude terrain, a psycho physiologic switch is thrown and illuminates the thin veil between the microcosm of Self and the macrocosm of nature. thus, I find my Highest Yoga; my richest Source of Union. I linger too long in my meditation and pranayama on this throne of the Mountain Gods and feel a chill build behind my sweat soaked clothes.  I plunge willingly over the precipice and fall like a pendant into the Abyss. to successfully reverse-navigate this highly technical terrain without killing myself, I face into the mountain and slide like an oilcloth down the icy, rock-strewn slope in dozens of self-controlled slides.  I descend rapidly, gleefully, mountain goat like...Sensei Kishiyama, my Taoist Yoga and martial art Teacher, would always advise me, "Move with the spirit of wild animals."  I do, and within 90 seconds, several hundred feet of dangerously steep mountain terrain are left in my wake. Starting to feel cocky, I lose focus and footing; a side traverse sends me falling 25 feet in a flicker of an instant. I feel a gouging in my right shin courtesy of my left snowshoe crampon. Before the Abyss gathered more momentum upon my body and turned me into Hamburger Helper, I rolled into a Self Arrest position. I come to a heart-thumping stall, teetering on the edge of a (thankfully) very stoic boulder.

"To those of aberrant minds, the place

is just earth, stone, water, and trees.

To mistaken intellects, it appears as

solid, inanimate objects.

To Practitioners, appearances have no

intrinsic nature.

Those of Pure Vision, it is a celestial

palace full of deities.

To those with Realization, it is the radiant

luminosity of innate awareness."

all there is

is