The Chilkoot Pass

I just returned from a week long cruise to Alaska. It was like jumping forward two months in time to 60-65 degree weather and misty rain that is so common in the Pacific Northwest. I knew that it would be a big challenge to somehow maintain my miles and not gain the average 1 pound a day they say you do on a cruise.

The first time I ran on the ship on a treadmill. It had been quite a while before I did the hamster dance on the… (oh darn… I just finished a 7 mile run and my brain is just too tired to finish that sentence) Anyway… the miles on the treadmill were agonizing. I didn’t have any music and it seemed like time crawled. It was horrid. I am rethinking my wife’s suggestion to get a treadmill for the basement for the winter. I don’t know if I can handle running on that thing for so long. My miles fly by when I am running outside… but on the treadmill… the odometer seems stuck.

For the 2nd run we were docked in Skagway, so I decided to just run off the boat. It was very windy and cold at the bottom of the gangway as I waited for my GPS watch to synch to the new timezone. I was thinking… what the heck am I doing? This is NUTS!

I was supposed do a 5 mile run, but somewhere along the way my brain froze and I decided I would just do 8 and skip the 3 the next day. That sounded like a fine idea. Except…

Skagway is not a very big town. I suppose it is about 2 miles through most of the inhabited parts… but I do know for sure that when you head N NE from the docks toward Canada… at about 2.5 miles you start up a canyon leading to the historic Chilkoot Pass. Bottom line is that I had not really trained on any hills to this point. Just gentle sloping ones… not anything like what I ran into. And for my first 8 mile run ever no doubt.

The thing is… I was stressed from the trip on the ship… the constant bumping into people… lines…mass humanity… not to mentioned trying to referee my 2 and 8 year old step kids. I was determined not to turn around until I hit the 4 mile mark. I didn’t, but that last 1.5 miles of the first half was brutal. If it wasn’t for the awe-inspiring beauty I was running though… I would have actually been work. As it was however… the run was one of the highlights of my trip.