keeping things short

(due to impending Very Long Things)

I am sitting directly in a ray of sunshine in the window of Pacific Crest Coffee, hands down the best coffee shop in Truckee. The auto shop next door is swapping my snow tires for summer ones. The roads up here are still half-covered in ice, but Saturday, I head across the great barren expanse of Nevada, season officially in season, as it were. I’m battling a mix of dread and anticipation.

Maybe it’s superstition, but I haven’t wanted to talk too much about this race around the corner. I’m scared, but like, in a fun way. Seems like all my favorite things begin in that space of fear, like often sheer terror if I’m being honest— mountain biking, skiing, rock climbing when I was younger. Ocean swimming, writing newsletters for an audience. There’s always a period of Why Do I Get Myself Into These Things.

Last year, I raced Epic Rides 24 Hours of Old Pueblo with 3 other girls (hi Maude hi Caro hi Lauren!), all faster than me and with much more cumulative mountain bike experience. The course is a 16-mile XC mountain bike loop in the desert outside of Tuscon. You complete as many laps as you can from 12 noon Saturday to 12 noon Sunday. We smashed the team lap record. The event was unlike anything I’d ever lined up for, the energy strumming, the wide open desert and alien chollas lending a mystical quality to it all. Unpacking all my dusty belongings after coming home, I found a sticker from the race. I stuck it on my car, a little promise to myself to come back.

maude! sunburns! delirium!

last year’s sleeping arrangement. this year? no sleep!!

I guess I always knew I’d be taking the endurance thing to new extremes. If there’s one thing I’m confident in, it’s my ability to keep going. One part ultramarathon genetics from my parents, one part stubbornness. Probably more stubbornness.

My memories from races tend to be mostly blurred, but there is one minute of last year’s 24-hour relay that I remember with extreme clarity. It’s the dead of night; I’m a little shaky from the caffeine gel I slammed pre-lap, nervous about my night-riding abilities but knowing I have a responsibility to my team. We’re crushing it, knocking out laps one by one with an almost absurd level of consistency. I know I can only be a few minutes slower this time around before I start to sabotage our chances at the record. So maybe I’m in a bit of a negative place.

One mile into the lap, there’s a steep rutted-out fire road, half sand, and impossible to read by a waning helmet light. I see a girl just up the hill from me. Something about her pedaling is familiar. It’s Lael Wilcox.

I idolize Lael, and I like, do not idolize people. But it’s her fearlessness that puts me in awe. It’s wild to me, and absolutely enviable. I’ve heard her talk, nonchalant, about mountain lion encounters, about running out of water miles from civilization, about ending up in situations that most people would call emergency help from, and Lael, Lael is fine. Lael seems to always be fine.

I ride up next to her and in a small voice, say “hi Lael!”, not expecting a response. She’s been riding since noon the day before and I guess I assumed that would do things to a person. Lael is fine. “Amity!!!!!!!!!!” She’s beaming. Radiating contentment. We cheer for each other and I push ahead. That’s all I can think about the rest of the race. How at peace she seems, how I want that for myself. How badly I want to know what happens, hour 14, hour 17, hour 20.

So here I am. Race in a week and a day. No idea what will happen, bursting with the possibility of what might.

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music on rotation this week:

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sourdough dark chocolate granola

If you follow me on instagram, you may remember a sourdough granola recipe I posted as part of the Other Means publication— this is yet another riff on an endlessly riffable formula. Chocolate cereal is super popular in Europe but somehow not as big a thing here in America. But when your cereal milk is also chocolate milk…..yo.

The older your starter, the more sour/less sweet this will be, but since we’re not relying on it here for any sort of leavening, feel free to use whatever’s been languishing in your fridge. If you don’t maintain a sourdough starter, I don’t recommend this recipe. It’s short on fats and sugars compared to a standard granola because the discard helps bind everything together in place of those.

preheat oven to 350º

prep one full-size baking sheet with parchment paper to cover it (necessary!)

melt

45g butter (or 45g olive oil if you want to keep it vegan) in large pot over medium-low heat.

stir in

100g honey or maple syrup or a combo

70g maple sugar or coconut sugar or brown sugar

40g cocoa powder

100g nut butter

1 tsp salt

stir constantly until everything has melted together and smells really nice. turn off heat.

add

1.5 tsp vanilla

150g sourdough discard (more or less, doesn’t matter too much)

230g chopped nuts (hazelnuts are so good here. sliced almonds too. use whatever you have)

200g oats

75g puffed cereal (rice, quinoa, etc., not *essential* but adds a super good crispiness/lightness)

might be difficult to mix at first but keep stirring until everything is well coated.

dump out onto the baking sheet.

ok here’s where technique comes in! it’s gonna look like way too much for one standard sheet— wet your fingers, or a spoon if you don’t like getting your hands in everything, and press everything down into a super solid uniform layer. as compressed as you can get it, till it’s in a perfect flattened rectangle. like this!

smush it!

bake for 20 minutes. remove from oven, and with a spatula, cut into 8 or so squares and flip so the outside edges are now on the inside and vice versa. It’ll start to break up a little at this point and that’s fine. we’re just trying to make sure it bakes evenly.

put back in for 15 minutes, then check on it. I usually do one more rotation, moving the less-done pieces to the outside and the toastier ones to the center, breaking it into smaller pieces as needed. It can be hard to tell doneness with the cocoa, but trust your instinct.

it’s done when everything is a shade darker and the pieces crisp up completely after cooling somewhat. you can always take a little test piece out to judge. I like to turn the oven off when it’s close, and leave it in there to cool, still checking on it frequently to make sure it isn’t burning.

when it’s still warm, if you wanna be extra, sprinkle it with chocolate chips so they melt onto the cereal a little bit. Trader Joe’s has some 100% cacao chips that are great here if you like it more bittersweet (sorry, Canadians). cocoa nibs would also be great!

let cool and store in an airtight container for up to several weeks. enjoy as cereal or keep in larger pieces for snacking.