Mertarvik (muk-ta-vik)

I'm a "dad" again. His name is Frankie and he's a young village pup. He was born in November 2020 in Mertarvik.

Don't let his napping fool you, he's an energetic puppy for sure!

Mertarvik is the Yup'ik word for "place to gather water from a spring." Regardless of what you think or feel about global warming, and I certainly don't want to get into that question here, the Yup'ik village of Newtok is eroding in the Ningliq River. Where there once was the flowing Newtok River, now its current sits still and collects sediment, a wonderful drinking water pond going through a salinification process, and peoples homes have been demolished and turned into shipping containers before they were washed away.

National Geographic Article

I've never been to the west coast of Alaska. I never had a reason to. My mother and her side of my family are from the village of Sleetmute, which is on the Kuskokwim River where I've had the pleasure of racing my fat bike multiple times. I haven't been back to Sleetmute since I was a toddler. 

It has been a quite the adjustment for me. The culture here is different from the community that I am in back home. We enjoy high priced beer, drive rather expensive vehicles to jobs that pay us a high wage. We ride bicycles and partake in sooooo many hobbies that cost a huge amount of money. The folks in Mertavik live a much different life. There's berry picking, and bird egg picking. There's fishing, and hunting. Moose aren't abundant in this village, although occasionally I see one swimming across the river. No doubt escaping any would be hunters. The children and dogs run wild, at least the ones not on a leash 24/7. The locals build saunas, I guess that's pretty much what they do for a night out on the town. The folks around town have different priorities. Not necessarily better or worse, just different from the ones you and I have.

I didn't bring a bike here. After another long season of riding and some winter-spring racing, my grip strength is down and my fingers tingle and go numb from time to time. I work everyday, 12 hours a day. I am the lead inspector/assistant project engineer for the building of the airport. We are currently building subgrade, from which we will build the structure of the airport, the airport lighting, and the maintenance buildings. It's a two year project and we are hauling a LOT of shot rock. Maybe this year we will be done with that portion of the work. 

Back to the bike. Lets see....where was I...not riding regularly has been quite an adjustment on top of the small village experience. I've had some recent life changes that have also thrown me a curveball and added a lot of confusion, sadness, and happiness. I guess that's why I'm writing this blog post. I thought I would share how I'm dealing with those challenges, and I hope that somewhere along the way I can start to prepare myself for another attempt at the Iditarod Trail Invitational, some new life challenges and a fast run at the Arizona Trail Race 300 next spring. 

With the physical aspects of my life, I've had some body imbalances materialize over the past few years both from riding and from accidents. 

• Some of you might know that I've had some shoulder injuries over the past couple of years. I would say there are good days and there are less than good days with my shoulder. I continue to work on overhead stability and strength. 
• My right leg has had some nagging issues for the past few years. My foot and ankle has had some sort of pain that is hard to describe, primarily it comes and goes at random times. After separating my AC joint in 2019 I was hiking a lot and in the process rolled my ankle multiple times that summer. I spent most of 2020 not hiking due to some Achilles aches, and also my foot would immediately act up. My knee has had some patellofemoral pain for awhile. When going to PT this past year my therapist did some quick movement tests and found that my quadricep muscles were particularly tight and suggested that I do some work in that area along with building up my glute strength. The idea behind this is to work on opposing muscles, allowing some more mobility in this aspect.
• Another area of concern has been my ability to squat. My calf muscles are tight and they don't have much strength. I decided this summer that I wanted to be able to do a pistol squat. In order to do that movement I need to get down low in the squat position, and with my lack of mobility and strength in my calf muscles that isn't going to happen. So I've been working on calf raises. I've moved to single leg calf raises and am working towards being able to do 3-4 sets of 10 per leg.

Overall on the body side, I feel like I'm starting to get it dialed in. My body is healing from volumes of cycling and the running I've been doing this summer feels much better with basically no pain. I'm pretty happy with my adjustments and am looking forward to getting back into training when I get back from Mertarvik this fall.

If you're not interested in emotional or personal issues I suggest that you move to another article or post on the web. :-)

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Are you still there? 

Mental health. This has become quite a challenge for me. Much like physical injuries or falling off your bike mental health and recovery are also a challenge. In my professional life, the past few years I've decided that I wanted to challenge myself by taking on more responsibility. I found that the previous position I held became a little stale, unfulfilling if you want to call it that. As an amateur athlete I strive to find my best. I'm always looking for areas to work on and develop. I want to be challenged and I want to be stressed in productive ways. I want to see what I'm made of. 

But I also realize that racing and performance are not only what makes for a happy life. Perhaps this is just 40 year old Clint speaking. 20 year old Clint would think that comment was crazy. I've been through a few relationships where I am not happy with how I treated people that I cared about. I don't care for how those significant others and some of my best friends have treated me. I'm not happy with how I've ignored the feelings and ultimately the death of my mother. I don't care for how I've disassociated with people I care deeply about. I don't care for the fact that I didn't finish college. I guess some professionals might call it trauma. I've found that I have a lot of experience with training my body to endure long endurance events but yet, I haven't taken any time to experience some of the feelings and think about the things I want in life. Perhaps this is my midlife crisis.

Kurt Refsnider has a mantra/saying, "Normalize Difficult." I also came to this revelation right around the time that he was talking about it and it was wonderful to hear someone put into words what I am learning and was feeling. But how would you apply that to life outside of sport? In endurance sports, we're doing this because we love riding bicycles. Nobody is twisting my arm and telling me I have to push a loaded bike over Rainy Pass, I'm not starving or thirsty or cold due to circumstances in my life, but because I payed and signed up for it.   

I've never thought about what I've truly wanted, I've only tried to keep the ones I loved happy so they wouldn't leave. I spend more time trying to understand difficult contractors in my job than I do the ones that I love. And it's not fair and definitely not what I want and I'm growing very tired of it.

I was warned of this many years ago. Racing can be a lonely road. Days and days training with not one person to speak to. Many nights sitting around my table eating alone. And when I do spend time with people I'm usually toasted from some silly long trainer ride or two-a-days. Sometimes I think about the "counterlife" as I've read in the book "The Glass Hotel." An alternate place where I have a wife, child, house, and dog. I think how it would be to meet my child's teacher. Having an argument about finances with my wife. Seeing my child take it's first steps. Cutting the grass every Sunday. Teaching my child how to play baseball or helping them with their homework. Retiring and running off to explore the country with my significant other. Gaining weight #dadbod. 

So I sit here typing in the middle of nowhere. My house is empty. I wish to miss someone. I don't know....anything. It's a disturbing feeling to exist without a known purpose. It feels like I'm mindlessly going through the motions. No children, no serious relationship, and nothing on the horizon. Sometimes I don't even know which direction to look. Racing my bicycle on the Iditarod Trail has taught me so much. But it hasn't taught me the meaning of it all. 

This is perhaps my great life challenge. Stay tuned folks, some changes are coming about...