Kokopelli Trail FKT

Watch the film: https://youtu.be/Sq-kcxMBrVA?si=BxIlT6FIbKRW6iVY

It was pitch black outside, except for the headlights of our vehicles in the parking lot. I was sitting in the car as Clayton pulled my bike out of the back of the truck. The light, icy breeze whispered across the road. It was time.

This whole thing was months in the making. In January of 2023, I was starting a new contract with Competitive Cyclist after a highly successful filming of my first ever FKT attempt on the Whole Enchilada the year before. Now, I sat in my home dreaming about what our next film might entail. I kept a running list of ideas that popped into my head. All good ideas, but there was one I couldn’t shake: The Kokopelli Trail.

This 137 mile trail with a current FKT of 13 hours and 7 minutes completely captivated my mind. I was a little obsessed. I found myself mindlessly googling things about the trail. Everything from pacing to terrain to the meaning of the Kokopelli. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Really, the challenge chose me. I was locked in.

Over the ensuing months, I raced my season, doing research on the back end to prepare for the Kokopelli. Clayton and I pre-rode the trail during the only time I had on the calendar without races: July. This has got to be the hottest possible time for humans to ride the Kokopelli. We were scorched. It was 110 degrees.

When the dust settled from my season in October, I didn’t tell anyone that my biggest challenge was still ahead. In just over a week I would attempt my longest ride to date.

In the week leading up to the challenge, I was preoccupied with the weather. Before I even got out of bed in the morning I had the Moab weather open on my phone as I agonized over another drop in temperature.

When the weather took a dive on our anticipated date (October 30st) I felt lost. I finally turned to Clayton and asked him what I should do. We went around and around about different possibilities, but I finally told him to just tell me what day I would do it. I needed to be told. You see, when we race bikes, we show up no matter what the conditions are and we face them. I needed to stop guessing and start doing. He picked the date for me and he moved the attempt up from the horribly cold October 30th to the still very cold October 29th and that was that.

On October 29th, my alarm went off at 3 am. I robotically put on my perfectly laid out equipment and I ate as much as humanly possible.

When we loaded up the car to go to the trailhead, I exclaimed that it wasn’t nearly as cold as I thought it would be. On the ride to the trail, I announced that I wouldn’t use hand warmers because it “wasn’t that cold.”

Clayton responded as he peered up to the top of the mountains with the full moon shedding light on what awaited me, “Don’t be surprised if you hit a dusting of snow. You can do it.”

I stepped out of the vehicle and stuffed my pockets with all my planned nutrition. Then I grabbed one extra Liquid Shot just in case. The fear was starting to hit me.

Clayton gave me a hug, he gave me words of wisdom, and right before I pushed off, I started to cry. I rode off into the darkness before anyone could see the tear fall down my face. I wasn’t sad. I wanted to do this more than anything. I was afraid, and that single tear was an automatic response to the fear taking over my body. After months and months of planning, the magnitude of what I was trying to do was hitting me finally, right as I started.

As I accelerated into the darkness the quiet enveloped me. It was just God and me now and the only words I would say for the next 137 miles would be prayers. The cold morning air hit my face and rhythmic breathing filled the air. I was alone. I kept imagining a zoomed out view of the mountain, a vast landscape, with just my tiny dot moving slowly up the side.

A big smile formed across my face and I exhaled and thought, “This is exactly what I was chasing. This feeling of smallness in this big world. The chase of adventure.” I actually thought the words, “This is perfect.”

The dirt road wrapped around the mountain about 30 minutes into my 13 hour day and I was slapped in the face. A massive headwind hit me so hard, I almost stopped in my tracks. The wind was icy and my face immediately froze. I tucked my fingers into the palm of my gloves to warm up against each other and I reminded myself of my feelings of “perfection” just moments earlier.

I watched my power increase as my average speed took a nose dive. My fingers and toes started to throb and even though I was pushing with all my might, I began to shiver.

I wondered how severely this was hindering my time, but I quickly pushed those thoughts away. This was survival and, “Surely,” I thought, “This will get better any minute.” Humans thrive on hope. I had to just keep hoping. I had to keep praying.

Knowing I was only 1 hour into my 13 hour ride, I continued to push the calories. I also knew that the cold was sucking the calories from my body at a much higher rate than expected. My hands had lost all dexterity and inside my gloves I couldn’t feel a thing. In order to grab food out of my pocket I had to remove my glove and expose my hand to the icy air.

Each time I did, I risked frost nip. One time in particular, my pinky got stuck in a bent position. The neurological signals would no longer tell it to straighten. I had to stop in order to use my other hand to manually straighten my pinky and shove my glove back on.

I reached for the hose on my hydration pack and as I lifted it to my mouth I heard it crack. The water was frozen in the hose. The water was frozen in my bottles. That’s when it hit me: It’s really, really cold.

I desperately yearned for the left hand turn into the trails. I thought maybe I would be more sheltered and the wind would stop beating me down. As I turned left I was greeted by snow that kept getting deeper and deeper as the trail continued upward.

In the dark hours of the morning, I couldn’t see the ice on the trail, but I could hear it breaking under my wheels. At one point my bike lurched forward as it cracked through the ice and fell into water. I thrusted my body off to the side and onto the ground to avoid putting my foot into the ice water.

When I got toward the top of the trail, the snow was so deep that I had to run. I was only 2 hours into my attempt. This was the portion where I thought I would make up the most time, and I was running.

As I crested the top of the first climb I felt no relief knowing I would now descend a freezing and icy road. I had pushed more than 30 watts more than I had in my pre-ride and my time up the climb was actually slower. I was still ahead of the FKT though, by 10 minutes, and again I hung onto hope. I thought, “Surely, this will get better.”

During these FKT attempts is not legal to have your crew help you or even speak to you out on the trails. So, as I passed by my crew, there was total silence.

The wind chill factor was in single digits. It had dropped 20 degrees from the time I started and I was in fact facing a headwind all day. The temperature on the dash of the truck was reading 17 degrees (although I didn’t know any of this). The crew thought I was going to quit. I pushed onward.

I gritted my teeth as I descended the icy road with squealing brakes. I yelled out loud to myself in agony about the pain shooting through my hands and toes.

An hour later I reached the top of the 2nd climb and felt in a panic to descend. I knew that the lower elevations would be warmer. I kept telling myself, “The hardest part is over.”

But the funny thing is, I was less than 4 hours in. Any normal person would have recognized that I was just getting started.

For the next couple of hours things did seem to get better. The sun warmed the earth and temperatures raised back to about 40 degrees. I thanked God that I had survived the worst.

At hour 6 I hit the one and only place to refill water. I rolled up to the river, pulled off my pack, opened the bladder and saw it was almost completely full.

The hose had only unthawed about 30 minutes before the water stop so I hadn’t had enough time to down water before hitting my only refill station. As I stared down into the full pack and filtered just a small amount to top it off, I felt true dread. I felt like the water was a physical representation of just how much my body was falling apart. It was a representation of the torture I was putting my body through. It was a representation of the misery I knew would be inevitable as I faced 8 more hours of riding after nearly 6 hours without water. I choked back the tears, pulled my pack back on and continued onward.

As the sun warmed the earth, the wind picked up at the low elevations and before I knew it I had a block 20 mile per hour head wind slapping me in the face. The trail was flat and straight for as far as the eye could see. I had planned to place my forearms on the bars to get aero, but the ripping wind was pulling my bike all over the trail. It was like riding into a brick wall.

As I once again pounded out more and more watts, the wind stripped me of my speed. The rushing wind was so loud I couldn’t hear the music in my headphones.

If you’ve ever ridden into a headwind you know just how demoralizing it can be. After nearly 4 hours into the headwind I was yelling out loud, “Please. Please. Just stop!” It never did. I was praying, “God please just give me 5 minutes without a headwind.” There was no reprieve. I watched as the 10 minute lead I had acquired slowly drained with every mph the wind picked up.

As I entered the final singletrack, I was dead set tied with the previous FKT. The wind had stripped me of my speed, the cold had plucked the calories from my body, the temperatures had prohibited me from taking in water and my body was empty.

I was a tube of toothpaste completely wrung out as I tried to get just a little bit more out on the brush.

I felt almost in a panic as I screamed in my head to go faster, but my body seemed to almost move in slow motion. During the hiking sections, I wobbled and nearly fell. I was “sprinting” but my sprint had slowed to the point that from the outside looking in you would see someone who just looked dazed and confused. I ate my last Liquid Shot and I thought, “That’s the most delicious thing I’ve ever eaten in my life.”

I was about 2 miles from the finish when I saw the time click over. I didn’t get the FKT. I expected to feel defeat, but all I felt was panic that I still had 2 miles to go.

When I finally crossed the finish line, I rode past the finish to make double, triple sure that my GPS would track the segment. I stopped about 50 feet down the road, turned back to see Clayton. I unclipped my foot, touched the ground, and my knee buckled. I collapsed onto the ground and I saw Clayton running toward me. I closed my eyes.

I remember a blanket, I remember shivering, and I remember being lifted into the car. That’s all I remember.

I had so many plans for that finish line and I hardly even remember it.

My body was wrecked from the cold. It took a week for me to gain sensation in my big toe and it took 2 weeks for me to gain sensation back in my little finger.

It was without a doubt the hardest thing I had ever done.

It is probably the hardest thing I will ever do.

The day after the attempt I sat down to do an interview. My body still wrecked. Barely able to eat and without sensation in my hands and feet. Before I knew it the words just came out of my mouth, “I’ll be back.” “I’m going to get this FKT.” Then I took it a step further, “I’m coming back when the snow clears.”

The intentions were set and now I just had to wait…

During these attempts you become very close to the trail. It almost feels like the trail takes on a personality of its own. To personify the trail, I don’t think the Kokopelli was trying to punish me; I think it was asking for me to prove myself. It wanted me to prove that I was tough enough to own its record. The first attempt was a right of passage. Now I had to prove that I wasn’t afraid to come back. I had to prove that I learned my lesson the first time. I had to prove that I respected the trail and all of the elements that it can bring.

It was a long 6 months of waiting. I felt like a woman obsessed. I checked the trail reports every day and I checked the weather in Moab so frequently that my phone actually started to prompt me every morning, “Would you like to check the weather in Moab?”

I hoped to make the attempt at the very end of March and even with a few inches of snow on the trail, I couldn’t let it go until 2 days before the projected attempt date when I finally asked myself, “Have you learned nothing?!” Patience will be rewarded. So, I kept waiting and set a new goal date of May 4th.

The day the Kokopelli trail report read “open” I texted the crew. It was the moment I had been waiting for. My stomach turned and suddenly my energy shifted from excited waiting to nervous execution. What if after all of this I still can’t do it? That was a harsh reality that I wouldn’t know the answer to unless I tried. I had to put myself out there again. I had to risk failing again if I wanted the chance to succeed.

I stood once again in the dark at the start line of the Kokopelli trail at 5 am on May 4th. I was much more cynical this time. I no longer had the ignorance is bliss approach, but this time knowledge would be power. I knew what could go wrong out there, but I also knew I could handle it.

I pushed off into the darkness and once again, everything was quiet. Just me and the trail and my breath.

The time seemed to melt away as I rode. This time nothing was new. I had done the trail before and I had paced an effort like this before. I knew how hard I could push and I wasn’t afraid. I started even harder than the first time. Once again, it was just God and me out on the trail.

After the first 15 miles I crested the top of climb number one. I was 18 minutes ahead of schedule. As I began to descend down the backside I caught a glimpse of the film crew, looking down the mountain, in the other direction. I was so far ahead of schedule that they didn’t even know I had already rounded that corner of the mountain and was descending down the backside!

As I continued on throughout the day I continued to gain a few minutes here and a few minutes there, but I never felt like I was ahead. I felt like I was just building a buffer for the unanticipated and the inevitable. Surely, something would go wrong, but this time I would have a time gap to face it with. I thanked God for giving this gap, and for giving me hope.

When I had about 2 hours left in the ride (20ish miles) I found myself with only half a bottle of water remaining. This time, the temperatures had risen all throughout the day and it was about 80 degrees.

I was so thirsty. I felt my body starting to falter. My heart was beating fast and I was becoming woozy and peaked. I had to make a plan. I had already been rationing my water for about an hour and I couldn’t take much more. I took my bottle and I downed the rest of it. I felt temporary relief, but now I was relying on a hunch.

I knew that with 10 miles to go I would cross a river again and I had heard that you could filter water there, but I had never stopped to look or find my way down to the bank. Now I would have to. As I saw the river come into sight I felt a small amount of relief. I had made it. I could do this thing.

I was looking for a place to go down to the water’s edge. Right there, it was a 5 foot drop off. Would I have to jump?! There! There was a small path where the plants had clearly been trampled down. I ran down to the water. I filtered water straight into my mouth, I poured it on my head, and I filtered a bottle to go. Now, I knew I could make it.

The last 10 miles were agonizing. Everything hurt. But the theme of the day rang true: perspective. That was my super power this time. I had done something EVEN harder to compare this to. Nothing would ever be as hard as that first attempt on the Kokopelli. Every time I felt pain, or doubt I would remember, you’ve been through worse. I finally understood that this whole time God had a plan. He made me tougher so that I could become bullet-proof. He was training me.

When I finally crossed the finish line, this time I could celebrate. I threw my hands up in the air. Clayton and I embraced. I smiled and we stood in that parking lot, celebrating, and telling stories for over an hour. And when we finally left, I realized the previous FKT hadn’t even passed yet.

I beat the time by 1 hour and 14 minutes. My final time on the trail was 11 hours and 53 minutes. I could finally take a deep breath of relief.

I left a piece of my heart on the Kokopelli trail. Attempting to go fast on that trail took me to places and taught me things within myself that I will forever be grateful for. I feel a deep connection with the landscape.

Now, looking back on the last year of this journey, I wouldn’t change a single thing. The first ‘failed’ attempt made me better. It made me tougher. It gave me perspective that I never would have gained otherwise. That failure built the foundation for which I could build my success. Now, when something feels hard, whether it’s in life or on the bike, Clayton and I have a saying. We say, “It’s time to be Kokopelli Strong.”