Spandex Recall

Barry Wicks on a spandexless and fine day circumnavigating a volcano.

Finding freedom and zen without spandex. For Barry Wicks, this means sorta being formerly fast. And he’s good with that.

I’ve worn a lot of spandex. Literally, spandexed every single day of my life from when I was 19 years old to around 2019 or 2020 at age 39. I don’t wear spandex anymore. But back in those 20-odd years of spandex, I was all spandex. All the time. So, it goes for a professional cyclist. Three to five hours a day, I pedaled my bike up and down the hills of Santa Cruz, CA, and worldwide. Close-to-me cycling people told me to keep training logs and stuff like that, but I didn’t. So did the not-close-to-me cycling people, too. Most of my bike racing career was pre-Strava, so I don’t really have a solid record of all those spandex hours. But, trust me on this, it was a lot of spandex.

The reason I don’t wear spandex anymore isn’t because of vanity or even function. Spandex is super functional. Plus, in the right circles, it looks dope. But, I don’t wear spandex anymore because I had a difficult time adjusting to my post-spandex life. Let’s be straight: spandex became my culture in totality. I spent so much of my spandex years focused on being FAST! that being FAST! was my identity. I have worked hard to rebuild that identity outside of FAST! Not wearing spandex helps me stay on this course. I now chase EXPERIENCE! not FAST!.

A whole lot of Spandex. Being fast and looking fast: Wicknasty.

Here’s some context on my relationship with experiencing other cultures. During high school my family hosted a Ukrainian exchange student through the American Field Service (AFS) exchange program. AFS was founded by volunteer ambulance drivers during World War I. They got tired of picking up all the body parts and blown-up people from the war and thought that if everyone just got to know one another better, we would perhaps resort to blowing each other up less frequently. 

As a result of my family’s experience hosting an exchange student for a year, I like to think that I have a clearer window into the culture and psyche of Ukraine vis a vis my connection to my Ukrainian brother, Sasha. I certainly do care a lot more about what happens over there at the very least, simply because I care about Sasha and want him to be happy and alive and to have a good life.

When we know and start to understand people from other cultures, we care about them more and are less inclined to do them harm.  

 Enough with death and destruction, let’s get back to spandex. Can one gain experience and understanding of other cultures and oneself by participating in the Grand Traverse ski race? 

It’s a dubious proposition, but let’s give it a shot.

What may not be apparent in this image are the size of the quads. Post-racing and post-spandex, the quads are still part of a robust trail breaking motor. Even if Barry Wicks is decidedly Zen.

Finding myself at midnight, on a starting line, on my skis, surrounded by spandex, I was somewhat perplexed. What was I doing here at the Grand Traverse ski race, ostensibly spandex central, if I had given up spandex? I was not wearing spandex. However, a majority of the people corralled on the starting line shimmered in it. 

I will admit to enjoying the flummoxed reaction I get at mile 80 of a 100-mile gravel race, or hour six of a ten-hour ski race when the spandex-clad people around me take note of my baggy shorts and flat pedals, or my 80mm (gasp!) underfoot skis and non-carbon boots below my baggy ski trousers, and wonder where they went wrong in their lives. But, that thrill, for me, is fleeting. In reality, I am out here doing this stuff because I like how it feels to narrow my hierarchy of needs to a basic level. I like chasing feelings of escapism and enlightenment. And the feelings of personal connection to the other people doing the same. 

If we want to unpack this like a therapy session, the real reason I don’t wear spandex anymore is counter to a traditional approach to sport. I dress aspirationally in my baggy clothes. Wearing cut-off jeans during a gravel race or sporting baggy ski clothes at a skimo race reminds me that my aspirations are not to be FAST! but to be chiiiiil. Sure, aspirational baggys are a weird concept, but they serve the same purpose as spandex for an aspiring racer. I dress for the part I want. I am attempting to shift my culture and mindset away from spandex.

There is something to be said of examining a culture while embedded deep inside. When I was a RACER!, seeing the entirety of that experience was difficult. The act of RACING so fully consumed me, I didn’t think to observe the experience. I was too deep in it. To participate in a race from a new perspective and to see it from a higher altitude—some may call it more enlightened—helps me stay grounded in a new identity and a new reality less consumed by RACE!.

Here are a few observations I have after nine and half hours (actually, just under 9:24 to be exact, but who’s keeping track?) of walking through the dark with my skis, my (second) best ski partner, and a couple hundred other ski obsessed spandex ninjas.

1. I am glad I was not the partner of the guy who lined up next to me with his girlfriend/partner already hooked up in tow, wearing a full race kit, checking and rechecking his heart rate/GPS watch every 13 seconds. By contrast she was in baggy bibs, on big skis, and was in for an interesting night.
2. The Blessing of the Freehealers advised that we were about to enter a place of literal and metaphorical darkness and would then emerge back into the light with our partners, stronger and improved by our shared hardship, which turned out to be, not unsurprisingly, prophetic.
3. Never trying new things on race day is a rule I heeded with religious fervor in my bike racing days, even more so than the mind-warping Belgian proverbs of not shaving your legs on race day lest too much energy would be consumed to regrow the hair, and not sleeping with plants in your room because they took all your oxygen. But we had  obtained some new-fangled ultra-high carbohydrate drink mix the day before the race and just went for it. It totally saved us from complete implosion.
4. Skinning up through Crested Butte surrounded by a couple hundred human bodies worth of transcendental, taught, focused, singular, amorphous, pulsating masses of energy and light was fucking cool. (We aren’t in traffic dude, we are traffic.)
5. Watching that powerful blob string out into a caterpillar of light that disappeared in both directions in front and behind us as we descended into the East River drainage was also very cool.
6. Large pieces of time are unaccounted for, skinning in a trance-like state in darkness, staring at alien faces forming and reforming in the snow patterns on the tails of my partner’s skis.
7. That 1.5 miles the course marshal told us were between him and the water stop at the Friends Hut took way longer than it should have. And, side note: don’t ditch your partner in the dark woods while he vomits behind a tree with serious-sounding AMS and assume he will catch up. When we got to the water stop, that guy was still 30 minutes back and his partner looked like a tool.
8. The last 800 feet of elevation up the distressingly steep skin track to Star Pass was punishment for something horrible I must have done.
9. Make sure to ski switch through the prayer flag portal at the top of the pass for 20 gnar points.
10. Don’t come to the GT for the skiing, as that isn’t the point anyway. But it is still quite fun skiing soft bumps off Star Pass, straying slightly from the standard route to hit some sweet pow lines, and straight-lining the power wedge scrubbed skin track through the dark, treewell-infested snake run rally to the valley floor. 
11. Since we had to do the T(Re)verse this year due to high avalanche danger on wind-loaded north slopes above tree line, we walked 1.5 miles on a dirt road right after sun up. Chugging mini cans of coke we had stashed in our packs for such an occasion was an excellent strategy.
12. Speaking of strategy, we started slow, finished slower, and strived for continuous movement over a high pace. Our strategy certainly had us finishing at the ragged edge of the enjoyable vs. suffering continuum but concretely on the fun side.
13. The final approach to the finish line along the ice luge MTB trail was exciting, plus we had some excellent slow motion battles going with several teams, everyone exploding to smithereens at some point or another before gathering the pieces back together and carrying on. But then we hit the last climb up to the ski resort, and it was just terrible.
14. Crossing the finish line felt amazing.

So there we have it, my take on the Grand Traverse as a cultural experience. So what does or did it all mean? That our shared experience brought us out of the darkness stronger and better than we went in? Undoubtedly. Even though I had no intention of harming the other skiers in the first place, the shared experience of traveling through the darkness, conquering physical and mental demons, and seeing both the forest and the trees brought me closer to my fellow backcountry travelers. 

Would I do the GT again? Probably not. Am I glad I didn’t wear spandex? Yes indeed. As for whether or not you should do the Grand Traverse, I will paraphrase Hunter S. Thompson and advise that if we are willing to bend our goals to fit our person, rather than bending our person to fit a goal, we are moving in the correct direction to meaningfulness. And for me, that seems like as good of a reason as any to go ski though the dark with a bunch of folks in spandex. It may, in fact, help our lives feel meaningful, you know, like our existence MATTERS!. That is a step along the path to World Peace.

So if you go, I’ll be there with you in spirit, but I probably will just sleep in a bit more, then go ski off a volcano in corn snow instead. Knowing a culture, respecting it, and wanting it to be part of one’s identity can be different things.

I always try to remember to let those feelings I get out there follow me home. That way, when someone blows by me on the skin track, clad head to toe in spandex, I don’t get mad, I just think, “wow, that is impressive” and get back to doing me.