24 Hours of Pain (and Pleasure)

By Dina Mishev

No, I’m not a masochist, but yes, I love the way my body hurts after physical exertions. In fact, it was because I wanted to feel this kind of exercise-induced pain that I signed up for my first ever 24 hour race. And just in case doing a 24 hour race itself wouldn’t be enough to bring it on, I decided my goal would be to set a new world record for the most vertical feet skied uphill by a woman in 24 hours.

The race was the annual 24 Hours of Sunlight (held February 7-8 this year) at the Sunlight Ski Resort outside of Glenwood Springs, Colorado. The goal of the race is to ski as many vertical feet uphill as you can in 24 hours. During the race, two of the resort’s intermediate level runs are closed to regular lift-riding skiers. Racers ski up one of them (a feat made possible by specialized bindings and climbing skins affixed to the bottom of each ski) and down the other. Each lap is 1,502-vertical feet. I needed to do more than 33,000 vertical feet, 22 laps. If anything would be guaranteed to bring the pain, this was it.

I was in third grade when I decided I was going to be the sporty girl. With dodge ball, kick ball, wall ball, and lounging around a giant rock mooning over Kirk Cameron and comparing jelly bracelets as the main options at recess, it wasn’t a difficult choice to make. After all, there was only so much I could say about Kirk Cameron. And there seemed to be no limit to the number of home runs I could knock out of the kickball field.

Fast-forwarding twenty-some years to when I moved to Jackson, Wyoming after graduating from college, I was still sporty girl… and so was pretty much every other woman in town. It was awesome. Friends in Jackson don’t socialize over drinks, but over powder, in boats, or on trails. Dinner and a movie date? No way. Try climbing in Grand Teton National Park and a picnic lunch of peanut butter and Nutella sandwiches. If possible, sports became even more a part of my life. But I wasn’t yet finding motivation and comfort in the aches and pains they could cause.

I had to go and get Multiple Sclerosis for that to happen.

MS is a chronic, degenerative, unpredictable, uncontrollable, incurable disease that can cause, among other things, blindness and paralysis. And even more fun? Incontinence. I was 30 and had had two weeks of double vision and vertigo when I was diagnosed in June 2006. Thankfully, almost three years later, I’m not blind, paralyzed, or incontinent. Yet. Any could happen at any time however. (Although rare, it is possible to go to bed fine and wake up in the morning needing a cane.) The symptoms I do experience range from shocks running the length of my body to forgetfulness; vertigo; numbness, tingling, and generalized pain in various body parts; twitching eyes; and sensitivity to heat. Everyone with MS has different symptoms, but whatever they are, they remind you your body is no longer really yours.

And so began my finding pleasure in the physical pain and strain of races, hikes, rides, mountains, and rock walls. Of course it’s not the pain and strain itself that I like. (Not being able to walk down the stairs for a week after making a 42-mile rim-to-rim-to-rim hike in the Grand Canyon my first hike of the season? Not fun.) But rather that it lets me, for a short time at least, feel like my body is normal and that I’ve got control over it.

During the 24 Hours of Sunlight, of course I was complaining about cracked and bloody fingers, sore-to-the-touch quads, a bloated stomach, dry eyes, a pounding head, and the heat (40-some degrees in the mountains of Colorado in early February, really?) – and that was all before lap 6 — but really, I was thankful for them. They helped me feel normal … at least until I started up on my 23rd lap. There are some instances – say, the final leg of a successful world record attempt – where you just can’t and don’t want to feel normal. But that kind of abnormality is the stuff dreams are made of.

Standing on top of the podium is a kind of abnormal I can take.

And in case you were wondering, just as expected all my aches, pains, and bruises, and even the bleeding in my stomach (I recommend avoiding exercise-induced gastritis if you can) were gone within a week of the race ending.

DINA MISHEV writes about travel, sports, adventure, gear, art, people, and lifestyle topics for Outside, Outside Online, National Geographic Traveler, National Geographic Adventure, and more. A graduate of Northwestern University with degrees in Math and Economics, Dina moved to Wyoming following college to learn how to ski before returning to law school on the East Coast the following fall. The latter part of that plan was thrown out the window within two weeks of her arrival in Jackson. When snow is in short supply, Dina races her road bike, climbs, hikes, drools over fabulous dresses that have no purpose in Jackson, and makes cookie dough.