The Road to Redemption Begins...in a Biodome?

Out in the middle of the Arizona Desert and Mountains.  Are you ready to get locked in!

Have you ever thought of running away from civilization, away from everyone and everything and going out on your own and just living off the earth?  Well in 1991 8 people took on such a mission and were locked in the Biosphere 2 for 2 years.  In many ways it was a success and a failure.  I had the chance to tour the Biosphere 2 recently and it was very interesting.  But before we get to that, a few other things happened along the way.

Don't worry this horrible movie won't be a part of the tour. 
And seriouly how is it that Pauly Shore got famous?!?!

It's now been over 3 weeks since I ran the Phoenix Marathon.  I've had plenty of time to reflect and try to not only try to understand what happened, but also to appreciate all that I did in fact accomplish during that journey.  As you can imagine immediately afterward it was still very difficult to try and wrap my head around the reasons why I had such issues with my legs that day.  I've talked to dozens of people and read lots of things about hydration and cramping, etc... but the best that I can come up with is that the moment was too much for me, that day.  I have only been running less than a year and I have certainly trained my body to run long distances, but apparently I am not ready to race a marathon, run and finish at a comfortable pace, I'm sure of it, but to race-pace it, obviously I am not quite ready for that challenge.  It's a sobering realization as I had trained so hard and thought I'd done everything right, but with every "failure" comes a learning experience and with all I've learned about running and about myself over the last year, I started back on my own Road to Redemption.

After the Marathon I took a whole week off of running.  For the first three days I wouldn't have been able to do much anyways, but the last 4 I was just itching to get out there, but I held myself back and just rested.  But when I got back at it, I did it in a big way and it felt really good.  Most importantly I had no lingering issues with my legs and I am very thankful for that.  I started running my regular schedule and after two weeks I decided I would run the Sole 2 Sole 18 Mile Fun Run, to which many people said to me, "How is that fun?".  Well that is a great question, but to a runner, it's a more of a challenge and therein lies the fun.  Sole Sports is the running store close to my place that I go to often, not just for merchandise, but as much for advice from the expert runners they have on staff and for the group runs on the canal.  They were going to have their 2nd Annual Fun Run going from the Scottsdale store to their store in Tempe, which is 18 miles away.  So on Saturday morning, March 16, I drove down to Tempe and with about 40 others, we all boarded a bus and drove back to Scottsdale to run back to Tempe.  The weather was perfect and everyone set out, at their own pace down the Scottsdale trail, through the ASU campus onto the Tempe trail and to their store.  Afterwards we all gathered at a local brew pub and "celebrated".  It was a great day and a good chance for me to test myself after the marathon issues I had to see how my body would respond.  It went really well and although the last two miles were very difficult, I ran my own pace, not a race pace, and it went great and I felt really good for having done it.

Those ready to have some fun running 18 miles.  I'm on the right in the neon yellow..

The next week I had already signed up to run the Oro Valley 1/2 Marathon on my birthday, March 24, as a present to myself.  I mean who else would want to get up at 2:30 a.m. on a Sunday to drive 2 hours to Oro Valley to run a 1/2 Marathon?  I guess only me.  But I did and again, it would be another chance to test myself and my legs and this time at a race pace.  When I got there it was only 37 degrees and it felt like it.  But with a huge crowd of people and about 1000 runners we took off and thankfully the race went very well.  The course was really difficult, all hills, up and down the whole way through the Gold Canyon and Honeybee Ridge. The scenery was really spectacular, but when you are running a race like that, you really don't have much chance to take it all in.  But I did well and had no issues and ran as good as I hoped finishing in 1:35:12 and in 53rd place out of about 1000.  It was a great day for me and I was really glad I did it.  If you are interested you can see pictures of me from the race here, even flashing the "V" for victory sign at the end, because for me, this was a victory.  After the race, I was only a few miles from the Biosphere and figured I'd never get down this way again, as it's truly in the middle of nowhere, so enough about my running, let's go see the Biosphere.

Oro Valley, in the shadows of the Catalina Mountains.  It definitely made for some great scenery.

Getting to the Biosphere is no easy feat and you might think it was built out of the way for a reason, but actually the land was owned by Motorola  and they built a conference center on the land in the 70's.  In the 80's the land was sold to private investors who wanted to construct a Biosphere, so during 1987-91 it was constructed and in September of 1991 a selected group of 8 people were sent in for 2 years.  The whole idea of this experiment was to study the effects of life systems in an air-tight structure and to eventually see if this sort of thing could be done in outer space.

Greenhouse on the left, human habitat areas on the right.

The 8 people that were chosen to be a part of this were not all scientists; the reason being the group would have to do everything inside on their own including farming their own food, harvesting animals, working on the electrical machines inside as needed and any number of other potential problems so they needed people that could do a multitude of things.  I should state that the term Biosphere refers to the Earth, as it is considered the ultimate Biosphere, so the official name of this project is Biosphere 2, but if I don't refer to it with the 2, that's what I mean.  Inside the 3+ acre biosphere, the group had a 1/2 acre of land dedicated to be a farm and 5 other biomes; a savannah, ocean with coral reef, rainforest, wetlands and a fog desert as well as a human habitat area.  The rainforest was patterned after those in South America and the plants were brought from that region to grow inside.  The ocean water was brought from the Pacific Ocean trucked in by the millions of gallons, along with coral reef.  The wetlands were patterned after the Florida Everglades and thus plant life was brought from Florida.  While the desert and savannah areas were built in the same vain.  Thus a tremendous amount of effort and engineering was involved in creating the Biosphere making it really an engineering marvel.

The original 8 participants entering in 1991.

The group would farm their own crops and in the first year had great success in growing bananas, papayas, sweet potatoes, beets, coffee beans, rice and wheat.  In addition to the farm, they had goats, pigs, chickens and fish in the ponds.  The hope was to have all of these systems live and thrive in this enclosed, controlled environment.  The group, however, did end up having some nutritional issues as their diets were heavy in nutrition but low in caloric intake.  During the second year they limited the number of crops they harvested to only a few and according to some of the participants sweet potatoes became such a staple of their diet that their skin did begin to take on an orange pigment.  Talk about the ultimate Ginger, yikes!

A section of the rain forest, hard to photograph.

Ocean, 25 feet deep with coral reef.

Some of the other challenges they faced included cockroaches and ant infestations, that actually destroyed some of the other species inside.  Also with no wind or weather related stresses, a lot of the plant life grew, but they were very weak as they never encountered anything to help build their strength, thus trees and plants expected to grow 30+ feet never did because they were too limp having never faced any adversity to grow tensile strength.

In addition to all of the scientific challenges they also faced social challenges as you can imagine being locked in with 8 people for 2 full years with no contact from the outside world, factions grew within the group and differing opinions on strategy and scientific data caused issues.  But the biggest challenge they faced was with oxygen.  The biosphere was not able to produce enough as originally thought and as the levels went down, so did the energy in the group as your body needs a certain amount.  They had enough to survive, but levels were so low that at one point artificial air was pumped in and thus in the eyes of the scientific community that made the project a failure.  However, much research was created and learned during the two years and the group vowed to stay in the whole time and did eventually exiting 2 years to the day in September 1993.  There have been many rumors about other things that may have happened, such as the group eating emergency food supplies, opening the air locked door, even a pregnancy.  However, in the end the 8 people did indeed live and survive in the biosphere virtually self sustaining for 2 years.

The community kitchen.  All food was always weighed before eating.  Science always came first.

One of the 8 bedrooms.  The stairs led to the bed area, the bottom half was more of a study.

A second mission was  eventually undertaken the following year for a 10 month period.  After that the company that owned the biosphere went through severe management changes eventually forcing the group to sell.  Columbia University owned it for a number of years before the University of Arizona, only 50 miles south in Tucson, bought it and still operates it conducting various scientific experiments while also having public tours non-stop.

For once, do NOT lock the door behind you!

It was interesting going through the biosphere.  I do remember the group going inside in 1991 and their release in 1993.  I was always itnrigued by the whole concept, but admittedly from more of a social experiment than scientific.  Whether it truly failed or succeeded depends on how you want to look at it.  From a tourist standpoint, even if you are not a scientist like me, you still can be awed by the creation and what transpired.  But good luck finding your way down there and don't get locked in if you do.

Thanks for joining me on this adventure! 
Now it's time to get ready for one of the biggest running events in the country and I can't wait!