Pushing

Date: Jan. 14
Mileage: 17.8
January mileage: 330.2
Hours: 3:15
Temperature upon departure: 27
Precipitation: .02"/.75" snow

The more movement grinds to a halt, the more time seems to speed by. I slumped over my handlebars and drew a deep breath, again. I wrestled with my right foot until I freed it from the shin-deep snow, again. I planted my foot a few inches down the slope, where it promptly disappeared into the drift, again. I inhaled another big breath and did the same with my left foot. My bike sat upright in the snow with no need for my support. I yanked on the handlebars, but it refused to budge. My calves burned and glutes throbbed as beads of sweat formed on my face in defiance of nonmovement. Even the bike's odometer mocked me, still registering 0.0 mph after more than 50 yards. "Well," I thought. "This is definitely worse than the trail." I waded over to the single soft snowmobile track I had used to trudge up, and now down, the mountain over my seven-mile slog. I looked at my camera display. Two hours had passed. All time and no distance. I was exhausted. I wondered how long it would take to push a bike 350 miles. And I wondered how long I would be able to endure the pushing. In the space where 50 yards is an epic, 350 miles is an eternity.

But it's good exercise, just the same.

A couple more photos from today:

Finally freed from the thick coat of fresh snow on the Dan Moller trail, I worked on my fat bike steering skillz in the Sandy Beach slaloms.

It's fun to come home to my cat, Cady. Cady's lifestyle offers a good balance to mine. She's lazy, pudgy, and fights with every cat she meets. But she's always there to remind me that the best things in life are free. (Or, in the case of a camp chair, nearly free.)

Meal planning

Date: Jan. 13
Mileage: 25.8
January mileage: 312.4
Hours: 2:00
Temperature upon departure: 30
Precipitation: .22"/4" snow

I had a great short ride today. I felt the strongest I have since my left knee started acting up in late December. My actual moving time seemed exceptionally short (the ride took two hours, but I stopped for a while in two different spots.) I hope to put in my longest single ride yet this weekend if the weather cooperates. I won't ride for 12 hours in 35-degree rain. There's just no reason to suffer that much in the name of "training."

I have been spending a fair amount of my off time trying to decide exactly what I'll have in my "kit" during the Ultrasport. In some aspects, I still have quite a bit of testing to complete before I really get my gear dialed in. I have a list and an pretty concrete idea of the clothing I want to bring, but I'm still not completely sure if it's enough. Or too much? My testing isn't likely to yield enough confidence in the end result to shave much off my current list. But I feel like the ideas I have now are a good balance of "too much" for most conditions and "just right" for extreme conditions. As long as it all fits on my bike, I'll be happy.

Something I've been a little less sure of is meal planning. How does one prepare all the food they're going to carry in a endurance event that will consume an unknown number of days? For my food planning, I'm taking a page from the mountaineering book: Hope for five days. Pack for seven. Ration if it takes nine. That I will be on a well-traveled trail that crosses several winter lodges and a couple of towns will minimize the danger of starvation, so I'd like to keep food on the light side. But that still doesn't answer the question of how much to take.

What to take, though, for me is an easier question. As much as I'd love to just carry a bunch of light-weight fatty products like butter, there's no way I can ingest, let alone digest that kind of food. My experience has taught me in heavily active situations, I operate great for extended periods of time on simple carbohydrates, can tolerate protein and unsaturated fat in well-distributed doses, and can't deal in the slightest with saturated fats and really greasy stuff. This reality seems to hold true even after more than a day. My only multiday experience is cycling the Golden Circle in August. I went for three days eating a diet that was almost entirely nut/fruit trail mix, fruit snacks and Clif Bars. I never really became tired of that stuff. In fact, the opposite happened. Knowing I had the ability to process my food and keep going was a huge comfort, and I relished in eating it. The experience that finally convinced me that a repetitive, simple carbohydrate diet is best for me happened as I rolled through Whitehorse during a really hot part of the afternoon after logging more than 250 miles in a little more than 24 hours. I pedaled by a McDonalds and several other fast food restaurants. The smells wafting from the buildings were beyond nauseating in my condition. But I continued to crave my crappy walnuts and cranberries. I also had a similarly sickening experience with French fries after the 24 Hours of Kincaid.

So I have some good ideas for foods I know I can and will eat, that pack fairly small and are either edible frozen, or thaw fairly easily. I'm still at a loss of how much to bring. I figure I can balance the fats and carbohydrates to log about 2,200 calories to a pound of food. I don't think it's likely I'll be able to eat much more than 4,500 calories in a day, but I'll probably pack and ship as much as 6,000 for each day, and maybe even a little extra emergency food. There will be some trail food, but my Whitehorse McDonalds experience has me a little concerned about how appetizing it will seem. If I don't need to head back out on the trail right away, I can always force the "free" calories down. But getting sick is always a concern.

Here's a list of the foods I have been thinking about, and their caloric value per ounce. You can gag or marvel in my refined palette. Either way, this is the stuff I'm comfortable with, and I'm not likely to change it too much.

Clif/Power Bars: 250 calories, 2.4 oz
Pop Tarts: 400 calories, 3.6 oz
Walnuts: 183 calories per ounce
Almonds: 169 calories per ounce
Pecans: 196 calories per ounce
Soy nuts: 128 calories per ounce
Sunflower seeds: 165 calories per ounce
Craisens: 92 calories per ounce
Dried cherries: 100 calories per ounce
Dried pineapple: 92 calories per ounce
Chocolate: 152 calories per ounce
Turkey jerky: 100 calories per ounce
13” tortilla: 330 calories
Fruit snacks: 123 calories per ounce
Peanut butter: 167 calories per ounce
Fruit leather: 90 calories per ounce
Tuna package: 40 calories per ounce
Wheat Thins: 137 calories per ounce

Pugsley presence

Date: Jan. 11
Mileage: 48.8
January mileage: 286.6
Hours: 5:00
Temperature upon departure: 26
Precipitation: .58"

When I first attached enough parts to my Pugsley to enable its mobility beyond my back yard, I thought for sure the sight of my obese clown bike would garner a lot of attention. I thought people would be stopping me on the streets ("Excuse me, but I think your bike's wheels are about to explode ...") Surprisingly, the early reactions to Pugsley were few and far between (and most of them involved some variation of "does that thing have studs?") I became comfortable with the idea that Pugsley did not in fact look all that strange to the indiscriminate eye, and relished in my cycling anonymity.

For some reason, that all changed recently. Suddenly, I've become this crazy bike lady that people recognize and feel compelled to question. If I ride out to the lake on a semi-nice day, I almost have to put on an extra base layer so I can stay warm during all the time I'm stopped, talking to people about my bike. Fat bikes are common in Anchorage, but not so much in Juneau. Slednecks like to give me incredulous looks. Hikers seem most concerned with the weight behind Pugsley's obvious girth. Nordic skiers, especially on the lake, usually ask the omnipresent stud question (which sometimes I feel compelled to answer with "I don't know. Do those skis have studs?") Skate skiers like to chase me, ambling as I am at 10 mph, but I still can usually stay ahead.

The only meetings where silence largely remains are the rare occasions in which I pass or am passed by other cyclists. Most are commuters, many on their own Frankenbike creations, and I think they in general respect the notion that if it has two wheels and moves forward, there's no reason to question its credentials. But even that changed yesteday.

I was returning from my second long ride of the weekend (well, five hours. I was satisfied), when a bicycle commuter merged onto the bike lane in front of me. Conditions were similar to the day before: a sheet of glare ice left over from earlier rain, covered in an inch or so of stirred-up snow. He had these skinny, skinny tires that appeared from the faint glare of my headlight to have studs, but it was hard to know for sure. We split off the bike lane near Fred Meyer and I forged ahead on the road shoulder. It was in even worse shape than the bike path, with churned up, sandy snow strewn in uneven piles. About a half mile later, he passed me again.

"Nice bike," he said. "What's the deal with those tires?"

"They're good in snow," I answered.

"Huh," he said. He didn't sound convinced. "Looks a little too big."

"Yeah. They're big."

"Are the tires studded?"

"No."

He shook his head. "That's not very safe."

I just raised my eyebrows. Not safe? Said the guy on the 1-inch roadie tires as he tried to plow through uneven sandy snow. Now, I know those skinny tires are better at slicing down to the pavement. But what happens that one time that they don't? Sounds like a wash-out waiting to happen if you ask me.

"It's mainly for trail riding," I said. "But the wide tires don't do too bad on ice."

"Well," he said, "you should think about getting some studded tires if you're going to ride on the road."

With that he started to pass me, and I let him go. I didn't really want to chase him after putting 14 hours of riding/pushing on my legs that weekend, and justified the decision by telling myself I didn't stand a chance against skinny tires on the stupid road, anyway. And with that, our snow bike argument ended like so many Polaris/Yamaha discussions do: Each of us convinced of our vehicle's superiority.

I spent several miles yesterday pedaling alongside Geoff as he ran with his 30-pound sled. He has a pretty good post up about the sled's inner workings. I'm pretty sure Geoff has put more time and effort into building his sled than we did with my Pugsley. It's funny that he, as a winter runner, has to deal with nearly as much equipment as I do as a winter cyclist.

Also yesterday, I caught another glimpse of Romeo the wolf. He was making advances on a golden retriever that seemed downright terrified of him, and cowered behind its two skiing owners as they gawked at the big black interloper. The wolf didn't seem to want to have anything to do with the people, so he kept a good distance. But he did make several friendly-seeming gestures: bowing down in the snow with his tail up in the air, and rolling on his side. Still the dog cowered, and eventually Romeo slinked away to the shelter of the moraine. I couldn't help but feel my heart fall at Romeo's rejection by the golden retriever. It really does seem that Romeo is just a lonely wolf. That he's become half-domesticated in his search for a family is the true tragedy.