New project

I have been taking it fairly mellow these past couple of days - low-key run on the Mount Jumbo trail yesterday, and a mud shower of a bike ride up the Perseverance Trail today. I was definitely starting to feel some muscle fatigue and soreness from the running. It was good to do something else today, although I have to say that after three months of basking in the blissfully ordinary weather of the Lower 48, I am not digging the rain riding, what with the head-to-toe mud splatters and big pieces of grit in my teeth (I know, I know. Fenders. Now where did I stash those?)

I took this picture today lest anyone accuse me of no longer riding my bicycle. I learned that if you place your camera on your bike seat and set the self-timer, you come out with an bike's eye image, as if your bike were taking a picture of you, rather than the other way around.

But now, with the reality of autumn sinking in, I have started sitting down with the 45 minutes of idle free time I have in the day (I can bump this up to 55 if I avoid Facebook, 75 if I avoid blogging), and begun to map out ideas for an autobiography about the stretch of time between March 1 and mid-July. I think if I can find momentum, this will be a really fun project for me. For me, writing about experiences is not just a creative outlet - it's a form of art. The experiences themselves are the initial photograph, the immediate capture of a moment in time. Blogging is the rough sketch, drawing from that photograph a form that is only beginning to take shape. But writing, something I only rarely do, is like painting. I look back at the photograph. I spread my sketch on canvas. Then I take out my paints, my best ideas, and I surround the sketch with color strokes, shadows, hints of light, until it takes on a deeper, richer meaning. I used to paint often, but I no longer own the art supplies, so now I write. I think writing will be an excellent way to spend some down time this winter, and it will give me an excuse to sit in coffee shops and look intellectual and maybe meet other people of this type. :-)

But all good writing needs to be about something, so I am trying to dream up a central theme. The natural beginning is my 12 ill-fated hours in this year's Iditarod bike race. It has all the good dramatic elements to set up a story ... the struggle, the danger, the failure, the frostbite. I want this to be about more than riding bikes, but I don't want to fall into the narrative trap of a story about losing a relationship and trying to find myself. There are other ideas bouncing around in my head. It's fun, actually, thinking of myself as the character in my own story. I have to write what's true, but the truth is so much more fun to paint than fiction.

But as with anything I do that feels more committed, I'm intimidated by the scope of it all, even if I never finish it, or if I finish it and hate it, or worst of all, if I finish it and love it and never take it anywhere. Since I started mapping out chapter one, I went back and read and re-read my early March blog entries. And already I'm learning valuable lessons from myself, namely something I wrote shortly after the race, when I was still on crutches:

I don't want to ever become the kind of person who doesn't dare to fail and fail spectacularly. I don't ever want to be unwilling to approach the unknown. I don't ever want to live a life free of risk.

So I'm resolved to finally take a pen to paper (or Microsoft Word, whatever), and I'm blogging about it to put yet another flighty goal out there in a way that will keep me at least semi-committed.

Ditch trail

Living out of a suitcase for four months hasn't bothered me at all until today, when I was suiting up for a run with Abby on the Treadwell Ditch Trail, and all three pairs of running shoes were in various states of muddy and wet. I probably have an extra pair of running shoes stashed away somewhere; I may even have a boot drier. But today I had to pull on one of my wet pairs, green slime still glistening on the laces, a musty aroma of mildew on the mesh, bits of bark pressing down on my toes and muddy water gurgling out of the soles, as I contemplated the life of a runner in Juneau.

I am really starting to hit my stride with trail running ... starting to think about all the places I can take it ... starting to think about ways I can improve it ... starting to (gulp) enjoy it. If I can bear to leave my bike at home, there's still a whole lot of terrain surrounding me that I have yet to experience. And while walking can be relaxing, running tends to get you there faster, with larger doses of happy chemicals, and a greater feeling of accomplishment.

I still have little interest in 5Ks, 10Ks, half marathons ... really, anything that involves pounding feet on pavement. Which is good. It means that if I do start running more, my fun won't be threatened by the temptation to turn it into training for some kind of race, because what kind of foot races are held in Alaska in the winter? (OK, there's the Little Su 50K. Don't tempt me.)

Or maybe ... do tempt me? I'm still very uncertain what I really want to do with this winter, but I do need goals to keep me motivated and I do need daily excursions in the outdoors to keep my spirits up. And right now, I am struck with this feeling that I need to do something different, even as I remain in Juneau with the same job and the same limited bike route options. Training for a 50K? Is that a completely idiotic idea? Or is it maybe just what I need?

Either way, it's fun to formulate different ideas and goals, even ones that contradict each other.

Trickling toward fall

All around me now are subtle first hints of fall. Deeper chills in the morning air. Red leaves on the mountain ash berries. Devil's club wilting. Fireweed blossoms closing. Alpine ground cover showing hints of yellow. Oh, and then there's the nonstop rain. That's a definite sign of fall in Juneau.

I think I have finally found a place to live in Juneau. It's not available for another few weeks, and it's quite small, but it's cheap, secluded, scenic, cat-friendly and serves all of my needs - mainly, a dry place to rest my head and my bikes, with a shower and a garden hose to keep them both clean. Everything else is just excess. It's out in Fritz Cove, which is about 10 miles north of town. It will be my first time living on the mainland - no more Douglas Island, which makes me sad. But this place also doesn't require me to make any longterm commitment, which makes me happy.

I am still moving slowly toward my resolve to start up a training routine. Doing whatever I want every morning has been fun, but as the weather deteriorates, it's been harder and harder to motivate. My recent solution for horrible weather has been running. It makes perfect sense. Running is already full of suffering, so it doesn't matter much what the weather is doing. I made an attempt to run/jog/speed-hike/trudge up to Gold Ridge today. I'm hoping to include some intensity work in my repertoire in the near future, so I have to test my mental resolve to keep pushing the throttle when every synapse in my body is firing pain and my thoughts dissolve into unintelligible screams and grunts. I pushed to this level twice, swallowing gasps of lung-piercing raindrops and cold wind, leg muscles throbbing and head pounding as I splashed through goopy mud up the steep slope. It's a good way to gain 2,700 feet in just over an hour. It's not a good way to leave yourself feeling like you are worth anything during your nine hours at work later that evening.

But, high-intensity workouts do have their immediate mental rewards. I can see why people like them. Endorphins are pretty cool (but wear off much too quickly.) I hear high-intensity workouts improve your performance as well, but I hear this only works if you keep yourself in a constant state of pain. If you are not limping into work every afternoon, head spinning and feeling like your quad muscles are going to melt right off your femur, then you are not working hard enough. So I hear.