Food fight

Date: Jan. 2
Mileage: 8.7
January mileage: 26.9
Temperature upon departure: 25

Today I did an hour on the trainer and then went out for a punchy but exhilarating 8-mile night ride on the ski trails around my house. I have to admit, I'm going to be a little bummed when winter ends and all the good trail riding around here melts into the sog and bog of summer. I'm going to have to take up sea kayaking because the biking's gonna be bad :-)

Homer's infamous Eagle Lady restarted her annual bald eagle feeding frenzy recently. The population that consisted of a few dozen resident eagles is quickly growing to a few hundred. And while her well-meaning eagle baiting brings amazing photographic opportunities to the masses, I'm a bit torn on the issue of blatantly habituating wild animals. If you leave your garbage out where bears can get to it, you'll be fined - but somehow artificially supporting a nationally protected raptor is legal. The Eagle Lady claims the eagles wouldn't survive without her selfless charity. But they were doing just fine before she moved here - wintering in other places around Alaska, where they could still ride the thermal drafts over coastal mountains and hunt for their food. Now they all congregate in Homer and fight for scraps.

Wildlife officials say Homer's shorebird populations have suffered since the eagles started coming here in droves. My co-worker swears that his little Yorkie puppy was carried away by an eagle. He followed the Yorkie's tracks until they just ended in an untouched field of snow, specked only by a few drops of blood. It seemed as though if his dog was lifted up by the Rapture (or raptor). In the end, eagle baiting just isn't natural. But it's a touchy subject in this town. I'd be interested to hear what nonlocals think about bald eagle baiting.

Happy New Year

Date: Jan. 1
Mileage: 18.2
January mileage: 18.2
Temperature upon departure: 32

Happy New Year to everyone! My celebration took a turn for the worse at the Edible Arts extravaganza when an all-too-tempting sushi dress (pictured) turned my night into an Edible Arts-born illness. I still sucked it up and waited out midnight while hunched over a table at Duggan's Pub, watching The Whipsaws and writhing in pain. Let this be a lesson - never eat perishable art; and don't sit in a smoky pub with sharp pains tearing at your intestines just because it's New Year's Eve. Once I got all of the sushi out of my system, though, I felt a lot better. I did a fairly relaxed ride along East End Road today and went home and took a nap.

I read a couple of year-end reviews in other blogs and enjoyed them. It inspired me to do one of my own. Here are Jill's memorable moments of 2005:

January: I learn to airboard ... a fancy sort of inflatable tobaggan with hard plastic edges to give its rider the illusion of control while she's careening down a narrow, tree-lined slope head first.

February: I discover Body Pump, and gain muscle definition in my arms for the first time in ... ever (and it's gone now.)

March: Nothing rings a bell. But early in April, I learned to draft off a herd of bison while bicycling in Yellowstone National Park.

April: I canoe down the Dirty Devil River, inspiring the best article I wrote for the Idaho Falls Post Register.

May: I go headlong over the handlebars during a mud ride in the Oquirrh Mountains, tearing some vital muscles in my left leg and walking like a rusty robot for the next four weeks. (I also earned the nickname "Gimpy McStiff," which followed me through the day I left town.)

June: I go on a crazy fun trip down the San Juan River with the Roberts family, full of stimulating conversations that led me to read three Jared Diamond books over the summer.

July: I discover the wonders of Lava Hot Springs, where I learned some real swim strokes and over the course of several weekends became a decent beach volleyball player.

August: I spend the month of my 26th birthday doing at least one thing that scares me each week: jumping off the 15-meter platform at Lava Hot Springs; hiking to the top of Mt. Borah; rock climbing in Little Cottonwood Canyon; rafting down the Snake River; applying for a job in Alaska.

September: I accept a job and move to Alaska.

October: I fly to Utah and hike across the Grand Canyon with my Dad and friends. Then I fly home to get my first real taste of Alaska winter, with a pre-Halloween snowstorm that dumped nearly a foot of powder.

November: I start this blog, thereby avoiding the necessity of buying a better TV for the long winter ahead.

December: I buy studded mountain bike tires, discover the wonders of winter cycling and register for the Susitna 100 race. Crazy training ensues.

That's my 2005. How was your year?

Last minutes

Date: Dec. 31
Mileage: 42.6
December mileage: 381.1
Temperature upon departure: 27

Today was sunny, calm, below freezing (but just barely). Perfect way to end the year. I biked the North Fork gravel road for a loop with a lot of ice and A LOT of hills. When the loop was over, I had biked for 3 hours and 39 minutes, and traveled 42 miles. On the way down to Anchor Point, I broke my mountain bike top speed record and coasted at 35 mph for nearly a mile. The last three miles consisted of a steep climb (one of four long hills on this ride) where I rarely broke the 5 mph barrier. When I arrived home, I thought I was shot. But then I ate a couple of peanut butter balls and took a big swig of water, and felt pretty good. I really should have gone for the last 19 miles. I especially felt that way after I found out that Geoff did a 15-mile run in Palmer this morning - before going out for some afternoon cross country skiing. But, considering my original goal for this month was 225 outdoor miles, I think I did OK.

Well, now it's time to go nosh on edible arts and get my New Year's on. Here's wishing everyone out in bloggerland a Happy New Year. May 2006 be filled with epic rides and powder-lined slopes - and may the wind always be at your back.

After dark

Date: Dec. 30
Mileage: 21.4
December mileage: 338.5
Temperature upon departure: 30

Today's ride was sponsored by Adam, and by Richard. Thank you! I left after work at 4:45 p.m. and did most of my ride in the dark - my longest night ride to date. It was a little surreal. When night strips the landscape bare, the shadows start to creep into your thoughts. I've had similar experiences hiking at night in the winter ... when there's only the dark and the silence, all of your senses are thrown into doubt. You wonder if you're colder than you feel. You wonder if the crunch of your tires on snow is as loud as it sounds. You know exactly where you are, and yet you can't help but wonder if you're lost - turned down another trail, slipped into another dimension, maybe. It was really interesting - never scary or dangerous. Just interesting. Night riding is definitely something I'm going to work harder to acclimate myself to before the Susitna 100. Plus, now I know exactly what I want in a bike headlight - which almost the perfect opposite of the one I have now.

Tomorrow I'm going to try to get up early (i.e. before the 10 a.m. sunrise) and pound out some miles before the New Year. Why? I don't know. Something to do, I guess. I probably should mix it up a bit and go cross country skiing - but the snow is so intermittently icy and slushy right now that if I was going to kill myself doing any winter sport, XC skiing in that stuff would probably be the way I'd go. Plus, I'm in training. It sounds so weird to say it.

I'm feeling bummed because Geoff just returned from New York but won't be able to come down from Anchorage until Sunday. Which means my New Year's Eve will probably go something like this: take as long a bicycle ride as I can stomach; down a couple of bowls of cold cereal for dinner; eat a cupcake shaped like a volcano at the Edible Arts Extravaganza; get my groove on with the hillbilly Anchorage band that I interviewed earlier this week; and go with Jen to the Masquerade Ball, where we will wear props left over from a middle school production of "Romeo and Juliet" and scream "Happy New Year" to no one in particular - at least no one we know.

Another holiday without the people I love. Oh well. At least there won't be another one for a while.

Snow ride

Date: Dec. 29
Mileage: 11.3
December mileage: 317.1
Temperature upon departure: 31

My snow ride today was slow ride. (sponsored by Adam. Thank you!) It took me nearly one and a half hours to do those 11.3 miles, mostly because I was dabbling on the ski trails while squinting against a torrent of wet, stinging flakes. And the conditions, well ... fresh, wet snow atop old rain-soaked snow means everything's soft and sinking. I was hoping to pound out 20 miles today, but I was not liking the visibility as it became dark. Plus, I had that annoying Foghat song running through my head ... Substituting some lyrics of course, and mashing my pedals to the rhythm ("snow ride ... take it easy.") Oh, and I received a dirty look from a skate skier. I always try to stay as far to the side as possible when I ride on established trails, but I think in these conditions, no one is happy.

There was one break in the blizzard early on. I pulled out my camera to snap a picture, only to find the lens, the screen, the viewfinder, pretty much everything soaked (it's not blurry - it's artistic.) It was a wet day. But a lot of fun! I am becoming much better at that whole steering thing. I'm also keeping my feet inside the cages for much longer periods of time. (Snow is a very unpredictable surface, but I am learning to trust my bike and steer through it rather than put my foot down ... just like learning to ride in sand.) I'm up to 317 outside miles this month. Think I can break 400 by New Year's? I doubt it ... but it's fun to dream.

Cool before fumes

So I received some lectures for my post yesterday, and rightly so (apparently, even my use of the word 'bonked' was a bad choice, although I have no desire to find out its other meaning. Each hemisphere has its own way of mangling the English language. Those Aussies probably wince at the word 'bonked' the same way we do when a Brit asks if he can bum a fag.) Anyway, I probably have a tendency to embellish a bit, and I really wasn't as bad off as I made it sound. I was just trying to point out that I'm not laboring under a delusion that a few weeks of training is going to turn me into an unstoppable endurance racer.

I know nutrition is important (I had Alpha-Bits for breakfast - now featuring "0 grams of sugar" and "rich in whole grain like Cherrios, plus has letter learning fun!") And I know training is important (Three-mile run and 45 minutes on the trainer today, thank you very much.) And I'm learning that understanding when to say when is important, too (although I think that actually having both the time and determination to overtrain would only happen in my deepest dreams.) But when I'm down in the trenches, pushing my bike through torrential drifts of snow, all of my preparations, the Alpha Bits and the evening jogs, will fade into memories of a pleasant but distant past. In those dark moments, everything will be a battle of wits, Jill against herself. I think my best defense against the dreaded "scratch" is gaining an understanding of what my body can do when it's running on little else than Power Bars and pure will, and train myself to extend that fuel a little bit further.

"Bonked"

Date: Dec. 27
Mileage: 16.4 (plus one hour on the trainer)
December mileage: 305.8
Temperature upon departure: 35

Cyclists have their own term for the special, fluffy sort of feeling one experiences when their blood depletes entirely of sugar, when their legs go AWOL and they begin to see imaginary bunnies darting in front of them - they call it "bonking," and it basically means you've gone as far as you're gonna.

I've never bonked before, although I have many experiences where I think I may have been on the precipice. Either way, bonking is definitely something I fear, and training for the Susitna 100 is as much about preparing for the psychological warfare of bonking as it is about building up my quads.

Today I was so, so tired when I stumbled home from work just before 3 p.m. I don't know why. Getting to bed late and waking up early wasn't exactly it, either. My whole body was on the riot path. Since Tuesday is the one day of the week when I can reliably return home while there's still a smidgen of daylight, I try to get out first thing. I went upstairs and commenced the layering process, pulling on a pair of fleece pants and socks, and then just stopped - for no reason - and stared into space for the longest time.

When I finally got out the front door, there was a driving sleet coating everything as it hit - my front steps, the packed snow, my jacket, my bike. Official sunset wasn't for another hour, but a dark mist soaked the sky with all the monotony of night. Every bit of common sense I have been blessed with was yelling, "this is not the kind of day for a bicycle ride." But one of my New Year's resolutions is to no longer allow myself the luxury to decide that.

I did the slow climb to Ohlson Mountain Road and back, bouncing over then rock-hard snowbanks along the way and trying to push harder, but mostly forgetting to do so. I came home feeling full to my waist in lactic acid and, well, sort of fluffy too. It wasn't even a hard ride, so I was frustrated with myself. I made some dinner, cleaned up, and began to think about how I hadn't tried hard enough.

I don't know why I kept going. It was 7 p.m. and all I wanted to do was sleep; I'd just felt off and I had been that way all day. Just one of those days. But I got on the trainer. I had to see what it felt like. I had to know. Also, it seemed like the perfect time to finally get around to watching "Teen Wolf Too" (a friend in Idaho gave me the DVD before I moved to Alaska because he thinks I'm in love with Jason Bateman. Whether or not that's true, it still has to be one of the worst teen movies ever made - and that's saying something.) Anyway, as I pedaled and willed myself to push harder and tried to keep from wincing at the dialogue, I began to feel better. I put in 65 minutes before deciding I had successfully conquered the creeping "bonk." Now I feel a lot more energized - go figure.