Countdown

Date: Feb. 10
Mileage: 25.4
February mileage: 185.9
Temperature on departure: 35

Well, I can check the 10-day weather forecast and see the day of my race now; I'm receiving empathy e-mails from fellow racers. Looks like the countdown's on. I feel like I'm physically ready for the race, but right now I'm so obsessed with the weather that nothing else seems to matter. I might as well go eat a row of Oreos.

Instead, I took Geoff's advice to do one short-but-hard ride. Thanks to a full day of ad design (blah), I only had about a two-hour span between punch-out time at the office and the start of a foreign film I really wanted to see, "The Story of Weeping Camel." (Mongolia is definitely a place I want to bicycle tour through someday.) Anyway, today was probably not the best day to decide to go out at "run" pace. Above-freezing temps and a full day of rain unleashed havoc on the deep snowpack, turning every road shoulder and bike path into unholy basins of slush. Sloppy, slurping slush that rose to my calves in some spots. I should have geared up with my new overboots. As it was, I was dressed for 35 degrees (basically, my summer suit). I biked until I was soaked through and through, and then I biked another 24.4 miles.

Hard pedaling helped me stay warm, although the wind chill was an definite minus. I pumped out 25 miles in one hour, 45 minutes. Laughably slow for road cyclists, I know, but for moving a full-suspension mountain bike with about 30 psi in high-treaded snow tires through an ocean of melting snow, it didn't seem too bad. In fact, it felt really good. Until I stopped. Then I was really cold.

The camel movie was really cute, too. I highly recommend it to anyone with an actual DVD rental store in their town. T minus one week, eight hours, 58 minutes and counting.

Just snow

Well, the snow banks in front of my house are now officially taller than I am. Geoff estimated that about 7 feet of snow has fallen here in the past three weeks. The accumulation isn't quite as high thanks to near or above-freezing temps, but there's still plenty of snow on the ground. I feel tempted sometimes to let my restless cat go out exploring, but I fear I wouldn't find her until spring. Heavy snowfall and 50 mph winds this morning created an absolute white out, complete with about eight inches of wet, unplowed powder on the roads. I barely got my car out of the driveway, and only because I have to drop 1,200 feet in elevation did I even have a prayer of driving it to work. I arrived at the office windblown and soaked to my thighs from pushing my car.

"How come you didn't ride your bike today?" my boss asked.

I think she was joking, but I'm not sure. I have developed a reputation for bicycling in nasty conditions, and bike commuting when the driving's bad. But I don't think she understands that, even if I could successfully ride - not walk - my bike through eight inches of snow, I'd likely be killed by traffic while negotiating the roads through the blasting wind and extremely low visibility. Big SUVs were sliding off the road. "Blizzard-like conditions" and two massive avalanches closed the Seward Highway, which means everyone on the Kenai Peninsula is stuck here until the storm lets up. My point is ... there are some days that you just can't ride.

For what it's worth, I did put in 90 minutes running intervals at 85-90 percent maximum heart rate on the elliptical (how boring is that?). But it's good to get in these hard cardiovascular workouts that I can't always achieve on my bike. And the gym was absolutely abandoned, because no one in their right mind was out driving today.

But if they're even getting a fraction of this snowfall north of Anchorage, no amount of heart-pumping intervals can save me, especially if it stays as warm as it's supposed to. Ned Rozell recently wrote a great description of conditions I fear the most in the lead of his latest Alaska Magazine column. But all I can do is watch and wait, and hope my prayers override the skiers'.

Getting there

Date: Feb. 8
Mileage: 19.2
February mileage: 160.5
Temperature on departure: 26

Today's ride was sponsored by Andy. I realized that I passed 1,000 miles for my winter "season," which officially began Dec. 1. The total right now: 1,042.9. I've always been a recreational rider, and I think it has probably been a while since I logged 1,000 miles in a two-month span. I especially let myself go last year, when I discovered a cheap gym membership through my employer would allow me to spin myself into pretty good shape without all of the psychological turmoil of wind and heat and mud-soaked trails. My bikes, which together are worth more than my car, spent most of summer 2005 in my apartment gathering dust. What a fool I was.

Outside is where it's at, elements be damned. Doing all this winter riding has reminded me why I started cycling, back when I didn't really care about speed increments or my ghetto booty. I wanted to be entertained. I wanted to be engaged. I wanted rare moments of clarity, and I wanted to work for them. Yes, I lost my way. But I've reformed.

And, if nothing else, I think riding in the snow has really improved my handling skills. Come summer, I expect to be fully charged and ready to tear up the trails on my mountain bike - rather than hedging for more time on the road and choking the brakes down winding single tracks. Today, while riding downhill in the soft, uneven slush, I lost control of my bike twice and managed to ride out of it each time with nary a foot on the ground. I feel so much more confidence. I feel like I have skills. You know, like numchuck skills ... computer hacking skills ...

I need to go find some sweet jumps.

Sloppy, sloppy

Date: Feb. 7
Mileage: 32.2
February mileage: 141.3
Temperature on departure: 24

Today's ride was sponsored by Thomas, and by my beautiful sister Lisa, who has some very exciting "unofficial" news that I'm probably not allowed to publish, but I'm very happy for her nonetheless.

I got out of work just in time for the most beee-utiful day imaginable - that is, there was some semblance of sun outside. So I set out in a very good mood, only to realize very quickly that the price I would pay for the warmth and sunshine was miles and miles and miles of this mess ---> (and, really, this picture does it no justice.)

This point is about a half mile from my house. The going was slow, slippery and precarious, and I was trying to decide whether to return home and ride the trainer for some good, heart-thumping exercise, or stay out and ride in the slop to practice, well, riding in the slop. I chose the slop. And I'm glad I did. Because it was a beee-utiful day; I did get some good practice riding through soft snow and semi-frozen puddles; and I ended up dropping into town, where I had to deal with fierce headwinds and the grueling climb back, so I even got some good exercise.

Since I was planning to do a longish ride after work, I turned down free pizza to eat Mini-Wheats cereal and yogurt for lunch (I usually only do good by conscious nutrition *before* rides. After-ride meals can and often do descend quickly into all-out sugar binges.) So before I took a shower I decided to weigh myself, because I was so proud of myself. But I was more than a little surprised to see it stop on 127. Since I still have tree-trunk legs and I'm always buried in three or four clothing layers anyway, I didn't really notice how slight my upper body has become. My weakling arms are starting to show muscle definition - probably because there's not much else there. My collarbone looks like it's trying to escape from my chest cavity. Even Geoff said my faces looks "thinner."

I thought my publisher was referring to my grumpy demeanor this morning when she looked into my eyes and said "you need pizza!" I fear that if I've actually dropped eight pounds during the past month, what I may have lost is muscle mass, which I probably burn through during my longer rides. It seems unlikely that I actually burned that much fat, since my caloric needs are well fortified, believe me. I don't know. I think that best thing to do about it is not to worry much about it. I feel strong today, and that's what matters.

On a related note, The Old Bag compared me to this guy in a Bicycles and Icicles post dedicated to "real" football players. That's right. Jack Lambert. Um ... thanks. This guy is scary, not to mention about as attractive as the back end of a rhino. But I guess he's tough. I guess he's real. And I hear he rubbed a lot of faces in the grass. So I probably should feel complimented. Even though putting myself in that category of "tough" really is kind of laughable. Right now, there are people in Alaska attempting winter summits of Denali, running their dog sleds in -50 degree wind chills and trying to cross the Bering Straight on skis. What I do is go out for bike rides. But they keep things interesting, and that's what matters to me.

Little tsunami

We had a short-lived tsunami warning this morning. A complete false alarm, but it lasted long enough to send the reporters at my office into a frenzy and release a steady stream of cars into town as they raced to get off the Homer Spit. Little earthquakes, little volcanoes ... does it end? Or do we just learn to live with it, like we learned to live with freezing rain and Kelly Clarkson, letting the threat sink into our lives until we scarcely realize how unnerving it should be?

I'm still haunted by a night Geoff and I spent bicycle camping in a little park in Chester, Illinois. Swirling clouds gathered in the Midwestern sky as blasts of hurricane-force wind tore through the deserted park, ripping down tree limbs and blowing through the rickety public restroom structure - the only building within sight. I sat in a "covered" picnic area, both arms stretched across a Rand McNally map to hold it down, my weather radio turned to high volume against the howling wind. Scratchy reports of tornado warnings (warnings, not watches, meaning tornados were imminent or were already happening) came in for nearby counties. Approaching counties. Then, finally, my county.

I remember being locked in a frozen sort of panic. Where would I go? What would I do? My best effort on a bicycle - even surging adrenaline - might reach oh, 35 mph. Maybe 40 with the wind behind me, although you'd have to knock off another 5 for the panic factor. Either way, not really enough to outrun shrapnel being shot out of a swirling vortex. So there I sat in the vertical rain, subdued by my powerlessness, and wondering how much better off I'd be if I just kept the stupid radio turned off in the first place. After all, the warnings only go as far as you can.

Not that I'm saying it's bad to have a good tsunami warning system in place - it's definitely better to create a little false hysteria than to risk loss of life. But it seems to also be true that we pay for this vigilance with increasing levels of elevated fear, even though the overwhelming majority of us will never encounter a catastrophic natural disaster. Still, some of us will. And I guess awareness is the price we pay for knowledge.

Earthquake II

Had the unsettling experience this morning of waking up to the bed jumping up and down as the bookshelf banged against the wall. High winds and warming had already sent huge slabs of snow on a 25-foot freefall from roof to ground throughout the night, but this was a much more prominent, much more sustained rumble. I couldn't tell what time it was, because the power had gone out several times already, and didn't even know what was happening in the black, inexplicable turbulence of it all. But either this Alaskan acclimation thing happens fast, or I'm more apathetic in the early morning than I even knew. Either way, I just thought "well, it's either an earthquake or an avalanche or the volcano finally blew its top over the entire Bay." Then I went back to sleep.

Turns out it was the former. At 7:15 a.m., a 5.3 earthquake hit about 18 miles south of Homer. A minor earthquake by damage standards, but large enough to be felt by people more than a hundred miles from here. And large enough to eclipse the all-time largest earthquakes of at least 10 states, according to a quick Internet search I did, including New Jersey and Indiana. OK. Not that impressive. Still, I hope this isn't a pattern that continues. Judging by the ruckus the bookshelf was making this morning, I think a 6-magnitude earthquake might just send it through the floor.

Geoff and I went snowshoeing this afternoon right before the Souper Bowl, which we missed the end of anyway in order the catch a movie (I actually missed pretty much the entire thing. It's amazing how much time a person can spend reading the Sunday paper when they're really locked into it.) Snow was deep and untrammeled, so it was a great workout for calves and quads. But the snowpack was warm and settling fast, which made for scary whoomps and thumps below our feet. At one point we watched a distinct fracture form across the gully we were trekking through. The hills around here are really mild as far as hills go, but you have to wonder - what could little avalanches do?

Little avalanches, little earthquakes. It's hard to keep on top of it all. At least one natural force is carrying out according to my evil plan. It's currently 37 degrees in Wasilla, where, as I type, the snow on the Iditarod trail is melting and settling and packing in tight beneath the weight of snowmobiles. If only the minor warmth keeps up for a few more days ... followed by the return of a deep freeze before oh, say Feb. 13 or 14 ... followed by clear, cold, sunshiney days with no new snow. Think I could will it so? It's worth a try.

End of the road, ma

Date: Feb. 4
Mileage: 63.4
February mileage: 109.1
Temperature on departure: 20

Well, according to some scratchy multiplication I just did, I rode about 102 kilometers today. If I were in Canada right now, I would have ridden a century. In Alaska, however, my ride was just a 63-mile slog against gale-force winds.

Today's ride was hard because I felt like I was in a constant battle with forces greater than myself - deep, uneven snow drifts across every road and trail, hills that seemed steeper than they probably actually are . And the wind. Oh, the wind. For most of the ride I was heading north or south with the wind right at my side, gusting to 40 mph and forcing me to lean like crazy diagonal biker woman just to stay on the road. Riding east, the chill would bring tears to my eyes, but at least I couldn't see my odometer registering its ridiculously low speeds. But there were the rare and beautiful moments riding west, skirting along at an even clip with traffic, feeling those oh-so-rare beads of sweat gathering beneath my layers. It was, after all, in the balmy 20s today. Felt much colder.

Also, my first experiment with the Camelbak thermal control kit was a massive failure. I made the mistake of neglecting to check my hose before I left the house. But I must have forgotten to blow the water out, because by the bottom of Diamond Ridge, 3.5 downhill miles and 10 minutes into my ride, the entire system was frozen solid. Because of the neoprene wrap around the tubing, I couldn't thaw it under my own power (by sticking the hose in my mouth) and I couldn't stuff it back into the protection of the pouch, where it would have been had I not purchased that false security system in the first place. The entire day, I had to drink straight out of the bladder, water slopping down my chin and raining onto anything below it (by the end of the ride, I had a fairly prominent frost bib down the front of my coat. Sad. Just sad.) I was really annoyed by the process. It caused me to never stay as well hydrated as I should have, and that combined with the pounding wind made for a really grumpy ride. I stuck it out to 5 p.m. because I promised myself I would. Under my training regimen, I could and probably should have gone further. Had I not been training, I would have turned around at the bottom of Diamond Ridge.

Oh well. I did have one bright spot during the ride. I took a little spur out from Anchor Point to a point that looked over the Cook Inlet. There, standing behind a mass of picnic tables buried in snow, was a sign informing me that I had just reached the furthest point west on the interconnected highways of North America. I had a short-lived but satisfying moment of standing somewhere important ... sort of like the time I stood at the end of the road in Prudhoe Bay (furthest point north), only this time, I was on my bike. That perked me up for at least two miles. Then, I remembered that it was really windy. Oh, the wind.