Crazy race

Ok. I admit it. I never really "followed" racing. I don't even actually understand what those guys do in the Tour de France. I know I see a lot of cyclists and they're going really fast. But the actual strategy the event escapes me. (Yellow, polka dotted jerseys? Does it ever strike avid pro cycling fans that some of the revered traditions of the TdF may seem a little, well, kooky to the untrained eye?)

Now, having admitted that embarrassing fact for all of the bicycle-blogging world to see, I also have to admit that I have become absolutely captivated by the Iditarod Trail Invitational. With nothing more to watch than spare, often long-delayed reports on racers' current placement on the trail, I have been caught up in a whirlwind of imagination about their trail conditions, method of movement, weather, and just what exactly they might be thinking about as they gaze across endless dunes of windswept snow over the treeless tundra.

The three leaders in the race took nearly 40 hours to pedal/walk/trudge the 90 miles between Rohn and Nikolai. They're pushing five days now to make it the McGrath, a very respectable time in which to finish the race. Five days. 350 miles. Those TdF guys do 350 miles in, what, like three hours?

But I can't help but feel awestruck respect for the racers struggling toward McGrath. Here they are, in their physical prime, clawing through blowing snow and temperatures plummeting to negative-double-digits with 15 mph headwinds. They're living on power bars, jerky, disgusting trail food, the occasional hamburger at a checkpoint. They're relying on human-powered transportation in one of the few places left in this overpopulated world where you can travel 100 miles between a human settlement of any kind. They're doing it all as fast as they can, as hard as they can, and all for this blurry-eyed, sleep-deprived slump over the finish line. Then they can return to their homes in Anchorage, London and South Africa, read their name in the massive scrunch of small gray type in the Anchorage Daily News, and tell their friends that they completed the "world's longest winter ultra race" - which, of course, none of their friends will have ever heard of.

This isn't the Tour de France. It's not even the Iditarod dogsled race. There aren't any television cameras, news reports or big payouts at the end. Whatever these racers do out there, they're doing entirely for themselves. You gotta respect that.

Take a left

Date: Feb. 28
Mileage: 18.4
February mileage: 433.3
Temperature upon departure: 10

A friend of mine is back in town after an extended trip home to Venezuela. She told us that the phrase her family uses to describe Alaska literally translates to "go to the end of the world, then take a left." (of course, it sounds much more alluring in Spanish.)

Today was a ride of subtle annoyances and short attention span. It was frosty out with a sharp, sustained wind (another friend informed me that the wind-chill factor was "minus 17, at least.") Lo these past few months, I've gotten pretty good at looking at the thermometer and knowing exactly what to wear, so I never felt chilled. But today conditions were just perfect for "cold headaches." You know, the kind you get when you suck down a Slurpee too fast? Yeah. You can get those cycling, too - especially if you're heading up a steep hill, right into the wind, and you start breathing too hard.

I rode an all-too-familiar route and completely zoned out. I probably wasn't pushing myself very hard at all, because I started thinking about writing projects from years ago that I'm curious to dredge up, and suddenly I was wheeling into my driveway. Have you ever done that in your car? Arrived at a destination only to realize you have no memory of the journey? Yeah, you can do that cycling, too.

My "camelbak injury" is still really bothering me, and I'm starting to wonder if it's something else (sustained muscle soreness in my lower left shoulder). As it is, I haven't carried a camelbak and therefore haven't had any water to drink on rides since the Susitna. But, what can you do? I've gone to see doctors about these strange injuries before. The best they've ever done is prescribe painkillers, so I guess I'll keep eating Ibuprofens.

I'm still watching the Iditarod Trail Invitational. Based on some of the checkpoint times these bikers are posting, I can see a lot of similarities to the Susitna 100 - conditions started out pretty good, (much colder, but good) so the leaders got through pretty fast. They're pushing on now to the last third of the 350-mile race. The bikers who were left behind, though, seem to be bogged down in conditions that quickly went to hell. One biker took nearly 36 hours just to clear 40 miles between the second and third checkpoints (and at last post was only 130 miles into an 1,100-mile slog.) Ug. It seems like racers are dropping out left and right, and I can only imagine what it must be like out there right now. But that's my problem. I can imagine. So I watch with fascinated empathy - and this dark (masochistic) side of myself even feels envy.

Float on

Well, I'm back to my Monday night routine, running on the hamster wheel at the gym, thereby inadvertently devoting an hour to wandering thoughts about ways to make life more interesting.

Today, for no reason, a mundane conversation I had with a coworker about a year ago suddenly popped into my head. It's been buried in the back of my mind, and I have no idea why it's even stored in my long-term memory - except as a glaring statement on how much I've changed since I moved to Alaska.

My coworker was training for the upcoming cycling season, and was trying to plan a fitness routine he could stick with. He hated the hamster wheel/spinning bike/whole indoor workout setup more than anyone I know. So he asked me what I knew about studs that you could attach to bike tires. He thought they might help him navigate icy Idaho highways during longer rides.

I remember shooting back a reply that was something along the lines of "That's crazy. Why in the world would you want to ride outside in the winter when you have a well-lit, climate-controlled gym at your disposal?" (I was a big hamster wheel advocate at the time.)

He told me he was training for a double century, and needed to keep a pretty strict routine that required him to step up his mileage soon. And he just couldn't put in the time indoors.

"But that's crazy," I replied. "Why would anyone want to ride a double century?"

Not only did I not have any advice to offer, but the whole idea turned my stomach. I promptly forgot the unpleasantness - until today, only one year later. I'm still plugging away on the hamster wheel, but this time with big dreams of double triple-digits running through my head.

There are a lot of things I want to do this summer, but I think the first event I might like to plan for is the Fireweed 200, a 200-mile highway ride from Sheep Mountain to Valdez. The race is slated for July 8. That's a little too close to 24 hours of Kincaid (June 24) to feasibly train for both (there's another similar event I specifically told another coworker she was "crazy" for doing - in her case, the 24 hours of Moab race.) So I do have to make some decisions, and map out a plan. The Fireweed 200 has a nondrafting division that appeals to the rabid soloist in me, so my early pull is for the road race. (However, some have suggested that I consider riding the entire Fireweed 400. While I do have a plug-along attitude that has gotten me through some tough spots, I'm not exactly an ultra athlete - and the Fireweed 400 is not only Four Hundred Nonstop Miles, but also 28,000 feet of climbing! UltraRob has done it. But UltraRob is UltraRob. He's one of those RAAM people that even the current me would call crazy.)

But I am excited about the prospect of training for and riding in these "ultra" races - if nothing else, to spite my 2005 self for being so self-depreciating and cynical. I do not need Cat 5 status or quads of steel to ride 200 miles or spend 24 hours on a mountain bike. I have love! I have Power Bars! I'm good to go.

It's a struggle

Date: Feb. 26
Mileage: 13.2
February mileage: 414.9
Temperature upon departure: 22

One thing that makes winter cycling so exciting and yet so frustrating at the same time is its total lack of predictability. Sure, you can gage weather conditions, new snow, temperature, etc. But you're never going to know what a trail will be - or become - until you're right on top of it. You could go out for a 13-mile ride that you'd successfully pounded out in less than an hour in the recent past, and watch it take you more than two.

Geoff and I went out for what was going to be our easy, pre-ski ride and spent over two hours navigating conditions that dangled on the precipice between rideable and not. Even the roads, which yesterday received about four inches of snow (not enough to plow on a weekend), were zig-zagging, fish-tailing affairs. On the trails we met soft, deep and sometimes all-together untrammeled snow (had I had my snowboard with me, I probably would have giggled with joy.) I enjoyed the challenge of trying to pedal through stuff that very recently I would have deemed unrideable, but there are only so many times you can bury your front tire in a drift and slam your crotch into the handlebar stem before you start asking yourself - why? (I'm sure if I were a member of the opposite gender, that question would have been asked much sooner.)

There was some poetic justice to today's ride, as we swerved down the final steep hill to the reservoir. Geoff, who is by leaps and bounds more athletic than I am, said "You know, I have a lot more appreciation for what you did last weekend." And I know, deep down, that winter cycling isn't the classic struggle of man against man or even man against self. No, it's the much more modern, much more sinister battle of man against machine, in a place where the very tool you chose to save you can become your worst enemy.

That said, the Iditarod Invitational racers are clearing checkpoints pretty quickly. As of early this afternoon, four bikers had already passed the 130-mile point. That's 24 hours for the leaders. Now they're really moving into the Alaska Range, above treeline and onto the sweeping tundra so remote the race organizers call it "The Black Hole." As of 3 p.m., Rocky Reifenstuhl was one of two in front. His brother, Steve, is marching the 350-mile distance on foot. He did the race last year, and here's what he said about the experience:

"The edge with which I am dancing is where the mind can make the body perform beyond what is believed to be possible. It is spiritual, it is dreamlike, it penetrates to my core and when I come back from it, I know I was there, and it beckons for months afterward ... At the finish line in McGrath, the physical and the emotional unite in a crescendo of emotion, pain, elation. The "other" becomes a memory. This unique reality has been reached by the passage of miles, time, physical exertion, psychological strain and sleep deprivation. It is so close to me, yet a world away."

Practice makes patience

It snowed most of the morning. Geoff and I went for a two-and-a-half hour cross-country skiing excursion. The sheer time on the skis helped me build confidence and some speed. It also left my hip flexors so sore that even walking now is more of a shuffle. I'm also feeling it in my much-neglected arm muscles and my Susitna "camelbak injury," a knot in my left shoulder that seems to just be getting worse. There is something to be said about cross training, and my lack thereof.

The 2006 Winter Olympic Games are almost over, and the pictures in the newspaper make me nostalgic for the balmy February nights of 2002, tearing through the crowded streets of Salt Lake City with a massive Canadian flag, just to stir things up a bit.

I came of age in the shadow of Olympic anticipation - learned to drive on streets under massive construction, lost my favorite wrong-side-of-the-tracks concert venue to a beautifying "Gateway" project, watched my alma mater squeeze out students to make way for an athletes-only Olympic village. Everything seemed to be closed down or off limits or reserved for the Olympic elite. By the time 2002 finally came around, I was about as close to anti-Olympics as they come. I thought the entire thing was an elaborate publicity sham. I thought that Salt Lake City was delusional to think it could host such an sweeping international event with any success. And I was pretty sure I was just going to hole up in some place far away and wait for them to be over.

But then they came. And I was living four blocks from downtown Salt Lake City, watching the sterile city streets transform into something colorful, loud and wholly alive. There were people everywhere - dressed in elaborate costumes, gyrating to ghettoblasters, guzzling from suddenly-legal open containers and lining up by the thousands for the free medals ceremony rock concerts. Athletes showed up at all the hot clubs. Latvians and Croatians and Slovakians were dancing in the streets. People waved flags from their balconies. How could you not get caught up in that?

One particularly memorable night, we set out with a video camera and all of the sense of a horde of 6-year-olds set loose in Disneyland. The rest of the night generated a series of caught-on-tape outtakes that at the time came so naturally, and now seem so surreal: an interview with Barney the Dinosaur, absurd arguments with anti-Mormon activists, "short-track street skating" in downhill ski boots; crashing a street rave; and taking on Canadian identities to join a group of real Canuks in full-gusto cheering.

It's kind of funny that those street parties became my Olympic experience. The only actual event I saw was the Men's Super G. Tickets were so expensive - and by the time I realized that I was in fact completely in love with the Olympics, they were over. Sometimes I wonder if I'll have to explain to my grandchildren someday about the time I was sitting right on top of the Olympics and missed them, but I don't think so. I think I saw the Olympics for what they really are - one big, surreal party. And everyone's invited.

Tough to quit

Date: Feb. 24
Mileage: 29.9
February mileage: 401.7
Temperature upon departure: 18

Today Geoff and I went to lunch at our favorite semi-organic greasy spoon, Cosmic Kitchen (there are two types of restaurants in this town - the swank places that welcome Xtratuf-wearing locals with open arms, and the carrot-juice-brewing hippie places that also serve beef and cheese burritos the size of your head.) After months of hugging the horizon, the noontime sun ventured toward midsky, bathing the whole restaurant in white light. We took our plates into the glare of a south-facing window just as a family settled in next to us - only on the other side of the window, where snow-covered picnic tables lined the balcony. There they sat for nearly an hour - sipping coffee, munching on corn chips, soaking in sunlight - with steam pouring from their burgers and breath in the subfreezing air.

That's when I decided it would be a great day for a bike ride. I left work a little later than hoped, but I still thought it would be good to go out for an hour, absorb some vitamin D through that narrow slit in my balaclava, and come back with time to spare before Foreign Film night.

But one aspect of the Susitna 100 that I didn't anticipate letting go was this whole training thing. Giving up the multihour, four-times-a-week bicycle rides I've become so accustomed to almost feels like losing a job. I fear that suddenly I'll find myself sprawled on my coach, pouring through classifieds for used bicycle parts and struck with that hollow feeling that my life is slowly sinking into uselessness ... meaningless ... joblessness. Sure - I could get some other hobby. Find a new passion. Maybe even get a life. Sure - and while I'm at it, I could apply for new jobs. It's not as easy as it sounds.

That said, my one hour ride turned to three, as simple as cranking those pedals and wishing I had decided to bring my Camelbak with me, especially as I was laboring up the 1200-foot-vertical, 3-mile climb the locals call East Hill (I don't typically bring water on short rides, because bottles freeze in about a millisecond and the Camelbak seems like overkill.) The whole time, I had this freeing feeling that I was riding for fun again - spinning down the snow-dusted bike path on the Spit, bouncing through the surprisingly technical ice boulderfield created by snowplows along East End Road. I was riding like I wasn't trying to put in miles, so the miles just came.

Before I knew it, the sun was slipping below the horizon. It was so far west that I could only see streaks of orange light reaching above treeline - a long way from its position in the south that I've become so accustomed to. And I knew what it felt like to be that family eating their lunch on the balcony on a 20-degree day in February. Despite all appearances, it felt good ... a rare and much appreciated afternoon in the sun.

Big dreams

Today I received a prize in the mail - a stainless steel mug that reads "Susitna 100 finisher" on it. Everyone who posted finishing times in the race wins the same. Since I've already plowed through all the Pepsi and Goldfish within chowing range, I thought I'd improvise on Kevin's request and make a self portrait of myself having my evening herbal in my "major award." Sorry, Kevin ... I can't sign it because I don't own any photo editing software. Plus, that's just an identity theft waiting to happen.

I look forward to putting this mug to good use this weekend when I kick back to watch the check-in times on the Iditarod Trail Invitational. This race makes the Susitna 100 look like a few turns down the Bunny Slope. I'd like to try it next year. I really mean that. With a little bike investment, a little more practice and a lot of workouts, it's not totally incomprehensible. By 2007, Geoff will be ready to take on the 350 miles to McGrath on foot anyway, so I sure as Susitna should be able to do it on a bike. Unless the trail conditions are bad ... how long is 350 miles at 2.5 mph?

As for this weekend, I'll be cheering on local rider Adam Bartlett, Alaska Magazine columnist Ned Rozell on skis, and my boy from back home - Eric Johnson of Utah on foot. In the long race, I'm watching out for Kathi Merchant of Chickaloon. She's a woman. She's Alaskan. And she's riding her bike to Nome. I am in awe.

I forgot to link this before, but I answered "20 questions" for Daniel of St. Louis. Daniel was kind. They're mostly softballs. But as for the Iditarod Invitational, which begins Saturday, I encourage all to join me, Tim, Old Bag and everyone else who has committed to kicking back with rich food, a warm hearth, and good vibes for those who are still out there, suffering toward wisps of glory in the endless snow.