Snow and light

Date: April 27
Mileage: 22
April mileage: 451
Temperature upon departure: 38

Warm day today. Temps even thought about hitting 50, but didn't quite make it. I seem to be writing an overabundance of extra-bloggy blog posts lately. The past month has been awash the mostly gray, windy, semi-warm, still-won't-melt-the-crust-on-my-driveway permanence that dominates "spring" in Alaska. My muse has been running a bit low, so I complain about the weather and take pictures out my bedroom window.

We now have officially more than 16 hours between sunrise and sunset, makes it hard to get those requisite 8 hours of sleep in. I'm one of those people that can barely dress myself in the morning, but I build energy as the day goes on, so it's also hard for me to go to bed. I had a really tough ride today, basically inexplicable as to why I was struggling so much. Lead legs on the commute. Dizzy up the hill. Spinning low gears on the gravel. It's probably just a matter of needing more rest than I anticipate, but my body just doesn't understand. When there's light on the horizon and snow on the ground, it just feels early, no matter what the clock says.

Training?

Date: April 26
Mileage: 24
April mileage: 429
Temperature upon departure: 35

Today's ride was sponsored by Shasta, who just bought a new bike and is doing some training of her own down in Dairyland. I had about 50 free minutes after work to ride today. It was a seriously short period of time for an outdoor bike workout, but I made up for it by upping my effort. I can't honestly say that I was burning everything I had, but the total mileage - 18 - didn't seem too bad, after factoring in a couple of hill climbs and a light headwind. That's - what - about 21 or 22 mph average? I could definitely improve on that, and I'm thinking that might be a good idea.

I've been trying to visualize some summer training goals that have a little more strategy than my winter training, which mostly revolved around doing a lot of crazy cold rides. So far, most of my ideas revolve around crazy long rides - which are seriously hard to make time for, especially when I have to do the whole job thing and still make time to go see "The World's Fastest Indian," like I did today. Plus, I'm going to have a few kinks in my schedule during the next two months, including two trips to Utah and my parents' visit to Alaska. There are about 18 days in there that I'm just going to lose, and there's nothing I can do about it. Not that I'm complaining. These are things that actually are more important the riding - making sure my family and friends still remember me, seeing my little sis get married, visiting the desert in the spring. Still, somewhere in all of this, I have to find focus.

So I thought it might be a good idea to train for speed. Get my lungs in good shape. For that, I thought about putting in more workouts on the hamster wheel, where I can monitor my heart rate to ensure I actually am working near anaerobic threshold, and I can also gage my progress. But, for the most part, driven training is still very new to me, so I'd love some advice. I have, now, exactly two months. I currently have a good base, but I need to work longer to get back the endurance I had in February, and I need to work harder to build up the strength that summer trail riding demands. It's also important for me to practice, practice, practice, because technical riding is still a weakness of mine. I also need to utilize cross training, because these next two months will include lots of hiking, sea kayaking, running and other miscellaneous outdoor opportunities. So, doc, what do you recommend?

Top 10 reasons for insanity

Date: April 25
Mileage: 41
April mileage: 405
Temperature upon departure: 40

Now that I'm planning on riding the Soggy Bottom 100, I should probably make a full disclosure about another summer race that is pretty close to making it on my "must do" list - the 24 Hours of Kincaid.

I know what you're thinking. Why put myself through that ... again? After all, there is a definite point where a mountain bike event stops being a race and starts to become, well, something else entirely. An exercise in insanity. Insomniac theater for athletes. There are only so many times you can ride around a loop before everything turns loopy.

There are so many reasons why riding the 24 Hours of Kincaid would be a bad idea. So I compiled a list of the relative few that make it a good idea:

1. I've already ridden/walked with/stared at with bitter resentment/and ridden a bike for a 24-hour period, so I know it's not outside the realm of possibility.
2. Not many women enter this race solo. Last year, I think the race only had one or two, so I'd have a great chance of finishing in the top 3.
3. I'm not sure what trails the 11.5-mile course covers, but I have ridden Kincaid Park before. Once. Three years ago. Therefore, I have experience.
4. The race is four days after summer solstice, so "night" riding will be almost nonexistent. There will only be about a two-hour period that I'd even need to use a light.
5. If my bike breaks or I bonk along the trail, the worst penalty I'd endure is a 5.75-mile walk to the starting line, not a painful death by hypothermia.
6. I'm not sure how many laps I could do in 24 hours, but last year's last place finisher did one. I'm fairly certain I could top that.
7. Sugar would finally have a chance to do what he does best: hop roots and negotiate hairpin turns. Now, if only I could catch up.
8. Training for this race will give me an excuse to do fun things like go on midnight trail rides or try to ride my road bike to Anchorage.
9. I've already learned the secret to surviving a 24-hour endurance event: Eat. Eat. And try to ignore the purple bunnies dancing across the trail.
10. I'm pretty sure that crazy races make me a better person.

What more reason do I need?

It's soggy out

Woke up this morning to more snow. I thought it was just as well because I was running behind and wasn't going to bike to work anyway, but the slush got its sweet revenge when it took me 10 minutes to back my car out the driveway. (When you drive a Geo in Alaska, it's all about patience.)

I thought more about yeserday's harassment incident. At the time, I was not really frightened. I just assumed they were bored idiots out for a joyride, who passed me once and thought it would be fun to go back and rile me up. It was enraging, sure, but I never felt in danger to the point where I actually would have pulled a can of bear mace on them (especially considering the high percentage of concealed weapon permits in this area.)However, it did think it strange that they were so old - they looked to be in their late-20s or early-30s, definitely old enough to know about the legal implications of terrorizing an unarmed cyclist. Also, as a strange coincidence, earlier that morning Geoff saw a white minivan with three people rumble down the driveway. He said the driver, a male, waved at him as he tried to turn the van around, apparently indicating that he mistook the driveway for a road. That happened at 11:30. About 40 minutes later, I was buzzed by a white minivan with three or more adults as it passed me 31 miles up the road. Coincidence? Or strange intersection of fate?

On a happier note, I received an e-mail the other day from Carlos, Alaska's own mountain-bike-race extraordinare, inviting me to participate in the Soggy Bottom 100. The Soggy Bottom is a 106-mile mountain bike race up an over the Resurrection Pass trail on July 22. "You have a sponsorship for the ride," he wrote, "so no moola is required." Can you believe it. Me? Sponsorship? A personal invitation to a race? How cool is that? I feel like I'm moving up in the world.

I think the Soggy Bottom is going to be a great ride, and will happen at a point in the summer when I hope to be at my strongest. It bills itself as the longest summer backcountry bicycle ride in Alaska (as opposed to winter, where the Iditarod Invitational has it beat by about 1,000 miles.) But the wheels are turning, plans are materializing, and it's definitely time to get my summer training started. Although, if it keeps snowing like it has, I may not actually get to practice riding on actual trails (the ones made out of rocks and roots and dirt) much before July. At least I have the local yokuls to keep me on my toes.

Harassed

Date: April 23
Mileage: 63
April mileage: 364
Temperature upon departure: 36

I'm not a big fan of biking on the Sterling Highway anytime, but I've noticed that the further north I ride, the deeper the twilight-zone factor is. It's a strange land of driven unemployment; of rows of single-wide trailers that serve simultaneously as day-care centers/ kennels/ charter offices/ tourist lodging and summer coffee shops; of inexplicable architecture and fake flowers planted in the snow.

So when a white minivan blew by me today blaring its horn, I wasn't surprised. This highway has a wide shoulder with a rumble-strip buffer, so traffic isn't usually very threatening. I nearly had it out of my mind when several minutes later, a startlingly similar van approached from the oncoming lane and swerved toward me, blaring its horn and swerving back into its own lane. My heart was racing against the surge of adrenaline and rage, but I stayed the course on the highway. I just couldn't believe that this van would turn around and come at me again.

No sooner had I thought it when I heard that high-pitched horn blast from behind. Everything around me turned red. I mashed into the pedals and began sprinting as I heard wheels hit the rumble strip, slowing down, no more than a few dozen yards behind me. I pulled further right until I was practically bouncing through the weeds, now 10 feet from the lane itself, just as this van pulled up beside me. A woman who at quick glance looked to be about my age rolled down the passenger-side window and screamed at me. No words, just screamed - "Ahhhhhh." The van was straddling the rumble strip, rolling at my pace only a few feet away. I could have reached out and punched the woman in her ugly face, and I'd be lying if I said there isn't a part of me that savors the thought. But I knew for my own safety that all I could do was look ahead as if no part of me noticed, and pedal against the tide of boiling blood. Finally, after an eternal second, the white minivan pulled away and headed down the road.

That is the exact point where I turned around and pedaled the way I came. I had not quite reached my destination. I was 31.5 miles from home.

The minivan did not come back, but it took quite a while before I calmed down and started thinking other thoughts besides a vengeance-tainted resolve to hunt that minivan down and cut the brake line. Why is that if someone pulls a gun on you, you can call the police? But if someone harasses you with a two-ton minivan filled with adults who are probably driving drunk at noon, your only recourse is the pull off the road and hide in a bush, or put up with it. Next time I ride the Sterling north of Anchor Point, I'm bringing my bear mace. And not because I'm afraid of bears.

Herd mentality

Date: April 21
Mileage: 31
April mileage: 301
Temperature upon departure: 38

During the past week, I have come to learn that there actually are other recreational road riders in Homer besides myself. They seem to be enthusiasts - meaning they're sporting no visible cotton on their bodies and riding bicycles that most likely weren't manufactured in China. However, like me, they always seem to be traveling solo. Scattered. Alone.

It's still too early in the season to know for sure, but it seems that there's no bicycle organization in my town. No bike club. There wasn't even a bike shop until very recently. Today I was thinking about organizing all of the lonely pedalers I've encountered into some sort of cohesive group - if nothing else, to find occasional reprieve from the near-constant wind on the Spit.

But as soon as I thought of it, logistics and doubt began to creep in. For one, I live in a terrible place to start a road bike club because I live in a terrible place to road bike. There's a 17-mile loop of bike paths and light-traffic roads that can be enjoyable, but that's about it. We have the Sterling Highway going north (the only artery in and out of town.) We have East End Road going east (narrow, winding ridge road used mostly by crazy Russians with large trucks and a tendency to drive 60 mph.) We have short stretches of neighborhood pavement with potholes that could swallow a Subaru. And the rest is gravel. Lots and lots of gravel. It's dismal, really.

And then I have my whole herd complex. I am exactly the wrong person to organize group rides, if only because I am terrified of riding in groups. I have clusterphobia. Those who occasionally scroll down through this blog probably saw my gaping knee road rash a few weeks back (still healing.) I sustained that in a crash with the one person I was riding with. Put me in the middle of a peloton amping up to 30 mph, and I am likely to cause a pileup of catastrophic proportions.

Cast that aside, and I still have the whole politics of a bike club to deal with. I still remember a "friendly" road ride I showed up for a few years back, a 30-mile jaunt down a board-flat stretch of the I-80 frontage road near Salt Lake City. I arrived on my Trek 6500, knobby tires running at about 30 psi, and I was wearing - tsk tsk - a T-shirt. The pack dropped me before I even had a chance to learn anyone's name. I was stuck in the back with an older gentleman who rode beside me as I puffed along and lectured me on the values of good gear and regular training. I know he meant well, but about 12 miles into the ride, I had had quite enough. As we approached a muddy four-wheeler trail heading off toward the Salt Lake, I said "I think I'll check this out," and bounced away from Mr. Bike Snob and the distant peloton. After that, I always saw group riders as the "Cool Kids Club" that I was definitely not a part of.

Who knows, though. The sheer lack of pavement in my town means I am probably going to pass my fellow riders more than occasionally. Maybe the group thing will just happen naturally, like rogue ducks joining a V-line. I just probably won't be the rider out front. Probably best if I'm not in the middle, either, for the safety of others. Put me in the back, and I'll probably end up where I started - alone, but happy.

Just for the halibut

Today I was finally indoctrinated into tourism side of Homer, which is known far and wide as the "Halibut Fishing Capitol of the World." (Note the addition of the word "Fishing" to that motto. If you just want to eat a halibut around here, you still have to dish out $12 a pound.) I hooked up with the Chamber of Commerce crew to tag some "little guys" for the annual halibut derby. After we tagged the requisite number of fish, they let us catch a couple of our own.

Compared to the rest of the boat, I had an awful morning. I caught three cod, had four incidents of snagging other peoples' lines, and then nothing - for hours. I just stood out there in the wind and blowing snow, wielding a fishing pole that weighs as much as my road bike and practically tap dancing to maintain an on-board (as opposed to overboard) position in the rising swells. I had taken two Dramamines to ward of seasickness but wound up feeling pitched and druggy instead. After a while it was hard not to ask myself - "and this is fun, why?"

At about noon, I was reeling up what I was certain was another cod, and I was thinking about the Popeye forearm muscles I could build if I did this kind of fishing everyday, when my first flatfish finally surfaced. No sooner had I reeled him in the boat and dropped my line back down when I felt another familiar tap-tap-tap. Second halibut, within seconds. And just like that, I was done. Four hours of nothing. Eight minutes of fishing. Done.

But there is a certain satisfaction, a feeling of warmth and independence, in pulling up your very own "little guy" - one that will net you a cool 10 pounds of moist, melt-in-your-mouth fillets. It makes the whole morning of mindlessly bouncing a four-pound sinker with frozen fingers seem entertaining - even exhilarating. In this way, fishing can be a lot like bicycling. Or mountaineering. Or hitting yourself repeatedly in the head with a hammer. It doesn't feel good until you stop.