Geoff has a blog

Fumbling Towards Endurance

Signs of spring 2

March snowfall: 92 inches
Season to date: 244.6

Today has been a day of weather contrasts. Sunny with fingers of warmth reaching through the air one minute, then snowing the next. It was perfect, really ... enough sunlight to perk up the sullen mood that comes from not enough sleep, but snowy enough to absolve any guilt about spending too much of the day inside.

Spring seems to be on everyone's mind. I think it's because the first signs of the season are starting to break through. Evidence of early spring in Alaska is very subtle ... even imaginary, in some cases. A sprout here, a non-raven bird there. Spring likes to keep a low profile here until it's suddenly summer, so, in the meantime, we cling to whatever clues we can find.

I remember last year, those subtle moments in which I first started to get a sense that the cold and snow would in fact not last forever. So I scrolled back, and found that the first concrete images of spring 2006 also appeared on March 26. Since this seems to be an anniversary of some sort, I thought I'd look for some Signs of Spring: 2007.

Something green punching through the snow: Actually, quite a bit of snow has melted since I first saw these spiny leaves poking out of several inches of icy crust. I'm not even sure what kind of plant this is, but it's about as impatient as plants come. Twenty bucks says the rest of the city's greenery doesn't show its face until May.

Midnight out at noon: I'm beginning to realize that my cats may actually make through the winter without killing each other. Too much time indoors makes for some spastic felines, but it's been almost impossible to coax them out during the day for months. Now they're raring to go out. They've even found places cleared enough of snow to soak up some sunlight. Good sign.


So much daylight: It's been strange to come home for my dinner break when it's still light out. I walk across the deck and notice that what I see is buildings and mountains, not blurs of orange light shrouded in fog. Pretty soon, it there will be daylight when I come home from work at 11 p.m. Strange.

Landlords still haven't taken the Christmas lights down: Back in January, Geoff and I laughed about this. In February, our neighbors laughed about it. Now it seems to be an unspoken oddity, like having 15 cats - humorous, but with a hint of sad desperation. But Christams lights are so out of place, they're a constant reminder of the passing of time.

Healing up nicely: So last year on March 26, I rear-ended Geoff on a road bike and body-slammed the snowless pavement at 15 mph. The crash ripped away a respectable chunk of my left knee. It took me a while to grow it back, and I didn't do a very good job of it, judging by the unsightly purple scar tissue that remains. Coincidentally, I was sitting at the edge of the public pool today when a lady from my normal gym swam up. She stopped to take a drink of water and regarded me for several seconds before she recognized me. (I think the wet hair and relative lack of clothing threw her off.) We've exchanged injury war stories in the past, and since my knees were right at her eye level, we only got our hellos in before she loudly asked "Oh no! Did you have to get surgery?"

I scrunched my forehead in confusion for a split second before I realized what she was talking about. "Oh no, no," I laughed. "That's my good knee."

Cabin fever

I don't have any pictures today because I haven't been outside for a couple of days. Patience has never been a virtue of mine. And with work as busy as its been, and the rest of life as enclosed as it's becoming, I'm about ready to burst out the door in a fight-or-flight sprint from apathy.

I can't shake the feeling that if this were the era of survival-of-the-fittest, I would have already been culled from the herd. It's funny to think about life in the caveman days, wondering what would finally bring you down. Some would die in a vicious battle with a potential meal. Others would die in an arduous journey, or by accident when trying to impress a potential mate while jumping over fire. I would be the one to contract a minor injury and become the slowest in the pack by just a touch - but just enough - to fall behind when the predators came around.

I've done some more swimming in the past two days. My hair is like straw and I've been fending off a cramp in my calf muscle most likely caused by dehydration, but other than that, it's going really well. Today I swam 100 laps. It gave me some time to think about endurance swimming as a pursuit. If I learned some technique, worked on moving faster, figured out how to stick my face in the water without inhaling, and bought a good swim cap, I could see progression in this sort of a thing. Of course, swimming long distances in a pool is about as interesting as running 3,100 miles around a single city block. And if I wanted to do something fun, like, say, swim across Kachemak Bay or the English Channel, I'd have to become a lot less intensely afraid of moving water (deep water doesn't scare me. Waves and rivers do.) Other than that, to be quite honest, I think I have more inherent aptitude for swimming than any other sport I've ever tried. Strange to be so naturally inclined and yet so terrified of something at the same time.

Not that I want to be a swim dork or anything. This blog will go bicycle again. Promise.

More avalanche photos

Sorry. I came across some photos of the recent avalanche in action, and I just had to post them for posterity. I'm actually not sure who took these photos or where they came from. They are one of those things that have been circulating in mass e-mails around town. And we identify with them and pass them on to our friends because we *almost* share a common experience.

Tonight I went with friends to see The Who's "Tommy" at the Perseverance Theatre. We were under the impression that we were going to see a local production in a small-town theater in Douglas, so we showed up thinking we'd just be able to buy tickets. They looked at us like we had twirled in wearing bed sheets and begging for free seats, but they did offer to herd us into a corner and sell us a seat if something opened up. It seemed unlikely that they'd have five extra tickets, but we persevered and they managed to wedge us into the last five seats available, even vaguely within sight of each other.

The play gave me an idea to create a rock opera about ice biking in the Arctic. In order to sell it to the masses, there would have to be at least one contrived love story about a cyclist who loses his way in a roiling storm, only be rescued by a beautiful Inuit girl who he then loses track of in another roiling storm. Then there'd be an encounter with a wayward polar bear, a harrowing ascent of some gnarly pass, a self-revealing moment of clarity beneath the northern lights, yet another roiling storm, and then a happy reunion. I can't decide what kind of rock would narrate the story best. I was thinking maybe Pearl Jam. Or Jimmy Eat World.

Um ... yeah. Anyway, hope you enjoyed the avalanche photos.

Laps

I don't start physical therapy until April 2, which means I'm on my own for another week. That hasn't proved the best place for me to be - I'm reminded of that fact each night when shots of sharp pain wake me up and some unlikely hour. Still, I'm dying to get this ball rolling. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

That's how ended up at the edge of the public pool today, blinking in a bewildered haze at the rush of swimmers crawling up and down every single lane. I arrived there a full 45 minutes later than I intended to. (That's about how long it took me to find my swimming suit, which I'm fairly certain I haven't worn once in nearly two years.) Finally, a teenage lifeguard walked up to me and explained that I could swim in a lane with someone else, as long as we kept a circular pattern. That sounded insurmountably complicated, so I pretended I forgot something in the locker room and waited in the shadows until someone get out. Appropriately, the free section was marked "Slow Lane."

I slipped into the water and it was cold. Freezing! I contemplated for a second jumping right back out, but I remembered that I was here to exercise and I'd probably warm up. So I took my first tentative strokes through the icy water. The feeling was vaguely nostalgic. When I was a kid, I was a natural in water. Never much of a swimmer - I never learned the technique and never really tried to. But I could maintain buoyancy for pretty much as long as I wanted. I used to spend the better part of a day crawling along the Bear Lake shoreline, looking for adventure. Adulthood has instilled in me a healthy (read: manic) fear of drowning and water in general, so swimming and I had parted ways.

But as I sliced through the water today, I felt a soothing release of bad energy that has been building up like plaque on my soul. The minor pain that accompanies pretty much everything I do - even walking across parking lots - had all but sloughed off, and I felt that now was the time - if there ever was a time to do so again - to go hard.

So I started ticking off laps, kicking gently with my legs and pulling hard with my arms. The echoing noise of the pool building roared and faded as my head bobbed in an out of the water. Every once in a while I would zone out and catch myself regressing into a lopsided sort of dog paddle. Then I would shake off the laziness and focus on raring back. I told myself I would keep swimming until it hurt or until my open-swim hour was up - whichever came first.

I was on lap 58, feeling dazed and a little sleepy, when I decided fatigue was probably going to come first. That's when a man with only one leg approached the pool on crutches and jumped in the lane next to mine. Watching him launch past me was the quick shot of inspiration I needed. He and I swam several laps pretty much side by side, with me pushing my best effort to keep up with a one-legged man. Then he got out and I thought - I have this hour in me yet.

I finished up lap 86 at 2 p.m. Time to get out of the pool. I wondered how many more I could do. I know it's not a good idea to push too hard in something you're not remotely in shape for ... but the idea of endurance swimming seemed so appealing at that moment.

I felt great and the buzz lasted almost 45 minutes - long enough for me to take a shower, drive over to Sandy Beach, and walk about a half mile along the shoreline. I was hoping for a photo safari of sorts, but the lighting was really flat, and it was raining. I was thinking about turning around for those reasons when I first realized that I was really feeling tired - tired enough that curling up in the sand for a little nap seemed appealing. Not only that, I was seriously dehydrated - dehydrated enough to have little bit of head swim going on, complete with a sore throat. Apparently, I had better workout than I was trying for.

When I got home, I did the math - 86 laps in a 75-foot pool equals 6,450 feet, which equals 1,965 meters, which equals 1.2 miles. It's funny to think that all of that effort will only net a mile and change in the water. An hour at that heart rate on a bike would probably put me at least 20 miles down the road. But I do know I wore myself out, pain-free. I think I'll go back tomorrow.

A good day to not be riding

(Photo by Brian Wallace/Juneau Empire)

So somewhere beneath this mountain of snow is Thane Road, a favorite route of mine. The road was of course closed for avalanche control when this one came tumbling down. But I think the gunners shot off a little more than they could handle. Road crews said it would be at least 10 hours before they could clear away the 20-foot-high powder wall, and there's a whole town's worth of people who live on the wrong side of this thing. Rough.

It's crazy weather day here in Juneau. We hit the all-time seasonal snowfall record early this morning - 195 inches (the official number is measured at the airport. Where I live, on Douglas Island, we have received closer to 240 inches.) Then it switched over to rain - heavy, heavy rain. Heavy in the way that waterlogged snow sitting atop a fresh powder slab is heavy. Avalanche danger right now is an understated "extreme." Flood advisories are rampant. They even threw in a wind advisory for good measure. Officials are telling people to drive at their own risk. If you don't get buried by a snow slide, you'll probably be swept away by a torrent from a flooded-out stream, or blown away by 50 mph gusts. Welcome to spring in Southeast Alaska - where winter doesn't just melt away. It implodes.

Either way, it's a good day to sit inside the office, ice my knee into dull-ache oblivion, and dream up ways to make a great gimp adventure out of it all tomorrow. Any ideas?

Patellar tendonitis

So my diagnosis has been upgraded from "angry knee" to "jumper's knee." At least this diagnosis makes a little more sense - even if it is a malady usually reserved for basketball players (and, apparently, people who can't pedal a bicycle as well as they think they can.) The bad news is my condition is at least "grade 3," which means I need to:

* Rest completely from the aggravating activity. Replace it with swimming/running in water (if pain allows).
* See a sports injury specialist/therapist who can apply sports massage techniques and advice on rehabilitation.

* Accept the fact that I've basically wasted an entire month.

The doc recommended physical therapy. That sounds expensive. But I'm willing now to accept that this is a problem worth throwing money at. The fact that I've been so stingy and stubborn is one of the reasons I've lost an entire month.

Because I acquired the injury in an interesting way - riding a 100-mile snow bike race - the doctor always ends up spending more time chatting with me about my bicycling than he does talking about my knee. He was asking me another string of questions about the Susitna 100 today when I finally dropped my most pressing question.

"So I want to be able to ride another 100-miler by early May. Think that's possible?" I asked.

"Yes, that's possible," he said.

I paused to wait for the qualifier, but it never came. So I said, "But ... um ... will I have time to get back into shape before then?"

"The idea is to not fall out of shape," he said.

I waited for more doctorly advice, but he just looked at me with a straight face. I was confused. This is the guy, after all, who recommended active recovery all along. But he wasn't gushing with specific suggestions. And because I'm pretty sure that I had it all wrong before, I went for something I've never tried."So, should I try swimming?"

"Swimming is good," he said. "Your physical therapist will be able to help you develop some recovery-specific exercises."

I felt a bit bewildered. There I was, fishing for an authoritative lecture about all of the things I shouldn't be doing, and I was only getting closer to having an actual MD tell me I should start riding my bike again. He chose that awkward pause to pick up our chat where we left off, in which I told him about my desire to ride the 24 Hours of Light.

"I'd like to ride the 24 Hours of Light," he said, "but I'm going to be in Coeur d'Alene that weekend."

I knew the doc was a cyclist, so I said, "Oh, are you going to do some riding down there?"

"I'm going to race the Ironman triathlon," he said.

"Ironman? Um. Wow. That's great." It's just my luck that I'd get a crazy enduro-nut for a doctor. He probably considers patellar tendonitis to be a perfectly normal condition, like blisters. He's probably tough enough to go out and run 100 miles through such a niggling injury, but that PhD degree forces him to recommend physical therapy to lesser animals like me.

This is all hugely speculative on my part, of course. But the diagnosis seemed to be good news either way. I had plans to go out after my doctor visit to consul myself with sushi. But instead, I decided to celebrate ... with sushi.

Now it's time to call those PT people and get to work. White Rim, here I come.