The difference between exercise and cycling

Date: Oct. 20
Mileage: 32.1
October mileage: 451.1
Temperature upon departure: 34
Rainfall: 0.57" (yesterday and today)

Back in 2005, beneath the warm blue skies of Idaho Falls, I was a complete gym rat. A little hard to believe, right? I received a free membership to the Apple Fitness through my employer. My tight-knit group of copy editor co-workers talked me into attending exercise classes with them. Pretty soon, I was at Body Pump every Wednesday and Friday, followed by a rigid ritual of cardio. Tuesdays and Thursdays held spin classes; Tiffany and I would set up on the stationary cycles in the back and mash away our work-related stress in a cloud of techno-pumping, fitness guru-screaming, black-light-enhanced white noise. It was my routine. I cherished it. My bicycle - the Ibex touring bike that I still ride today - sat stashed in a corner of my apartment while the farm roads of Idaho Falls stretched out for hundreds of scenic miles, all unridden and unloved.

It was a strange sort of hiccup in my development as a cyclist, my "year of fitness." I had muscle definition in my arms and knees that didn't buckle under the slightest addition of weight. I had friends who swapped tips about protein powders, a vague sense of what I could "bench" and a spin class instructor who hopped off her own bike just to scream in each person's face. And yet, somehow, I thought I was happy.

I think about that year sometimes, when I am holed up in my Juneau gym, clutching 15-pound barbells as Court TV and 50 Cent fight for dominance of the already overbearing volume in the room. I am back where I started, trying to reclaim the ideal of overall fitness, trying to coax every part of my body to its top working condition. I always become lost in the repetition and do way more reps than I planned. A woman nearby talks to her friend about the necessity of a 1,000-calorie-a-day diet ... "I used to run for an hour, two hours a day, but I realized you have to cut back your food. Nothing else works." Men grunt and groan in the back room. The cardio machine users stare off into space. The scene is so reminiscent of the Apple Fitness that I can't help but wonder if I am where I was, traveling quickly, going nowhere.

So I close my eyes and think of the less distant past, moments that slipped by just yesterday. Geoff and I rode our mountain bikes across the icy veneer of puddles on the Dredge Lake trail, skirting some and shattering others in a geyser of cold water. Black ice on rocks and roots acted as an unbeatable wheel-repellent. I approached every obstacle slowly and deliberately, sweating only from fear and focused only on my safety. Those seven miles ate up nearly an hour of stressful, if not strenuous work. "Obviously, trail riding was not the way to go today," said Geoff, who was aiming for a long day and a good workout. We squished over carpets of spongy leaves as frost shimmered on the stems they left bare, so white they seemed skeletal. We passed an open view of the glacier just as the sun slipped behind a mountain of clouds. I watched its orange glow retreat over the electric blue crevasses, and then everything was gray. It was a simple moment, but I can never repeat it, no matter how many reps I do, or how big my arm muscles become, or how much protein I injest, or how well my knees work.

I once strived for perfect fitness. Now I am a cyclist. Both renew the body, but only one renews the soul.

Day 1 of no rain

Date: Oct. 19
Mileage: 63.4
October mileage: 419.0
Temperature upon departure: 37
Rainfall: 0.00"

The reason I started keeping statistics at the top of each blog post is because I saw it as the best way to quantify my "training" for future reference. Since this whole blog is the story of how my bikes make me feel ad nauseum, I figured tracking my mileage, monthly mileage, temperature and rainfall would help me draw patterns and answer questions: So why did I feel that way? How can I avoid it (or recreate it)? Ect.

But my system is I'm afraid fundamentally flawed. As impossible as it it to truly track a ride, the spartan way in which I'm going about it is a travesty of misinformation. Take today and yesterday, for example. Compared to yesterday's 37 degrees, today's 37 degrees felt like a subtropical sunbake on a summer afternoon. Compared to yesterday's 17.9 miles, today's 63.4 miles felt like an after-dinner spin around a suburban park. Compared to yesterday's 1.4 inches of rain, today's 0" of rain felt like the literal hand of mercy punched a hole in the sky and released a blast of goodness and light.

As reluctant as I am to stop tracking my mileage, there's just no way for me to display to true night and day, the yin and yang, the evil and good of yesterday and today. There are no words, no symbols, no numbers to depict the truth. So I will accept the fact that I have no real record to look back on, and I will ride my bike as I did today, without agenda or struggle, knowing that the pattern is bound to smile at me, once in a while.

Hardship

Date: Oct. 18
Mileage: 17.9
October mileage: 355.6
Temperature upon departure: 38
Rainfall: 1.04"

I was nearly there, nearly to the southern tip of Douglas Island; even with the dismal visibility through swirling rain, it was nearly in sight. I mashed the pedals ... 9 mph, 10 mph - the fastest I had moved all morning. A long walk through a minefield of sharp rocks had yielded this thin gravel bar where I could ride, actually ride, like a delirious bird fighting the wind. The chill needled through every layer of wet clothing and gripped my skin like icy fingers. My own fingers had deteriorated from clammy to numb, and I was on my third set of gloves - my last - because I tried everything I could think of, and nothing really works in this weather. Nothing, nothing, nothing. (Edit: My bike pogies would work. I can't believe I didn't think of it earlier.)

I rounded a cliff and followed the gravel bar as it jutted out toward the open channel. After an entire morning of bouncing and skidding along a bumpy shoreline as slippery as ice, that simple left turn proved to be the ride's fatal move. I was scarcely out in the open when I was suddenly hit from the side by a blast of wind so strong that I felt like I had been punched in the lungs. The bike skidded sideways and I lost control, launching skyward like a sail behind ripped from a flimsy boat. I landed on the rocks several feet away from the bike, wrenching my (good) knee sideways with a sharp shot of pain, and then I crumpled like a broken kite. I had so, so had it with this ride. Had it, had it, had it.

I sat up and began to gnaw on the one Luna Bar I brought with me. I could see a definitive point in the beach less than a half mile in front of me. GPS showed me rounding the sharp curve of the island. That could be my destination - the end of Douglas - but I'd never know and I no longer cared. I decided the Luna Bar might just stoke my core temperature long enough to get me home before my fingers froze. I drank a bunch of water, too, because I hadn't bothered to sip anything in two hours, and hypothermia brought on by dehydration is a real concern. I no longer felt like I was a recreational rider dawdling around on a beach only nine miles from my home. I was on a real epic, and every mile from here on out was going to be a struggle. The thought of that fueled my fury - because I am always eager to overcome hardship.

With the wind I was flying, but I could still feel the chill ripping through. Snow accumulation crept down to an elevation only a few hundred feet above my head. If I wasn't at sea level, I'd likely be fighting a blizzard. The temperature was mid-30s at best, with a steady 25 mph wind gusting to 50. Even as I skirted the edge of dry land, I couldn't shake the image of a crab fisherman clinging to a boat in the brunt of a Bering Sea storm. I wanted to persevere, but I could feel indifference creeping in. My mind always seems to shut off when I'm struggling. It's almost as though my body decides that it can't expend any energy on frivolous things such as emotions and thoughts. Having experienced this state before, I've learned I can trust my instinct more than my mind. The miles flew by in this white fog of apathy, somehow completely free of the many near-misses and actual crashes I experienced on the way out.

By the time I reached the last big stream crossing, I had warmed up enough that doubt was beginning to creep back into my consciousness. I could feel the acute pain of warm circulation stabbing at my fingers. I just wanted to get home as quickly as possible. Since I was soaked to the bone anyway, I decided to ford the river rather than hoisting my heavy bike up a cliff so I could thread it across the narrow, rickety wooden bridge that spanned an upstream waterfall. I lifted my bike on my shoulders and began to step gingerly into the creek ... up to my knees, up to my thighs, up to my waist. The swift water began to sweep the bottom of the wheels before I even reached the center channel. I looked downstream and visualized the river ripping my bike from my hands, ripping me off my feet, and carrying us both out to sea. I turned around with a renewed feeling of frustration and anger at myself, and began the slog up to the bridge.

Once across the bridge, I was finally able to convince myself I was home-free. Just like that, all of that negative emotion flipped over to a massive adrenaline high. The last mile of beach was all rideable and I sprinted over it with rekindled energy. My hands came back from the dead and I could maneuver the bike with ease, powering over steep sandbanks and launching across boulders. I felt great, so great, like I had suddenly been granted some kind of cycling superpower. I laughed at yet another reminder of why I voluntarily take my Pugsley out on a trailless beach on the coldest, wettest day of the season - why I voluntarily put myself through hardship. I crave the lowest lows because I believe I can survive them, and I crave the highest highs because I believe I have earned them.

Day 35 of rain

Date: Oct. 17
Mileage: 24.6
October mileage: 337.7
Temperature upon departure: 41
Rainfall: .13"

There actually have been breaks in the weather this month - big, beautiful holes sky that occasionally remind the skeptic in me that there is a great emptiness beyond the crushing ceiling of clouds. But as soul-lifting as these weather breaks have been, none of them have been long enough to encompass a 24-hour period between midnight and midnight. And so the rain streak continues. Day 35:

I woke up late, finished a quick succession of sprint intervals up to Eaglecrest and took advantage of the fact I was on a mountain bike to practice my plank riding. Wet wooden planks are my worst nemesis, whether I'm on bike or foot ... even the crampons on the bottom of snowshoes don't seem to prevent me from flipping butt over back on the slippery surface. So I made a few runs on a quarter-mile-long section of planks across the Nordic park. During the snowless season, it's better known as "Slowly Sinking Bog."

Despite my trouble with them, planks are great practice for becoming a better rider on technical singletrack. You have no choice but to keep your (very thin) line. When the planks made a 45-degree turn to the right, I tried the same. When my back tire slipped off the "trail," I had a split second between that horrible slurping sound and the moment I had to put a foot down to pray that this particular mudhole was not a keeper. I nearly lost a bootie in one.

More moisture in the forecast this weekend. There's not much I can do about it, except pray for snow.

Stuff

My new sleeping bag arrived in the mail. I was thrilled. I carried it to the bedroom and pulled it out of its stuff sack, watching in wonder as it self-inflated to a mass only slightly smaller than my bed. I tugged at the industrial-strength zipper and crawled inside. It was there, enveloped in a mountain of down, that I basked in the afterglow of consumerism. I congratulated myself on my shrewd eBay shopping - well, lucky happenstance - that netted me a nearly brand new, relatively rare product for less than half its retail price.

Beads of sweat started to form on my neck as I slipped deeper inside the bag. Buyer's remorse was beginning to trickle in. What was I thinking? What was I planning to do with this thing? Good deal or not, how could I go and spend more money on a sleeping bag than I did on my first mountain bike? I'm a cyclist, for crying out loud, not a mountaineer gearing up for a solo summit of Kangchenjunga.

I have never been the ideal American consumer. It's rare that I buy any non-food item that isn't either secondhand or heavily discounted. My closet is stuffed with hand-me-downs from my little sister, who is eight years my junior but has eighteen times as many clothes as I do. It's not that I care all that much about money. It's just that I've never cared too much about stuff. I had a built-in Alaska mentality long before I moved here. I like things to be functional, not frilly. I like things to be burly, not beautiful. I like to condense and consolidate. If I truly believed there was a bike out there that could fit all of my wants and needs, you can believe I'd only own one bicycle.

My camera is a good example of this aspect of my personality. It's survived the full brunt of impact in a 20 mph mountain bike crash and endless hours in my waterlogged pocket. Its picture-taking capabilities, however, are about what you'd expect in a low-end digital camera. It is the only camera I own. My friends have asked me, "You seem to really enjoy photography. Why don't you get, you know, a real camera?" ... A real camera? You mean a camera with a highly focused, fragile lens and 100x optical zoom that will spend all of its time sitting in a protective bag inside my house while I thrash and trash my Olympus during my adventures? Yeah, no thanks.

However, I'm worried that my paradigm may be shifting. I seem to have succumbed to the mad impulse to spend! spend! spend! I own all sorts of stuff now that would have made the Jill of five years ago spray Pepsi out of her nose ... a cramped little bivy sack, a snow bike that's worth more than my car, GPS technology I don't even understand, enough neoprene gear to assemble a decent scuba suit, and now, a -40 degree sleeping bag ...

All in the name of the reckless pursuit of wilderness. I may be turning into a good little consumer. Or, more likely, I may just be on the slow train to crazy.

Eaglecrest, twice

Date: Oct. 15
Mileage: 34.6
October mileage: 313.1
Temperature upon departure: 43
Rainfall: .45"

I am very lucky that I don't have a coach to breathe down my neck and assault me with numbers and statistics and myriad equations to prove that I'm not trying hard enough. My imaginary coach is irritating enough, especially now that she has an odometer and GPS and my bad habit for reading training blogs to back up her claims. She hovers over my shoulder, chanting witless mantras such as "Go! Go! Go!" "I ... am ... doing the ... best ... that I ... can," I huff back, sometimes out loud, for emphasis.

My imaginary coach always backs down. I live with my guilt. I embrace my freedom. I adapt. When road interval training turned out to be a hideous exercise in breathing through an unmitigated runny nose, I took the intensity workouts indoors. I can run just as hard on an elliptical trainer, and while I'm recovering, I read books. I've burned through three so far this month. My current subjects of choice are nonfiction about Alaska mountaineering and dogsled racing. I am learning tons.

Now my imaginary coach is telling me I should spend more time climbing. "Best bike workout there is," she tells me. "Good for the quads." As limited as my climbing options are, it's not quite as monotonous as the gym. So I listened this time.

Today I rode the "Double Eaglecrest." My GPS tells me this ride climbs 2,958 feet in 34 miles. Of course, most of that climbing happens in the 10 miles it takes to ride up the Eaglecrest road twice. It's a respectable grade.

It seems a bit silly to use a 26" full-suspension mountain bike for a road climb, but that's my best option right now. Little did I know it was going to be the perfect bike for the job today. I was actually enjoying the slow comfort of the squishy saddle when I passed a large road machine - sort of an industrial weed whacker - about two miles into the climb. The thing was crawling down the mountain and leveling every bush and tree within 10 feet of the road - probably to make room for a snow berm come winter. The air was suddenly overcome with the strong scent of evergreen - the kind of overzealous pine aroma that reminds me of a kitschy Christmas store. And behind the machine, I could see why. The weed whacker left a trail of debris that stretched the entire width of the street - twigs, leaves, spruce bows, spiny devil's club shoots, even logs. It was a complete minefield.

I was gunning for 90 percent effort for the first climb, even as I ran over some obstacles and dodged others. Easy enough, right? Now turn that around, factor in a wet road and a 35 mph, teary-eyed descent, and you have a swerving, exhilarating mountain bike ride that is every bit as exciting as, well, a real mountain bike ride.

The weed whacker operator had destroyed another half mile of road by the time I climbed past him a second time. By then I was at 80 percent effort and starting to feel it. I was a little less alert on the second descent and nearly launched over one of the logs. I like to think I would have landed it. Towards the bottom, there was a break in the clouds and I could see a half rainbow floating overhead. I took a picture and continued on my way before the full view opened up - the rainbow disintegrating across a deep gray sky that stood in stark contrast of the snow-covered mountains, the low-lying clouds, and the muskeg bathed in new sunlight. The moment became so beautiful that I said so, out loud, adding a swear word for emphasis.

I think even a real coach would approve.

Two road bikes bite the dust

And here Geoff waited, for nearly two hours, hoping his rescue ride would pick up the pace.

Date: Oct. 14
Mileage: 40.1
October mileage: 278.5
Temperature upon departure: 46
Rainfall: .31"

Another break in the weather drifted past Juneau this morning. This one was more glorious than any of the breaks from the past month - clouds nearly clear-cut from the sky; sun that nearly blinded eyes unaccustomed to unobstructed light; temperatures that nearly allowed one to roll up a sleeve. Yes, it was a beautiful morning. So Geoff and I decided to go for a "long" road bike ride.

Before we even made it past the house, Geoff observed that my crank was really loose. He pulled the crank and discovered the bottom bracket was falling apart. Probably just a few spins away from falling to pieces. I should have noticed it earlier, but I recently reinstalled my clipless pedals, and assumed the loose feeling and strange clanking was the pedals' fault (after all, I like to blame all of my riding troubles on clipless pedals.) Geoff regreased the bottom bracket and tightened the crank back up. He told me I might make it through the ride. Might.

We pedalled north on a feather, moving through the calm morning like seagulls on an ocean breeze. Geoff wasn't feeling stellar so we kept the pace pretty easy, but it didn't take long for my crank to begin wobbling again. By mile 20, it was clanking more horribly than it ever had before. It sounded like an ax striking metal. Geoff and I were discussing how much longer we should ride when I decided that I couldn't pedal that bike a mile further than I had to. I was going to have to turn around. He decided to go with me.

We were just leaving the spot where we sprawled out on the beach for a short break when he stopped suddenly. He jiggled his back wheel until he found what he suspected - a spoke snapped clean off the hub. He climbed back onto his bike as I followed behind, watching his rear wheel wobble back and forth like a rolling hula hoop. Rather than risk the catastrophic failure of his wheel, he decided to stop right there. He was going to need me to rescue him. We were 17 miles from home.

So I set into my ailing pedals, cranking with everything I had so Geoff wouldn't freeze on that beach and I wouldn't be late for work. A light breeze brushed my back and I mashed away - 18, 19, 20 miles per hour, listening to my crank groan as it fluttered wildly from side to side, the whole way wondering if this stroke was going to be the one to finally snap the bottom bracket in half.

Somehow I managed to ride the entire way home (the last three miles had me convinced I'd be unipedaling at best), take a shower, pack a quick lunch and drive the 17 miles back to pick up Geoff in less than two hours. But now, both Geoff's and my road bikes are out of commission. My bike requires ordering a bottom bracket from out of state, waiting for it to show up in the mail and installing it. By the time I fix the bike, there's likely to be ice on the roads in the morning. This could be a season-ending injury for Roadie - and in the midst of my month of interval training!

On the bright side, I took a picture that I really like.