Snow-riding tips

Wet weather has me hitting the weights again. I neglected my gym routine for more than a week, and I can notice a difference even after a short hiatus. Weight-lifting has been an interesting experience for me. It's by far the most controlled aspect of my training, and its also the area where I can best identify real gains and losses. I hate weight lifting with a drudgery that stretches beyond cycling in the sleet, and yet I can't deny its value.

That's about all I have to report on that. I made another article for the NPR blog. I'm not sure when it will be posted, but I hope they don't mind if I republish it here. This week, it's: 10 tips for riding a bicycle on snow:

1. Think surface area: If you’ve ever used snowshoes before, you know that all that mass at the bottom of your feet can mean the difference between coasting atop power or wading knee-deep in it. Snow bikes work they same way. They incorporate wide tires with a flat profile in order to distribute bulk (you) as evenly as possible, allowing for maximum floatation.

2. Fat is the new skinny. As long as there have been bicycles, there have been weight-weenie types trying to shave grams off wheels. Nowadays, it’s not uncommon to see a spoke-free wheel sporting tires as thin as razors. But once you slice into snow, skinny tires might as well be razors. Snow-bikers know that fat means float, and have been developing bicycles to accommodate increasingly larger wheels for years. I predict that not too far in the future, someone will build a bicycle frame with room for motocross tires. Look for it.

3. There is no shame in walking. Cyclists hate to admit when they come to a hill or an obstacle they just can’t conquer. I have seen cyclists blow out their knees and face-plant over logs just to avoid suffering the indignity of getting off the bike and walking. Snow-bikers have no such pretensions. We know that bikes are not ready-made for snow, and vice versa. If snow is too soft, or too deep, or too wet, we simply step off and amble along until we can ride again. We learn to enjoy it, like walking a dog, but without the constant slobbering.

4. When in doubt, let air out. Often, snowy trails are what we would call “marginally ridable.” By letting air out of tires, you can increase the surface area and improve your floatation. Sometimes it means riding on nearly flat tires at a pace a snail wouldn’t envy, but, despite what I said in the previous paragraph, it’s still better than walking.

5. Learn your snow types. It's been said that Eskimos have dozens of different words of snow. Snow bikers also understand the myriad varieties: powder, sugar, corn, hard-pack, sandy, slushy, and so on. Each type comes with its own challenges. But understanding the nature of the white stuff you are trying to ride atop, you can adjust your riding and wheels to meet the conditions.

6. Don't be disappointed when you fail to set a land-speed record. Snow, like sand, puts up a lot of resistance, and snow bikers are not known for their speed. I have often heard accounts of cyclists who said felt like they were careening down a hill, only to look down and see they hadn’t even breached the 10 mph barrier. In snow races, 10 mph is considered fast. 8 mph is average. 6 mph is respectable, and 4 mph isn’t uncommon. When ask to describe the nature of the 2006 Iditarod Invitational, which was plagued by cold temperatures and fresh snow, third-place finisher Jeff Oatley said, “It was about as intense as a 2.5 mph race can be.”

7. All brakes are not created equal. When contemplating what brakes to put on their bikes, cyclists have all kinds of reasons to choose between disc or rim. But snow bikers, who often find their rims coated in a thick layer of ungrippable ice, have the best reason of all: Rim brakes could mean an icy death by gravity. Go with disc.

8. Re-lubricate and be free. There is nothing that will slow down a snow biker faster than having their hubs freeze up, which is always a possibility when the mercury drops below 0. We have to lube up our moving parts with a special low-temperature grease, sold widely in cold regions like Fairbanks and Minnesota.

9. Stay away from moose tracks. Common injures for road cyclists include road rash and head injuries. Mountain bikers have problems with broken collar bones and bad knees. Alaska snow bikers are always being tripped up by the deep, narrow holes moose leave when they walk through the snow. Avoiding these minefields will help curb post-holing injuries like broken ankles.

10. Stay away from dogs. We talk a lot about fear of angry moose, grumpy bears and rabid wolves, but our most likely animal to have a dangerous encounter with remains the sled dog. They approach so quickly and quietly that we sometimes don’t even have time to jump off the trail. A collision can be disastrous - imagine tangled lines, confused canines and a lot of sharp teeth. Add to that an annoyed musher who’s likely packing heat, and you stir up the kind of fear that convinces snow-bikers to give those racing puppies a wide berth.

••••••

Also, from YouTube, we have a treasure from time: A short documentary about the 1988 Iditabike race, back when it was 200 miles and everyone rode on "skinny" tires. I'm going to try to embed part 2. It's worth watching just for the great '80s news-lite soundtrack. To view the three segments, click here:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

"Bicycles on Snow"

Staying cold

Date: Dec. 11
Mileage: 28.2
Hours: 2:30
December mileage: 255.6
Temperature upon departure: 35
Rainfall: .58"

For me, the problem in dressing for Juneau winter cycling isn’t starting warm; it’s staying warm. I can have the ideal combination for long periods of comfort - sometimes hours. But if anything breaches the heat barrier - a lingering stop, or an extended descent - it often takes many teeth-chattering, skin-burning minutes of hard pedaling to find my way back to normal. Some days, I don’t find my way back at all.

The obvious solution is to just wear more than I think I need, but I hate that sticky feeling of being overheated in cold air. Taking additional layers to put on later is complicated by the soaking nature of the one condition that consistently breaks me - sleet.

Today I headed out in the gray slush for a quick ride to North Douglas, and decided to head up the Eaglecrest road at the last minute. I wanted to check out the snow depth and see if any pre-season trails had been laid yet. There’s definitely a fair amount of snow up there, but no trails. Using the area for training is a bit of a Catch-22, though. I don’t think I could get my bald-tire Pugsley up the icy access road, but once I’m there, my studded-tire Sugar becomes basically useless. Back to the drawing board.

I spent some time at the top tromping around the Nordic ski area, listening intently for snowmobiles and exchanging incredulous glances with backcountry skiers as they passed. Before heading back down, I took off my gloves because they had become completely soaked (as had basically everything else on my body.) I pulled up my face mask, adjusted my goggles, stuck my bare hands in my pogies and locked into the screaming descent.

The downhill run was so full of goggle-coating sleet and jaw-clenching ice patches that I didn’t even notice that the skin on my legs had started to tingle, and my fingers were going numb, and my torso was beginning to feel clammy and cold.

By the bottom of the hill, shivering had taken over. I still had plenty of energy, so I amped up the speed as much as my legs and the slush-coated road would allow. But all that seemed to do is intensify the wet wind chill, and I just couldn’t shake the shivering. My condition had started to improve, somewhat, by the time I made it home. I peeled off my dripping layers and turned on the shower, but then remembered how nauseated I usually feel if I reheat my prickling skin too quickly, and thought better of it. So I scavenged the refrigerator until I found a half-eaten cup of lentil soup, and stood in the kitchen in my underwear as the microwave reheated it. The thick, tomato-flavored soup oozed down my throat like melted gold, and tasted every bit as warm and rich. It was heaven sent, that soup, and you don't earn that kind of deliciousness by staying indoors.

But, I concur. Brushes with hypothermia are pretty funny until they're not. I need to rework my wet-weather layer system for days when even fenders can't ward off the endless shower of slush. Or maybe, next time I ride up to Eaglecrest in a sleet storm, I'll see if one of the backcountry skiers can shuttle me down the mountain in their Subaru.

Mind over body

Last week, the New York Times published an article, appropriately titled “I’m not really running, I’m not really running ...” about the effectiveness of dissociation in endurance racing. It’s commonly believed that humans use only a small part of their intellectual capacity, but dissociation plays off the idea that humans also tap only a fraction of their physical ability. The article calls it “mind over mind-over-body:” the art of tricking your mind into believing it’s not actually forcing your body to do the things that nobody but your ego and maybe a small part of your spiritual self want it to do. The result is an ability to jump higher, run faster, and cycle farther than the preconceived - and rather unimaginative - limits of the concious mind would generally allow.

Athletes who practice dissociation learn to block out the white noise of the human condition - past events, future goals, perceived fatigue, real pain - and focus completely on the immediate moment. Many athletes count. Some chant. Some fixate on a distant point, or a shadow, and watch only that. However they do it, dissociation whisks a person away from the task at hand and all of its complications, and transplants them in a simpler place far away from the weaknesses of the mind ... the weaknesses that tell a body it’s too slow, too tired, in too much pain, and tell it to stop.

In the article, an exercise psychologist asks the reporter to imagine she is running on a wet, windy, cold Sunday morning. “The conscious brain says, ‘You know that coffee shop on the corner. That’s where you really should be,” said Dr. Timothy Noakes. And suddenly, you feel tired, it’s time to stop. “There is some fatigue in muscle; I’m not suggesting muscles don’t get fatigued. I’m suggesting that the brain can make the muscles work harder if it wanted to.”

A scientist who tested this method based his research on a group of Tibetan monks who reportedly ran 300 miles in 30 hours. It's an unbelievable story, if only because monks aren’t typical athletes. They don’t spend all day training their bodies, ingesting scientifically precise diets and maintaining an unwavering focus on their fitness. But in their spiritual pursuit, while breathing in synchrony with the moment, these monks achieved something that many of the world’s most elite athletes would consider impossible.

It’s an interesting idea, and one that’s especially intriguing to me. It gives mere mortals like myself hope that we can overcome our own athletic mediocrity and rise to extraordinary feats. Geoff, who fits more in the athletic freak of nature category, finds the idea frightening. “If a person can really find their way into an order higher than physical pain,” he said, “what will stop them from running themselves to death?”

What indeed.

Whipping up a slushy

Date: Dec. 9
Mileage: 18.1
Hours: 2:15
December mileage: 227.4
Temperature upon departure: 36
Rainfall: .26"

Some days, my rides are less about physical fitness and more about psychological endurance. Unfortunately, I never know which one it's going to be until after I leave the house.

Within two blocks, I had no doubt about what kind of ride I was in for today. The roads were an absolute nightmare. Still mostly unplowed, a continuous cold rain had saturated yesterday's snow, which traffic stirred up into a substance that is best described as a dirt-flavored slurpee. I don't believe there's a bicycle invented that can efficiently navigate this stuff, or a car for that matter, and I found myself walking (walking!) my Surly Pugsley on the road (on the road!) to reach the trails.

The trail itself was devoid of traffic of any kind - not a footprint, not a pawprint, not even a shuffling porcupine track. Not a single soul had attempted to slog up the trail, and that wasn't big surprise. Imagine taking six inches of already wet snowfall, letting it melt a little over night, then injecting it with a quarter inch of rain, and you have a thick blanket of sludge that is only slightly more pliable than peanut butter, but a lot more slippery.

I walked for a while up the trail, holding out eternal optimism that any moment it would become rideable, and muttering my mantra that trudging with a bike is an important skill to forge. But even without me on top of it, the bike occasionally slipped out and fell over, or I slipped out and we fell over, and the whole thing was so stupid, and I was glad nobody was there to tell me so.

But it true Pugsley form, running the tires at about 5 psi no less, we were actually able to ride most of the way down. I slid around often. But not enough to crash. It was more like semi-controlled falling ... fishtailing fun ... like when I first took up snowboarding and learned that true control was an illusion, but true disaster was easily avoidable.

To be honest, I'm not sure why I don't just give up on rides like today's, rather than pushing through two planned hours on the cusp of either laughing out loud or screaming obscenities. I think it's because I believe that any hardship, real or perceived, is good for my mental fitness. I also fear that once I let myself give up on one thing, no matter how minor, I'll start on that steep and slippery slope that ends in me throwing in the towel on the whole Iditarod dream.

Re-learning this snow-riding thing

Date: Dec. 8
Mileage: 22.2
Hours: 2:45
December mileage: 209.3
Temperature upon departure: 32
Snowfall: 6.5"

I spent nearly three hours this morning grinding away at 22 miles of trails, beach sand and a fair amount of road. Everything was covered in about an inch and a half of wet snow that increased to more than three inches by the end of the ride. That's not exactly a lot, and I tried not to think anything of it ... even as the hours passed and the miles crept along and I ground my legs furiously for traction through the wet, sticky slop. My quads are still burning.

Snow riding hands out some hard lessons, and its time to wend my way around the learning curve, again. Every season, I start school with a new bike. You'd think snow-riding on the Pugsley would just come naturally, being the tank that it is, but it has its own issues. Its slack turning makes it harder to control around sharp, slippery corners, and the lack of tread in the tires has a hard time gripping in the sloppy mixures of snow, slush and mud that are so prevelant in Juneau. I spent a lot of time playing with the tire pressure, until I finally just let enough go to find the control that had been eluding me all morning long. I was also making loops on a small trail system, and by that point had doubled over my own lines enough to leave a thin semblence of a groomed track; that probably helped, too.

This was only my third or fourth "snow ride" of the season, but I just wasn't all that into it today. I'm missing the cold and sun. Temperatures are forecast to just keep warming. This snow isn't likely to stick around long, although there's already more than six inches on the ground from today's storm. But what an incredible workout. Despite the skidding and pedal mashing, I could not come to grips with the idea of two measly inches of snow getting the better of me, and I pushed really hard. I think I'm more tired now than I was after riding nearly 100 miles on Thursday. Of course, that might have something to do with riding nearly 100 miles on Thursday.

In other news, I talked to the friendly people at NPR's Bryant Park Project again. Interview No. 3 is located at this link. I'm also writing a weekly update for the radio show's blog. It's basically just a condensed version of this blog, with some editor-injected humor. The blog is at this link: "Biking the Iditarod." I hope you enjoy it!

Eight hours in photos

Date: Dec. 6
Mileage: 97.4
Hours: 8:15
December mileage: 187.1
Temperature upon departure: 20

Some bloggers that I read have been participating in this cool project called "12 Hours in Photos," in which they take a picture each hour for 12 hours in a typical day. I had this plan to do a long ride - at least eight hours - this weekend, and I wasn't all that excited about it. So I thought, why not do that once-an-hour photo thing? It will give me something to look forward to, and help pass the time on a long ride. As it turned out, I couldn't have asked for a more beautiful day of riding. Temperatures ranged from about 15 to 23 degrees, with partly cloudy skies and light winds. I felt strong, and made lots of little stops, and came home with a photo essay: "My training ride, Dec. 6, 2007"

9 a.m. Crossing the Juneau-Douglas bridge shortly after sunrise.

10 a.m.: Venturing out onto the Mendenhall Lake to weave through an iceberg playground. My nubbins of Kenda studs surprised me with their grippiness on glare ice, but I didn't really have the ability to stop once I got going, so I had to take it pretty slow. Still, it was crazy fun. If it wasn't for the bone-chilling cold that crept in as I was coasting along at 8 mph, I probably would have stayed out there all day.

11 a.m. I had enough fun at Mendenhall Lake that I only made it as far as Auke Rec after more than two hours of riding.

Noon: For lunch, a chilled PB&J.

1 p.m. The coastal mud flats of the Lynn Canal were coated in all sorts of beautiful ice formations. It was here I began to realize that I dressed way too lightly for the long day. I need to remember that what works for two hours won't necessarily cut it for eight. Stopping for just a few minutes to wrestle my Camelbak nozzle out of my jackets or take a picture would leave me instantly uncomfortably chilled, and it would usually take 15-20 minutes of riding to return to normal again. It wasn't uncomfortable enough to discourage stopping altogether, but I did begin to neglect eating and drinking despite my knowledge that doing so would only make me feel colder.

2 p.m. Moving south again after a short time in the northland.

3 p.m. A subdued sunset and a subtle feeling of nausea. The calorie deficit I'd been running finally caught up to me. I stopped to remove the Camelbak that was deeply buried in my layers by then, and removed my current favorite anti-bonking therapy: Wheat Thins. I threw the whole baggie in my handlebar poggies and munched at will.

4 p.m.: I took this photo in the midst of a small disaster. Throughout the day, my Camelbak nozzle kept freezing. I gnawed at the end in an effort to thaw it, then buried it deeper in my layers. The chewing process must have slowly loosened the nozzle from the hose, and right around 4 p.m. it popped off. By the time the water seeped through a fleece jacket and a bicycle jersey to soak my skin enough to notice, I had lost the nozzle and most of my water. The lost water had completely coated the top of my right leg and one shoe. Luckily, it froze before it soaked through. The nozzle was leaky and crappy and I'm glad that it's gone, but its absence forced me to hold the hose to the wind until it froze enough to keep more water from pouring through. I hate Camelbaks.

5 p.m.: Yeah, there's just not much to look at once it gets dark. I made up a lot of lost time in the last hour because having a wet torso coaxed me to fire the engine up a notch or two. I wasn't too thrilled to be out of water. By the time I neared home, all of my fleece layers had frozen together. But I still felt warm; in fact, I felt fantastic. And I took home some valuable lessons. I have got to get a better water system dialed in. And next time, I will follow my own advice and dress to take things off, not wish they were there.

Transformation

Date: Dec. 5
Mileage: 11.7
Hours: 1:15
December mileage: 89.9
Temperature upon departure: 13

I just read Mike Curiak’s blog post about how he got his start in endurance winter cycling. I began to wonder just how I found my way into this sport. I still have a hard time pinpointing the exact moment when I decided, “Hey, riding a bike through the snow for a long time in extreme cold ... that sounds fun!” It shouldn’t be a hard time to remember. It was only two years ago. I blogged the entire thing; I have a record of the whole process right here in the sidebar. But I still can’t make sense of it. It all happened so quickly, and quietly, sometime in November 2005. One day, I was a former Utahn recently transplanted in Alaska with a seldom-used mountain bike, a passing interest in winter sports and absolutely zero racing experience ... endurance, cross-country, Thanksgiving Turkey Trot or otherwise. Then something happened ... maybe a bolt of lightning, or a lucid dream, or maybe just a hiccup in life’s slow creep. But something happened, and I changed. The next day, I was an aspiring ultra-endurance cyclist with little talent but a lot of enthusiasm. Life is strange like that.

Choosing to enter the 2006 Susitna 100 was a huge leap of faith for me. It’s almost comical to think back on my inexperience heading into that race. I had never ridden a bicycle for more than six straight hours, and had no idea if I could last longer than that. I had never spent more than a few hours outside in the winter, and had no idea if I could survive longer than that. I showed up on the worst kind of newb bike for a snow race ... a full-suspension 26’er with studded tires (heavy and nearly useless on packed snow.) Then, when the race finally started, I struggled and dawdled just long enough to become caught in the worst kind of snowbiking weather ... 40 degrees with wind and rain.

I remember stopping at the last checkpoint, 75 miles into the race. I settled in to eat some food and wring out my clothing. I peeled off my top layer, which was soaked, to find my next layer soaked, and my base layer soaked, and, in fact, everything I had with me was soaked ... as soaked as if I had jumped directly into a cold lake. The melting, rain-pocked snow had rendered the trail into an unrideable slop for the likes of my newb bike, and I had to walk beside it for most of the last seven miles into the checkpoint. I had 25 more to go, and no idea if I’d be able to ride any of it. I remember thinking that I’d pay $100, $1,000 to get myself out of that situation. I spent an hour considering it, quite seriously. But then something happened ... a bolt of determination, or a lucid daydream, or maybe just a hiccup in the race’s slow creep. Something happened, and I changed my mind. I slithered back into my sopping wet clothing and set out into the dark and stormy night, on foot. Racing is strange like that.

It took me the better part of nine hours to finish the last 25 miles of that race, almost entirely by hoofing through a deteriorating trail of heavy slush. I walked just fast enough to stave off the creeping wet chill that was scarier than any sensation of cold I have felt before or since. When I finished the race on the slow side of 25 hours, I was supremely disappointed. It took me another year of endurance racing and dedicated cycling to realize that I couldn’t have asked for a greater challenge. I have technically won a race or two since then, but just finishing the 2006 Susitna 100 remains the best performance of my short “career.”

The 2008 Iditarod Invitational is no less of a leap of faith than the Susitna 100 was in 2006. The intense challenge, along with the fear, anxiety and hard lessons it brings, are much of what draws me to the event. Time will tell how it will play out, but I know this: I will take my comically inexperienced body and latest newb bike, and I will wring out everything they have to give. If I slog into McGrath several days after I expected to finish, coughing up the last fumes of my energy and more willing to kill myself than pedal another stroke, I’ll know - eventually - that I couldn’t have asked for a more valuable experience.