Meal planning

Date: Jan. 13
Mileage: 25.8
January mileage: 312.4
Hours: 2:00
Temperature upon departure: 30
Precipitation: .22"/4" snow

I had a great short ride today. I felt the strongest I have since my left knee started acting up in late December. My actual moving time seemed exceptionally short (the ride took two hours, but I stopped for a while in two different spots.) I hope to put in my longest single ride yet this weekend if the weather cooperates. I won't ride for 12 hours in 35-degree rain. There's just no reason to suffer that much in the name of "training."

I have been spending a fair amount of my off time trying to decide exactly what I'll have in my "kit" during the Ultrasport. In some aspects, I still have quite a bit of testing to complete before I really get my gear dialed in. I have a list and an pretty concrete idea of the clothing I want to bring, but I'm still not completely sure if it's enough. Or too much? My testing isn't likely to yield enough confidence in the end result to shave much off my current list. But I feel like the ideas I have now are a good balance of "too much" for most conditions and "just right" for extreme conditions. As long as it all fits on my bike, I'll be happy.

Something I've been a little less sure of is meal planning. How does one prepare all the food they're going to carry in a endurance event that will consume an unknown number of days? For my food planning, I'm taking a page from the mountaineering book: Hope for five days. Pack for seven. Ration if it takes nine. That I will be on a well-traveled trail that crosses several winter lodges and a couple of towns will minimize the danger of starvation, so I'd like to keep food on the light side. But that still doesn't answer the question of how much to take.

What to take, though, for me is an easier question. As much as I'd love to just carry a bunch of light-weight fatty products like butter, there's no way I can ingest, let alone digest that kind of food. My experience has taught me in heavily active situations, I operate great for extended periods of time on simple carbohydrates, can tolerate protein and unsaturated fat in well-distributed doses, and can't deal in the slightest with saturated fats and really greasy stuff. This reality seems to hold true even after more than a day. My only multiday experience is cycling the Golden Circle in August. I went for three days eating a diet that was almost entirely nut/fruit trail mix, fruit snacks and Clif Bars. I never really became tired of that stuff. In fact, the opposite happened. Knowing I had the ability to process my food and keep going was a huge comfort, and I relished in eating it. The experience that finally convinced me that a repetitive, simple carbohydrate diet is best for me happened as I rolled through Whitehorse during a really hot part of the afternoon after logging more than 250 miles in a little more than 24 hours. I pedaled by a McDonalds and several other fast food restaurants. The smells wafting from the buildings were beyond nauseating in my condition. But I continued to crave my crappy walnuts and cranberries. I also had a similarly sickening experience with French fries after the 24 Hours of Kincaid.

So I have some good ideas for foods I know I can and will eat, that pack fairly small and are either edible frozen, or thaw fairly easily. I'm still at a loss of how much to bring. I figure I can balance the fats and carbohydrates to log about 2,200 calories to a pound of food. I don't think it's likely I'll be able to eat much more than 4,500 calories in a day, but I'll probably pack and ship as much as 6,000 for each day, and maybe even a little extra emergency food. There will be some trail food, but my Whitehorse McDonalds experience has me a little concerned about how appetizing it will seem. If I don't need to head back out on the trail right away, I can always force the "free" calories down. But getting sick is always a concern.

Here's a list of the foods I have been thinking about, and their caloric value per ounce. You can gag or marvel in my refined palette. Either way, this is the stuff I'm comfortable with, and I'm not likely to change it too much.

Clif/Power Bars: 250 calories, 2.4 oz
Pop Tarts: 400 calories, 3.6 oz
Walnuts: 183 calories per ounce
Almonds: 169 calories per ounce
Pecans: 196 calories per ounce
Soy nuts: 128 calories per ounce
Sunflower seeds: 165 calories per ounce
Craisens: 92 calories per ounce
Dried cherries: 100 calories per ounce
Dried pineapple: 92 calories per ounce
Chocolate: 152 calories per ounce
Turkey jerky: 100 calories per ounce
13” tortilla: 330 calories
Fruit snacks: 123 calories per ounce
Peanut butter: 167 calories per ounce
Fruit leather: 90 calories per ounce
Tuna package: 40 calories per ounce
Wheat Thins: 137 calories per ounce

Pugsley presence

Date: Jan. 11
Mileage: 48.8
January mileage: 286.6
Hours: 5:00
Temperature upon departure: 26
Precipitation: .58"

When I first attached enough parts to my Pugsley to enable its mobility beyond my back yard, I thought for sure the sight of my obese clown bike would garner a lot of attention. I thought people would be stopping me on the streets ("Excuse me, but I think your bike's wheels are about to explode ...") Surprisingly, the early reactions to Pugsley were few and far between (and most of them involved some variation of "does that thing have studs?") I became comfortable with the idea that Pugsley did not in fact look all that strange to the indiscriminate eye, and relished in my cycling anonymity.

For some reason, that all changed recently. Suddenly, I've become this crazy bike lady that people recognize and feel compelled to question. If I ride out to the lake on a semi-nice day, I almost have to put on an extra base layer so I can stay warm during all the time I'm stopped, talking to people about my bike. Fat bikes are common in Anchorage, but not so much in Juneau. Slednecks like to give me incredulous looks. Hikers seem most concerned with the weight behind Pugsley's obvious girth. Nordic skiers, especially on the lake, usually ask the omnipresent stud question (which sometimes I feel compelled to answer with "I don't know. Do those skis have studs?") Skate skiers like to chase me, ambling as I am at 10 mph, but I still can usually stay ahead.

The only meetings where silence largely remains are the rare occasions in which I pass or am passed by other cyclists. Most are commuters, many on their own Frankenbike creations, and I think they in general respect the notion that if it has two wheels and moves forward, there's no reason to question its credentials. But even that changed yesteday.

I was returning from my second long ride of the weekend (well, five hours. I was satisfied), when a bicycle commuter merged onto the bike lane in front of me. Conditions were similar to the day before: a sheet of glare ice left over from earlier rain, covered in an inch or so of stirred-up snow. He had these skinny, skinny tires that appeared from the faint glare of my headlight to have studs, but it was hard to know for sure. We split off the bike lane near Fred Meyer and I forged ahead on the road shoulder. It was in even worse shape than the bike path, with churned up, sandy snow strewn in uneven piles. About a half mile later, he passed me again.

"Nice bike," he said. "What's the deal with those tires?"

"They're good in snow," I answered.

"Huh," he said. He didn't sound convinced. "Looks a little too big."

"Yeah. They're big."

"Are the tires studded?"

"No."

He shook his head. "That's not very safe."

I just raised my eyebrows. Not safe? Said the guy on the 1-inch roadie tires as he tried to plow through uneven sandy snow. Now, I know those skinny tires are better at slicing down to the pavement. But what happens that one time that they don't? Sounds like a wash-out waiting to happen if you ask me.

"It's mainly for trail riding," I said. "But the wide tires don't do too bad on ice."

"Well," he said, "you should think about getting some studded tires if you're going to ride on the road."

With that he started to pass me, and I let him go. I didn't really want to chase him after putting 14 hours of riding/pushing on my legs that weekend, and justified the decision by telling myself I didn't stand a chance against skinny tires on the stupid road, anyway. And with that, our snow bike argument ended like so many Polaris/Yamaha discussions do: Each of us convinced of our vehicle's superiority.

I spent several miles yesterday pedaling alongside Geoff as he ran with his 30-pound sled. He has a pretty good post up about the sled's inner workings. I'm pretty sure Geoff has put more time and effort into building his sled than we did with my Pugsley. It's funny that he, as a winter runner, has to deal with nearly as much equipment as I do as a winter cyclist.

Also yesterday, I caught another glimpse of Romeo the wolf. He was making advances on a golden retriever that seemed downright terrified of him, and cowered behind its two skiing owners as they gawked at the big black interloper. The wolf didn't seem to want to have anything to do with the people, so he kept a good distance. But he did make several friendly-seeming gestures: bowing down in the snow with his tail up in the air, and rolling on his side. Still the dog cowered, and eventually Romeo slinked away to the shelter of the moraine. I couldn't help but feel my heart fall at Romeo's rejection by the golden retriever. It really does seem that Romeo is just a lonely wolf. That he's become half-domesticated in his search for a family is the true tragedy.

So much beauty it'll make you cry

Date: Jan. 10
Mileage: 65.4
January mileage: 238.2
Hours: 8:45
Temperature upon departure: 22
Precipitation: 0"

Disclaimer: There are a particularly gratuitous number of pictures in this post. It may make the post seem obnoxiously large. You have been warned.

I didn't have many goals for today's ride. I wanted to spend at least eight hours outside, slowly as I am trying to ween my knee back into long rides. I wanted to spend most of the day riding trails and check out some new trails. But I have to admit, I wasn't that particularly excited about it the prospect of an all-day bike ride.

My mood kicked into manic mode at the first sight of blue sky after breakfast. There's no way to overemphasize this: There's really nothing like a (partly) sunny day in Juneau. We all spend so much time slogging through downpours that even I sometimes catching myself wondering why anyone would take a job here, buy a house here, commit themselves to living here for any amount of time. But then the sun comes out, and every lingering speck of S.A.D. disintegrates. We have great selective short-term amnesia, we Juneauites.

I knew, looking across the Douglas Island bridge first thing this morning, that the day was going to be beautiful.

Even the commute was nice.

Temps were in the low-20s ... preferable to the soggy mid-30s by any Juneauite's standards, and absolutely ideal in my mind.

The Mendenhall Glacier was looking very azure this morning.

The Mendenhall Lake was covered in a little more than an inch of fresh snow resting atop glare ice. A great day for speed. Not a great day to make figure 8s.

As I crossed the lake in the light mist, I heard this low, loud howl. "It couldn't be," I thought, but I made a U-turn toward the sound anyway.

Sure enough, I caught a glimpse of the black wolf called "Romeo" as he loped along the shoreline. The story behind Romeo, by local legend, is one of a lone and lonely wolf who was somehow separated from his pack (another story has his entire pack killed by wildlife officials.) So now he lives on the outskirts of suburban Juneau, looking for dogs to be friends with (another story has him looking for dogs to eat.) Either way, he is regularly sighted near the lake, but he still takes my breath away every time.

I soon made my way over to the north end of the valley. This is what I imagine the pre-Alaska Range Iditarod landscape looks like.

Pushing my bike up the Lake Creek trail was completely exhausting. Most of it was a steep sheet of glare ice covered in a very meager layer of snowmobile-chewed snow. One would imagine that, when training for a bike race, it would make the most sense to ride one's bike. But I've found that my most valuable training comes in taking my bike for long, steep walks. I'm never working harder than I am at 1.5 mph.

I sweat a bucket and a half while slogging up there. But when I reached the wide-open trails of Spaulding Meadow, I knew the ice climb was worth it.

Totally worth it.

Totally, totally worth it.

Back to the lake by sunset, making a few more loops on the ice before hopping over to the nicely foot-packed trails of Dredge Lake. I had hardly noticed the day had slipped away.

And just like that, it was nearly 4 p.m. Even though I absolutely had to be home by six, I had a hard time peeling myself away from the trail. I felt completely strong. My knees felt completely strong. I wasn't even hungry. It was like I hadn't ridden a single minute the entire day.

I can't believe I let myself count these rides as "training."

Riding corduroy

Date: Jan. 8
Mileage: 30.8
January mileage: 172.8
Hours: 3:00
Temperature upon departure: 33
Precipitation: 0"

We make our own gravity to give weight to things.
Then things fall and they break and gravity sings.
We can only hold so much is what I figure.
Try and keep our eye on the big picture,
Picture just keeps getting bigger.
- Ani Difranco, "Hour Follows Hour"

Juneau has a city-owned ski area that shuts down early in the week. Monday morning is a good time to chug up the mostly deserted access road, look for fresh snowmobile tracks and exhale some anxiety into the cold mountain air. All the snowmobile trails I tried today were a bust, with light use and even lighter snow. I paused by the Nordic ski area for a minute to look wistfully at the freshly groomed paths. I wouldn’t dream of touching that area with my bicycle, not even on an off day, lest I reap the wrath of the Nordics and their exclusive rights. (Never mind that I would have a much lighter trail impact on my bicycle than I would on skis, what with my flailing falls and notch-digging side steps down the tiniest of hills. I’m a terrible skier.)

I was just about to turn around when I noticed a pair of snowboarders crawling (yes, literally crawling) up the mountain using their boards as ice axes. Finding my own way up the mountain seemed like a fun challenge. I pedaled past the resort building and began to work my way up the cat track. I followed the signs marked with green circles as my best hope for a shallow incline, and spun with fury until my back wheel refused to move. (I will continue to hope that someday Surly decides to make an Endomorph tire with more aggressive tread. Although knobby tires don’t improve - and may actually hurt - traction in cross-country snow biking, I’m convinced they would make all the difference in mountain snow biking.) The ski runs rippled with corduroy, a fresh grooming job disturbed only by a single set of wheels and feet. I spun madly where I could ride and trudged where I couldn’t, slowly picking my way up the slopes.

Somewhere near the top of the mountain, where all the runs were labeled “more difficult,” I hit a slope I could no longer negotiate and began to slide backward. I whirled around and dug my heels into the snow, grasping the frame of my overturned bike that threatened to keep sliding. Beneath my feet, I had a great view of several tributary runs snaking down the mountain, the confluence ending in a lift now hundreds of feet below. I shivered with the realization about how steep it all looked, how I had somehow stranded myself up here with only wheels to get down, and how this somehow looked very familiar. And then I remembered why.

I actually remember it very well: The first time I went snowboarding at a resort. I even remember the date: Oct. 28, 1996. Some friends and I ditched school to catch the opening day of Park City Ski Resort, the first day of first season the resort had ever allowed snowboarding. We felt like we were ushering in history. Never mind that I didn’t actually know how to snowboard. My friends did. They promised to teach me. They directed me toward a lift that carried us up to the highest point on the mountain. They shouted at me to follow them as they coasted down the ramp. I took a face plant right off the lift, and when I stood up again, I was alone.

I slid and tumbled and scooted my way to what appeared to be the edge of a cliff. Only a single black diamond sign on a nearby tree indicated that it was intended to be any sort of human path at all. I peered over the edge, where more than a thousand vertical feet disappeared below me. I remember feeling a piercing dread, so intense that it made me feel faint with heat even as snowflakes swirled around. I didn’t think it was possible to survive such an descent, but I had to try. So I stood up, dug my back edge into the snow, and scooted, hopped and scooted down the cliffside. As I became more comfortable with that action, I began to zigzag from side to side, slowly picking up speed and a sense of exhilaration as I pressed toward the safety of low elevation. It certainly didn’t work out perfectly. I fell. A lot. And it hurt. A lot. I couldn’t sit down for three solid days after that fateful first time. But I made it. And in the end, I decided, I had always known that things would turn out OK.

My bicycle broke into a dead run before I had even swung my leg over the top tube. The wheels swerved wildly and I thought I’d never pull out of it, but somehow the tires gripped into the snow and began to roll in a (mostly) straight line toward the green-circle haven. From there, it was just me and my wheels, cutting a thick line in the windswept corduroy as a cloud of fine powder kicked up behind. Plummeting toward the lift, I felt a familiar sense of fear-stoked peace that reminded me that there are many routes, but only one destination, when it comes to bliss.

And I still believe that somehow, things are going to turn out OK.

Anxiety

Date: Jan. 8
Mileage: 12.1
January mileage: 142.0
Temperature upon departure: 30
Precipitation: 0"

I was worried this feeling would begin to set in, after the New Year came and went and February crept ever closer - a fluttering anxiety punctuated by increasingly more frequent shots of dread. My once-abstract fears are developing a voice. And that voice says, “Dang ... you’re really going through with this, aren’t you?”

As Geoff and I work out more of the little details associated with the Iditarod Trail Invitational, our focus is beginning to zoom out on the big picture. And the big picture is, well, very, very big. I miss the days when I could just think solely about the physical prospect of riding 350 miles on snow. Or the psychological prospect of pushing a bike through fresh powder, in the darkness, in a blizzard. Or the physiological prospect of staying warm over a whole lot of subzero hours. Or the educational prospect of route-finding in a wilderness I’ve never before set foot in. Or the intellectual prospect of planning the exact food I’ll need to eat and the exact clothing I’ll need to wear without missing a beat. Now I’m beginning to think about all these things, all the time. I believe Geoff is beginning to feel overwhelmed as well. After we came home from camping on Saturday, he plopped down on the couch and said, “You know, when you really think about it, the Ultrasport is really scary, and basically impossible.”

I get the feeling that during the next six weeks, my mind is going to be all over the place - I mean more so than usual - as I meander through the remaining details while trying not to drown in the big picture. This anxiety seems to be both a good and bad thing. Yesterday, while I was down with a cold, I became consumed with fears about getting lost. So I spent my free time learning what I could about my GPS, looking at maps, mulling electronic maps, and finally ordering one. It became a productive "rest" day. Today I felt better, so I set out for a Dan Moller Trail hike-a-bike. The point of this workout is to build up my “pushing” muscles on the 2,000-foot climb and improve my “handling” skills on the screaming descent. The downhill is usually a reward after what is essentially a tedious hike. But I somehow failed to leech much enjoyment in today’s bumpy ride, lost as I was in the landscape of my mind. Even now, I try to remember this morning and only see images of Rainy Pass the way I envision it: ice-hardened, windswept and devoid of any discernable trail.

I keep telling myself that I’d probably be crazy if I wasn’t afraid, and that I’m going to conquer this race by doing the same thing I’ve been doing all along: Taking it mile by mile by mile, one baby step at a time. But I'm beginning to realize that the first step may be the hardest.

Living outside

Date: Jan. 4
Mileage: 54.2
January mileage: 129.9
Temperature upon departure: 24
Precipitation: 0"

I was burrowed deep in my billowing down cocoon when I awoke, again, in a fit of gasping. I groped among piles of discarded clothing layers for my soggy snot rag and blew my nose until the pressure in my sinuses diffused to a low boil. I shook my head violently, hoping in vain the gunk could somehow exit through my ears. Frost flakes rained from the top of the bivy and stung my cheeks. I knew this head cold had been idling for two days, but it had to pick tonight to steamroll through. I gasped some more and tore open the bivy, gulping for oxygen in the cold air.

Above me, Mars still burned orange among a splattering of stars, but a hazy white gauze had stretched over the sky. "Oh man, it's clouding up," I thought. It was the third time that night I had woken up unable to breathe. I decided it was probably worth it to leave my toasty burrow on a faint hope that Dayquil pills had made it into my rapidly expanding portable pharmacy.

As I slithered out of the sleeping bag, I noticed the white lines across the sky were flexing and retreating with considerable velocity. "Strange thing for clouds to do," I thought. But as I stood up and looked around, I saw waves of bright green light flowing over the snowcapped peaks to the north. The white clouds weren't clouds at all, but south-reaching streaks of the Northern Lights. Having momentarily forgotten about the explosion building in my head, I stood in my sock feet and booties in the snow and watched the white flares streak across the sky. Even the frigid wind needling my naked fingers couldn't tear me away from my slack-jawed stance beneath those horizon-caressing fingers of light.

I had set out with my loaded bicycle at 2:30 p.m. Friday, just before sunset, knowing that I would probably not set foot indoors again for nearly 24 hours. The street shoulders were coated in a terrifying layer of glare ice, and I kept the tire pressure low just to regain some sense of control. My momentum slowed to a crawl, but I didn't care. It's strange how speed stops mattering once time has no meaning.

A few near wipeouts had me grateful to hit snow, even crusty snow, and I spent as much time on trails as I could before heading out the road to meet Geoff at our predesignated camping destination. The trail to Herbert Glacier was rideable in a bad way ... a deep ski track barely wider than my tires that had been punched out by footprints. I took a few arm-smashing falls before I decided those four miles to camp would be a good time to test the walking comfort of my boots. I slogged through knee-deep snow as my bike rolled happily on the trail alongside.

I still beat Geoff to camp and set to gathering wood for the great fire I was planning to build, knowing that all the exposed dead wood had soaked up several days of rain before refreezing. I then exhausted all the newspaper I brought for firebuilding purposes, plus all the notepaper I had planned to write on, plus the French and German sections of the directions to my stove, and never even coaxed a tiny twig to catch fire. Geoff arrived shortly after I had given up and exhausted his own paper supply in the effort. In the end, we resorted to pouring liquid fuel all over a bunch of spruce bows. Even that didn't work, but I did enjoy a split second of warmth when I lit the fuel-soaked needles and jumped away from the resulting fireball.

We finally gave up on the whole campfire idea and fired up the stove to melt snow for water and hot chocolate. I have yet to receive my new Camelback in the mail, and my old leaky one had long since frozen. I didn't realize how thirsty I had become until I gulped down the still-slushy water from my cooking pot like a famished refugee. A chill was starting to set in as Geoff and I stood by our non-flammable stack of twigs swigging hot chocolate. His thermometer read 10 degrees.

By the time we went to bed, I had been mostly idle at camp for more than three hours. I was pleased by how warm I stayed, given that I was dressed to ride a bicycle in temperatures that started out in the mid-2os. It wasn't until I laid down that I realized how much my cold had progressed. I whittled away most of the restless night consoling myself by chanting "At least I'm still warm. At least I'm still warm." But seeing the Northern Lights was a nice treat.

I spent 45 minutes this morning cuddling with my Camelbak bladder until I finally was able to coax some of the water through the ice-glazed hose. Even then, it froze on me again less than five minutes after I crawled out of bed, so I resorted to pouring its slushy contents into my cooking pot so I'd have something to drink. I had planned to ride all the way home, but my throat was on fire and I was feeling more than a little thrashed. Geoff and I stumbled back to the trailhead and I caught a ride home with him. Geoff told me he felt surprisingly tired after a mild 4.5-mile run. "That's the thing about winter camping," I said. "Keeping warm when you're inactive almost feels like more work than staying active." Even though we didn't struggle with the effort, we never really felt like we could just kick back and relax, either. And the fact is 10 degrees above 0 would be a warm night on the Iditarod Trail.

"All the better reason to keep moving," Geoff said.

Packing

Date: Jan. 3
Mileage: 25.1
Hours: 2:00 (plus two hours at the gym)
January mileage: 75.7
Temperature upon departure: 35
Precipitation: .33"

I've been packing up for another daylong cycling/camping adventure. Before I started having knee pain, my plan was to spend these first few days of January pressing into the Yukon for two nights of "out in the weather" living. But injury worries prompted me to postpone the trip. So instead I decided to head out locally for one night, and still managed to put that task off until Friday. Tomorrow should be a good day for it. Colder and dry. Weather in the 20s around here is actually warmer than most weather in the 30s, because the potential to get wet and stay wet is much lower. So I am looking forward to traveling in comfort.

Sometime soon I will have to write a gear post about the stuff I am planning (at that point, at least) to use in the Ultrasport. I got a big box of stuff earlier this week and today ordered what I hope will be my last box of stuff. Just a few odds and ends ... a Thermarest, to match the one that Geoff owns that I always use; a fuel bottle; a 6-liter MSR bladder to fill as I see fit; a Camelbak "stowaway" bladder that I hope will actually stow away water rather than leak it all over me; and goggles, because the $25 pair that I bought at Solitude ski resort in 1998 just aren't cutting it anymore.

My last big box came while my friends Craig and Amity were in town for the New Year holiday. They watched bemused as I ripped through the heavily taped cardboard like a 6-year-old on Christmas morning. I squealed over my new winter boots ("Waterproof! Coldproof!") and modeled my baby-blue polyester long underwear complete with baby blue balaclava and my old crappy goggles ("You look like a scuba diver.") Craig especially thought the whole scene was funny because he has known me since 1998 and remembers when my entire outdoor gear repertoire amounted to a pair of crappy ski goggles and a few cotton hoodies.

"You've come a long way since we hiked Upper Black Box," he said. "Ice water up to our chins, and you were wearing blue jeans and a pair of Vans."

"Sketchers," I corrected him. "But that was back when they made them with 3-inch soles. Also, the only pack I carried was the top of my overnight backpack, cinched around my waist. And the only food I had was a jar of peanut butter and a baggie of crackers, both of which were filled to the brim with San Rafael River water before mile 3."

"Yeah," he said, eyeing my Arctic expedition boots warily. "What in the world happened to you?"

I shrugged. "Oh, to be young and completely underprepared again," I said, and caressed my new down coat with the genuine appreciation of someone who knows what it means to slog through a 12-hour river hike with a pair of Sketchers and giardia-laced peanut butter.

Today's ride was fairly uneventful, but I saw my friends the sea lions again. I was disappointed to see that they probably didn't remember me as they bobbed and flapped and swam away.