Feelin' soggy

The stats

The truth

Date: July 19 and 20
Mileage: 14.3 and 24.1
July mileage: 470.2

The Soggy Bottom 100 is upon me.

This is the last race of my 2006 Alaska endurance trilogy. Time will tell as to whether it's a grand finale or "Scream III."

Single-track century. 11,000 feet of climbing. Technical stretches. Time cut-offs. Self supported. 40 percent chance of precipitation.

I've been trying to will myself strong ... as if self-fulfilling prophecy could make it so.

"It's only 106 miles. Traversing 40 miles of uninterrupted wilderness. With just myself and people who are expected to pedal a whole lot faster than me. How bad could it really be?"

The numbers are daunting, but when I step back from them, I'm surrounded by a new reality.

Self supported on wilderness singletrack - just me and my bike and some Power Bars ... a jingling bear bell ... maybe some Catherine Wheel pulsing through the iPod (don't judge me; I keep the volume low) - climbing until the lush spruce forest gives way to devils club meadows and alpine tundra, with its stark gray gravel sweeping down snow-streaked mountains. Bouncing through scattered rocks and dried mud pockmarked with bear tracks. Pounding that final pedal stroke over the crest before dropping into another tear-inducing descent.

The mileage will come on its own.

Hopefully.

Wish me luck.

Movin' on up (er ... down)

Date: July 18
Mileage: 28.9
July mileage: 431.8
Temperature upon departure: 56

Well, I'm moving to Juneau. It sounds a bit rash, I know, but it's actually the culmination of several weeks of events that started the day they handed me number 111 at the 24 Hours of Kincaid Race (Elevens, my friend Ryan always told me, signify shifts in universal or personal patterns i.e. routines.) Anyway, the next day I received a cold call from The Juneau Empire. Next month, I'm going to be working there. Crazy how quickly life can shift gears.

While Juneau is technically in the same state I live in now (and who am I kidding ... it's the capitol), moving there is no small matter. It's about the distance equivalent of moving from Denver to San Francisco, if the only way to get to San Francisco was to drive to a tiny upstate town like Arcata and then hop a slow-moving ferry down the coast. Oh ... and throw in an international border crossing as well. I might as well move to Seattle. At least it stops raining sometimes there.

But that's precisely the reason I'm excited. Juneau is this mysterious community isolated by a wall of steep, vast mountains and hundreds of miles of remote coastline. With 30,000 people, it's the second largest city in Alaska and the center of its government - all squashed into this unlikely place teeming with grizzly bears and avalanche danger. As a former denizen of the wide-open Mountain West, who grew up with Interstate dependence flowing through her veins, I find this kind of lifestyle very intriguing. So I'm going to give it a try.

Also, I'm completely in love with Alaska, and I realize that I've only scratched a small surface of this bewildering state. Moving to Juneau, I know, isn't exactly going to open up opportunities to move freely through the Arctic. And yet - it's another piece of a vast puzzle. For that reason, I couldn't resist.

When I think about leaving Homer, I feel sad. I feel anxious. I feel anticipation. I feel angry at myself. I feel excited. I feel terrified. I feel like I need to stop thinking about it even if it does make the hill intervals go faster. Change is so hard, and unfortunately I'm one of those people that thrives on it, craves it, consumes it with reckless abandon. I like the fact that there's something new around the corner. It gives the present so much more meaning.

One weekend, two passes

Date: July 16
Mileage: 15.3
July mileage: 402.9

I honestly used to think I was in really great shape. Then I did this hike called the Crow Pass crossing, which looks like a gentle traverse on a map but is in reality 26 miles of limb-pounding, joint-jarring terrain broken only by heart-stopping stream crossings. Brrrrr.

Geoff is actually racing this course next weekend, crazy man, so we set out on Saturday to check out the trail. We had no great plan for getting back around (Girdwood and Eagle River, an hour and a half apart by road, are hardly an easy two points to connect.) Also, I've done almost no hiking this summer. But, hey, I had that great biking base. I was insistent on going the whole way.

It was a little after 10 a.m. by the time we left. Despite a heavy drizzle, fog and temps closing in on 40, the hike to the pass was a breeze and I was feeling great. We crossed several glacier-fed streams that were running swift and strong but nothing higher than knee-deep. Soaked clothing kept us going at a brisk pace. At mile 8 Geoff announced that he was going to run ahead to experience running on the rocky, slippery trail. He told me he'd meet me at the Eagle River crossing, which we believed to be somewhere near mile 18 or 20. I continued slashing through overgrown brush. Even though the rain had stopped, the tall, wet grass provided a continuous cold shower.

Finally, the trail descended into the woods and the grass let up, only to be replaced by a group of backpackers who convinced me that I was going the wrong way when they, in fact, were the ones headed the wrong way. We didn't figure this out until I had followed them back up the trail at their turtle pace for more than a mile, only to meet another group of backpackers who confirmed my suspicions. Frustrated, I turned around and jogged back down the trail, only to meet the Eagle River and a shivering, irritated Geoff at mile 14.

Because the river crossing was so much sooner than we anticipated, he didn't want to go ahead but didn't expect to wait for me for so long. The backpackers caught up and we began our river ford together, linking arms while we moved sideways through the thigh-deep glacial torrent. The river was at least 150 yards wide, nearly waist-deep at its deepest channels, with 33-degree water flowing so fast and hard that the slightest movement threw me off balance. As my orientation disintegrated, so did my confidence, and I froze like a novice climber clinging to a cliff, draining all of my strength and energy into involuntary immobility. Geoff, who had already made it across, actually got back in the water to help me through it. Because of my small meltdown, we each spent about 10 minutes in that frigid water. Geoff was near hypothermic by the time we got out, but, mercifully, the remaining 12 miles of the hike was flat and fast, with enough bouldering obstacles and log crossings to keep the blood flowing.

Anyway, we got out at about 7 p.m., more than 70 miles from our car and no real plan for getting back. Luckily, we have some benevolent friends who picked us up and took us to their home. With nothing more than the soaked gear we had carried over on our backs, we ate a warm meal, took a shower, and passed out on the floor.

Today we had this plan to check out my race course, riding 50 mountain bike miles in the process. When I woke up this morning more sore than I have ever been, ever, except for maybe that time I rolled my road bike - well, I figured that the entire loop wasn't the best plan. But I thought that a two-hour ride wouldn't be unreasonable. So I hobbled over to my bike, spent several sharp seconds coaxing my left leg over the saddle, and set out on the Devil's Pass trail. Sure enough, my biking muscles still proved to be in decent shape, and I was able to ignore the subdued screams from those annoyed hiking muscles that kept getting in the way as I pedaled most of the way to the pass. It was great to check out the one leg of the course I hadn't seen before, even if I did lose my bear spray somewhere along the jarring rocks of that technical singletrack. However, after that marathon hike, with the Soggy Bottom 100 only one week away, I probably just officially had the worst training weekend ever ... except for maybe that time I rolled my road bike.