10-day forecast

Date: Feb. 6
Mileage: 20.6
February mileage: 142.2
Temperature upon departure: 30

The Susitna 100 draws near. I think the single moment that really pulls this sinking reality to the forefront of my every waking thought is the moment I discover the race date on the 10-day weather forecast. The 10-day countdown begins tomorrow.

Am I ready? I don’t know ... I don’t know ... where did I stash those heat packs ... face mask ... where’s my face mask? I haven’t seen it since March ... neoprene socks ... tights ... fleece layers ... check ... check ... how much will it cost to put my bike on the plane ... 50 bucks? ... crap, I still need to buy that ticket I have on hold ... what do you mean you can’t take a camp stove on a plane? ... sleeping bag ... bike rack ... check ... check.

The truth is, I will never be truly ready. Might as well huck whatever gear I can find on my overpriced Alaska Airlines flight and pray for grace. I know now that out on the lonely wilderness trail, grace ... and maybe that extra pound of butter ... are sometimes the only things we have to get by.

The Arrowhead 135 is wrapping up. Both Dave and Doug pedaled into the depths of their abilities and in the end had to scratch. Most of the field scratched. The temperatures dipped beneath 30 below, temperatures in which comfort and strength never fully reach the surface. It’s a humbling thought that really cuts the Susitna 100 reality even deeper. But don’t worry, Mom, I don’t think it gets that cold in Big Lake, Alaska :-).

Geoff went to see a foot doctor today, and is now more confused and probably worse off than he was before. Instead of even offering a vague answer, the podiatrist gave him no answers. Nothing. The experience rings similar to a medical ordeal I went through two years ago. I injured some muscles in my lower left leg during a mountain bike fall, and became convinced I had blood clotting. The doctor never really found anything but humored me through three visits and an ultrasound. I could barely walk for a month, and just when I had decided I was a certifiable hypochondriac, something broke loose and my entire lower leg turned black and blue. After that cleared up, I was fine. Fine, and out a $500 deductible.

That’s when pretty much lost my faith in doctors.

Now I always second guess sports injuries. Unless you can afford to seek out the personal scrutiny of the best specialists in the country, is it really worth going to see a local physician for some $300 version of “take two aspirins and call me when you feel like spending more?”

But, who knows? I’ll probably change my tune if (when?) the frostbite sets in.

Freezing fog

Date: Feb. 5
Mileage: 25.2
February mileage: 121.6
Temperature upon departure: 34

When I left my office tonight, the landscape was enveloped in vision-obscuring fog. Halfway-frozen droplets drifted sluggishly through the thick air. Where they collided with solid objects, shields of white frost were beginning to form. Fatally silent as fog tends to be, the scrape of my footsteps on the gravel was by contrast deafening. So I stopped to listen, for a moment, to nothing at all. The churn of a newspaper press echoed somewhere distant - by the sound of it, distance measured in miles, at least. The drifting droplets began to collide with my body. Their icy grip tightened around my skin, and I could feel frost shields forming around me.

I thought of Dave and Doug, of several dozen other cyclists out on the Arrowhead 135 trail, noses wrapped in a shield of neoprene and dangling closer, closer to the handlebars. The headlines today screamed "ARCTIC BLAST." Not in the Arctic, just beyond my home, but somewhere distant - somewhere in northern Minnesota. Where schools and highways shut down and the feds closed up shop. Everything moves real slow when it's 40 below. It would be 2 a.m. there. Were the cyclists, too, stopped in the midst of endless ice fog, struggling with the disconnect of intense physical effort and minds they had to shut down a long time ago. Were they, too, listening, for a moment, to nothing at all? Waiting, for a moment, for nothing at all? Wondering where the wilderness trail ends, or if it even began?

I thought of Geoff, still gripped by injury and the crushing disappointment of two months of effort for naught. We set these goals in our search for purpose until they become our purpose; we embark on these journeys in our search for identity until they become our identity. To take away my bike would be the first step on a slippery slope that in the end could strip me of who I am. I would be unmolded, undefined, drifting. If Geoff is stripped of his ability to run, who is he? Even in temporary setbacks, life has a way of moving on.

I could almost feel the ice crystals shattering as I began to walk again, with an unfocused gaze drifting toward a faint stream of orange light. I imagined it was just a street light or possibly a house. But as the light crept through the opaque night, it cast a blurry path of impossible warmth and comfortable direction. I felt like I could follow and it would take me where I wanted to go, if only I could remember where I wanted to go.

I drift, for a moment, but eventually the fog has to lift.

Problems from the feet up

Date: Feb. 4
Mileage: 25.8
February mileage: 96.4
Temperature upon departure: 36

This entire time I have been training for the Susitna 100, my boyfriend, Geoff, has been working toward the same race. We haven't seen each other much in the process because while my training involves a couple of hours of cycling every morning, Geoff has been in high-intensity training to run the race. With no mechanical help. For 100 snowbound miles.

Even though neither of us really committed to the race until mid-December, training was going well. He ran 50 miles last week in less than 10 hours and felt great about it. So great, in fact, that he did a couple of 20-mile runs in a row just a few days later. The first day, he came home looking strong and refreshed. The second day, he came home hobbling on a foot that had swollen considerably. He could barely walk.

The next day, it wasn't any better.

He’s fairly certain it’s a stress fracture.

And today, I watched as grim possibilities started to settle in. He doesn't have health insurance, which means a 'real' diagnosis could set him back several hundred dollars, and probably wouldn't achieve much. What he does know is he's in pain, all of the dozens of Web sites he’s surfed tell him he probably has a broken bone, and he has a 100-mile race to run. In two weeks.

Or not. That, to him, is the grimmest possibility of all. He's poured his heart into this race - arguably more than I have, even with my narcissistic blog and scores of saddle hours. He put a lot more money that he doesn't have into this race. He's stayed up late at night hand-sewing a harness for his sled. He's purchased giant jars of Perpetuem and Hammer Gel and actually made himself choke them down. He goes out running in the dark. He even inspired me to buy a pair of Montrail Susitnas (yes, I did recently purchase a pair of winter running shoes. I’m still trying to figure out why.)

Realizing that he might not be out there pounding that dark trail with me is more heartbreaking than I would have imagined. It makes me want to quit, too. Or lace up my Montrails and run it myself.

In just a few hours, that "other" two-day winter ultramarathon will begin - the Arrowhead 135. I’m rooting for a couple of bicycle bloggers I know, Doug from Minnesota and Dave from North Dakota. The weather report is still predicting lows around 25 below zero. Maybe as you’re going about your daily Monday routine, as I will be, you could send a few good foot vibes their way ... for Doug’s and Dave’s toes to stay warm and intact, and for Geoff’s injury to magically be not that bad.