Saturday, March 31, 2007

My 14-mile month

I feel like I'm going to be riding my bike again soon. I can't say why I feel so confident about it, especially since I have yet to obtain a proper opinion on the matter. But it just feels intuitive. It's like that time I hobbled around with undiagnosable muscle injury for a month (blood clots, probably.) One day, all of the tension just drained out. I didn't know it was over at the time, but I could feel it happening. It's more likely this time around that I've traded denial for self pity for clingy optimism. But who knows? I've been reserving strong judgement or reckless experiments for my PT appointment on April 2. And after that? I think I saw a horoscope somewhere that said April's the month to begin anew.

Today was a nice day, the first in a while, but I wasn't really able to capture any interesting pictures. The top picture was actually an attempt to photograph a bald eagle perched on a branch. But Juneau raptors are much more wily than the pet eagles in Homer. They generally move out of the way far too fast. So the eagle is long gone. What I do have is a photo of enough green to prove that I don't live in a black-and-white world. The massive snowpack is receding, however slowly.

I went out for a walk today wearing only my rain pants, a T-shirt and a hat. It was warm ... relatively ... it was 38 degrees. But the reflection of sun off the snow adds at least 40 degrees to the air temperature. I could have done that walk in a swim suit. I mostly just wore the hat because I have been swimming a lot lately, so any unrestrained hair flies around like the follicles on a person hugging the static electricity ball at the planetarium. The landscape was so bright white that I could not stop squinting. Couldn't make myself open my eyes. So I took a photo to illustrate the walk. Yet another self portrait. Yawn. Sorry.

Geoff and I spent the afternoon skiing at Eaglecrest. Well ... not exactly. Geoff spent the afternoon cross-country skiing. I did one lap and decided the snow was entirely too fast and scary, the possibility of further injury far too high, and the attraction of late-afternoon laziness too difficult to resist. So I plopped down at the top of a 15-foot snow berm and read a New Yorker magazine. For about 40 minutes. Just reclining in my self-molded easy chair, soaking up sunlight on my pasty Alaskan skin and deep-freezing my butt.

On the way home, Geoff's Civic rolled over to 300,000 miles. I decided to document the occasion. Unfortunately, the only photo that didn't come out irreparably blurry reads 299,999.9.

It's funny to be proud about the mileage achievement of a car. If anything, I should be ashamed to admit on my bicycle blog that I have been near a car that has actually been driven 300,000 miles while commuter bicycles everywhere gather rust. But there you have it. This car has been everywhere. It has more good stories over the course of its lifetime than some people do, and there should be no shame in owning a good car. Well, except for that whole global warming thing.
Tomorrow is supposed to be 39 and sunny. How will I stay off my bike?

Friday, March 30, 2007

Big day indoors

My hair is now officially an indoor fire hazard and my eyes are sore from squinting at small pages, but other than that, I feel pretty good right now.

So I spent four hours working out indoors today. I wasn't all that bad, physically or mentally. And it didn't even turn out to be a nice day outside, so I feel like I won this small battle.

I started at the pool, noon sharp. I'm not exactly sure how I feel about pool swimming. It makes me thirsty like the land of 1,000 suns, and makes my skin and hair feel like I just got back from such a place. But it goes smoothly enough in the meantime, and there's great people watching pretty much nonstop ... because I still can't put my face in the water without taking a big draw of liquid chlorine. I still need to figure that one out.

Open swim lasts two hours, and I thought I'd try to stick in out the entire time. But at about minute 94, I was hit with a need to visit the bathroom at a degree and urgency I did not anticipate. One minute I was fine, and the next, it was as though the entire weight of the pool and everyone inside of it came crushing down on my bladder. I did the last half-lap pulling frantically with my arms while squeezing my legs together. Then I waddled quickly into the locker room. By the time I came back out, about a half dozen children had taken residence in my lane. And since there was only about 20 minutes left in open swim anyway, I decided to call it good. 144 laps.

The I went to the regular gym. I did I few quick upper body lifts to cool down, and I ate a little baggie of dried fruit and nuts. Then I took up residence on an elliptical machine with a copy of "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime," which I bought at a garage sale months ago and have been meaning to read. Good book, and fast reading. Before I even knew it, I was on page 136. Two hours, 15 minutes.

Now it's been seven hours since I returned. I left the gym feeling a little depleted, mostly because it's impossible to drink in two hours the seven gallons of water the pool seems to drain from me. But other than that, I felt pretty strong. No knee pain out of what is ordinary. Good signs. Happy day.

Swim: 95 minutes, 2 miles (10,600 feet).
PedalRun (or whatever it is you actually do on a elliptical machine): 135 minutes, 16.8 miles (Distance according to the digital display. Who knows how accurate that is, but since I don't even know what an elliptical machine is supposed to mimic, what does it matter?)
Actual distance traveled: About 400 feet.

Life is a mystery.
Thursday, March 29, 2007

Clean slate

The only exercising I did today was a 45-minute walk along the Mendenhall Lake shoreline. It was a rest day, but it seemed important to get out - if only just to look at a waterfall and snap a picture of a glacier. Thing is, there are a lot of places in Juneau to go "see." Lately, especially so on these sleet-streaked, featureless days, I seem to gravitate out here. Maybe it's the lack of contrast. Staring out across a rotting sheet of ice and wondering where it meets the sky. I spend more time looking in than out.

I've been working on changing my outlook about things. Before now, my philosophy about endurance cycling - and life in general, really - has been that if you want it, really want it, so bad that you've convinced yourself you need it, it's possible. Out of shape? No food? No water? If you had to bike that 100 miles to survive, you'd find a way to do it. Of course, I never lived by anything that extreme. But I like to operate under the delusion that I control my own destiny.

I'm learning, though, that wanting things ... even needing things ... isn't enough. Life is a little control and a lot of chaos, so in the end, you're not really the one behind the wheel. If you don't have any water, don't have any food, that's a correctable problem. But if that problem persists, you'll die, eventually. No matter how much you tell yourself you'd really like to keep going.

But I staggered upstream through a tough week on the job and it worked out for me; now it's over. Hooray. I have this plan to complete several hours of low-impact, high-energy activity tomorrow ... swimming, elliptical machine and the like. Maybe four hours. My idea was to test how my endurance is holding up. I'm actually looking forward to it, even if it is hamster wheel stuff. But then I hear that it's going to be a beautiful day ... partly sunny ... clean pavement ... may even hit 40. And a larger part of me is wondering how I can make that whole bike thing work. I'd like to ride out to the glacier. Snap a picture of some blue sky with a red roadie in the foreground. It sounds so idyllic. I know I'm going to resist temptation, though. I'm not even worried.

Maybe I just don't want it badly enough. But I guess that's not the point.
Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Ode to the gym: A sonnet

Ode to the gym and its hamster machines,
Where sweat, not love, drips onto the floor.
And bleary-eyed faces, as though in a dream,
Just keep circling and circling for more.

Ode to the worker, who each day at noon,
Chips away at her unyielding routine.
Where meaning is found in a glaze of tunes,
And Fox News full blast on TV screens.

Ode to gym and the peace that I find,
With nowhere to go and nothing to see.
Read magazines till my conscience goes blind,
And circle until my legs are set free.

Hearts beat in hopeful pursuit of each run,
In static frenzy we find our own fun.

Geoff has a blog


Fumbling Towards Endurance

Monday, March 26, 2007

Signs of spring 2

March snowfall: 92 inches
Season to date: 244.6

Today has been a day of weather contrasts. Sunny with fingers of warmth reaching through the air one minute, then snowing the next. It was perfect, really ... enough sunlight to perk up the sullen mood that comes from not enough sleep, but snowy enough to absolve any guilt about spending too much of the day inside.

Spring seems to be on everyone's mind. I think it's because the first signs of the season are starting to break through. Evidence of early spring in Alaska is very subtle ... even imaginary, in some cases. A sprout here, a non-raven bird there. Spring likes to keep a low profile here until it's suddenly summer, so, in the meantime, we cling to whatever clues we can find.

I remember last year, those subtle moments in which I first started to get a sense that the cold and snow would in fact not last forever. So I scrolled back, and found that the first concrete images of spring 2006 also appeared on March 26. Since this seems to be an anniversary of some sort, I thought I'd look for some Signs of Spring: 2007.

Something green punching through the snow: Actually, quite a bit of snow has melted since I first saw these spiny leaves poking out of several inches of icy crust. I'm not even sure what kind of plant this is, but it's about as impatient as plants come. Twenty bucks says the rest of the city's greenery doesn't show its face until May.

Midnight out at noon: I'm beginning to realize that my cats may actually make through the winter without killing each other. Too much time indoors makes for some spastic felines, but it's been almost impossible to coax them out during the day for months. Now they're raring to go out. They've even found places cleared enough of snow to soak up some sunlight. Good sign.


So much daylight: It's been strange to come home for my dinner break when it's still light out. I walk across the deck and notice that what I see is buildings and mountains, not blurs of orange light shrouded in fog. Pretty soon, it there will be daylight when I come home from work at 11 p.m. Strange.


Landlords still haven't taken the Christmas lights down: Back in January, Geoff and I laughed about this. In February, our neighbors laughed about it. Now it seems to be an unspoken oddity, like having 15 cats - humorous, but with a hint of sad desperation. But Christams lights are so out of place, they're a constant reminder of the passing of time.

Healing up nicely: So last year on March 26, I rear-ended Geoff on a road bike and body-slammed the snowless pavement at 15 mph. The crash ripped away a respectable chunk of my left knee. It took me a while to grow it back, and I didn't do a very good job of it, judging by the unsightly purple scar tissue that remains. Coincidentally, I was sitting at the edge of the public pool today when a lady from my normal gym swam up. She stopped to take a drink of water and regarded me for several seconds before she recognized me. (I think the wet hair and relative lack of clothing threw her off.) We've exchanged injury war stories in the past, and since my knees were right at her eye level, we only got our hellos in before she loudly asked "Oh no! Did you have to get surgery?"

I scrunched my forehead in confusion for a split second before I realized what she was talking about. "Oh no, no," I laughed. "That's my good knee."

Sunday, March 25, 2007

Cabin fever

I don't have any pictures today because I haven't been outside for a couple of days. Patience has never been a virtue of mine. And with work as busy as its been, and the rest of life as enclosed as it's becoming, I'm about ready to burst out the door in a fight-or-flight sprint from apathy.

I can't shake the feeling that if this were the era of survival-of-the-fittest, I would have already been culled from the herd. It's funny to think about life in the caveman days, wondering what would finally bring you down. Some would die in a vicious battle with a potential meal. Others would die in an arduous journey, or by accident when trying to impress a potential mate while jumping over fire. I would be the one to contract a minor injury and become the slowest in the pack by just a touch - but just enough - to fall behind when the predators came around.

I've done some more swimming in the past two days. My hair is like straw and I've been fending off a cramp in my calf muscle most likely caused by dehydration, but other than that, it's going really well. Today I swam 100 laps. It gave me some time to think about endurance swimming as a pursuit. If I learned some technique, worked on moving faster, figured out how to stick my face in the water without inhaling, and bought a good swim cap, I could see progression in this sort of a thing. Of course, swimming long distances in a pool is about as interesting as running 3,100 miles around a single city block. And if I wanted to do something fun, like, say, swim across Kachemak Bay or the English Channel, I'd have to become a lot less intensely afraid of moving water (deep water doesn't scare me. Waves and rivers do.) Other than that, to be quite honest, I think I have more inherent aptitude for swimming than any other sport I've ever tried. Strange to be so naturally inclined and yet so terrified of something at the same time.

Not that I want to be a swim dork or anything. This blog will go bicycle again. Promise.