Cut my ride short

Date: July 26
Mileage: 99.4
July mileage: 792.9
Temperature upon departure: 54
Inches of rain today: 0.01"

I'm feeling a little bummed right now. It's the kind of creeping guilt I usually feel when I intend to get up and do something active first thing in the morning, but instead muddle around for several hours with back issues of the New Yorker and handfuls of Honey Nut Cheerios. It's the kind of remorse I feel when I realize I just watched an entire sunset from the narrow screen of a digital camera viewfinder. It curls the edges of my memory until the only image I see are the bold-type words, "Could Have." It's regret. Not the way I usually feel after bashing out nearly 100 miles.

I had big plans today. Twelve hours of big plans, and lasted through about half that. The regret comes from the fact that I had everything in line. I was feeling strong, and eating well, and finding plenty of water despite having only one water bottle - meaning I wasn't wearing a pack, which meant I wasn't having shoulder issues, which meant I shouldn't have had any excuse not to hit every dead end in Juneau. Except ... except for those pangs. I knew them well once, but then I mastered them. I mastered them and then I ignored them. But as the miles wore on, they began to slice deeper. I was rounding an arbitrary point near mile 80 when I finally decided that there was no longer reason to ignore. There is sometimes much to be gained by being stubborn, but rarely anything to gain by being stupid.

So I am back to second-guessing my knee again. It makes sense that the inflammation would creep back. My saddle time has skyrocketed. I am basically reliving January. I was never under the delusion that I was a healed person, but I did believe I was finally in a position to ride it out. And I probably am in a good position to ride it out ... under a more conservative set of limitations. But that's what has me bummed out right now ... not the idea of longterm or possibly permanent injury, but the reality of limitations.

I did lots of icing tonight, and Aleve, and actually feel quite healthy right now. The rest of my fitness is falling together pretty well, but I can't really ignore the return of angry knee. It was very minor today compared to past bouts, but the fact that it's the first in a while has me suddenly rethinking, well, everything. Not a real fun place to be.

A need a day or so of rest and a couple of good rides before I do anything drastic. There may just be an element of having had a bad day rather than a full-on regression. Still, I don't want to go back. To injury, or to moderation.

Seriously, why?

Date: July 25
Mileage: 15.1
July mileage: 693.5
Temperature upon departure: 65
Inches of rain today: 0.01"

Despite the cycling nature of this blog, I was not going to post about the Tour de France because well, I don’t watch the Tour de France. But I do read newspapers. And after yet another day of being inundated by dopers in the headlines, I have to say ... sad. Just sad.

As a member of the nonviewing general public, I am probably not qualified to comment. I've actually never followed the tour because I don’t find much personal entertainment in it. I tend to identify more closely with dog mushers and adventure racers than I do with skinny Europeans all hopped up on other peoples’ blood. I do admire fast pedaling as much as the next cyclist. But ... if the pros are all dirty, if they’re really all dirty (and why would I, a member of the nonviewing general public, have any reason to believe they’re not?) ... then what’s the point? Why not build a bunch of cycling robots and watch them do their thing? Since cycling is a competition of humans, doesn't it make more sense to watch humans?

That’s actually one of my favorite things about riding in the summer ... the cyclist watching is so much richer and more diverse. I wasn’t going to ride today because I wanted to rest up my knee as much as possible before the weekend. But a rare sunny morning demanded I at least make an appearance outside. I went for a quick ride out to Thane - just an hour out and back. As I coasted to a stop at the turnaround, I met an older man - maybe 70-ish - who was standing next to a rusty contraption of a road bike and snacking on a miniature bag of Doritos. He was wearing a pair of Docker-type shorts and I noticed he had knee braces, just like me. I asked him if he lived in Juneau. “No,” he said. “I’m from Seattle. My daughter lives here, in Auke Bay.”

“Really?” I said. “Auke Bay?” (Auke Bay is about 17 miles from where we were standing.)

“Yup,” he said. “When she needs me out of her hair, I go for a little ride.”

With that, he dug back into his bag of Doritios, and I turned around to make the half-hour trip home, thinking how lucky I am to be involved in a sport with no shortage of heroes.

Happy Pioneer Day

Date: July 24
Mileage: 35.4
July mileage: 678.4
Temperature upon departure: 58
Inches of rain today: 0.02"

That's right. Pioneer Day. In most states, people couldn't even tell you the specific dates on which their respective state holidays fall (isn't Alaska Day in October sometime?) But in Utah, July 24 is second only to Christmas.

Everyone comes out of the woodwork to celebrate the day, 160 years ago today, that Brigham Young and his motley band of American dissidents trudged over a mountain pass, looked out across the cracked-mud valley surrounding a giant dead lake, and said, "Well, I'm sure no one's going to kick us out of this place." (A quote later aesthetically revised to "This is the place," which looked better on T-shirts.) Thus, Salt Lake City was born.

Among that crew were my great-great-and-so-forth-grandparents. I've always been proud of my Mormon pioneer heritage. I like to believe that the same adventuring spirit and irrational zeal that would drive someone to schlep a handcart across the Great Plains lives on in me. So I thought about them today as I was churning the pedals up to Eaglecrest ... about how painful it would be to ride on wooden wheels ... about the insane audacity of carrying things like furniture and pianos across the wilderness ... about how the pioneer children sang as they walked ... and walked ... and walked.

I like that no matter how artificially hard I make my life, I will never live up to their standard. They shredded everything they had in their lives to hit a dusty trail to nowhere. There, in an America before pavement, they experienced a world of extreme suffering and extreme beauty that I will never know. But I like to think that they passed the torch on to me, and that here, on the relatively-well-traveled Alaska frontier, I can blaze my own path to the future.