First rides

Date: Jan. 1 and 2
Mileage: 14.5 and 36.1
Hours: 2:00 and 4:30
January mileage: 50.6
Temperature upon departure: 30 and 34
Precipitation: 1.03"

As I roll over the frozen Mendenhall Lake in a sleetstorm, the surface and the sky blur together in a wash of light gray. The lake blends into hillsides, which blend into mountains, which blend into air without borders or distinction. The world is a blank canvas broken only by brilliant blue brushstrokes at the center of the monotony. The color draws me forward like a distant light on a dark night, even as my conscience nags me to heed wise warnings and turn back. The warnings tell me not to go near the glacier, with its electric blue spires threatening to peel off the mountain of ice and tumble into the water below ... the threat of a spectacular death by ice-shard tsunami. The unlikeliness that such an event would happen keeps me rolling forward, but my heart rate shoots up and sweat beads form on my face in anticipation of that enjoyable fear - the fear of something that probably won't happen, but it could.

But in the true form of someone who's always willing to assume the worst-case scenario, I stopped about 200 feet shy of the last solid ice before the glacier's face, took a few quick photos, and high-tailed back to terra firma. But it's so irresistible, sidling up next to a glacier. It's hard to appreciate the scale until the glacier's right there, towering over me like the skyline of a city, with alleyways so deeply blue, I'm convinced they stretch beyond the bowels of the glacier into another dimension.

I was actually going to take a full week off the bike, but I became a little bored on New Year's morning while waiting for my friends to roll out of bed (we had a couple of friends visiting us from Palmer over the weekend. We love them, but they are in their own way unapologetically lazy when they're on vacation. I've never see anyone sleep so much in three days.) Anyway, I took out the Pugsley and was encouraged to find it didn't hurt to pedal. And after two hours, it still didn't hurt. Nor was there any residual pain after that. It seems I was taking a bit of an alarmist stance with my knee. Better to be safe and overcareful than reckless and injured, but I decided it wouldn't hurt to go out for a little bit longer today.

Because of my "injury watch," I allowed myself to do something I never do - I put my bike in my car and drove it to a trailhead. It was wonderful to spend the afternoon almost entirely on trails, but the lack of pavement commute to the Valley actually made for a much harder ride overall. The weather today was a fluctuating mixture of snow and rain that people around here call "snain." Trails started out wet and soft and gradually deteriorated to saturated and soupy. I've had a light week and brought a lot of energy to spend on the effort, but still I felt like I was slogging through quicksand. Only because I have a fat-bottomed Pugsley that I can run at <10 psi was I able to ride much of that trail at all. I have this theory that once I finally find my way to the cold snow of Southcentral Alaska, my Southeast-forged quads of steel will be so strong that I'll just be able to fly over the snowy trail as though it were pavement. Either that, or the cold will drive me into the ground. But if there just happens to be an extreme, snain-soaked warm spell during this year's race, I'll be ready.

This is turning into a longish post, but I wanted to thank Andrea Recht for nominating my site as a VeloNews "Site of the Day." That is really too cool! I couldn't believe the number on my hits counter. I think this blog received more hits today than it did in all of 2005. It won't be the Site of the Day anymore by the time this post goes out, but if you dropped in from VeloNews, hello. There are probably a lot of things in the cycling world that are more interesting than a soggy snowbiker in Southeast Alaska, but I appreciate you stopping by.

Also thanks to Laura Conaway for the mention in the Bryant Park Project blog's "Best of the Blog 2007." I came in a little late in the year, and only post about once a week, but it's nice to feel appreciated.

And, I wasn't going to mention this, but ... Oh, who am I kidding? Of course I was going to mention this. Nominations have started for the 2008 Bloggies. Last year, this blog actually was nominated for a Weblog award in what I thought was the unlikely category of "Best Sports Blog." But it was cool nonetheless, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't secretly hope it would happen again. Ok, I guess it's not much of a secret. But, if you feel like wasting a few more seconds, you should drop by the site and nominate someone for something. It doesn't have to me. We bloggers, all of us, pour a lot of time into our pastimes and relish in feedback. It's true. Even though most bloggers fling their heart and souls into cyberspace for entirely selfish reasons (the same reasons others watch TV), we still like to tell ourselves we're doing something worthwhile.

So thanks to everyone who reads and stops by this blog. I don't have a good exuse to quit writing as long as you're around.

Happy New Year

This is one of my favorite photos I took in 2007 ... serendipitously captured while I was wandering lost in the woods below Heinzleman Ridge in September. I like the way the beams of light slice through some shadows and slip behind others. I like the intense illumination on that single bush in the center. And I like the context ... the first streaks of sunlight to cut through the fog. Everything below here was shrouded in a thick cloud. Everything above was glaring and clear. But for these few steps in my meandering search for a trail, the two worlds collided, perfectly.

New Year's is a good time to write a reflective year-in-review blog post. Here's mine.

January: The holidays. January became consumed by my training for the Susitna 100. It was a fun month because nearly everything I did had some connection to cycling. I spent my mornings plowing through snow drifts and skirting icy roads. I wandered into work with wind-burnt skin and more times than not, a huge smile spread across my face. Then I would spend the rest of the day stealing moments to research gear and plot different rides and type up reports. It's amazing I managed to keep my job.

February: The race. Everything about February centered around the Susitna 100, which took place on Feb. 18. The first half of the month involved more preparations than training as Geoff and I tried to gather up required gear, tweak my bicycle and his sled, and somehow pack it all in boxes that we could take on a plane with us to Anchorage. But all that stress seemed to melt away when I set my bicycle on the frozen ground and began to pedal into an expanse of snow. I love that place, that Susitna valley. Even after those 100 miles left me with little more than an injury that stole three months of the year, I wouldn't take it back.

March: The knee debacle. That knee injury I sustained during the Susitna 100 followed me into the next month, when it became apparent that I was probably in for a long recovery. I remained defiant during the first few weeks, and continued trying to ride my bicycle through sometimes blinding pain and Juneau's snowiest month on record. Nearly 100 inches dumped in my backyard over the course of the month, a beautiful barrage that I hardly took the time to appreciate. But I remember it now.

April: The waiting. April was a quiet month; I might even say the cruelest month. By then I was fairly entrenched in a routine of physical therapy, doctor visits and mundane gym workouts. Meanwhile, I didn't feel like I was making any progress. Instead, I felt like I was cycling through an loop that offered neither hope nor relief. I remember traveling to Anchorage for work and visiting old friends from Homer. As we sat around a table at the Glacier Brewhouse, I began to wonder if my whole Juneau existence had perhaps just been a bad dream.

May: The desert. It was an ideal reunion - friends who went to college together and dispersed to far-away lands such as Alaska, Ann Arbor and northern Idaho, reunited in the remote Utah desert for a week of biking, backpacking and general debauchery. While setting up camp in a dry wash deep in a canyon on the southern edge of the state, we came across black bear tracks. So we followed them up a side canyon, tracing the path of the unlikely desert dweller until the walls of the canyon cut us off. At the end, I think we all had a better sense of the way life's mysteries interconnect.

June: The comeback. At the first hint of feeling stronger, I went on a bit of a cycling bender. And after a substantial stretch without it, I felt like a recently-reformed crack addict who suddenly discovered heroin. Even as toned down as my fitness was at that point, every mile I pedalled seemed effortless, from my first summer century to riding 12 hours of the 24 Hours of Light in Whitehorse, Yukon. Unless I'm forced to abstain from cycling for three months, I'll probably never again experience that inexhaustible feeling.

July: The summer. A friend came to visit us from Washington, D.C., and had the amazing fortune to experience a four-day stretch of consecutively sunny weather in Juneau. One Friday night, we were sitting on the beach in our T-shirts, roasting salmon and watching a brilliant sunset linger over the horizon. "Is it always like this here?" she asked. "Not even remotely," I replied, "but when it is, it could make you forget a month of grayness."

August: The distance. I set out to test my endurance by touring the "Golden Circle," a series of roads that connects the sister communities of Haines and Skagway in the most roundabout way possible - by stretching across a mountain range and meandering through interior Yukon for 371 miles before returning to Southeast Alaska. I experienced a startling range of highs and lows in that often brutally hot, aggressively hilly 48-hour whirlwind tour. I also gained more confidence that I can handle the distance when I need to.

September: The mountains. I took another subtle hiatus from cycling to prepare to walk across the Grand Canyon in late September. I spent the month stomping up and down all the major trails around Juneau, bulking up my quads and gaining a better sense of the sweeping geography that towers over the place where I live. The Southeast Alaska tundra above 2,500 feet has become one of my favorite places to visit ... windswept and barren and nothing like the light-smothering rainforest below it.

October: The rain. Nearly 16 inches of steady rainfall, drenching all but one of October's 31 days, pretty much defined this month. Fall in Juneau can be downright dreary, and I burned it up by embarking on a month of "speed work." I emerged with prune-like fingers, a runny nose, and a better understanding that as long as I live in this waterlogged place, I will probably never be "fast," but I will always be "tough."

November: The decision. I actually struggled for a while with the question about whether I really wanted to spend the winter training for a race like the Iditarod Trail Invitational. Although I have been eyeing this event since 2006, I had no idea if I was actually ready, and still don't. But in deciding to enter the race, I gave myself a free pass for a near-daily adventure.

December: The beginning. Back to the holidays, the training, the uncertainty. I don't know where I'm going. But at least I know where I've been.

Walkin

There's something underrated, and yet subtly satisfying, about putting on a pair of shoes, stepping out the front door, and going for a walk. There seems to be an cultural perception that it is difficult to have a good time outdoors without strapping oneself to some sort of toy. I definitely buy into this idea, what with my penchant for dragging and hoisting my bicycle over every near-unrideable trail I can find. The temptation to bring a toy on my walk today was nearly overwhelming. "I can bring my bicycle," I thought, "and only ride it downhill." But even downhill snowbiking involves a fair amount of pedaling, and I am trying to cut back on the deep bending of my left knee for the time being. Then, I thought about carrying my snowboard. But if cycling is bad for my knee right now, then snowboarding most definitely is. So, almost grudgingly, I strapped on my snowshoes (which could be considered a toy, but I like to think of them as a "walking aid"). I walked out the door and marched up the unplowed surface of Fairbanks Street, waving at children as their plastic sleds whisked past me.

The reason I can walk through my various knee injuries is because my pain is caused not by impact, but by bending the joint further than 90 degrees - achieving that ever-elusive acute angle that pedaling demands. The impact of running can be too much to bear, but walking I can do forever. I make it an honest workout by pushing as hard as I can uphill. Today I had stripped down to my base layer and snowboarding pants - no hat or gloves - by the time I reached the Douglas Ski Bowl. From there, I commenced my ongoing quest to find a walkable route to the ridge - and by walkable I mean a route where I can keep my snowshoes on my feet rather than removing them to kick steps up the steep slope. I follow snowmobile high-marking tracks because I feel that if they can make it up a mountain, so can I ... but that's really not the case. During my final attempt - while I was still sans hat and gloves - I lost my footing and began to slide, on my belly, backward down the slope. I decided mid-slide that this was probably a good time to "head down," so I flipped over on my butt and continued to careen downward, dragging my naked fingers through the snow and trying futilely to use my snowshoes as brakes. My coat ripped from my waist, and several dozen feet went by before I finally rolled to a stop and crawled back up to retrieve it. No more high-marking for me.

The knee's already making progress. My pain-free range of motion is increasing at a fairly encouraging clip, and I spend my day wearing these arthritis patches that smell like an old lady's medicine cabinet and make my skin feel like it's pressed against a hot oven - but they seem to be working. Optimism will prevail.

My year in miles

Date: Dec. 29
Mileage: 14.4
Hours: 1:30
December mileage: 710.3
Temperature upon departure: 28
Precipitation: 4"

When I break down my 2007 miles by month, I realize I've had a fairly inconsistent year:

January: 893.4
February: 361.1
March: 14.4
April: 25.3
May: 168.9
June: 598.2
July: 874.6
August: 1,009.1
September: 475.6
October: 648.1
November: 793
December: 710.3

What surprised me is the total: 6,572 miles. That's still about 1,000 more than last year, despite a three-month period between mid-February and mid-May in which I essentially did not ride a bicycle. Looking back on my year of riding, I'd say the "most challenging" month was January. The "most fun" month was August. The "most eye-opening" month was February.

Cycling hasn't been the same since February. I'm beginning to understand that it never will be be the same. When my right knee locked up on me in February, I began to realize how precariously close I am, all the time, to not being able to do this thing I love. The threat rolls beside me like a shadow, much more well-defined than vague fears like death and disaster. The shadow reflects my weaknesses and muddles my strength. My strength is my willpower. My weaknesses are my knees.

I set out on a short ride today and cut it shorter. Several inches of new snow made for some hard pushing, but that didn't justify my inclination to pull my left knee off the pedal at rapidly increasing intervals. I realized at mile 7 that I wasn't in great shape, and wasn't going to improve, so I turned around and soft-pedaled home by sliding as far back on my saddle as I could sit and pushing the edge of the pedal with my heel so I was practically recumbent on my bike. When the surface wasn't too slippery, I stood. I felt despondent, for a little while. But after I got my head together, I realized that this is not the end all. I have eight weeks until Feb. 24, and this is only a minor onset of what feels a lot like (and probably is) chondromalacia. Not nearly as advanced as my right-knee symptoms earlier this year. I can be proactive about it and still stay on track. First, I plan to stay off the bike for several days. I'll revisit my old swimming haunts, go hiking, and the gym is always good. Today bought a bunch of different over-the-counter arthritis medications and supplements, and I'm going to try them all. (Glucosamine, yum). If I don't feel substantial improvements after a week, I'll get my doctor involved. I'd rather avoid that route for now, because a new year means a new deductible.

2007 has been a year of dedicated cycling accentuated with cross-training, IT band stretches, low-weight-high-rep lifting, attention to pedal stroke and regular icing. I tried to do this injury free. I tried the prevention route. I tried my best. So this is where I wrap up my biking year. Not with a bang, but a whimper.

Ten hours in photos

Date: Dec. 27
Mileage: 111.5
Hours: 10:00
December mileage: 694.9
Temperature upon departure: 38
Precipitation: 0"

I had a good ride today - first of the winter to break double-digit hours and triple-digit miles. I felt really strong except for two small things. But more on that later. Now, for my weekly photo essay:

8:30 a.m.: My only big wildlife sighting of the day: phosphorescent deer.

9:30 a.m.: North Douglas. I was again disappointed by the lack of sunrise.

10:30 a.m.: Looking toward West Juneau. After two hours of riding, my house is in that shot somewhere.

11:30 a.m.: Obligatory glacier shot.

12:30 p.m.: Auke Rec.

1:30 p.m.: Basking in the 30 minutes of sunlight that reached me today. I could see sunlight on the mountain tops for most of this "mostly cloudy" day, but the sun was always too low on the horizon for any light to touch the ground.

2:30 p.m.: A dirty-looking sunset way out toward the end of the road. This "increasing daylight" thing is happening way to slowly.

3:30 p.m.: The Glacier Highway was entirely covered in packed snow with patches of glare ice. Three times my back tire slipped out from under me and kicked several inches to the side. Luckily, it was my rear wheel, so I was able to regain control of the bike without falling. I was really hoping these studded tires would make it through the season, but it's becoming more obvious that they're not up to the job.

4:30 p.m.: The obligatory self portrait.

5:30 p.m.: It's still pretty nice outside.

6:30 p.m.: Celebrating my first triple-digit ride since August with the last obtainable sips of my Nuun slushy.

A few quick thoughts about the ride: I am definitely having some pain in my left knee. It was never too sharp today and didn't seem to stiffen up much afterward, but it caused enough concern that I opted out of pushing "big gears" pretty early; and for most of the ride, I kept my left foot out of the pedal cage so I could push the back of the platform using my heel. (The ability to move my foot around on the pedal for comfort was always a huge bonus of platforms when I was rehabilitating my right knee, and one of the reasons I will probably never be a total convert to clipless.) It is strange to have my "bad" knee suddenly feel like the strong one. I'm going to have to monitor this left knee pretty closely in the coming weeks to make sure it doesn't find its way down the bad knee's path.

Also, this is a little embarrassing, but I frost-nipped the sides of both pinky toes. It was really, really, really minor. But for as mild as the temperatures were (20s), definitely embarrassing. The mistake I made was wearing a thin neoprene sock - which I use fairly often during wet weather in the summer - as a "liner" layer. This sock is really tight, and even though my toes weren't constricted in the shoe, they were fairly constricted within that neoprene sock, which doesn't stretch much. I noticed around hour eight that my toes felt tingly. But since my feet didn't feel cold at all, nor had I ever noticed any feeling of cold, I figured I could ride out the last two hours. Sure enough, when I got home, I had white patches on the surface of two pretty swollen pinkies. They came back to having feeling again over the course of the evening. None of my other toes were affected at all. But a valuable lesson to learn - the onset of frostbite doesn't always feel "cold." The sensation to watch for and take seriously is the tingling. Circulation is key.

Anyway, beyond those two things, I'm pretty happy with how training is progressing. I feel much less thrashed after this ride than last weeks, despite the extra hour and 40-something extra miles. I just have to watch my knee. And hide those socks!

"The point of snow sports is hot chocolate"

Date: Dec. 25
Mileage: 30.4
Hours: 2:30
December mileage: 583.4
Temperature upon departure: 36
Precipitation: .31"

Geoff was on NPR today!

It has been really interesting to listen to the feedback Geoff and I have received since we decided to enter the Iditarod Trail Invitational. We've heard a fair amount of commentary, not only from friends and family, but also from strangers - radio personalities, marathon runners, people who blog in Ajax, Ontario. The general reaction is “They’re crazy. They’re going to hurt themselves out there.” And yet no one has stepped in and tried to stop us. Instead, we receive an abundance of encouragement and advice. I think nearly everyone who stumbles across our story has some understanding of how it feels to aspire to something so extreme, it all but promises both the depths of suffering and the apex of joy. If they had no comprehension of that feeling, they simply wouldn’t care.

One aspect of this race that is incomprehensible to nearly everyone is how Geoff and I fit in it together. I ride a bicycle and he runs. In the real world, these are very different activities that have very different techniques and ends. A cyclist, even a poor cyclist, is nearly always faster than a person on foot. But on the Iditarod Trail, our playing field is much more level. I have a hard time explaining this to people. Geoff, who is a much better athlete than I am, can hold a steady run/walk average of 4-6 mph almost indefinitely, and can do so even on poor trail conditions. I can swing wildly, from riding 10-15 mph on hardpacked snow to walking and pushing my bike at 2 mph through a number of much more common snow conditions, such as fresh powder, wind-blown drifts and sandy “flash-frozen” snow. In the end, if I hold a 4-6 mph moving average over the course of the race, I’ll be more than happy with it. Truth be told, I will be happy just to finish the race. And as long as I am relatively healthy and my bicycle is still basically in one piece, I’m willing to give myself as much time as it takes. Of course I know it’s a race and of course I want to be fast. But to put it in perspective, beyond just Geoff and myself: The women’s cycling course record for the 350-mile race is 5 days, 7 hours. By contrast, the course record for a man on foot is 4 days, 15 hours. If history has been any indicator, in all likelihood Geoff, on foot, will beat me, on a bicycle, to McGrath.

Still, my physical fitness is one of the few things I can control about this race, and I want to be as prepared as possible in this regard. I can’t believe it’s already nearly Thursday again, and with it, another plan for an endurance-building long ride. Tomorrow I plan to shoot for several continuous hours in the saddle rather than the stop-and-go conditions of trail riding. Pushing a few big gears will help me pinpoint some nagging pains that have been cropping up, and it will be fun to shoot for some bigger miles ... I mean, as big as they go when it is 25 degrees and snowing, and you are hunkered over a full-suspension mountain bike with studded tires. I am just hoping the temperature drops below freezing and the roads are not as sloppy as they've been, or I’ll never be able to ride it out.

Hints of Christmas

Date: Dec. 23 and 24
Mileage: 30.2 and 25.1
Hours: 2:30 and 1:40
December mileage: 553.0
Temperature upon departure: 39 and 34
Rainfall: .11"

This is the third year in a row that I haven't been home for the holidays. Instead, I work right through them ... Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Years Eve, New Years Day, all that time lingering among the ghost crew at the office while the people with priorities, the people with families, disappear into warm-looking homes. Geoff and I don't make a big deal out of Christmas (we don't even exchange gifts), and the rest of my Alaska family is comprised of two cats who only understand that this is a dark and foreboding time of year. Our good friends, who are Jewish, took pity on us and organized a potluck tonight. We will be joining a few other holiday orphans for a Christmas Eve dinner of mac 'n cheese, salad, and if I am lucky, some kind of fudge.

My lifestyle has evolved such that Christmas sneaks up very quietly, hiccups quickly, and flutters away. So it wasn't surprising when nothing felt very "Christmassy" when I headed out into the gray predawn or my morning ride. Even the decorative icicle lights, which my landlords last year left glowing until June, hung dark against the house. The weather has warmed up again, and has otherwise been very windy and fairly dry. It makes for less than exciting biking, definitely not the kind that feels like Christmas biking, and I had to push hard to log a few decent miles before I had to be at work.

As my studded tires clacked on the wet pavement and my quads began to burn, I thought about Dec. 24. Right about now, I thought, my entire immediate family is probably gathering at an overcrowded movie theater for a holiday matinee, probably a feel-good PG film, or maybe that Fred Claus debacle. If I were there with them, I would be able to wrap up the Marmot rain jacket I bought for my dad rather than hoping the U.S. Postal Service actually delivers it in time. "Next time we go hiking in the Grand Canyon," I'd say, "you won't get soaked." Then there would be dinner - probably a half dozen of those baby chickens my mom likes to call Cornish Game Hens, and ribbon jello, and sweet spinach salad. We would watch "A Christmas Story" and eat peanut butter balls until our eyes started rolling toward the back of our heads, and then we would move on to hot-fudge sundaes. There would be a suburban tour of Christmas lights in there somewhere, and new pajamas, and the quiet hustle of parents with three grown children and no grandchildren, perpetuating the ritual of Santa Claus.

As I tilt my head back and imagine Christmas Eve, I can hear the roar of a truck barrelling through the slush behind me. I'm way over in the shoulder but I pull over even further, and I can tell this guy's still right on top of me. I turn to him just the truck passes me. It's all but straddling the white line, and in the face-soaking spray of sludge coming off the wheels I hear the driver yell out his open passenger-side window, "Merry Christmas!"

Merry Christmas to you too, buddy.