Happy Blue Monday

Date: Jan. 21
Mileage: 12.6
January mileage: 521.8
Hours: 2:45
Temperature upon departure: 27
Precipitation: 0"

A couple of years ago, I learned a psychologist had proclaimed the third Monday in January to be "The Most Depressing Day of the Year." (Yes, I also know it's Martin Luther King Jr. Day. But the psychologist is British and probably didn't mean to coincide the two.) I like to acknowledge the passage of "Blue Monday," if only because the day is usually anything but. I love mid-January. It's the time of year I'm pushing toward the peak of my training and riding an endorphin high that can't be crushed by even the heaviest office workload. Days are becoming noticeably longer. Winter has settled into its maximum splendor. Spring is on the horizon.

The weather forecast today called for "mostly sunny." So I was more than a little disappointed when I woke up to a thick bank of clouds hovering above the city. I suited up for the possibility of precipitation and set out with plans for a recovery-type ride on the road. But at the last minute, without even thinking much about exactly why I had changed my mind, I grabbed my Pugsley and hit the Dan Moller Trail instead.

I complained enough the other day about all the rain we received, but it left behind the most ideal trail conditions imaginable. The Moller gains ~500 feet of elevation per mile and has always been an uphill hike-a-bike, even in the best of conditions. But today, with packed snow condensed and frozen to gravel-road consistency, the trail had set up beyond the best of conditions. I was able to ride effortlessly - well, I was able to ride huffing and sweating and wrestling off extra layers and averaging about 4.5 mph. But I rode!

I didn't have to gain much elevation before I emerged from the low-lying clouds and realized that it was, in fact, a sunny, beautiful day. The trail took a steep turn up the canyon, and I relished in listening to the rolling crackle of rubber rather than the crunch-crunch of trudging feet. Even when the trail hit a grade that would have been only marginally climbable even on dirt, I continued to spin and spin furiously until the back wheel refused to inch forward. By the time I was finally, actually pushing, I was only one mile from the top of the ski bowl.

I pushed my bike until even pushing became impossible, and the only place left to go was the near-vertical face of the ridgeline. I layed the bike down and continued to climb up the mountain, kicking steps into the snowpack and hoping my gloved fingers worked as an adequate substitute for an ice axe. I clawed over the crest of the ridge and with one final push - a powdery pull-up - I met the first direct sunlight of the day.

Suddenly I was facing the backside of Douglas Island, looking out across Stephens Passage and Admiralty Island. Elevation was about 2,500 feet.

Sea-level was still shrouded in clouds. I stood at the cusp of treeline and open slopes of untouched powder. I longed to carve some curvy lines and decided that someday I would figure out how to carry a snowboard on my bike. Winter multisport-style.

Instead, I slid on my butt back to the bike and set into the screaming descent. Two hours up and a half hour back. I bounded over an unbroken stream of snowmobile moguls with my butt hovering inches over the back rack and tears streaming down my face in the cold wind. With no powder to kick us sideways, Pugsley and I picked up the kind of raw speed that narrows focus to each single moment, locked in silence without anticipation or fear. We rode the wave of blue shadows, snaking through trees and plummeting into the clouds - where it was still Monday, but different somehow.

I don't really have to quit yet, do I?

Date: Jan. 20
Mileage: 63.8
January mileage: 509.2
Hours: 5:15
Temperature upon departure: 23
Precipitation: 0"

I veered onto Mendenhall Lake and looked at my watch again. 12:47 p.m. In a perfect world, I would be sitting at my office desk in 13 minutes. In my own skewed world, I didn't really need to be at work before 2, and that was more than an hour away. In the real world, I still had more than 15 miles to ride even if I turned around right there and went straight home, a shower to take, some lunch to eat ...

The studded tires clacked loudly on the ice; in the still air the sound echoed like a symphony of snare drums. I skidded to a scraping stop and looked back with pride at the deep gouges I had scratched into the surface - like skid marks off a muscle car. The traction definitely seemed satisfactory, and I was much more interested in circumnavigating the lake than racing the clock home. But still my watch ticked and still I stood there, undecided even as I acknowledged my first fatal scheduling decision had already been made hours ago, when I refused to stop pedaling north.

But what else can I do with an indefatigable bike day, day 4 of a big push no less, when it came time to go to work? I blame this cruel economy that forces me to sit at a desk to pay for my bikes, and ride my bikes to tolerate sitting at a desk. And I blame this cruel world where a flickering computer screen trumps even the most perfect techie winter singletrack: snow pumped full of rain and frozen to a petrified sheen. It looks so slippery that even the walkers stay away, but a full-suspension mountain bike with studded tires can hop and swerve and motor up hills with quiet determination. The real secret to perfection are thin flakes of hoarfrost sprinkled over the surface, offering unyeilding gritty traction that conjures the do-no-wrong sensation of slickrock in Moab ... if Moab slickrock was white, and cold, and in Alaska.

I broke away from the singletrack after only one run, because secretly my goal today was mileage. Hard to explain true motivations. But the open road was calling me out, taunting me with a blaze of sunlight and the promise of flight - as much as flight can be achieved on a full-suspension mountain bike with studded tires, in the cold, in Alaska.

And even as the ice called me back, my sense of duty called louder. I cut a wide U-turn on the ice and pedaled toward the road, legs still pumping fire and demanding something more ... a century, or singletrack loops, or the crunchy smooth surface of the lake. Anything but cramped beneath a desk, slowly going stiff as they brace for the down side of the week.

Last day of the five-hour push and 63 miles on a work day. I was going to cut back tomorrow, but do I have to?

Brand new camera

Date: Jan. 18 and 19
Mileage: 36.6 and 54.5
January mileage: 445.4
Hours: 3:00 (plus 3:00 at the gym) yesterday and 4:30 today
Temperature upon departure: 39 and 28
Precipitation: 1.61 inches!!! (All rain, all yesterday.)

Last week, I received an e-mail from Stephanie at Olympus. She told me she had looked at my blog, enjoyed the cycling/photography concept, and just happened to have in mind the perfect camera for me: The Olympus Stylus 770 SW. She told me she would send me one, no strings attached ... I'm sure knowing that any blogger is going to brag publicly about free gear. But what she didn't know is that I already owned an older version of this exact camera, and had been abusing it quite heavily since April. Even after I told her so, she didn't withdraw her offer. "You'll like to new version," she told me. "This one is freezeproof."

Mendenhall Lake

The sparkling new silver camera came in the mail on Thursday. Today I took it on its first ride. Not a bad day for a first shoot, and not a bad little camera. I don't have an memory card yet, and the internal memory limited me to 11 pictures. I decided this was a good thing, because I was aiming for a long ride, and I wanted to keep moving. Instead, I spent way too much time during my ride self-editing my photos. Definitely an amazing, beautiful day.

Auke Bay, with enough steam to show that is really is somewhat cold out.

Juneau had its first sunlight in nine days, coming off a string of some of the crappiest weather January can conjure. I've had people tell me they'd prefer cold winter rain to subzero temperatures. I can't even fathom that. Subzero, rare as it is here, brings all that crisp dry air and clear skies. Dress for it right, and this kind of weather is both comfortable and exciting. Rain and temperatures in the 30s, on the other hand, can only mean one thing to me as a cyclist: That I'm going to be really wet, and really miserable, and I'm eventually going to be really cold no matter what I do.

Tee Harbor

Friday was one of those "put your head down and ride" kind of days. In continuously heavy rain, especially with the kind of flooding we get against the snowpack, it only takes about a half hour for my outer "waterproof" clothing barrier to be broken. After one hour, I'm soaked through and through. And that's the way I have to ride, in temperatures in the high 30s, a 15-20 mph wind and windchills hovering between 20 and 25, for as many hours as I can endure it. I can usually hold out about three hours without completely changing my clothing. But by the end of the ride, especially if I make a single stop or, as I did yesterday, slow for a while to talk to Geoff as he runs, I usually have to spend the last half hour of the ride racked with chills, hating every minute of my miserable existence. Maybe weeks of unbroken subzero temperatures would teach me differently, but until then, there is no weather I hate more than cold rain.

SPRING! (Not really, but it doesn't take much to coax a little green around here.)

But today! Today was exactly the shot I needed. Blazing sun and temps just cold enough to refreeze all the slop. I'm on day three of my current long training push ... exercising about five hours each in four consecutive days (a little short today, a little long yesterday.) Either way, it eats up a lot of time. Geoff is training at a similar level right now, and between us, we're putting in more than a full-time job's worth of hours in the selfish pursuit of fitness. We've had to make more and more concessions in the things we normally do just to clear up the time. One of the things we've given up is grocery shopping. I thought it was pretty funny when I was eating frozen ravioli two nights in a row and spooning peanut butter out of a jar for lunch. But I think we've both started to run a bit of a calorie deficit (go figure ... keeping food out of the house is a good way to go on a diet.) I stood on the scale at the gym yesterday and learned I weigh five pounds less than I did at this time last year. No necessarily a bad thing, but I was just beginning to think that a little extra pudge might even pay off during the Ultrasport. Because there's no way I'll avoid running a calorie deficit in that event, and it's not like I'll even notice a little extra junk in the trunk once I slog out there with 60 pounds of bike and gear. This is the excuse I've drummed up to hit the ice cream ... if only we had some.

Auke Lake with Mount McGinnis in the background.

But where was I? Oh yes, the Stylus 770 SW. I had great fun with it on this sunny, beautiful day. Miles and miles of rubbing up against Power Bars in my pocket has scratched my old Olympus's viewing screen to the point of abstraction. This camera's screen was crystal clear. I am excited to test out its "freezeproof" claims. I already know it's basically bombproof. In August, I inadvertently used my old camera to break a rather rocky fall off my mountain bike, landing directly on the hip pocket that held the camera. I put a gouge in the casing nearly a millimeter deep, but the camera didn't even flicker. The Stylus 770 SW is waterproof, too. It's definitely not a top-of-the-line, professional camera. But I think pro cameras really aren't practical for cyclists. Cyclists need something small, something simple, and something that can endure a 15-foot huck off a gnarly cliff and still take pictures at the bottom. If National Geographic ever comes knocking, I'll go buy something with a zoom lens.

This little point-and-shoot Stylus really is the perfect camera for me. I'm not just being a shill by saying that. I bought the same camera long before Olympus volunteered to sponsor my blog efforts. Does a comped camera make me a sponsored photographer? I guess this is my blog, so I say it does. Be sure to click on the Olympus logo in the sidebar. Yeah Olympus!

I broke both my snowshoes

How, you might ask, does one go about breaking two individual snowshoes on the same day? By accidentally running them over with a car? No. By hucking off cliffs? Sounds fun, but no. By practicing my kickboxing with a Sitka spruce? No, it's really much more mundane than that. First, you take a pair of cheap collapsible snowshoes. Then you use them to break your own trail up a typically steep slope in Juneau, Alaska, through wet, deep, heavy, heavy snow (I mean, really, is there some kind of lead pollution in the precipitation that nobody knows about?) Fail to notice that the back end has come loose after two miles. Continue stomping around, breaking crucial plastic parts and filling up the tubes with lead-based snow. Act surprised when the back end finally snaps off. Try in vain to wedge it back on to the front. Repeat with other shoe.

I was hoping to put in a long day on my bike sometime this weekend, but the weather turned absolutely atrocious: Temperatures in the high 30s and heavy, heavy (lead-based) rain. This heavy rain has been going on for more than 24 hours, and has turned all of our snow-packed roads to precarious wet ice sheets and our trails to mush. The rain continued today. I could ride in this for sure, but I figure any more than four hours in this kind of weather only stands to teach me three things:

1.) How many changes of clothes I can pack in one drybag.
2.) How long I can endure moving mild hypothermia.
3.) How long I am willing to put up with absolute misery just to ride a bicycle.

None of these are very fun lessons to sign up for, so I rationalized putting off the long ride at least a day, if not until next week. (I could, after all, just put in three longish days on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.) Snowshoeing, on the other hand, sounded much more appealing today. Snowshoeing also stood to offer some valuable lessons:

1.) How my new GPS maps work.
2.) How much of a chance I stand in navigating myself now that I have GPS maps.
3.) How well my high-end endurance is holding up, because I have yet to find a more strenuous activity (that doesn't involve the highly unappealing act of running) than uphill snowshoeing.

So I set out up the Auke Nu trail knowing I could cut out at Spaulding Meadow and navigate myself somewhere else. I was hoping to connect with the Montana Creek trail or something similar. It's not a far distance on screen, but it was a pretty ambitious idea given the conditions. The trail was only broken to the John Muir cabin turnoff, a grand distance of about 0.8 miles. After that, I was sloshing through a foot or more of new, unbroken snow that had been condensed and softened by the rain. About two miles in, I found myself pausing every 50 steps or so to catch my breath. I felt like I was hiking at high elevation.

My right snowshoe finally broke while I was wandering above Spaulding Meadow at an elevation of about 1,500 feet. It took me 15 yards to notice, mainly because I was often sinking up to my knees in the snow, even with snowshoes on. I tried to continue, but it quickly became apparent that the half-snowshoe setup was really throwing off my balance. The other one broke off shortly after I turned around. I kept my half-showshoes on all the way down the mountain, but my heels sunk in so deep that it continued to feel like I was walking uphill.

The hike rounded out to about three and a half hours. It was shorter than planned, so I spent another two hours at the gym. I finished reading "Freakonomics." I did come home with a few other valuable lessons, too.

1.) GPS is pretty good at overall tracking, but despite its claims, it doesn't seem to make satellite connections when there is heavy tree cover ... at least, it doesn't at my slow rate of speed. My odometer listed my total moving time as 1 hour 25 minutes and my stopped time as more than 2 hours. I took my fair share of breathers, but I can guarantee I wasn't stopped for 2 hours. It also listed my final mileage as 3.5. I would estimate, based on the maps alone, definitely more than 7. The total elevation gain, 1,900 feet, seemed much more accurate.
2.) My new boots are really comfortable for hiking, but because they're about three sizes too large, I have to wear at least three pairs of socks to avoid weird rubbing. This will probably be ideal when it's minus 20 out, but it feels uncomfortably similar to walking on hot sand when it's 35.
3.) Never pin expedition hopes on a pair of no-name snowshoes purchased for $20 on eBay.

Oh well. At least I got 2 years out of them.

Slow snow

Date: Jan. 15
Mileage: 25.1
January mileage: 355.3
Hours: 3:00
Temperature upon departure: 32
Precipitation: .48"/3.5" snow

Holy cow, I had a tough ride today. It wouldn't appear that way on paper. I rode to the end of the North Douglas Highway and back.

That’s right. A 25-mile road ride with a mere 1,000 feet of elevation gain. The ride I know by heart. The ride I’ve done in as little as 1:20 on several occasions, mostly windless days in July. The ride I could barely recognize today through windblasted daggers of icicle snow as I bumped and bounced over a heavily plowed-in shoulder. The ride that kicked me endlessly sideways with wind gusts that stopped me in my tracks and constant effort that left me wheezing up the smallest of hills. And when I sat down to lunch after three hours of tough riding, I really believed I earned it.

I brought my GPS to play with the new electronic map I just received in the mail. I had a ton of fun watching the contour lines roll beside my virtual dot. I rattled off my stats as Geoff was leaving for work. “Wow, my top speed was 20.6 mph!” I told him. And then, “Wow, my average speed was 8.3 mph.”

Geoff just frowned. “That’s like running speed,” he said.

And just like that, three hours of tough riding were quantified. I felt deflated, and little bit cheated.

There’s a few truths in snowbiking that I think most would find frustrating: The truth that you will never be fairly reimbursed for your efforts, and you will never ride the same "trail" twice. I find that aspect of snowbiking intriguing, but I think that much uncertainty turns some people off. How could I be happy with 8.3 mph? On pavement? (Well, if a deep and slippery slurry strewn with hidden blocks of ice counts as pavement) Especially when I know I got so much more worked over and pedaled so much harder than I ever did during any and every time I averaged 19 mph along the same route? In a society that values speed as an absolute measure of quality, I, the snow biker, have truly failed.

And yet here I am, happy. Go figure.

On a gear-related note: When I posted about my food ideas, I received some good suggestions. So I thought I’d run this plan by the InterWeb and hope for similarly good advice. Basically, it’s a lot of clothing in a big handlebar bag. I ran through my list of potential Ultrasport clothing and packed all but my most basic layer in a random stuff sack. Then I lashed it to the handlebars and rode with it today. I was surprised to discover that all that extra bulk up front didn’t seem to affect the bike’s handling at all. There was plenty of clearance everywhere (brake area is a little tight once the pogies are on, but still perfectly workable.) Plus, that particular stuff sack was packed pretty loosely. I envision even more capacity in a compression sack, and weight doesn’t seem to be an issue (I'm not sure how much this bag weighs. Maybe six pounds?). I’m interested to hear others’ thoughts, whether or not it’s a bad idea to put that much stuff on the handlebars. Most people use front racks. I don’t think I need one, and I’d rather not buy one, but I don’t want a simple handlebar bag to become a fatal decision, either.

If you’re curious, here’s a list of the stuff I had in the handlebar bag: Down coat, heavyweight fleece pullover, base-layer polypro tights, base-layer polypro shirt, lightweight polyester longjohns, heavyweight polyester pants, liner socks, 2 pair Smartwool socks, heavy wool socks, extra liner gloves, lightweight polyester balaclava, heavyweight fleece balaclava, fleece hat, neoprene face mask, earband, underwear, big mittens.

Another interesting tidbit: I don’t use chamois. I basically haven’t for more than two years. I still own a couple pairs of ancient bike shorts that are technically padded, but the weather only allows me to wear those maybe 10 or 15 times a year. The rest of the time, I just wear whatever I want. I like the versatility. And I’ve never had any issues with the nether region. I have been thinking about a chamois for the Ultrasport, if only because the event is so, so long. But I’m almost more inclined to just stick with the stuff I know works for me. A chamois on a well-calloused butt may only cause misery.

Pushing

Date: Jan. 14
Mileage: 17.8
January mileage: 330.2
Hours: 3:15
Temperature upon departure: 27
Precipitation: .02"/.75" snow

The more movement grinds to a halt, the more time seems to speed by. I slumped over my handlebars and drew a deep breath, again. I wrestled with my right foot until I freed it from the shin-deep snow, again. I planted my foot a few inches down the slope, where it promptly disappeared into the drift, again. I inhaled another big breath and did the same with my left foot. My bike sat upright in the snow with no need for my support. I yanked on the handlebars, but it refused to budge. My calves burned and glutes throbbed as beads of sweat formed on my face in defiance of nonmovement. Even the bike's odometer mocked me, still registering 0.0 mph after more than 50 yards. "Well," I thought. "This is definitely worse than the trail." I waded over to the single soft snowmobile track I had used to trudge up, and now down, the mountain over my seven-mile slog. I looked at my camera display. Two hours had passed. All time and no distance. I was exhausted. I wondered how long it would take to push a bike 350 miles. And I wondered how long I would be able to endure the pushing. In the space where 50 yards is an epic, 350 miles is an eternity.

But it's good exercise, just the same.

A couple more photos from today:

Finally freed from the thick coat of fresh snow on the Dan Moller trail, I worked on my fat bike steering skillz in the Sandy Beach slaloms.

It's fun to come home to my cat, Cady. Cady's lifestyle offers a good balance to mine. She's lazy, pudgy, and fights with every cat she meets. But she's always there to remind me that the best things in life are free. (Or, in the case of a camp chair, nearly free.)

Meal planning

Date: Jan. 13
Mileage: 25.8
January mileage: 312.4
Hours: 2:00
Temperature upon departure: 30
Precipitation: .22"/4" snow

I had a great short ride today. I felt the strongest I have since my left knee started acting up in late December. My actual moving time seemed exceptionally short (the ride took two hours, but I stopped for a while in two different spots.) I hope to put in my longest single ride yet this weekend if the weather cooperates. I won't ride for 12 hours in 35-degree rain. There's just no reason to suffer that much in the name of "training."

I have been spending a fair amount of my off time trying to decide exactly what I'll have in my "kit" during the Ultrasport. In some aspects, I still have quite a bit of testing to complete before I really get my gear dialed in. I have a list and an pretty concrete idea of the clothing I want to bring, but I'm still not completely sure if it's enough. Or too much? My testing isn't likely to yield enough confidence in the end result to shave much off my current list. But I feel like the ideas I have now are a good balance of "too much" for most conditions and "just right" for extreme conditions. As long as it all fits on my bike, I'll be happy.

Something I've been a little less sure of is meal planning. How does one prepare all the food they're going to carry in a endurance event that will consume an unknown number of days? For my food planning, I'm taking a page from the mountaineering book: Hope for five days. Pack for seven. Ration if it takes nine. That I will be on a well-traveled trail that crosses several winter lodges and a couple of towns will minimize the danger of starvation, so I'd like to keep food on the light side. But that still doesn't answer the question of how much to take.

What to take, though, for me is an easier question. As much as I'd love to just carry a bunch of light-weight fatty products like butter, there's no way I can ingest, let alone digest that kind of food. My experience has taught me in heavily active situations, I operate great for extended periods of time on simple carbohydrates, can tolerate protein and unsaturated fat in well-distributed doses, and can't deal in the slightest with saturated fats and really greasy stuff. This reality seems to hold true even after more than a day. My only multiday experience is cycling the Golden Circle in August. I went for three days eating a diet that was almost entirely nut/fruit trail mix, fruit snacks and Clif Bars. I never really became tired of that stuff. In fact, the opposite happened. Knowing I had the ability to process my food and keep going was a huge comfort, and I relished in eating it. The experience that finally convinced me that a repetitive, simple carbohydrate diet is best for me happened as I rolled through Whitehorse during a really hot part of the afternoon after logging more than 250 miles in a little more than 24 hours. I pedaled by a McDonalds and several other fast food restaurants. The smells wafting from the buildings were beyond nauseating in my condition. But I continued to crave my crappy walnuts and cranberries. I also had a similarly sickening experience with French fries after the 24 Hours of Kincaid.

So I have some good ideas for foods I know I can and will eat, that pack fairly small and are either edible frozen, or thaw fairly easily. I'm still at a loss of how much to bring. I figure I can balance the fats and carbohydrates to log about 2,200 calories to a pound of food. I don't think it's likely I'll be able to eat much more than 4,500 calories in a day, but I'll probably pack and ship as much as 6,000 for each day, and maybe even a little extra emergency food. There will be some trail food, but my Whitehorse McDonalds experience has me a little concerned about how appetizing it will seem. If I don't need to head back out on the trail right away, I can always force the "free" calories down. But getting sick is always a concern.

Here's a list of the foods I have been thinking about, and their caloric value per ounce. You can gag or marvel in my refined palette. Either way, this is the stuff I'm comfortable with, and I'm not likely to change it too much.

Clif/Power Bars: 250 calories, 2.4 oz
Pop Tarts: 400 calories, 3.6 oz
Walnuts: 183 calories per ounce
Almonds: 169 calories per ounce
Pecans: 196 calories per ounce
Soy nuts: 128 calories per ounce
Sunflower seeds: 165 calories per ounce
Craisens: 92 calories per ounce
Dried cherries: 100 calories per ounce
Dried pineapple: 92 calories per ounce
Chocolate: 152 calories per ounce
Turkey jerky: 100 calories per ounce
13” tortilla: 330 calories
Fruit snacks: 123 calories per ounce
Peanut butter: 167 calories per ounce
Fruit leather: 90 calories per ounce
Tuna package: 40 calories per ounce
Wheat Thins: 137 calories per ounce