Balance

Date: May 10 and 11
Mileage: 25.1 and 53.3
May mileage: 409
Temperature: 48 and 45

I've come to the conclusion that using a mountain bike for every ride is good for strength training. Whenever I'm riding on pavement, I always have this perception of how fast I should be going, not really considering the fact I need to push the mountain bike harder to get there. If I drop below 15 mph, I amp up the output. Plus, the mountain bike has coaxed me to seek out gravel and spur trails, no matter how short or rough, wherever I can find them. After two weeks of this, I've noticed a difference. I feel acute muscle soreness at the end of the day. And today, when I finally got around to shaving my legs (for being a girl and a cyclist, I don't do this nearly as often as I should) ... anyway, I noticed definite new muscle definition, especially in the lower quad region. Good things.

Tougher for me has been balancing my idea of a good morning ride with my bicycle commute. On Sundays I always have a little more time to spare, so I like to put in a longer midweek ride. Today I did a hard hill climb with a burn back into the wind, about three hours of riding that used up just about everything I had. I like it when I really push my limits like that, but the immediate hour following is always tough. I stumble down the stairs with legs that feel like a lightly charred piece of toast, about to crumble underneath me. I try to make lunch with hands that are still numb and shaking. I step into the shower and let all the effort soak in, blissfully tired and warm, and then I remember ... "Oh crap, I still have to ride my bike to work today."

I really, really didn't want to walk back upstairs and get back on my bike. But it's Bike to Work Week, and I couldn't let myself wuss out of a six-mile commute during Bike to Work Week. So I soft-pedalled toward the office until I crossed the bridge. That's when I was passed by a road cyclist.

What is it about being passed by another cyclist that so involuntarily ignites the primitive chase reflex within us all? I was like a border collie watching a sheep break away from the herd. I wanted - nay, I needed - to reel him in. Never mind that I was wearing jeans, riding a platform-pedal mountain bike and hoisting an overstuffed backpack that contained, among many other things, a frozen bag of ravioli and a jar of spaghetti sauce. All the better to crush the Lycra dude.

Anyway, the race was on, with my toasted quads and only partially recovered energy level, mashing and sweating for no reason whatsoever. When I finally did catch the guy, I just hung near his wheel and drafted off him until we reached my intersection. I don't even think he noticed.

And once I got to work, I had to go through the whole shaky hands and sweaty clothes routine, again. Luckily, I have a pretty good stash of extra clothing built up there now. But still, I'm tired, and not yet deep enough into my new routine to know how to keep the commute from becoming a few miles too many.

12 hours in photos

Date: May 9
Mileage: 10.1
May mileage: 330.6
Temperature: 52

Jerome recently asked me to contribute to his "12 Hours in Photos" blog, in which people document a 12-hour stretch of a day, using one photo to represent each hour. I've copied this format before to blog about bike rides, but this time around I decided to do the whole 12 hours, breakfast, lunch and all. Today was a good day for a 12-hour photo blog. Packed full and didn't end at 12 hours, but 12 hours is what I shot. So here is my contribution, "12 Hours of Friday, May 9."

7 a.m.: Breakfast on the porch. Still waiting for softball season to start to provide better morning entertainment.

8 a.m.: Heading out on my friend Brian's boat with a Spring King Salmon Derby ticket in my pocket.

9 a.m.: Lots of people on the rocks, hoping to hit the jackpot.

10 a.m.: What a great way to fish - a buoyant bicycle (tandem no less!)

11 a.m.: Brian gets a few hard hits but no bites. It's a slow day for salmon fishing.

12 p.m.: Driving back, denied. I have to let go of my dream of fresh grilled King for lunch, not to mention the $50,000 big'un. "Well, it was a beautiful day to be on the water," Brian said. Too true.

1 p.m.: Alternative lunch - big tuna salad and all the strawberries I can eat.

2 p.m.: Going for a walk with my friend Geoff K. and his baby girl Paige.

3 p.m. Paige starts to fuss and it's time for Dad to turn around. Time for me to strap on the snowshoes and head high.

4 p.m.: Cresting the Douglas Island ridge. As the snowpack rots it gets tougher to climb up here every time, but it's always worth it.

5 p.m.: Walking/slipping/sinking down the Dan Moller trail.

6 p.m. Riding home.

Seven hours of escaping the blahs

Date: May 8
Mileage: 84.2
May mileage: 320.5
Temperature: 48

Today was one of those days. You know the days. A stupid cat paws your face at some unspeakable hour of the morning. You roll around groggily in the gray morning light, unsure of who you are, where you are, and what day this is. And even as painful consciousness slowly wrestles you through your haze tunnel, you still can't remember what's on the schedule for today. What was it again? What were you going to do?

Oh yeah. Seven-hour bike ride.

Blah.

Cyclists often use the phrase "Any day I ride my bike is a good day." I appreciate the sentiment, and respect anyone for whom it's true, but I've never thought that phrase applied to me. I spend most every day on a bike. They can't all be good days. They just can't. Some days you just wake up to good vibes, and even though you don't have anything planned, you go ride two hours on the beach, and afterward you feel like you could leap off buildings and use the sheer force of your energy to hold back gravity. And some days you wake up to blahs, and you have a seven-hour ride planned, and you think, "I should just go do it. I planned it." But, but, but ... blah.

Then there are usually a bunch of wasted hours in the morning until your conscience finally absolves you of the necessity of biking only to remind you of all the other things you could be doing today - you know, like grocery shopping and laundry. That's about the time you just get on the bike just to get the thing over with, and if enough time passes, at least you won't have to do your chores.

The sky is the same color as the mountains which is the same color as the pavement which is the same color as your mood. You're thinking, "I can't face seven hours of out the road and back and then some. What can I do to break this up? What can I do?"

Oh yeah. Dredge Lake.

Trails are dry. Hard-packed. Fast. Ice-patched. Jolty. Narrow. So I weave. Shoulder a tree. Jump. Roll. Coast. Climb. An hour passes in the maze. Now two hours are up. Where is there to go from here?

Oh yeah. West Glacier Trail and Montana Creek.

More snow up here. No matter, good smooth descent. Climb back up. Down, back through Dredge Lake. Another hour passes - one on pavement, two on trail. Not bad. The day feels lighter. Purposeful, even. Where to now? How 'bout out the road, not to ride out the road, but to see how much progress the melt is making on the spur trails?

Herbert Glacier is all snow from mile one. Eagle River is snow and old-growth devil's club stalks. Ouch. I ride along Eagle Beach for a while, scanning the shoreline for some of those tasty clams that people often find here, but it's not really low tide, and anyway, you have to dig for those.

So it's back south, into the wind, and I'm surprised to find it doesn't even faze me. Underneath all of my grump and grumble, I actually have good energy today. I can feel the burn in my quads from pushing around sand and dirt, and even the pavement seems to be rolling faster than normal, and I didn't notice earlier, but my random shuffle iTunes mix is really good today. Really good. I'm singing along, Modest Mouse, "A nice heart and a white suit and a baby blue sedan. And I am doing the best that I can ..."

Fast back to Dredge Lake and the Mendenhall River, hit the trails hard and strong, ride the jackhammer root sections that I always walked last year, ride the twisty wooden plank for the first time ever. Wish Geoff were here to see that. Feeling tired, feeling good and tired, leave the trail 15 minutes before hour six, one hour fifteen to get home. Push harder and harder, thinking about ravioli, thinking a lot about ravioli, reaching up to scan the shuffle and find that Modest Mouse song again, and sing, "And it's hard to be a human being. And it's harder as anything else ..."

Back with fifteen minutes to spare. In reality, a 6:45 day. I could've sandbagged it home, but I didn't.

One of those days. A good day to be on a bike.

Filling

Date: May 7
Mileage: 26.1
May mileage: 236.3
Temperature: 47

I’m hoping to crank out seven-hour bike ride tomorrow, so today was supposed to be a “rest” day. Rest day doesn’t mean I spend a partly sunny, mostly dry morning sitting around the house, which I don’t find all that enjoyable. Rest day also doesn’t mean catching up on my chores, which I find even less enjoyable. Rest days are for something frivolous and fun, like riding on the beach.

But if you’ve ever pedaled any distance through boulders and sand, you know it’s not all that restful. It’s quad-burning work, probably moreso than any hill climbs I do, and so intensely focused that an hour can pass in what seems like an instant. Sweat through 13 miles of that, then tack on the commute to work and a trip to the bank, and I have quite the full day behind me. It doesn’t feel that way.

Sometimes I try to envision what my routine was like before I became such a frantic cyclist, but it’s hard. I just can’t remember how I used to fill my days back then. There were probably a few less dishes in the sink, a few more minutes of quality time with my friends and my cat. But mostly, I just draw blanks. Today, the beach ride chewed up more than two hours and the commuting consumed a little more than one. That’s three and a half hours of cycling on a “rest” day. There were times in my recent past when three and a half hours of even relaxed cycling would have knocked me out. Now it’s just my life, my routine, like eating and sleeping. Without it, I would be hungry and tired. With it, I’m content. I’m full.

Today I talked for a while with Geoff about cycling as he zeroes in on the sport, once and for all, ahead of the Great Divide Race. I think he holds this fleeting idea that I am going to show up unannounced at the Canadian border on June 20, straddling my Karate Monkey and ready to go. That’s not going to happen. I play with the logistics in my daydreams, but I am committed to things back home; anyway, my current fitness is hardly ready for even my comparatively light summer ahead.

But most people closest to me can’t understand what I’m doing right now. They know Geoff is away pursuing some great endurance racing odyssey. They know I spent two years almost single-mindedly pursuing the Ultrasport, giving nearly every day to my training, giving nearly all of my disposable cash to bikes and gear. And then I did it, and then it was finished, and then I kept training ... for?

There are friends who think it’s time for me to go big. Cross-country tour was big. Susitna was big. Ultrasport was big. Now, they say, go BIG. Climb that ladder.

Then there are friends who think Ultrasport should be the culmination of all this madness. Time to settle in, devote my life to more realistic - or at least more productive - pursuits. I’ll be 30 next year. I’ve had my fun. Time to grow up.

And here I am, somewhere in the middle. I’ve spent much of my life near the extremes. Level ground is not the place for me, and my good friends know it. So they’re watching, and wondering what I’m up to. They don’t believe me when I tell them that I don’t even know what I’m up to. I’m just living my life, the life I’ve built for myself, the life I’m comfortable with. As for the future, I’m preparing.

It reminds me of a book I read earlier this year, by a man who attempted to illegally climb Mount Everest with his friends in 1962, basically on a lark. Woodrow Wilson Sayre made it most the way, nearly died (a couple times) trying, and came home to similar questions from his friends. He wrote: “One can't take a breath large enough to last a lifetime; one can't eat a meal big enough so that one never needs to eat again. Similarly, there are such values as warm friendship tested and strengthened through shared danger, the excitement of obstacles overcome by one’s own efforts, or the beauty of the high, quiet places of the world. But these values can’t be stored like canned goods. They may need to be experienced, lived — many times.”

And so I dream.

No country for new trails

Date: May 6
Mileage: 42.0
May mileage: 210.2
Temperature: 47

One of the perks of using my mountain bike for the regular tempo ride out North Douglas is hitting the Rainforest Trail near the end of the road. It's not your typical mountain bike trail. The loop in its entirety is about 1.5 miles, and not exactly technical, per say. But it's fun to try to hit a flow down the narrow, smooth gravel. It descends and then quickly climbs a steep hill with some crazy tight hairpin turns, and the raised nature of the gravel doesn't allow for mistakes - if you drop off the trail, you launch off the bike. It's a good early season ride for me because it allows me to become more comfortable with my bike handling without a lot of obstacles. Plus, the destination is kinda pretty ...

So I put in three good laps on the Rainforest Trail, but the entire ride out there plus my eventual commute to work meant I barely had time for even that, less than five miles of trail riding, in 3+ hours of cycling. In this town, there's almost always a heavy pavement price to pay for a little trail time - emphasis on little.

Juneau has a lot of amazing trails near town, but none of them were built with cyclists in mind. Any mountain trails go straight up the mountain - emphasis on straight, with 60 percent+ grades that utilize tree roots as handholds. As for our coastal trails, they're either so primitive or in such advanced disrepair that they make for tough and technical trail runs ... or they're so overbuilt that a skilled rider on a road bike could coast large stretches of them. Since I moved to Juneau, our local trail advocacy group, Trail Mix, has completed a number of projects geared toward hikers - the kind of hikers who show up fresh from the cruise ships wearing Crocs and twirling umbrellas. Last fall, Trail Mix spent about $900,000 to blast a few wider sections and repair bridges on the Perserverence Trail. Their latest endeavour is a $1.2 million project to build a 1.1-mile trail along Auke Lake.

I'm not about to criticize Trail Mix ... they do a lot of good work. But when these projects budget hundreds of thousands of dollars to build short highways of trails, I can't help but wonder: What could mountain bikers do with $1.2 million? We could improve the 20-mile-long Treadwell Ditch Trail so it's actually rideable with something other than a Pugsley for the first four miles and a good pair of rubber boots for the rest. We could improve and expand the Dupont Trail way up the Taku Inlet. Heck, for $1.2 million, we could build a Lemon Creek trail to the icefield! Snow biking year round! But we don't have the money. We probably don't even have the interest. I would volunteer a lot of time to improving the Ditch, but I'm not about to initiate such a project. So I guess I'm part of the problem.

I'm not sure if any Juneau mountain bikers will read this. Actually, I'm not really sure there are any other mountain bikers in Juneau (Just kidding! I know you're out there. I see your tracks.) But, if you are out there, what do you think? Do we have the numbers? Can we build our very own trail?

Yeah dirt

Date: May 5
Mileage: 35.5
May mileage: 168.2
Temperature: 45

I wasn’t expecting the trail to be clear. But there it was, no slush in sight, cutting up a steep embankment and into the woods. I slowed mid-interval and veered off the road.

I was immediately thrown into a minefield of rocks and wet roots. The front wheel jolted like a jackhammer and nearly bounced me off my bike. I stopped at the side of the trail, my heart still racing from my road sprint. As I waited for the woods to stop spinning, my clearing vision rested on a narrow strip of dirt - still clear, still dry as it disappeared into the trees. This was not the time or place for road intervals. I unlocked the shock, took a deep breath, and rolled forward.

And just like that I was mountain biking, for real this time - no snow, no slush, no wide gravel roads. It was time for my Karate Monkey - which I have already ridden a few hundred miles - and I to finally get acquainted.

The singletrack weaved erratically through a jungle of wet roots and spiderwebs, and I was rusty, rusty, rusty. I shoulder-checked a couple of trees. I slid sideways off a root or two. My last mountain bike was a full suspension, and I realized that I actually do miss the bouncy on back. That rear shock sure took the edge off the downhills. There also is something dubious about 29” wheels on a small frame. I get some toe overlap with my Pugsley, but it is one thing to occasionally scrape the front tire when you are puttering through snow. It is another thing to have that happen when you are banking a sharp right on rocks at high speed. Gotta learn to pull those feet in.

The moss-lined thread of a trail cut out of the woods and onto the glacial moraine, snaking through a series of rolling gravel hills. I amped up my speed and crested the high banks of every curve. I had found my flow, my perfect flow, and in those moments I remembered what it felt like to be 8 years old and clutching the handlebars of my dad’s motorcycle as we rode the waves of sandhills just beyond our house. The area was little more than an undeveloped suburban tract, the earth moved by bulldozers and front-end loaders, the trails carved by dirtbikers out for a quick thrill. But that didn’t matter to me then, with the wind whipping through my hair and my dad’s powerful arms guiding the motorcycle over a rollercoaster of sand. It was the epitome of adventure, and to experience again what that was like, what that actually felt like, is exactly why I ride a mountain bike.

The soft blue light on the Mendenhall Glacier, the reflection of Thunder Mountain in a rippling beaver pond, the soft moss carpeting the forest floor ... these are my suburbs. They were beautiful then, and they’re beautiful now.

It's official. I can't fix bikes.

Date: May 4
Mileage: 29.2
May mileage: 132.7
Temperature: 39

How much time have I wasted on a shifter cable? Enough that I really should have left my bike at the bike shop for three weeks, and given them a few hundred dollars just to keep it away from me for that long. Because if I spend any more time tightening and loosening cables and screws and staring intently at the nubbin pulley wheels on my rusted-out derailleur, I am going to throw my entire bike off my balcony and hope the devil's club grows thick enough to prevent me from ever trying to retrieve it.

I know, I know, I know. I need to learn this stuff. But people like me shouldn't be teaching themselves the procedures. That's like telling a dyslexic person they should teach themselves how to read. I have a genuine mechanical learning disability. Only because someone held my hands and guided me through every excruciating step did I learn to change a tire or put a quick link on a chain. Simple stuff baffles me. I thought the cable replacement would be easier than simple. So I browsed Sheldon Brown's and Park Tool's Web sites for a while until I got sick of trying to decipher Sanskrit. Then I propped up my bike, oiled the cable, and threaded it through the only possible places for it to go. Then I spent hours adjusting the tension and tweaking the derailleur screws just to get the thing to shift smoothly. I came close a couple of times. But then I'd try to execute a hairline tension change, only to end up with the chain skipping all over the place. In the end, I stripped the threading for one of the screws and mangled the cable, and gave up with an adjustment that is about as choppy as it would have been if I had never bothered with it all. I didn't replace the old housing, and maybe that's my problem. But it doesn't matter. I am done. Done. Done. Done.

So my new plan is to wait out this bike shop backlog by ordering a new derailleur online, and then taking the whole setup into the bike shop to have it replaced properly after things slow down. In the meantime, I think I will just slash the cable and accept my bike as a clunky three-speed.

Or put it in the basement. I thought about that. I really like riding my new mountain bike. It rides so comfortable, so smooth, and I've been making a genuine effort to keep up with the cleaning and maintenance to keep it that way. My only problem is the mud-specific tires I bought for it, which put up more rolling resistance than studs on pavement. This time of year and this location require a lot of pavement riding, so I'd be subjecting myself to much frustrating slowness if I use the Karate Monkey for every ride. At the same time, putting slicks on a mountain bike limits my trail riding options; plus, slicks on a mountain bike is just sad. And I'm not going to switch tires back and forth. I am the world's slowest tire changer. Did I mention my mechanical disability?

Too bad Ibex Bikes is sold out of all of their Corridas. Despite Roadie's problems (and they're mostly my fault after years of lax maintenance), I really like this bike. For the price, I think it's a great touring/training/commuting bike. It just needs a little TLC. And an entire set of new components.