Friday the 13th

Date: Feb. 13
Mileage: 22.3
February mileage: 366.3
Temperature: 20

Today was an absolutely perfect day. In Juneau, you can't get a better day than a day like today, unless it's summer, and even then, I'm not sure it would really be better. Warmer, yes. Different, yes. But there is something about the silk-smooth sweep of snow over the mountains, the ice glistening on the cliffs, the power-coated trees ... something about winter that makes a blue-sky, no-wind, sunny day just ... perfect.

I dragged my loaded Pugsley up the Dan Moller Trail. It's a short trip, mileage-wise, even when I add an extra leg of highway biking at the end. I was still out for nearly five hours. Climbing to the ridge on this trail usually nets about 3,000-3,500 feet of elevation gain, depending on how long I spend traversing the ridge. I don't drag my bike all the way to the top, but I take it as far as I think I'll be able to ride downhill, which even on a soft day like today is generally pretty far. Minute for minute, it's the best workout there is walking up (specific to my upcoming race at least.) And mile-for-mile, it's the most exhilarating workout there is coming down.

I dropped Pugsley off just below the bowl and hiked to the ridge to take pretty pictures and dodge snowmobiles. Everyone was out today, everyone and their dog. It was the kind of Juneau day that leads to half the town calling in sick.

Even the ghost trees looked happy.

The air above the wind-scoured ridge was as calm as summer. My thermometer hovered somewhere in the low teens, but in direct sun with no wind after hiking from the bottom, I was warm enough to sit on my coat for a few minutes wearing only a T-shirt as I sipped my orange juice and gazed over Stephens Passage.

Geoff and I had a dinner party tonight and after that I put together my drop bags for the race. I'm allowed two drop bags of 10 pounds each. One goes to the 135-mile checkpoint and the other to the 210-mile checkpoint, over the Alaska Range. I figure I'll see an average of about two days between drops, less if things go well. I packed 12,000 calories in each drop, lithium batteries (lots of batteries) and chemical warmers. The calories are on the high side. That assumes I'll eat about 6,000 a day, which I know I won't, although I'll probably be burning at least that many. But we're allowed 10 pounds and whatever I don't need I can leave behind. I left a lot of food behind last year.

At dinner, our friends made fun of our food selection. On the surface it looks like a lot of junk food, and it is. But I've actually spent a fair amount of time thinking through this. My one and only goal is to get calories in. That is all. As long as they go in, it doesn't matter where they come from. Fat is good and sugar isn't so great, but sugar is what I like. Sugar is what I always like, even after six days. I can also digest large amounts of it it without issues, unlike most high-fat foods. So I'm going to eat a lot of sugar. I'll probably come home with a couple of cavities, but as long as I eat, that's what matters. I'll be burning through the calories so quickly that I really don't think it matters of they're not complex-carbohydrate, amino-acid, antioxidant, lycopene-infused calories. They just need to be appealing enough to go down in the first place. Thus, the miniature peanut butter cups (thanks, Richard!) with almonds in a handy 3,000-calorie zippy. Get in ma belly!

There's actually a decent balance of fat and protein in the mix, and I'll be supplementing it all with vitamins, antacids and electrolyte pills. But what I'm drop bagging is a delicious smorgasbord of peanut butter cups big and small, Kit Kat bars, almonds, walnuts, dry-roasted edemame, Corn Nuts, a mix of dried cherries, cranberries and chocolate-covered raisins, and home-made chocolate chip cookies (mmm, butter.) This isn't a performance race. It's a survival test.

Notice that I've given up on bars. I like to eat Clif Bars on training rides, but they're impossible to ingest once deep frozen. Freezing is actually a strong factor behind many of these decisions. Has to be good, has to be easy, has to be edible deep frozen. Healthy crap can come before and after the race.

There you have it. My next book will be called "How Cycling Turned Me Into a Junkaholic."

Nine hours of recharging

Date: Feb. 11 and 12
Mileage: 26.7 and 97.4
February mileage: 344
Temperature: 30 and 19

I really can not overexaggerate the energy that surrounds me when I wake up to the first sunny day after a long stretch of gray. Winter or summer, snow or rain, after a while, it just doesn't seem to matter. Gray is gray. And sun is intense color and open space, dry snow and packed trails. Sun is light. Why it would really matter what the temperature is, I've long since forgotten. Today was 20 degrees and as beautiful and energizing as any day in June.

I'd hoped to squeeze in about a 10-hour ride today, but it took me a while to pack up this morning. I loaded my bike with a good chunk of the kit I plan to carry with me in the race - about 10,000 calories in food (today, because I wasn't planning on eating the majority of it, mostly nuts and dried fruit), stove, chemical warmers, all my extra clothing (because it was so "warm" today, I was wearing my base minimum), ~four liters of water, bike repair stuff and tubes, other random little things ... The only thing I was missing was my bivy bundle (sleeping bag, pad and bivy sack), because I am still waiting on a front rack. But the bulk of it, the main weight of it, was all there.

The road shoulders, while still coated in a tire suck of loose powder/sand and clunky ice, were in better shape than I've seen them in weeks. Even with the weight of bike, food, water and gear pushing 55 pounds, I was able to sit back and coast easy. I hit up all the side roads in the Valley looking for packed trails, but didn't find too much. It's still too soon after the snow dump. I pushed my bike on the foot trails for a short while before settling back in to cruise mode.

I greedily soaked up sun through a few square inches of exposed skin on my face and made frequent stops to practice all the little things that long-distance snow-biking usually entails ... adjusting my tire pressure, adjusting my layers, feeding my face. I experimented today with force-feeding. I've gotten better about taking in calories on long rides, but still end up running a deficit before the ride is over. Small calorie deficits are fine for daylong rides, but they add up quickly over longer efforts. Today I was determined to end the day somewhere closer to even. For a nine-hour ride, that's at least 3,000 calories ... ug ... but I tried to put it down. I snacked on dried apples for close to the entire day. They were delicious at first. And then not so delicious. And then downright revolting. I supplemented the apples with Luna Bars and peanut butter cups. Both went down smooth. I ended the ride pretty close to my calorie-intake goal - and somewhat nauseated. It was a strange feeling ... I was nauseated but I had a ton of energy. With the exception of never wanting to look at a dried apple again, I felt nearly as fresh as I had at the beginning of the day, before all the pedaling and heavy bike pushing and cold wind and 90-something miles. And I'm thinking ... food is the answer.

But, then again, maybe sun is the answer. Or maybe just having a whole day to ride my bike is the answer. After dinner, Geoff and I decided to go to Costco and Fred Meyer to buy all the stuff we need for our race drop bags, among other things (Costco runs always result in about 400 pounds of groceries.)

"Aren't you too tired?" Geoff asked me when questioning whether we should go.

"Are you kidding?" I said. "All I did today was ride my bike."

And, the more I think about it, it's a pretty relaxing way to live.

Book update

It's been a while since I posted an update about my book. I wanted to again thank everyone who has purchased it. I released it in November as a fundraiser for the 2009 ITI, and the royalties have helped me pay for the entry fee, travel expenses, food and new gear. I received my 2008 W2 tax form from Lulu the other day. When I showed it to Geoff, he said, "You earned as much from your book in a tenth of a year as I earned in a tenth of the year, working." I didn't remind him of all of the long summer nights I stayed up until 4 a.m. pounding the thing out. I also didn't remind him that the sum only included the books that sold directly through Lulu, and not the boxes I've moved out of the house. Anyway, it's been a lucrative fundraiser, and I wanted to say thanks again.

I also wanted to thank everyone who e-mailed me in the past month with contacts at bike shops and book stores. I'm sorry if I haven't gotten back to you. I made the mistake of posting a request for contacts before I went to Hawaii, and came home to a flood of e-mails. I just wanted to let you know that I have saved them all and will be sorting through them in hopes of expanding my distribution when I have more time. Right now, the book (and any future projects) have been pushed far on the backburner, and that's OK.

A few readers have been nice enough to post reviews online. You can read them here:

Kent's Bike Blog
An Adventure Called Bicycling
Moronacity (not a book review, but a really cool essay just the same.)
The Accidental Athlete
Danielle Musto

UPDATE: Fat Cyclist (Thanks, Elden! Great timing.)
One Less Car

Finally, I want to apologize for the long delay in getting the signed copies of the book out during January. My trip to Hawaii, the fact that I ran out of a shipment before I expected to, and continued busyness all conspired to delay some purchases for a couple weeks. I should have all of the books out now, and I now have more in stock, so if you ordered my book in the past few weeks and you don't have it in hand by Friday, please contact me. The book is still available for purchase, the money still going into my hemorrhaging Iditarod fund. In a couple of new developments, I now have the eBook listed separately. It costs $8 and is available here. Also, Amazon.com approved "Ghost Trails" for sale, but they don't yet have it in stock. For those dead-set on purchasing it from Amazon (who, I will say, take their fair cut), it will likely be listed here in the near future.

I still receive the highest royalties from those who purchase a signed book directly from me, using the "Buy Now" button in the sidebar. I'll only be able to offer this option for the next two weeks. After Feb. 22 I will be in Anchorage and no longer able to process orders until mid-March.

Right now I am working on my gear list and will probably post it in the next few days. (Having it on record helps me more than anyone.) Stay tuned!

Facing the anxiety

Date: Feb. 8 and 19
Mileage: 42.2 and 12.1
February mileage: 219.9
Temperature: 34 and 29

Iditarod Trail near Burma Road, Jan. 28, 2006

"Of course, everything about today was exactly what I would expect of such an excursion. Temps were cold, but not unreasonably so. The trail was soft, but all-in-all better than I expected. Mt. Augustine decided today was the fourth of July, but all the ash headed south. Yes, today was a good day. An encouraging day. And yet, I feel the cold grip of this daunting task tightening around me. It could be my neoprene gear. But, no. I think it's the Susitna 100. It's going to be hard."

It's funny for me to go back and read this old blog post from a training ride before the 2006 Susitna 100. I feel like I could have written it today. There was even a volcano erupting (Mount Augustine) to parallel the current restlessness of Mount Redoubt in the near area. But this blog post completely denies a raw anxiety that I remember hit fever pitch after this January 2006 ride. I don't think I was ready to admit it to myself when I wrote this post.

Geoff and I drove from Homer to Palmer for the weekend, a trip almost solely dedicated to getting in one training ride on the actual race course. It was 7 below zero when we left Palmer, likely colder where we connected with the Iditarod Trail at Burma Road. We both rode full-suspension Gary Fisher Sugars. We stopped to play with tire pressure and I got really cold and struggled to warm back up. I tried to eat a frozen Power Bar, bit my lip and bled all over the front of my coat. We both crashed hard going down a steep hill and I broke my seat post bag. We rode for five hours. We covered 20 miles. I returned to Palmer bloody, shivering and completely, utterly spent.

Our friend Amity, never one to skimp on sweets, made us a celebration desert of three big homemade chocolate chip cookies topped with several scoops of ice cream. I ate the whole thing. I remember sitting on the couch with a horrible, sickening pit in my stomach thinking, "I am never, never going to finish this race."

Recent Snowslide Gulch avalanche as seen from Douglas Island.

Ever since I moved to Alaska, February has been my toughest month. Mid-winter blues and training fatigue, along with preparation and pre-race anxiety for the various adventure racers I keep signing up for, always add up to a month full of creeping malaise. The end result is worth it, in my mind, but the lead-up is sometimes difficult to bear.

This February, I can't even catch a break from the weather - which simply means that the weather hasn't cooperated with my training plans. It also means I haven't had a direct hit of sun in quite some time (It feels like weeks). Snow turns to rain turns to ice turns to snow, which has left nothing very rideable, trails or roads. I'm fusing my old job with my new job and I really do have less time to train, because the extra hours I'm working generally spill out into mornings. I've been bike commuting to work more often because the roads have been too treacherous for my wimpy little car. The actual biking is nice, but it often adds up to 10-12 hours straight at the office, and I never bring enough food and end up close to bonked before I have to ride home (I could probably plan better, but I haven't been shopping for myself in a while.) These are all just little problems, nagging issues, but they start to add up. I'm trying to keep my head above water, but it's hard to push it back sometimes ... that sinking feeling.

The 90-minute snowshoe run that made my day.

Going outside helps. A lot. My race and job anxiety seem to dissipate proportionally with the number of hours I'm able to spend traipsing through the snow. The continuous record snowfall that is literally smothering the city becomes alluring and beautiful up high. I walk and run with purpose, listening to the rhythm of my breath and feeling the movement in my muscles. It all seems so simple and I try to remember that the upcoming race, as big and complicated and scary as it seems right now, is just as simple.

"One foot in front of the other," I tell myself. "One pedal stroke in front of the other. Keep yourself warm, keep yourself fed, and keep moving. You'll get there."

I'll get there. Eventually.

Just missed it

(photo by Peter Bibb, stuck on the wrong side of a big slide)

Date: Feb. 7
Mileage: 19.8
February mileage: 165.5
Temperature: 39

Every once in a while, I have a rare but memorable day where I come home from a bike ride grumpier than I was before I left. Today was one of those days. I planned a short recovery ride, 20 miles on pavement, and the roads looked almost bare thanks to an overnight scouring by heavy rain. But because city road crews never actually scrape the shoulders, I had to ride my brakes over wet ice as a strong southeast wind pushed my back like a sail. After two miles of hardly pedaling on flat road, I turned onto the bridge to meet the crosswind. Unobstructed over the Channel, the gale pulled like an industrial vacuum toward traffic, blowing 50-60 mph steady. Steering was an exercise in futility, coasting a vehicular game of Russian roulette. I crawled off my bike and started walking, bike on the leeward side, until the wind ripped it right out of my hands and tossed it like a blanket against the pedestrian barrier. It didn't even hear it clatter amid the ceaseless roar. Daggers of rain pierced my cheeks. I moved the battered bike windward, leaned against it, and kept walking. I nearly turned around right there, but decided if I could just make it over the bridge, things would get better.

I churned out Thane Road directly into the gusts, but a least there the wind was buffered by houses and trees as it rushed along the steep face of Mount Roberts. Near the bottom of the second hill, my studded tires slipped and washed out on the wet ice. I went down, elbow first into a puddle. I swore out loud and picked myself up, holding my sore elbow against my side, dripping rainwater and grit as I made all the mental promises that I don't really intend to keep, but that make me feel so much better: Throw away the Nokians; Renew my gym membership; move far, far away from Juneau and never look back.

But because I get so stubbornly locked into things, I still fought the wind to the end of the road and turned around, playing Russian roulette with patches of wet ice as the gusting tailwind determined my speed. I had little choice in the matter, brakes and all. When tailwind gets overly pushy, it stops being fun.

And of course, grumpy as I was, I was thinking, "Can it get any worse than this?"

I rode the freight train of wind past Snowslide Gulch at about 12:15 p.m. I was probably in the shower when the avalanche came down at 1 p.m. It tumbled down the mountain like a rock slide, 300 feet long and 18 feet high, completely burying the road before settling into the sea. The debris effectively blocked off the community of Thane and its dead-end road from the rest of the world. Right now it seems that there wasn't anyone driving by when the slide came down, but in the Russian roulette game of life, that possibility is always there ... you never know ... it could happen to a random hapless cyclist who picked Thane Road because it's usually the most wind-protected area, who fell off her bike on the ice in nearly that exact area a mere hour earlier, who thought she was having a bad day ...

I guess it can always get worse.

Seven hours of white

Marginal weather conditions showed up this morning as promised - heavy snowfall with temperatures right on the cusp of freezing, threatening to warm throughout the day and mix rain with snow for the worst kind of riding surface imaginable (in my opinion). It's like trying to pedal through a six inches of Slurpee.

I wanted to get outside for seven our eight hours today, and it was either that or a long hike. I picked the hike. Walking, actually, is a huge part of the Iditarod race, and I learned last year it's important to be in good trudging shape for slogs that can last upwards of 24 hours and more. To be best prepared, I'd actually have to get out and push my loaded bike, thereby building the shoulder and arm muscles that I am still probably lacking. But there's a limit to the misery I'm willing to endure when I'm just training. The idea of pushing my bike through the unbroken snow of the backcountry definitely goes beyond this limit. Slogging through steep, deep stuff in snowshoes feels like punishment enough. But a little slogging is good for the soul ... in the long run.

I left from my house, hiked up the Mount Jumbo Trail, traversed along the Treadwell Ditch Trail and went up the next canyon to the Douglas Ski Bowl and eventually the ridge, where I traversed until the wind and chill rattled me back down. I lost the trail more than a few times. I snowshoed about 15-17 miles and 4,500 feet of vertical gain in seven hours, much of that mired in the slow slog of trail-breaking. The kind of work that cuts deep into the core of your muscles with every step. The good slog. And the whole time, icy snow fell in streams, sometimes to the point of whiteout conditions. The above picture pretty much sums up everything there was to see for seven solid hours.

I was pretty well soaked through and through by the time I crested the ridge, because the falling snow was so wet. The wind had picked up throughout the day, and it hit the ridge with shocking force. The gusts were probably 40 to 50 mph - enough to actually knock me off my feet once. My soaked hair froze into one solid block even after I put my hood up, and my coat and pants froze as well. It felt like I was wearing an outer layer made of wood. The fabric became almost immovably stiff, trapped as it was beneath a sheet of ice that had once been beaded-up precipitation. But in the amazing way Gortex can, the coat still completely blocked the wind and let my insulation layer (just one) keep me warm, so I hiked along the ridge for a little while.

I'm always fascinated by the ghost trees that live along the ridge. They live just a few dozen feet of elevation below treeline, the absolute margin of where a tree can even grow. They're fringe trees, and their postures show the burden of hard, hard lives. Every square inch of needle and bark is coated in solid ice (not snow, ice), for most of the months of the year. They're incessantly pounded by brutal wind. And yet, somehow, they survive. I don't pity these trees. In a way, I envy them, because through whatever twist of fate, they arrived at the brutal fringes of their environment and still decided life was worth living.

I don't have real photoshop on my computer, just this freeware photo organizing software with an "auto levels" setting that goes more than a little heavy on the contrast. But I kinda like what it does with monotone photos. Artsy.

The last miles of the hike passed in the way that many, many miles on the Iditarod Trail pass ... forever moving toward a small island of light amid an ocean of night.

8.5 hours

Date: Feb. 5
Mileage: 93.4
February mileage: 145.7
Temperature: 28

I had a really good, strong ride today, according to the "sweat test." I usually feel I can't base the progress of winter rides on distance or speed, because trail and road conditions are so variable (and generally marginal at best, necessitating a lot of work to go pretty dang slow.) So I base my winter progress on the amount of sweat I generate. I always check the weather forecast and current temperature before I go. Since neither varies much in Juneau, I have pretty much down pat exactly what I need to stay warm but not overheat in the most common temperature/precipitation combinations (between 10 degrees and 40 degrees dry or wet I have down pat. Beyond those I have much less experience.) So, if I look at the temperature, and dress exactly how I think I need to, then head out and still sweat a ton and have to shed layers, then I know I've had a good, strong ride.

These eight and nine-hour rides don't really feel long or hard any more, but they're good enough because I don't have much more time to burn. Working nights as I do, the only way I can have any social life at all is by making dinner plans on Thursdays and Fridays. So I wake up early (for me) and ride from 9 to 6. Lately, I've felt relaxed and strong the whole day, even pushing at a rate I consider moderately strenuous, and often come home wishing I could stay out even longer, if I didn't have this and that lined up. I guess that's a good sign that I should be taking in longer rides, but I still believe I'll be more successful in the long run if I live a balanced life rather than taking the quickest route to burnout.

I've been pretty frustrated with the road conditions and general uselessness of snow removal crews in Juneau. The roads are basically in better shape where they don't bother to clear them at all, like mile 35-40 Glacier Highway, because then it's just a snowmobile trail. But I'll try not to complain about snow removal because it's a boring subject. I will say that if it's snowing quite a bit tomorrow morning, I'll probably spend my planned long day as a long hike rather than take too many more chances in the slush and sandy powder in traffic. I've just lost control of both my bikes too many times for comfort, and going slow enough to feel totally confident about staying in control just isn't really exercise (This specifically isn't a criticism of Juneau road crews. It's just a truth about riding on roads where snow has been piled up unevenly by traffic flow. The fact that the City and Borough of Juneau never bothers to clear that crap away even after many days go by is what irks me.) Ok. Rant officially over.

It was a nice day, though. The sun was always on the horizon, stretched between the mountains and a ceiling of clouds.

I found my way to the Airport Dike Trail right at sunset. It was the perfect combination of a trail ride and exactly the right time. Great way the end the day.