Good mileage push

Date: April 8 and 9
Mileage: 47.8 and 101.6
April mileage: 391.5
Temperature upon departure: 39 and 42

Sometimes I fell compelled to apologize to my journal for the frivolous way I burn up all my free time. I mean, I consider myself an intelligent person. I have a good job. I have friends. Most of them are even real friends, not just, as Geoff calls them, "Facebook Friends." I have a great cat. I love reading newspapers, even though I work for one. I devour New Yorker magazines. Every so often, I read a book. I've had a variety of hobbies - snowboarding, drawing, going to movies ... OK, not that many hobbies. But these days, I pretty much just ride my bike. I'm sorry.

There's just this thing about me ... I can't really explain it ... I just really like riding my bike. People pass me on the street and later tell me I seemed to be smiling. Everyone tells me this. Do I smile every second that I'm on my bike? I don't know. That's what people say.

It's just that biking is so monotonous and repetitive and sort of pointless. I go out to a random point and then I return to my home. The next day, I go to another random point and then come home. Sometimes I take my bike to work, and then I ride home. Then I go out to the first random point that I rode to earlier in the week, and come home. Day after day after day. What's wrong with me?

Sometimes it's raining. Usually, it's raining. The wind blows hard from the south. Even though the temperature has been above 40, I still have to bundle up pretty warm to help keep my ultra-sensitive toes from freezing. The trails have turned to mush. The roads are covered in goo, but at least they're rideable. There aren't many roads in Juneau. I see a lot of the same terrain. Day after day after day. And yet, I never see it in the same way twice. Sometimes strips of sunlight escape through the clouds and paint streaks of green on the gray-washed mountainsides. Sometimes deer bound along the roadside and waterfalls roar with the weight of spring runoff. Yesterday, I stopped at Auke Rec and saw a man swimming in the bay. His long, neoprene-covered arms cast wide strokes over the smooth water. I watched him for a few seconds and realized he wasn't alone. Sleek, shadowy figures bounded in and out of the bay near him. I squinted and realized the shadows were dorsal fins. Porpoises. The man was swimming with porpoises, or, more accurately, they were swimming with him. Either way, it looked amazing, in a beautiful, terrifying way, and I wished myself out there with them. The man just kept swimming, calmly toward shore, as the porpoises danced around him. I got back on my bike and coasted down the road, smiling.

I was stoked to squeeze in nearly 50 miles before work yesterday. I wanted to go for 100 today. The bike did not make it easy. It was a "bad bike day." I got three flat tires, and at one point had to backtrack five miles to a bike shop to buy new tubes. I sliced my hand clean open on the razor-sharp derailleur pulley spikes and bled all over my patch kit. My rear brake pads finally wore to nothing. My rear wheel skewer kept coming loose on its own, which could have ended badly, but I kept telling myself it was my fault and it wouldn't happen again. Then it would. I was starting to remember why I gave up riding this bike last fall. It has a lot of problems.

But when I wasn't wallowing in a snowy ditch and fumbling with my rear wheel, the miles just flew by. Traffic was scarce and I did a lot of singing out loud. I decided I am a big fan of Clif Shot Bloks. It's taken me a while to come around to them. I used to think they tasted like sugar-coated wads of snot. Now I think they taste like energy-stoking wads of heaven. I like the "cola" kind. They taste like Pepsi.

On the outside, I'm just turning pedals and going nowhere, wearing soaked nylon and splattered in mud, probably with a big dopey smile on my face and Pepsi-colored Shot Blok bits lodged in my teeth. But on the inside, I'm drifting in a peaceful sea, moving freely between the past and present, and absorbing almost obscene quantities of beauty that I could devour forever and never be full.

I'm riding my bike.

I'm not sorry.

The (next) ultimate bike tour

Date: April 7
Mileage: 27.2
April mileage: 242.1
Temperature upon departure: 41

So I’m thinking about heading up to Banff on June 11 and lining up with whoever else shows up for the 2009 Great Divide (formerly known as the Great Divide Race.) I’ve actually been thinking about this since 2006. When Geoff decided to enter the race last year, I certainly didn’t feel ready myself and wasn’t at a point in my career where I felt comfortable just dropping everything for a trip south. I still don’t feel ready for such an extreme physical endeavor, but I am at a good place to hit pause on my life in Juneau for a few months. This may be the best window I ever get. Might as well go as far as I can.

Why the GD?
Since I first found out about the existence of the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route, back in 2003, I’ve looked to it as an ultimate bike tour. I started out as a road tourist and I’m not bothered at all by the fact that this route mostly follows gravel roads and jeep tracks. In fact, I prefer it. I appreciate a good piece of singletrack as much as the next mediocre mountain biker, but I certainly wouldn’t want to ride a couple thousand miles of singletrack, or even a couple hundred, at least not until I become much more comfortable with technical riding. What I do want to ride is large swaths of vastly empty space, beautiful mountains, stunning desert vistas, punchy snow, soul-crushing climbs and soaring descents. The GDMBR is set up in such a way that a person like myself with my talents (turning cranks, hike-a-biking, looking past pain and generally outlasting myself) actually stands a chance of succeeding.

But why the race? Why not just tour it and have fun?
One of the more rewarding things I’ve done in recent years is my 2007 “fast tour” of the Golden Circle. I set a time limit of 48 hours to ride 370 miles of remote Alaska and Canadian roads that I had never ridden before, all by myself. I packed light, rode well into the evening, slept in a bivy sack in bear country with tuna juice all over my hands, saw beautiful country, sweated in 90-degree heat, fought fierce headwinds, suffered a fair amount, sought refuge with friends, shivered through subfreezing mornings, and finally crested that last pass knowing I “could do it.” I met my goal. The fact that I had that time limit on top of the crushing distance, that I pushed and pushed and pushed and overcame the loneliness and hardships, made the ride so much more rewarding. It still look back on that trip as one of my best accomplishments, right up there with my first Susitna 100 and the 2008 ITI. The Golden Circle wasn’t even a race, but it had the perimeters and therefore challenges and rewards of a race. And I realize that it’s one thing to push yourself near the limit for two days, and quite another to try it for 25. But you never know if you don’t go.

Are you and Geoff going to ride together?
No. Geoff has several ultramarathons he’s been planning and training for the better part of a year. And I’m of the opinion that ultrarunning is his true calling and he owes it to himself to give it his best shot while he’s near the top of his game. The truth is, if he did decide to drop everything and join me, I’d be inclined to try to talk him out of it.

My reasons are partly selfish, too. I benefit most from endurance challenges if I go it alone. The solitude is one of the virtues I seek, although I also value new friendships and comraderie ... that’s one of the main benefits of lining up with others in the context of a race. And the fact is, it is a race. It’s hard to commit to riding with another person for the entire distance. Groups are only as strong as the weakest rider (cough, cough, me), and are almost guaranteed to never hit their highs and lows at the same time. While teamwork most certainly helps fellow competitors work through the low points, it can be tough on a relationship. I’ve joked with other endurance junkies about creating a couples race on the GDMBR. We’d call it the “Tour Divorce.”

So why the Great Divide and not the Tour Divide?
For those unfamiliar with the whole issue of the two races, the race split in two last year based on differences of opinion about the route and rules among its participants. It remains two races, and anyone who wants to line up with other people has to pick one. So that’s my answer. I had to pick one. The GD has a race philosophy I’m already familiar with. It also seems smaller and more willing to fly under the radar, and that’s probably a good place for an in-over-her-head competitor to be. Plus, GD starts a whole day earlier than the TD, and that one-day head start may give me more opportunities to ride with others.

And just how qualified do you really think you are?
Probably the best ride on my resume is a 2003 bike tour from Salt Lake City to Syracuse, N.Y. Sure, we only averaged about 50 miles a day on pavement (propelling about 70 pounds of bikes and gear a piece, mind you.) But no other ride I’ve done could have better prepared me for the realities of camping in ditches, having to find all of your food and water, pushing through the bad days and relishing in the good, and generally just living outside among strange people in a strange land for weeks at a time. The 2008 Iditarod Trail Invitational, of course, helped me become more familiar with the realities of back-to-back 15 to 20-hour days of solid physical work. Life in Alaska has made me more comfortable with remote places and bear country. As far as endurance races, I’ve only done a couple solo 24-hour races and a handful of winter races. I’m of the opinion that race history does little to help a person finish the GDMBR. It’s really more about good planning, a healthy dose of luck, and heaps of mental fortitude.

So how do you plan to prepare?
Geoff and I leave Juneau on April 22. We’re heading to San Francisco so Geoff can run the Miwok 100K, and I’ll have some time amid the travels to amp up my bike mileage. We’re going to spend the month of May near Teasdale, Utah, where I can ride and camp in the desert and Boulder mountains and hopefully (hopefully!) adapt to heat and elevation, both big weaknesses of mine, living as I do in a temperate rainforest at sea level. I realize a month isn’t a lot of time to prepare, but it’s more than many people get. The idea for this forlough started out as being all about Geoff’s races and my fun forays into bicycle camping. I also wanted to spend more time focusing on my writing. Adding the GD as a big punctuation mark was a distant dream that started to make more and more sense. Who knows if I’ll be ready come June 11? The worst I can do is fail. But it will be incredibly exciting just to try.

What about your foot?
It's mostly better. My toes are still quite sensitive. I’m hoping the pain continues to wear off so I can start to walk longer distances more comfortably, but I am no longer in danger of doing further damage as long as I don’t freeze them again (possible but very unlikely on the GDMBR in June).

What gear will you take?
Super cool stuff! More to come ...

Adventures with Roadie

Date: April 5 and 6
Mileage: 76.2 and 39.1
April mileage: 214.9
Temperature upon departure: 36 and 37

We’ve had a fairly rainy weekend in Juneau, just in time to coincide with my efforts to log more hours on the bike. Right now I want to log miles for the sake of logging miles, to spend that time with my butt in the saddle and heavy weight hanging off my back so I can become reacquainted with the pressure and flow. When it rains the whole time, like it did on Sunday, the ride becomes one of those “put your head down and pedal” kind of rides. Or, as I like to think of it, “five hours of looking at wet pavement.”

One would think that such a ride would be unbearably dull, maddening even, but I never feel that way. The whirring wheel and fountains of rainwater put me in a meditative place, a place where I truly feel like I have room to think ... think openly, that is, not necessarily deeply. Between a high heart rate, focus on cadence and hours worth of fatigue, I’m certainly not composing any sonnets in my head. What I do most often is replay random memories from the past, often events or conversations I haven’t thought of in years. It’s like watching vaguely familiar television reruns through a haze of insomnia. Amid the sleepiness and indifference, the most mundane moments shine through with startling clarity.

I watched the crank spin on my creaky old touring bike and thought back to the day we first met. "Roadie" showed up in a box from Georgia. I left him in there until the night before our first ride. I attached the stock pedals and stock seat, tightened the headset and mounted the front wheel. Early the next morning, I wheeled him outside for the first time and teetered a bit down B Street en route to the start of the Salt Lake Century.

I was about 22 miles into the ride when a stranger pulled up behind me.

“Mind if I ride with you for a bit?” the man asked. I couldn't see him but he sounded non-creepy enough.

“Sure,” I said.

“You lose your group?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “I’m alone.”

“You’re not riding with anyone?”

“Nope. All alone.”

“You know these things are easier if you ride with people.”

“I don’t really care,” I said. “I’m not looking to set an Olympic record.”

“Well, I already got dropped,” he said. “I had to cut back but I’m going to try to catch up to them at the next station.”

We rode in silence for a few minutes, and then he said, “What’s with the big backpack?”

“That’s all my food and water,” I said. “I didn’t realize there’d be rest stops every 15 miles.”

“Have you ever ridden a century before?”

“Not in one shot,” I said.

“So have you been training pretty hard?”

I thought about my old bike, which for the past several weeks had been piled in pieces in Geoff’s basement. Then there was the mountain bike I was still mostly afraid ride. Truth was, since I returned from my cross-country bike tour a half year before, I hadn’t ridden more than a couple dozen times here and there. “Not really,” I said.

“So what made you decide to ride a century?”

“Cycling Utah covered my entry fee,” I said. “They want me to write an article.”

“How much do they pay you?”

“Oh, about 50 bucks an article.”

“You’re riding 100 miles for 50 bucks?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Sweet deal, huh?”

“Well, it’s more than I’m getting,” he said. “It was my brother’s plan do this. We’ve been training all spring. He has one of those training plans.”

“How’s that working out for you?”

He laughed. “I feel like crap. How are you doing?”

“Not so bad,” I said. “This is kind of relaxing, out here by the lake. But ask me that question again at mile 80.”

He moved ahead to pull for a while. He coasted beside me a few moments, checking out my bike.

“Nice bike,” he said.

“Thanks,” I said. “It’s brand new.”

“Brand new?”

“I just opened it yesterday.”

“Opened it?”

“It came in a box.”

“And you just decided the Salt Lake Century would be good inaugural ride?”

“I needed a bike,” I said. “My editor told me I’d be nuts to try this on my mountain bike.”

“I think you’re nuts to try it on a bike you’ve never ridden.”

“It’s pretty comfortable,” I said. “I like this bike.”

“What’s with the flat bar?”

“The what?”

“The handlebar.”

“Oh,” I said. “It’s a touring bike.” I sat up straight and grinned. “Built for all-day comfort. I’d rather ride far than fast.”

He laughed. “I’d rather do both.”

Not long after, he stopped at the next aid station to look for his friends. I already had a backpack full of food and water, so I just kept going. By mile 75, my gut had seized up with cramps, but I doubled over and kept going. Sweat gushed down my neck as streaks of red light shot through my blurring line of vision. My butt and hands throbbed and my legs felt like they were slowly being crushed beneath a blunt object. Through it all, Roadie kept on rolling along, carrying me farther than I ever thought I'd really be able to ride in a single push. And by mile 92, all the pain seemed to break free. A wave of peace washed over me. The final miles limped by in a happy haze.

"This is what it feels like to ride far," I thought. It occurred to me that my "Fast and Far" riding companion never passed me again. "Far and kinda fast," I smiled.

The Salt Lake Century opened up a new way of thinking for me. My cross-country bike tour showed me all the ways riding a bicycle can stretch out the distance between two points to an appealingly infinite space. The Century taught me the ways cycling can bring truly far-away spaces together, bridging a void that becomes even more meaningful en route.

Today, Roadie and I rode hard, seeking short dives into the pain cave and hints of sucker hole sunlight. I've been hedging on the same decision for so long that I think I should just go ahead and mentally commit to another big adventure. Open that brand new bike box and set out, so to speak. More on this tomorrow.

This season isn't so bad

Date: April 3
Mileage: 42.2
April mileage: 99.6
Temperature upon departure: 21

Most people I know in Alaska are not hugely in love with the season of Spring. Around here we call it "Break Up," an ugly name for an ugly time of year. We've all endured a long, volatile relationship with Winter. There were times it was beautiful; others when we curled up with our SAD lights and looked photographs of our old love, Summer. But through it all, Winter stuck around, and now we're left with piles of baggage ... snowpack over our heads, punchy trails, chunks of ice swept beside the roads. As our inevitable but ugly break up with Winter begins, we begin to slough off the baggage only to find the ugliness Winter had shielded from us all this time ... piles of dog crap, sticky mud, a thick layer of loose gravel and sloppy slop slop. People put on rubber boots and walk around with sour looks on their faces, because it's too punchy to ski and too muddy gross dirty to do anything else. By the time the temperature climbs above 55 and the first sprigs of green appear on the alder branches, it's already nearly Summer and we're too drunk on warmth and endless daylight to really notice. But Breaking Up is hard to do.

I made good on my promise of getting up yesterday at 6:30. It was actually closer to 6:15, although I dawdled around and wasn't out the door until 6:51. The rising sunlight burned bright gold against a high, thin cloud cover. The thermometer said 21 when I left and the air tasted sharp and almost shockingly cold. It's funny how quickly the familiarity of Winter can dissolve away. That simple taste of freezing air jolted away the last of my sleepiness and I started pounding up the road. I climbed to the Dan Moller trailhead. Geoff had assured me that the trail wasn't even in. He ran up their two days ago and reported sinking up to his knees in fresh snow. But I had faith in Juneau snowmobilers, and knew that warm days followed by freezing nights meant even a handful of tracks would make a bomber trail.

I was right. Deep, rippling moguls meant I had to walk most the way up to the Douglas Ski Bowl, but I was rewarded by a screaming, air-catching singletrack ride down. I like to believe that downhill snowbiking has really improved my technical mountain biking skills. There's a lot of strange handling in snowbiking, including shifting my weight from side to side to stay on top of a fishtailing rear wheel. I guess I'll find out how many skills I've actually developed when I hit the dirt this summer. I'll have to remember that dirt is a lot less forgiving of endos than snow.

I was home before 10 a.m., which is usually about the time I set out in the morning. I rushed to a doctor's appointment and was given a clean bill of health. No more doctor visits. No more bandaging. No more sandals and booties. I can wear two shoes again, although I did yesterday and was uncomfortable the whole time. I'm still going to have a significant level of sensitivity in my toes for some time.

"It's amazing how fast people can grow skin," I said as my doctor sloughed off most of the remaining dead tissue.

"You seem to have been working double time," she said. "What's your secret?"

I didn't say it to her, but I'm going to go with cycling.

I put in a short day at work ... short meaning about six hours. It's a far cry from the previous six days, where 10 hours was starting to seem like an easy shift. My boss took a vacation and I've been in charge of the whole crazy operation since last Saturday. Thus, "Hell Week." I was working 10 or 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. every day - seven days of 10-13 hour shifts. Stress-filled, high-octane shifts at that. The kind of shifts where there's not even time to eat, and even bathroom breaks were so limited that I waited until my eyes were watering and I couldn't possibly hold it any longer even if the building was on fire. I was getting calls from the production department at 1 a.m. I was still trying to wake up at an early enough hour to have time to exercise. Now that it's all over, finally all over, I can look back at this past week with some sense of accomplishment, like a semi-successful endurance race. Agonizing, but, because it doesn't last forever, ultimately rewarding. I'm glad it's over.

After work, I spent 30 minutes trying to wrench my road bike back into some form of working condition. I haven't ridden this bike since early fall, when I turned my Karate Monkey into a skinny-tire touring bike and no longer had a need for this creaky old thing. I received this bike back in 2004 as payment for some writing work I did for the IBEX Bicycles Web site. It retailed back then for about $600. I've probably put something in the range of 15,000-18,000 miles on it with very few replacement parts (my Karate Monkey, on the other hand, is exactly one year old and facing the replacement of nearly everything. Pugsley at age two and a half has had two total makeovers.) Roadie, however, just gets more and more decrepit every year. I changed the tires, threw on some old platform pedals (my toes can't handle the clipless shoes yet), adjusted the brakes, greased the chain and made small shifter adjustments, tried to bend the fenders in a place where they wouldn't rub the tires, and took off down the road. Without even trying, I was suddenly blasting down the North Douglas Highway ... 20 mph steady, amping up to 25 many times although dropping to 15 up the hills. It still felt like I had a small motor attached to the rear wheel. I could hardly believe it. I pounded up Eaglecrest Road at 7-8 mph (I'm usually going 4-5 mph on my Pugsley and Karate Monkey), and was home from a 27-mile ride in a little more than an hour and a half. Geoff came back from his run as I was hosing the bike down.

"Holy cow, this bike is super fast!" I gasped as Geoff ran up.

"That bike is piece of crap," he said.

I propped it up lovingly and wheeled it back in the closet. How great of a season is it when you can snow bike in the morning and road bike with actual skinny wheels in 43-degree air in the evening? That's Break Up.

More early morning fun

Date: April 1 and 2
Mileage: 27.1 and 30.3
April mileage: 57.4
Temperature upon departure: 31 and 29

Power day at Eaglecrest! I didn't climb up there with the intention of riding the mountain, nor did I really have the time, but I did have the Pugsley, and a clear view of four inches of fresh snow swept over a firm base. Some conditions are just too perfect to resist.

Amazing how five minutes of a swooping, weightless, white-silent powder blast can absorb all the malaise of a 12-hour work day. I'm going to try to get up at 6:30 tomorrow.

Escaped for a couple hours

I oozed out of bed at 7:35 a.m. Cough, cough, coffee, coffee. I know it’s not early to some. It’s early to me.

Cranked up the hill at 8somethingish. Still early. Got a little overeager with the shifting. Snapped my chain clean off. Hopped off the bike, turned around. Power walked, jogged, ran toward the house. It was the first time I'd run at all in more than a month. The cold wind tasted like maple syrup. Toes ached a little. Time ticked onward.

Fixing a chain takes too long so I swapped out my bikes. Pugsley doesn't have a front fender because the front rack gets in the way. I changed into my plastic jacket i.e. "wearable tarp" and braced for the slush fest.

But new snow and sunlight ... nowhere in the warm spring world does a better combination exist.

On days like this, it's easy to become lost in the shadows and light. Sometimes I feel like I'm dissolving into a painting, where each movement becomes a brush stroke, dramatic and smooth, a rolling creation of flawless art. Creative cycling. That is what I do. And when time squeezes in, stretches back out, moves farther away from winter, it's what I'm left with. It's what I remember.

Ahhhhh ...

Spring face.

Hell week

Date: March 28 and 29
Mileage: 31.1 and 20
March mileage: 312
Temperature upon departure: 35 and 33

I'm in the midst of a crazy busy seven-day span at work. 12-hour days and everything (and I figured out, factoring in recent company-wide pay cuts and an otherwise static weekly salary, that my big promotion is currently netting me something in the range of $2.46 an hour.) Since I pretty much only do three things with the majority of my awake time - bike, work and blog - it's been hard to make cuts. Daily blogging, as you can see, was the first to go. Biking I can do still do with the sacrifice of some of my non-awake time. If I ooze out of bed at 7 a.m., even though I don't roll home from the office until after 11 p.m., I can still ride my bike and/or go to the gym in the morning. This is the part where I can't help but laugh at the humor in a situation that has me - me of all people - sampling the life of a stressed-out workaholic. It's enlightening, really ... in a "It's A Wonderful Life" sort of way ... without the big jar of money at the end ...

Since the blogging has to suffer, I thought I'd just throw in a few quick updates.

1. My book is now available electronically on Amazon Kindle for the low low price of $5.59.

2. By popular demand, mostly from real-life friends, I recently created a four-week frostbite recovery update with pictures. I buried it in the archives to protect the squeamish, so DO NOT CLICK HERE if you do not want to see photographs of dead-looking toes.

3. I have a very exciting announcement to make: Up in Alaska is holding its first-ever product giveaway! Up for grabs is a brand new Olympus Stylus Tough-8000 camera: 12 megapixels, shockproof, waterproof, and lots of new fun. It even has a "beauty" feature that is basically an in-camera Photoshop function that has been programmed to erase ugly boils and blemishes from skin. Sadly, this feature does not work on dead-looking toes. But stay tuned for the camera giveaway contest, which I hope to post within the next week.

4. Since this upcoming summer is to be my "Summer of Bikepacking," expect cool new gear posts in the coming weeks as well.

5. Being under so much job pressure has created a rapid day-to-day swing in my moods and ambitions, until I'm not sure what I want to do. But I refuse to collapse under the weight of "economy guilt." There's just too much joy in simplicity, and the greater the amount of external pressure, the easier it is to forget that I already live an untethered life.

Embracing the snain

Date: March 26 and 27
Mileage: 21.3 and 55.4
March mileage: 255.9
Temperature upon departure: 34

I went to the doctor again Thursday, and am now feeling confident enough in the durability of my toes to start venturing out for some longer days of exercise. The weather, however, didn't have the same ambitions. 34 degrees with intermittent snow and rain ... actually snowing one minute, raining the next, repeat. In Juneau, we call it snain. It's even uglier than its name, and uglier still to try to ride a bike in. Gooey slush erupts from the road in a geyser of moisture that even the best mountain bike fenders can't contain (and I have to use a mountain bike just to plow through the thick slop) Meanwhile, moisture falls in cold streams from the sky. Imagine straddling a cold-water geyser in a downpour. That's what biking in snain feels like. It's impossible to stay dry.

But I've actually figured out a great system for my feet. It only took seven layers (nine including the bandages), but I think I've actually found a way to keep my toes relatively dry (with the exception of trapped sweat, which is closer to damp than the swimming-in-a-slush-pond soaked that my feet usually are after a snain ride): Loose nylon sock to hold sweat somewhat away from the toes, loose vapor barrier sock, huge calf-high wool sock, tights stretched over that, sandle, waterproof overboot, and double-layer rain pants pulled over the top to keep water from seeping in. Dare I say such a setup can keep my feet dry indefinitely? It certainly seems that way after five hours in the slush geyser. Can't say that at all about the rest of my body.

Mostly based on the weather, I had decided to spend the weekend venturing forward in moderation. Riding in snain for anything longer than two hours is miserable, and working out at the gym for anything longer than two hours is miserable. But do both in the same day, and you have a four-hour day that is definitely tolerable. That was my plan. It went well yesterday. I kept my feet dry and I started reading a bad book (why is it that so many bike touring books are nearly unreadable? As in, "I ate this pie, and it was good, and then I rode up this hill, and it was hard." How are all these books getting published? ... said the self-publisher.)

Anyway ... two hours of riding followed by two hours at the gym was the plan today as well. I rode out toward North Douglas but quickly found myself in two to four-inch deep glop. Cars were swerving all over the road and I was having a tough time riding a straight line myself. I turned around to seek out something with a semblance of pavement, and started north toward the Valley. I was riding strong with a tailwind, walking all of the snow-covered bike paths, and actually feeling pretty good. I decided to push on a little longer than two hours, took the long way around Mendenhall Loop, hammered against the pounding headwind, jogged the unrideable bike paths, and had to stop at the Breeze Inn for a Snicker Bar and Gatorade because I was pretty severely bonked and wasn't carrying any food. Then, with sugar coursing through my blood, I decided to tack on another extra 10 miles of slow slush riding out to Thane before finally heading home. And just like that, a planned 20-mile ride became 55. I arrived home at 4 p.m., having left a little after 11 a.m. and telling Geoff I would be back at "1 at the latest."

"I was starting to get worried about you," he said. "I thought you had to be hurt or broken down or something, because there's no way you stayed out that long because you were actually enjoying yourself."

I looked at him, with my polar fleece jacket and rain pants dripping brown water onto the linoleum, waterlogged mittens wadded up in my hands, wet hair clinging to the clammy skin on my neck, socks pretty much comprising the only dry piece of clothing on my body, and I just smiled ... because I had been enjoying myself.

Getting back in shape is hard

Date: March 25
Mileage: 35.2
March mileage: 179.2
Temperature upon departure: 33

Yeah, I'm ultra-busy at work right now and, OK, I still have frostbite on my toes, but I really have to get this bike thing going again. No more sitting at my computer with my foot up. No more sleeping until 9 a.m. If I am going to work myself up to the best biking shape of my life, I am going to have to trim the fat ... in more ways than one.

I was in pretty good bike shape a month ago. OK, I let it slide a little after that January trip to Hawaii, and in February I did a lot more hiking and swimming through waist-deep snow to prepare for the pushathon I was expecting the Iditarod Trail Invitational to be (I was right about the pushathon; I just happened to miss the bulk of the race.) But then came the frostbite, the downtime that followed, the somewhat conservative venture back to activity, and finally, less than a week ago, getting back on the bike.

I've been doing lots of interval sessions on the elliptical trainer at the gym ... good, high-heart-rate stuff. I thought my fitness was at least late-November level. Maybe even December. I actually had an entire morning available to ride before I had to be at work today, so I planned my most ambitious ride since the pseudo-comback ... 25 miles of tempo riding with a five mile, 1,200-foot climb thrown in.

I wrapped up my bad foot in its requisite 16 layers and put the legs into high gear, rolling north. I knew I was in trouble when four miles in, with a strong wind at my back, I already felt like vomiting. I took it down a notch, but still, the pedaling felt hard. Much harder than this same stretch of road felt the 100 or so times I rode it last season. "I'm really not in very good shape," I thought as I sucked down gulps of cold air. And why would I be? It's been four weeks of crutching and limping and 90-minute elliptical spins in a 70-degree gym and chocolate chip cookies (mental health first, I always say.)

It didn't bode well for the rest of my ride, but I made it to North Douglas and turned into the wind. It really was blowing hard. Bummer. Head down, churning, feet toasty warm but hands half-frozen and locked in place (the coming of spring always makes me stop thinking about mittens until it matters), it was time to fix my blank stare on the glowing circle at the end of cave and suffer.

But I had time. I still had time. I can't afford to waste the time I have, so I turned right at Fish Creek Road, and commenced the climb. I was really hoping I was at least still a good climber. I was a good climber in Hawaii. I am not a good climber right now. At least, I wasn't today. Halfway up I had to stop for water. The effort called for something more, something energizing yet mindless, like 90s pop punk. I pulled out my iPod, flipped through the artist list until I found the Suicide Machines. When I was in 12th grade, I would listen to the Suicide Machines while I stayed up all night churning out uninspired drawings so I could fill up my portfolio with the minimum required to earn my AP Art credit. Come to think of it, my life is not so different now.

I mounted my bike again and smiled at the rush of purple noise.

"I tell you that the world's a scary place
And you tell me we're caught up in the same race
Everybody's worried that they'll never get their share
I got left behind cause I wasn't even there."

Thirty seconds later, I was well out of the pain cave, gazing at a sunlit strip of fog stretched over the mountains and singing out loud, "All my dreams were just islands in the sky! All my dreams were just islands in the sky ..."

It was a strange boost out of nowhere. My hands warmed back up. I climbed hard and shot down the hill, spraying snow and slush at 40 mph. I felt much stronger and even rode a bit faster fighting the headwind home than I had felt coasting with it on the way out. I had spent most of the morning believing I was doomed for this coming summer, but the climb reminded me that success in cycling is still, for me at least, mostly a mental battle.

But I still have a lot of work to do.

Pictures from the drive home

No time to bike or blog these past couple of days. It's not even Hell week at work yet. That's next week. Some day I hope to look back on this span of months as "perspective." Right now I'm just hoping that three years of endurance training gets me through.

At least I had a good dinner break ...

Snow line

Egan Drive

Sandy Beach

There's always tomorrow.

Feels good to come back

Date: March 22
Mileage: 38.2
March mileage: 144
Temperature upon departure: 38

I intended to stick to roads for a while, but the trail looked irresistible where it branched away from the highway. Packed by a steady flow of feet and still firm in the late morning, it cut a six-inch deep line through the snow-crusted woods. It was so narrow that both pedals scrapped against the sides - true winter singletrack - but so smooth and flowing that I could navigate my rigid-fork mountain bike with ease. I breathed in large gulps of air, tasting warmth and fresh moisture. Light from the noon sun streamed through clouds directly overhead. Spring thaw has begun.

I wove through the woods, lost in thoughts about mountain biking and summer. I dropped down the moraine and rolled onto the lake. The narrow trail became bumpier - less traveled - and the walkers had inexplicably tracked a series of tight, hairpin turns across the wide-open lake ice. In the midst of a hard maneuver, I rolled right over a minefield of deep footprints in refrozen slush. I slammed on the breaks and put my good foot down as blood rushed to my head. I felt light-headed, weak and a little bit nauseous, staring right into obvious but also obviously harmless overflow. "Great," I thought, "now I'm going to have to add overflow to my list of fears I overreact to." Also on this list are the open ocean, breaking waves, whitewater and fast-flowing currents. Come to think of it, all of my irrational fears have to do with water.

But I swallowed my overflow phobia and crossed the lake to the face of Mendenhall Glacier.

It seems inevitable that every time someone catches you taking photos of scenic spots, they are going to ask if you want a photo of yourself in front of said spot. It's a nice gesture, but I have mixed feelings about posting a photo of myself modeling the floppy bulk of footgear I need to wear these days to protect my feet from the 40-degree air.

Overflow! Spooky!

The intense blue hue of glacial ice is intriguing, but I find the texture of newly exposed layers truly fascinating. To the touch it feels rough and gritty, like cold sandstone. I like to look for fine particles of crushed sediment encased in the age-old ice, geological layers uncovered by gravity and relentless melt. The face of a glacier is almost uncanny in the way it resembles the wind-eroded rock formations of the Colorado Plateau. Ice and fire.

Can you tell I'm really excited about my monthlong sojourn to the Utah desert? Come mid-May, my blog will probably feature pictures much like the ones above, in shades of red.

Moving on

Date: March 20 and 21
Mileage: 22.1 and 26.7
March mileage: 105.8
Temperature upon departure: 41 and 35

My blog has been a bit boring as of late, so I thought I'd point everyone to some great links on the Web. First is Geoff's exclusive interview with Jeff Oatley, the winner of this year's Iditarod Trail Invitational. The second is the blog of Cory Smith, who competed in the race on skis. He offers a three-part race report full of gripping detail.

Since I returned from Anchorage, several people have asked me what my future is with the Iditarod Trail Invitational. Everybody has either assumed that my frostbite has scared some sense back into me and I'll never return, or that my failure in this year's race will only fire me up more for next year. Both assumptions are untrue. My answer is I'm "probably" not going to enter the ITI in 2010 (emphasis on probably.) This was a decision I had made several months before I froze my foot. My obsession with this race dates back to early 2006, and it's had a strong grip on me ever since. I've never quite been able to pin down the reasons why. The extreme nature of the race never really fit my personality in the beginning, but my individual growth in the past three years has been largely shaped by it. When old friends of mine asked me how I could have possibly found my way into endurance cycling, I would jokingly blame my direct descension from Mormon pioneers. My great-great-and-so-on grandparents dragged wooden handcarts across the untrammeled American plains. If ever there was a gene for enduring a good slog, I inherited it from them.

But in my mind, that wasn't a real answer for why the Iditarod Trail had such a forceful grip on my imagination. I thought I'd find my reasons by finally just lining up with the race in 2008, but my experiences on the trail largely created more questions than answers. I recall several times while slogging through the sugar snow on the Kuskokwim River, long after I had taken to holding out-loud conversations with myself, saying, "This is absurd. This is the bone-dry-desolate-frigid-middle-of-nowhere. What are you doing out here?" So I spent a good portion of the summer writing personal experience essays based on that exact question, which I eventually turned into a book. That helped usher the race out of my head for a short period of the wet, gray summer. But come September and the first hint of cold weather, I was itching to get my name on the ITI roster again.

The grip of my obsession started to loosen somewhat shortly after I made the commitment. I think part of the problem is I was having so much fun training. I started to ask myself, legitimately I believe, if having that same big scary goal at the end of it all was really necessary. I truly enjoy the focus, drive and energy involved in preparing for a race like this, but I started to wonder if I could direct that focus toward something new. As I looked to make changes in my life and "something new" became more of a possibility, I began to divide my focus, and it was freeing. In doing so, I actually became more excited about the ITI, the "grand tour" of the stunning Iditarod Trail and a tough expedition that stood to further boost my body and mind toward my new goals. From that point, I approached the race much more in "tour mode" with less pressure on myself to finish than I felt last year. But because this race still takes so much intense focus, gear prep and hard training just to survive the thing, it felt right to tell myself the the 2009 race would be my last, at least for a while. Then next winter could be more about unwinding - snowboarding more often and actually taking the time to learn to cross-country ski, and bike train to get the sub-20-hour Susitna 100 finish that I really deserve. :-)

Then came the big failure of 2009. I certainly don't blame the race for it. I'm pretty much done even blaming myself for it. Fluke things happen every day, everywhere. After I worked through the initial pain and disappointment, I was left with this inexplicable but plain sense of closure ... a sort of, "Well, this is how the ITI chapter ends. Now what?"

It's all a bit complicated and hard to explain. And of course I'll never say that I'll never go back to the Iditarod Trail. I may even end up back there next year. But for now I'm thinking dirt and sand, heat and elevation, and even though my emotional involvement so far doesn't rise to the level of obsession, I'm happy with my goals.

I've been somewhat cryptic about my summer plans thus far because the fact is I'm still injured, trying by not quite succeeding to keep a holding pattern with my pre-race fitness, and still unable to commit 100 percent. (I learned the hard way with the 2006 Susitna 100 that once something goes up on the blog, it's a done deal.) But, either way, I've put the wheels in motion to go back to the roots of my cycling obsession, which took hold years before the ITI obsession and 24-hour mountain bike races and daylong training rides in snow and ice. In the beginning, all I cared about was traveling between two far-away points on my bicycle. I look forward to being a bike tourist again. And who knows? Maybe those Mormon pioneer genes will pull me through.

First day of spring

Scattered blizzards rolled through Juneau for most of the day - near-white-outs followed by squinting windows of sunlight. I drove to the gym with a high-intensity workout in mind. I've been using my quality time at the gym to catch up on back issues of the New Yorker and read "Desert Solitaire" for the fifth time (but only the second in the 2000s.) In a sign of improvement, I couldn't focus enough to read today ... seeing red spots and streaks of white ... the colors of strength, returning.

After 97 minutes and 1,353 estimated calories burned (yeah, right), I drove home feeling tired but unfulfilled. A rolling white-out filled the air with static and dissipated as quickly as it arrived, and to the south, the Channel shimmered beneath patches of blue sky. The temperature seemed to climb by the minute. I walked toward my house, weight firmly pressed on both feet, and wondered if this was my window. I've been plotting my return to the outdoors for a week now. It will be a while still before I can hike, ski or snowboard ... sadly, all of the activities I had planned to engage in with more fervor once winter cycling season was over. But cycling, where feet are off the ground and don't do much of anything anyway, is actually an ideal activity for a bad foot.

I broached the subject with my doctor yesterday. She regarded the idea in her semi-disapproving way but said as long as I monitored myself for infection or any kind of rapid changes, I could probably do the things I felt comfortable doing, but I should start slow. I'm in wait-and-see mode with any long-term damage, and there's little I can do but wait for my cells to do their thing; my only job is to keep my foot warm, keep it dry, keep it clean, keep it circulating, and avoid doing anything that causes pain. Check.

I ate lunch and prepped my armor - one loose, moisture-wicking nylon sock, one vapor barrier sock, one heavy duty super thick wool sock, my open-toe walking sandal and a brand new pair of NEOS Explorer overboots that I just bought from Geoff. I'm in general not a huge NEOS fan. (Before someone comments about how NEOS could have saved me on Flathorn Lake, I just want to reaffirm that they wouldn't have. My own system was waterproof to my shins and very water-resistant up to my knees, but I punched through the ice into open water at least as deep as my hips, and likely deeper.) But, really, NEOS are good footwear for keeping the toes warm when it's 20 below; they're also good footwear for keeping frostbitten toes warm when it's 40 degrees and partly cloudy with scattered snow showers.

I thought an hourlong ride sounded reasonable. I took Pugsley because he's my only bike in full working order right now. The first pedal strokes up the Douglas Highway were strange - at once dully familiar and exhilarating. The sucker hole in the clouds opened wider and full-spectrum sunlight poured onto the street. I glanced up at the afternoon sun, much higher in the sky than I remember it being. "This is a good thing, getting out," I told myself. "You need vitamin D to grow new skin. Or is that bone?"

Most of the ride passed by semi-consciously, the way you can sometimes drive to the store and have no memory of how you got there. I had a lot of energy in the reserves, but mentally I held back quite a bit, and ended up slipping into autodrive. Strong but tentative. Baby steps. As it turns out, the ride was a pretty good circulation jog. I felt great afterward. When I sit in my office desk for too long, I get "dead foot" feeling, which makes me nervous. And in my experience so far, the only way to return to healthy tingling is to stand up and move. And what better place to move around than where I belong, outside?

I'm not yet ready to just go ahead and start churning out hill intervals and centuries, but I'm more optimistic now that I'll get there in the time I need to be there. Baby steps toward summer. A good way to start out spring.

Yeah spring.

This is shaping up to be a tough month

My company had another one of those employee meetings today. I'm not at liberty to say what was said in the meeting, but let's just say it was another dose of bad news, the worst yet, but certainly not the last in a heavy regiment of bad news.

We were all herded into the press room, a cavernous cement warehouse that's always quiet in the afternoon. The first among us had to wait a while. The walls dripped with anxiety and a fierce silence. Small jokes crackled and dissipated. The air had a finality to it, cold and sterile, like a morgue.

I leaned against a post, unable to stand on both feet. I felt like the one trying not to burst out laughing at a funeral. The morbid urge almost seemed logical. It seems like we're just getting what we paid for in this crazy backward economy of ours, throwing around fake money and goals until neither have much meaning. Funnier yet to be a journalist, part of the very entity trying to carve out some sense in this cold war of financial panic, only to learn we're next in line in a toppling house of cards.

So do you fall down or brace yourself to prop up what is certain to become an unbearable load? Neither option really ends well. Thus, the silence.

After most everyone had filed out of the room, my boss approached me. "Is this the part where you bolt out of the building screaming and I never see you again?" he asked.

"No," I said. "I'm not going to do that. Yet."

He looked up, toward the door. "Why?"

I smiled. "I think you know me well enough by now to know I'm not one of those people motivated by money. Good or bad."

"That's good," he said.

I shrugged. "Or bad."

"And next month?"

"I'm still going," I said. "Either way."

"But you're coming back?"

I smiled. "That seems hugely optimistic at this point, doesn't it? But, yeah, I want to be optimistic."

He shook his head. I didn't envy his expression. It's tough to be a manager in tough times. Better, I think, to be one of the tucked away rank-and-file. "You seem to have a good outlook," he said.

I laughed and held up my right foot, with its thick wool sock hanging out of an ugly medical sandal. "You know, when you have hobbies like mine, regular life never seems that bad."

We returned to our desks, grateful, as they say, to be living and breathing.

The rest will be OK. One frozen-toe step at a time.

Closer to fine

Spring is creeping closer; the sun is up until 7; and I am starting to think about riding again. It's a tough decision and I'm not sure how to make it - where do you draw the line between smartly conservative and borderline hypochondriac? At the same time, where do you draw the line between doable and reckless?

There's not a lot of sports advice about frostbite and activity out there. One might wonder how a few measly blisters on toes would even prevent a person from riding a bicycle in the first place. My problem is the injury cuts a little deeper than skin-deep. Circulation has for the most part returned to my foot, but left in its wake strange sensations and pains. The lower half of my foot is at once numb and hyper-sensitive. A burning sensation has become a constant. I still can't put much weight on my toes without streaks of pain. But I can press down flat-footed indefinitely. So I can walk with only a slight limp, but I can't negotiate much in the way of inclines.

I've been running 90-minute interval sessions on the elliptical machine at the gym most days, with a little weight-lifting thrown in. It's a good hard workout in a short time, but there's not much variety in the routine, and nothing to really help me hold my endurance. I can also press down on pedals easily. Riding a bike should be fine as long as I can keep my foot warm and completely dry. But still, I have reservations about venturing outside. One, I can't feel my toes very well and wouldn't know if they were becoming too cold. And two, it's difficult to keep my feet dry even with overboots (In my three years in Juneau, I've become totally complacent about riding around for hours in 35-degrees-and-raining weather with wet feet. I think this complacency may have contributed to me not treating my wet foot with the urgency it deserved during the race. 35 degrees with wet feet is one thing. 20 below is another.)

Right now roads are pretty dry, but more rain, snow and snow melt is on the way. Spring generally creates consistently wet riding conditions, which complicate things. I plan to discuss cycling with my doctor, but I'm worried she's going to tell me to just ride the bike at the gym (I can't handle that thing for more than 30 minutes before saddle sores set in.) I sold my bike trainer earlier this year because I was convinced I'd never be tempted to use it again, so I don't even have that as an option. I want my doctor to give me the OK to set out for six-hour rides, but I have a feeling the answer is going to be "Um, better not ..."

But really, the fact that I am even thinking about the option of riding, and not scheduling surgeries, is an optimistic boost. I'm trying to be patient, and directing my energy into my new 50-hour work week. But overwork just doesn't churn out the same rewards as working out. And I've never been too enamored with the virtue of patience. :-)

Shifting focus

No biking means I've had more down time these past two weeks. Most of that time, unfortunately, seems to trickle into the office (I've found that less biking in fact results in less photography, writing, and most of my other more fulfilling pastimes.) But I have been able to allot some of my downtime to going through my stuff and skimming off the bottom. It's amazing how a person can move to Alaska with only the things they can fit in a Geo Prism, and three and a half years later end up with rooms full of gear. But assessing some of the stuff that has survived my myriad moves has been fun and nostalgic. A random scattering of 4x6 disposable camera prints are right at the top of the fun list: things I can't believe I still have but can't imagine throwing away.

Above is a picture of me as a 17-year-old at the Hurricane (pronounced "Her'kun") Dunes, more commonly known as Sand Hollow, in southwestern Utah. The Her'kun Dunes were the ultimate escape when I was a teenager - so close to Zion National Park that they were practically in the shadow of the massive cliffs, but so unknown that we only saw the occasional local pass through on a four-wheeler. My three BFFs and I would cut out of class on some Friday in early spring, load up Liz's Chevy Cavalier with our $10 sleeping bags, spring-bar tent and enough Doritos and Dr. Pepper to stock a convenience store. We'd stream down I-15 with our feet out the window, highway jet stream drying the toenails we had just painted blue and silver, listening to the radio until the signal cut out, then popping in Tarrah's garbled Atom and his Package bootleg tape, singing to the desert wind - "I had a dream when I was in high school, that I attended the Punk Rock Academy and no one made fun of me." The Cavalier would rattle down some half-washed-out dirt road until we arrived at our retreat, where piles of red sand swept against a mottled outcropping of sandstone. We'd weave through the red-rock maze, dance barefoot in the sand, play a genuine game of hide and seek like kindergarteners on summer vacation, and launch ourselves off 10-foot cliffs because nothing below could hurt us.

After dark, the moon and marshmallows came out. We built fires out of flash-flood driftwood, juniper and sage. The savory sweet smoke reminded us we were a long way from home. Reflections of flames flickered on the ragged walls, dancing like tamarisk in a cool desert breeze. "This is the most beautiful place on Earth," I would say, shamelessly quoting Ed Abbey. We all knew it wasn't, but it was our most beautiful place, because it seemed to reach only us, and we belonged there, and it, somehow, belonged to us.

The last trip we took to the Her'kun Dunes, sometime shortly after high school graduation, we found the access road half-paved. That was the trip we learned there were plans to build a reservoir. "They're gonna drown all them dunes," a woman at the grocery store checkout told us. Much of our redrock playground had been fenced off. We spent the rest of our weekend in Zion National Park never went back. But I read in the newspaper in summer 2000 that the state started work on the dam. I remember choking up a little.

Beyond occasionally bringing up Sand Hollow Reservoir as an example of the evils of St. George golf courses, I hadn't given the Her'kun Dunes much thought in the years passed. Bigger, better places came along, places set farther away from civilization where no one could drive a four-wheeler if they tried. Somewhere along there, the landscape of my imagination shifted from red-sand deserts to wind-swept tundra. But lately, this now-inundated patch of land has been creeping back into my dreams. I can almost feel the cool sand streaming through my fingers, almost taste the air surrounding our bon fires: sage brush, hot dogs ... freedom. It reminds me that a place can be long gone and still exist in memories. And maybe, in a world where nothing stays the same anyway, that's what really matters.

I've been trying to figure out why I don't feel more depressed right now. I hit a pretty big low point for the year last March, the year I had actually completed the ITI, that one event I had dedicated an entire winter to and had a somewhat successful first go at. This year I dropped out of the ITI the first day, injured myself in the process, haven't ridden a bike or even really been outside since; I'm working longer hours, combing through my stuff with an eye and getting rid of a good bulk of it ... and yet, in all honesty, I'm not all that bummed out.

And think it's because of the desert, and a little dry cabin down on a nondescript patch of sand near Teasdale, Utah, where Geoff and I plan to spend the late spring and early part of summer. This isn't goodbye to Alaska or even to Juneau. It's just a "furlough" as my ex-Army boss calls it, to I place where I can reconnect roots and regenerate strength, and hopefully grow experiences that can never be submerged.

New skin

I started with the recumbent bike and moved to the upright bike, spinning easy circles beneath the florescent lights of the gym. Ten days isn't a long time but it feels eternal, and the dull passing of time was wearing holes into my resolve to take it slow. By the third day of my renewed gym membership, I had crawled my way over to the elliptical machine, toeless surgery boot strapped to one foot, pressing down on my heel until I hit a good glide. I poured sweat onto the plastic machine and felt like I could sprint forever. Good. Alive. Happy to be out again, even if only inside.

I took a bath and changed all my dressings so my doctor wouldn't suspect anything, but she did.

"You've been getting this wet?" she scolded me as she pressed down on the wrinkled white skin on top of my foot.

"Maybe a little sweat," I said. "Or slush. It's been nasty outside."

"You shouldn't be walking around outside," she said. "You still have your crutches?" I nodded. "Good. Did you get the aloe vera cream?"

"Oh, um, I haven't had a chance yet."

"You haven't had a chance? What have you been doing all this time? These are your toes."

"Sorry. I forgot."

She finished unwrapping my bandages to reveal the deep purple skin that has been darkening by the day. I let out a loud sigh. "It's not looking good, is it?"

"It's going to get darker," she said. She took out a small razor and poked my big toe with the tip. "Can you feel that?"

I sighed again. "No."

"Well, it feels pretty soft," she said. "I'm going to look inside."

She sliced the blade in and began carving a straight line around my dull blue toenail. She rounded the outside edge and pressed down harder.

"Does that hurt?"

"I can feel it, but it doesn't hurt."

"That's a pretty major callous you have right there."

"Thanks. I've been working on it for at least two years. It's my Juneau mountain callous."

"Yeah, well you're going to lose it." She carved out the hard yellow mass and set it aside. She moved around the back of my toe and carved along the bottom, coming up the other side of the dead toenail and meeting the edge where she started. She lifted the blister from the back of my toe and said "wow."

"What is it?" I asked. "What do you see?"

"Look at this," she said as she peeled back the purple skin. "This is moving along very quickly." Beneath the blackened veneer of frostbite was a layer of dark pink tissue, smooth and wet like the skin of a newborn.

"That's new baby skin," she said. "Completely healthy." She smiled.

I looked down at my newly pink toe and smiled back. I don't think I've ever been so proud of what my body can do.

One more rehash

Photo by Dan Bailey. Used without permission. Sorry, Dan.

I'm probably one of the few ITI participants who can stay in a race for all of 12 hours and still find a way to write 6,000 words about it. This is a column I wrote for the Juneau Empire. It seemed a good overview, so I thought I'd post it here.

"A unique cycling injury: Frostbite."

From a racer’s perspective, it was a perfect example of how a person can be on top of their game one minute and hip-deep in trouble the next.

From an adventurer’s perspective, it was a defining moment of hard reality amid months of hopeful preparations.

This is where I stood on March 1 at mile 27 of the 2009 Iditarod Trail Invitational, a 350-mile human-powered adventure race along Alaska’s most famous winter trail. It was my second year entered in the race as a cyclist. In 2008 as a rookie, I managed to land myself in plenty of troubling situations and still found a way to finish the race in a respectable time of six days, two hours. This year, I wasn’t a rookie anymore. I had made my mistakes and learned from them. I had a whole new batch of sweat-tested survival gear and a new outlook about my willpower and physical abilities. And on the afternoon of March 1, as I faced the seemingly endless trail where it launched from Knik Lake, I felt ready.

At 2 p.m., the race director yelled “go," and 45 cyclists, runners and skiers fanned over the frozen lake. Amid several inches of new snow, I joined a pack of six cyclists as we mashed our way along soft snowmachine trails over the rolling hills of the Susitna River Valley. The going was slow — 8 mph at a sprint — but the smiles were wide as clear-day sunshine and the distant peaks of the Alaska Range loomed over our heads. I felt strong and alive — exactly, I thought, how I needed to feel at the beginning of a six-day endurance adventure.

As the trails became more drifted in and our progress slowed, the pack began to break apart. I found myself out in front, walking with my bike through shin-deep snow on top of the frozen surface of Flathorn Lake. A fierce wind whipped up the powder into swirling ground blizzards, which sparkled like confetti in the orange light of sunset.

Once the sun sank behind the mountains, the wind-driven snow obscured the trail and filled in the footprints of the racers who came before me. I was gazing up at the last hints of red light on Mount Susitna when the front wheel of my bicycle dropped sharply into a trench. My instinctual reaction was to fall backward as I slid down the embankment. My right leg punched through a thin layer of ice, plunging to my hip in frigid water. My left leg twisted painfully but remained on solid ice as I swung around and clawed up the slope.

As I hoisted my bike out of the trench, I realized my handlebar had punched through the ice, soaking a handlebar mitt and a mitten that was stuffed aside. A half-eaten bag of M&Ms was missing, most likely already drifting toward the bottom of Flathorn Lake. But, most concerningly, a rush of cold water had filled by boots and was slowly soaking through to my skin.

I wavered for a few seconds of disbelief at the edge of the trench, watching slushy water gurgle up from the hole I had punched in the ice as a veneer of frost formed on my pants. The sun was gone. The temperature was already dipping below zero. The wind whipped up light snow and a deep chill, and every rational voice in my head pleaded with me to get off that lake.

I walked toward the relative shelter of the shoreline, trying to formulate a plan. I would gather wood, start a fire, take off my boot, crawl into my sleeping bag, and wait for help. But did I really need help? What if I just took off my boot, put on a pair of dry socks, and continued down the trail? But my wet boot would only wet those socks, and any exposure to the subzero air could only make things worse. What choices did I have? The tree-lined shore seemed to only move farther away.

By the time I reached shelter from the wind, 45 minutes had passed. I bent down to take off my boot, but ice had encased my entire lower leg. I couldn’t even rip apart the Velcro on my gators, let alone undo the boot’s zipper or laces.

“My boot is insulated,” I thought. “So are my vapor barrier socks. My foot feels pretty warm right now. Maybe that insulation will be enough to get me to the next checkpoint.”

As I beat more ice off my pants, another cyclist, Sean Grady, caught up to me.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“I’m,” I said, and paused. “I’m just trying to get some things together.”

“Really?” he said. Even in the soft light of my headlamp, I could tell he didn’t believe me.

“I stepped in overflow,” I finally admitted. “Back on Flathorn. I can’t get my boot off.”

“Are you going to stop here?” he asked. “Do you need me to send someone back?”

“I think I'll keep going to keep going until my foot feels cold,” I said. “If I stop, it’s because I’m worried about my foot.”

With that, we continued pushing our bikes across a blown-in section of trail. Eventually, I wandered out ahead, alone, on the Yentna River.

For the next few hours I alternated pedaling over the soft snow and running with my bike to help boost circulation in my wet foot. I wiggled my toes and continued to tell myself I was fine. But in the interim, seven hours passed and the temperature dropped below minus 20. The hard headwind never let up. The effort and my carefully planned clothing kept me warm, but fear started to creep in. “I’m still fine,” I thought. “I’m fine because I feel fine.”

At 2:30 a.m., I reached the first checkpoint, a quaint little river lodge at mile 57. I was in 14th place at the time, and still only about an hour behind most of the race leaders. I snuck in quietly and crouched next to the wood stove, chipping away at the hard ice and trying to loosen solidified pieces of footgear. When I finally worked the boot open, my foot wouldn’t budge. As I worked my wet sock down and wiggled and yanked my foot, nothing happened. My socks were frozen to the inside of my boot. And my foot, I realized with sinking dread, was frozen to the inside of my socks.

When I finally freed my foot, nearly a half hour after I sat down next to the wood stove, I found five chalk-white toes with skin as solid as wood. Even as I tried to reassure myself that they might not be frozen, I knew exactly what I had done, and I knew just how heavy a price I had yet to pay. My race was over. I faced hospital visits, longterm injury, possibly permanent disfiguration. But, worst of all, my race was over. I leaned against a stairway and fought back a rush of blood to my head. It seemed such a high cost for a simple misstep, a single instance of letting my guard down during a moment of bliss.

I took a sleeping pill and napped for about two hours before the thaw set in. My boyfriend, Geoff Roes, who was competing in the race as a runner, arrived at about 5 a.m. We moved to an upstairs room where the temperature was at least 80 degrees. Geoff had a cold that was quickly developing into something closer to pneumonia. For the next three hours, I writhed on the floor in burning, excruciating pain while Geoff coughed and sputtered and struggled to breathe. More than once I envisioned a Spartan 19th-century hospital, the kind of place where non-anesthesitized patients lay strapped to cots, screaming. Geoff and I had unwittingly set up a makeshift Iditarod triage center. It would have been somewhat comical if it wasn’t so painful.

By morning, my toes had formed deep yellow and purple blisters, Geoff could barely stand up and we both knew we needed to catch the first flight out of there. The morning burned bright and beautiful, with ocean blue sky and sparkling snow. More than anything, I wanted to return to the trail. The race seemed so simple compared to the alternative. But reality had finally set in. I had frostbite and I had to go home.

In the week since the race, I have gone over the scenario again and again. I tried to recognize what I could have done differently and how I could have better handled the situation. I’ve had to remind myself that what’s done is done, and all that matters now is moving forward. My hospital visits have netted positive results, and I will most likely be able to keep all of my toes and may someday even ride a bike again, although it’s hard to imagine as I hobble around on crutches.

“Experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want,” a friend wrote to me as I struggled through the disappointing aftermath.

“Experience is what you always get,” I wrote back. But some experiences are more valuable than others.