One week of spring, and already I miss winter

Date: Feb. 10
Mileage: 34
Time: 2 hours, 13 minutes
Weather: 37 degrees, mostly cloudy, SE wind 5-10 mph
Details: Tempo ride, intensity 70-90 percent; circuit around Mendenhall Valley area because that was where the sun was shining.
Note: Legs felt tired from the get-go, in a good way. More biking this week than in a long time.

Dear Mr. Marmot,

I bet you were pretty excited when the Alaska Legislature gave you your own day. Now, every Feb. 2, schoolchildren across the state are going to wish each other a "Happy Marmot Day." Frankly, I was excited about this, too. Passing the Marmot Day bill was about the only tangible thing the Alaska Legislature did in 2009. But I am not here to discuss politics. I am here to discuss winter.

As you may know, Feb. 2 was traditionally considered Groundhog Day, and still is Groundhog Day in the other 49 states (you know, “Outside,” that place we Alaskans generally avoid unless it is February and we have booked tickets to Hawaii.)

But what you may not know is that Punxsutawney Phil, the Pennsylvania groundhog famed for his winter weather forecasts, who has lumbered out of his den on Feb. 2 for who knows how many decades, did in fact still lumber out of his den on Feb. 2, and did in fact see his shadow, and did in fact forecast six more weeks of winter.

Now that forecasted winter is playing out across many of the 48 states (i.e. “Outside” without Hawaii, where it is never winter.) Just Wednesday, the second big blizzard in less than a week buried the most populous stretch of the East Coast under nearly a foot of snow. Conditions in Washington, D.C., were so bad that even plows were advised to get off the roads. They are calling it “Snowmageddon.”

And I am jealous.

You see, Mr. Marmot, since Feb. 2, we here in Southeast Alaska have seen nothing but spring: dry roads, wispy clouds, nearly-blue skies and temperatures in the 40s. Sure, I am enjoying riding my road bicycle during the winter. Yes, it is pleasant to wear a single base layer when playing outdoors in February. I think I am even starting to get a tan on that crescent of skin where my nose and cheeks poke out of my balaclava.

But I miss the snow.

This is Alaska, Mr. Marmot. We like to think we’re special. We like to think we’re tough. We like to think winter in this state was custom-designed to challenge our tenacity and steel our pioneering strength. But this winter has been different. This winter, we strong Alaskans braced to walk on nails and you handed us a cake walk.

Here in Juneau, our February snowfall to date is .2 inches. That’s not 2 inches, Mr. Marmot, that’s point-two. In other words, a fraction not even worth bothering with. Our seasonal snowfall has only been 50 inches, which means we’re currently below Baltimore, Philadelphia ... we’re now below Washington, D.C., for crying out loud. D.C.! The only place where lawmakers are more inept than they are in Alaska.

But I digress. They gave you the day — the special, winter-weather predicting day. Now I think you should do something about it. So here is what I propose. I will come to your den up on Mount Meek. Don’t pretend I didn’t see your furry face up there a couple weeks ago, poking out of the rocks at a time when you were supposed to be deep in hibernation. So, yes, I will come to your den with a big spotlight. Then, when you poke your head up again for another breath of fresh, warm air, I will blast you with so much light, you will have no choice but to see your shadow. And that will be that. Snow will fall. Winter will return. And all will be right in this crazy, new, Marmot Day world.

Punxsutawney Phil gets it.

When are you going to get on board?

Goodbye to good shoes

Date: Feb. 9
Mileage: 21
Time: 1 hour, 31 minutes
Weather: 35 degrees, overcast, SE wind 10 mph
Details: Recovery ride; intensity 60-80 percent
Note: Lots of lightly sore muscles in the legs today

Last Thursday, I walked to a Dumpster in Banff and threw away my favorite pair of shoes.

I didn't want to. It's just that Canada has this irritating no-carry-on rule for flights into the United States, and I didn't have room in my checked bag to take them home. Plus, friends in Juneau had been urging me to throw them away for a while. But I wouldn't. Sure, the shoes were more than four years old. And yeah, they had more than 1,000 hiking miles on them, even more cycling miles, an untold number of soakings and freezings and days left out in the sun. Yes, they were cheap to begin with. Yes, they were two sizes too big. And yes, they were falling apart. But I loved those shoes. I trusted them. I didn't want them to grow old and die.

I am not much of a gear snob. In fact, I am the antithesis of a gear snob. I am a gear-a-phobe. My gear acquisition usually follows these lines: I develop a new hobby. New hobbies require new gear. Begrudgingly, I go out and find some entry-level piece of gear to meet my needs. Since I have disliked shopping since the days my mother dragged me into fabric stores for hours on end, I don't generally spend much time researching the different options. I buy the first thing I find. Then I use it. Then I use it a lot. Then, slowly, I come to appreciate it, and trust it, and even love it. And even as I become better at my hobby, more knowledgeable of the options out there, and more dialed in my needs, I refuse to give up the entry-level gear because I have become emotionally attached to it. The gear and I have been through a lot together. We have had many adventures. We grew into the hobby together. I can't imagine the hobby without this specific piece of gear.

Take my road bike for example. Yes, that is a road bike. It's actually a "light touring" bike, which I've owned since early 2004. It's an entry-level bike - worth about $600 when it was new. I have put lots and lots and lots of miles on this bike. It has been on a few long tours. The fenders were a Juneau addition, as were the fork bottle mounts. That is its original seat (yes, I realize it's tilted back in the photo.) Most of the other parts aren't original. I even had the wheels rebuilt at one point (new hubs and spokes, same rims.) Every year, I tell myself I am going to get rid of this bike and buy a "real" road bike. And every year, I find excuses not to. Last fall, I pulled it out of the apartment building basement where I expected it to be buried forever, and took it to my friend Dan for yet another overhaul. He replaced most of the drivetrain and coated all of the many rusty spots in battleship-gray primer. Thanks to an unseasonable warm spell that has left the pavement ridiculously dry, I've been riding my road bike all week. It feels so fast and light and comfortable. I can't imagine what ever made me want to give it away.

And then there's the shoes. They're a pair of North Face winter hiking boots, men's size 9, which I bought in 2005 specifically to use as winter cycling shoes. That's why they're two sizes too big - to accommodate several extra pairs of warm socks. They're also insulated with Thinsulate and were for the most part waterproof during their heyday, which was a long time ago. This is a picture of me wearing those boots before the 2006 Susitna 100. This picture makes me laugh out loud on so many levels. I don't even know where to begin - there's the fact I'm starting a 100-mile snow-trail race with a full-suspension, 26" Gary Fisher Sugar with 2.1" studded tires. There's the overloaded seatpost rack that scraped the rear tire on every single snowmobile mogul. There's the handlebar bag attached to the rear shock, stuffed with Power Bars that froze solid (and yes, the chemical handwarmers I brought to help thaw them inside the bag did nothing.) There's the stuff sack strapped to the handlebars, filled with who-knows-what. There's the fact I'm wearing rain pants and an old Burton snowboarding coat into a winter backcountry race in Alaska. And then there's the shoes. After my badly chosen food left me starving and my badly chosen clothing left me drenched and my badly chosen bike left me walking through slush the entire last ~30 miles of the race, the shoes worked. Out of all of that gear, they were the one thing I stuck with. I since bought a burlier pair of winter boots for cycling, but these became my go-to winter hiking boots for snowshoeing, frozen-root-scaling, sloppy-slush-slogging and crampon trekking alike.

And now they're gone.

My hiking companions will be so proud of me. But I feel lost. What will I hike in now?

Why I'm not so good at training

Date: Feb. 8
Mileage: 36
Time: 2 hours, 8 minutes
Weather: 39 degrees, partly cloudy, ESE wind 5-10 mph
Details: Interval training; intensity 60-95 percent
Note: Still lots of ice on the road beyond the shrine.

My future TransRockies partner, Keith, recently started a rigorous training program under the direction of an actual, flesh-and-blood coach. When he asked me if I'd ever consider working with a coach, I said, "No, because eventually the coach would tell me I needed to stay inside on a sunny day, and that would be the end of that."

Not that I'm against coaching in any way. I recognize that if athletes want real results, they need to treat fitness like a science, and that involves doing things they'd rather not do, at times they'd rather not do them. It's just that I have this thing called a "job," which already tells me where I need to be and exactly when to be there, five days a week. I'm not about to take up a second "job" that revolves around bicycle racing and threatens to ruin one of the things in life I truly love - riding bicycles. The day something stops being fun or rewarding is the day I quit, cold turkey. (This ideal has also led me to quit several of my past jobs.)

That said, I am trying to establish a little more of a structured fitness routine under my own rather broad and unscientific terms. Today I planned to do something involving intervals. I had scheduled a trip to the gym, where the handy settings on the elliptical machine help me specifically monitor the time, power output and even heart-rate estimates of each interval. But when I woke up, the sun was trying ever so slyly to peek out of the clouds. Winds were light. Temps were in the high 30s, promising to hit the 40s. Basically, it was April outside. The kind of day where I would definitely tell my imaginary coach to step aside so I could go have some fun.

But I still wanted to do my intervals. I'm not a watch-watcher, so when I'm outside, my interval training is about as unscientific as it comes. Basically, I pick a single song, generally in the two- to three-minute range, with which to ride my intervals. This song is usually from the pop punk days of my youth, which means it's short enough to sprint to, snappy enough to keep the pace, and obnoxious enough that after the third or fourth playing, I am going to purposely enter the pain cave just to block it out. I set my mP3 player so I can sprint to that song, recover to another random song, and then repeat the sprint song. Today I listened to "Cool Kids" by Screeching Weasel.

At first, the interval training went really well. I was sweating and gasping and my heart was pounding into my throat. Then, a pretty song like "All the Trees of the Field Will Clap Their Hands" by Sufjan Stevens would come on and I'd exhale long and slow, shoot a couple of snot rockets, and pedal into the happy daze of post-interval endorphins. Then, like a foghorn out of a thick mist, Screeching Weasel would launch into their namesake rant and "na na na nana nana na nana" - suddenly I was rocketing into clear blue air.

I was supposed to do this for 30 minutes (after a 10-minute warm up) and turn around for a cool-down. But the farther I pedaled north, the more the sky opened up, and the more alive I felt. I felt as awesome as the Cool Kids in the song that wouldn't leave me alone, but rather than become annoyed with the noise, I relished in it, craved it, and pumped harder every time the track started anew. My veins gushed molten lava; my lungs breathed fire and the sun cast a stark shadow directly in front of me. Time seemed to stand still, but what actually happened is nearly an hour passed, and I found myself all the way out at the construction zone near Eagle Beach, feeling fairly exhausted.

Plus, I was 18 miles from home, it was 11:55 a.m., and I really needed to be home by 1 p.m.

Did I mention that I haven't done any speed work all winter long?

The result was I really bonked while I was still a fair distance from home, but I couldn't let off the pace. So I struggled and my head spun and there was no more Screeching Weasel to help me along (I was definitely too annoyed with that song to put up with it at that point.) Sometimes the fog would sink in and I'd find myself limping up the road at about 10 mph, so I'd shake my head around like a driver trying not to fall asleep at the wheel before amping it up again.

Definitely more than a bit too much, too soon. But I have to admit, it was fun while it lasted.

I wonder what my coach would say?

Good thing I don't have one.

Food is fuel

Date: Feb. 7
Mileage: 67
Time: 4 hours, 47 minutes
Weather: 43 degrees, rain showers, southeast wind 10-20 mph (felt like spring. Thanks El Niño!)
Details: Distance road ride on the "southern circuit:" North Douglas, Thane, Back Loop Road; intensity 50-80 percent
Note: Left knee tendons are feeling a lot better but right knee had some light patellar pain while riding into the headwind. Been a while since I felt that.

Endurance athletes tend to develop very literal interpretation of the “food is fuel" mantra. This is especially true of touring cyclists, whose access to different varieties of food becomes more and more limited as they travel through isolated areas and tiny towns. Eventually, quality and nutrition are relegated to the sidelines as energy-starved cyclists go on an indiscriminate calorie hunt.

When this happens, these cyclists will find themselves standing in gas stations, questioning why they should spend $1.75 on an organic, vitamin-fortified Clif Bar when they can get the same calorie punch (and similar fat-protein-carb levels) in a much smoother, much tastier, 75-cent Snickers Bar. When these cyclists start entering multiday races, the situation deteriorates even further, until they’re questioning why they should bother stopping for dinner when four Snickers Bars will provide all of the energy in a fraction of the time.

I found myself buried deep in this rationale during the Tour Divide. By the time I left Grants, New Mexico, I had already lost nearly 15 pounds and was running a deepening daily calorie deficit. Before leaving town, I stocked up with two days worth of supplies, because I didn’t expect to reach another food resupply before Silver City, about 275 miles away. One of the supplies I bought was a pound of Sour Patch Kids. This portion of my “gummy snack” food group was supposed to last two days. I ate a breakfast of pastry, orange juice, fruit smoothie, banana and coffee at the last gas station out of Grants and set out toward Pie Town. It didn’t take me long to crack into those Sour Patch Kids. I continued to mindlessly munch on them until about 15 miles outside of Pie Town, a mere five hours later, when I hit the bottom of the bag. In the matter of a single morning, I had consumed an entire pound of Sour Patch Kids. Do you know how many calories are in a pound of Sour Patch Kids? Sixteen hundred! Guess how many grams of sugar? Three hundred and thirty! That’s a third of a kilogram! Of pure sugar!

I still ate a huge lunch in Pie Town, including a piece of banana creme pie and two cans of Pepsi. I don’t even remember what I ate during the afternoon, but I remember sitting down that night at my campsite to a dinner of two huge cookies, a bag of almonds and dried cherries. And that was just one day. Needless to say, I came home from the Tour Divide very, very addicted to sugar.

Kicking this addiction has been my continuing battle ever since, especially because my life revolves around convenience foods. I genuinely do not have time to cook, plus I don’t like to cook, and I’m not very good at it as well. But my “food as fuel (and only fuel)” mantra has gone too far. I actually still eye king-sized Snickers Bars at the grocery store and think, “Well, that could work for dinner.”

I am not and never will be a food snob; I require about as much culinary variety in my diet as my cat. But I do want to eat at least somewhat healthy, and I want to stop the guilty mid-day gummy bear binges (and the resulting extra pounds now that my calorie deficit has become a surplus.) So my goal from this point on is to drastically reduce my candy intake, limit my simple carb intake, and eat a lot more fresh raw fruits and vegetables (which are already a pretty heavy staple of my diet.) I get around the whole cooking nuisance by making a lot of gigantic salads and veggie-laden sandwiches; using tuna, surimi, black beans, cottage cheese, sushi and hummus as sources of protein; buying only whole-grain bread and tortillas and trying to stick to low-sugar cold cereals (even though my favorites are flavored Cheerios and Honey Bunches of Oats); and snacking on yogurt, flaxseed tortilla chips, fresh salsa and fruit.

If you have any other ideas for relatively healthy, no-cooking-required, can-be-eaten-on-the-go foods, I'd love to hear them. I want to be healthy and strong for White Mountains 100! Hot food is overrated anyway. But Sour Patch Kids will always be little morsels of heaven.

Leaving Banff

I had a great last couple of days in Banff. The weather, which had been stellar all week, really opened up on Wednesday and Thursday with blue skies and temps that actually climbed above freezing (as Canadians call it, "Zero.") My long streak of visiting Canada amid the best weather possible continues. I have this theory that Canada loves me.

On Thursday, Keith and I skied up the Chickadee Valley.

It's been a while since the Banff-Jasper region had much fresh snow, and the conditions included about two inches of fresh powder surrounding a slick, well-packed skin track. It was winter singletrack at its best. I continued to pine for my Pugsley. My trip to Banff was intended to ignite new passion for skiing, but I just happened to visit during a week when the snow biking couldn't have been better.

The skiing was pretty good too, though. A little more than a decade ago, when I was still a teenager, a friend asked me what my own personal heaven would look like. I replied, "Canyonlands with snow." (Canyonlands is national park in Utah, famous for its towering redrock cliffs and large desert plateaus.) In Chickadee Valley, I caught a glimpse of my original vision of Jill Heaven.

Later that day, I hiked to the top of Sulphur Mountain to kill a couple hours before the night's planned all-you-can-eat sushi bender and the long drive to the Calgary airport.

Sulphur Mountain is a special place for me. I first walked to the top on June 10, the morning after I arrived in Banff ahead of the 2009 Tour Divide. I was a mess of emotions, and a large part of me did not want to start the race. But as I stood on the Sulphur Mountain observation deck and looked out over the southern horizon, I felt this strong sense of peace that the Tour Divide was the right thing to do. This is that same view, eight months later. Mount Rundle is on the left and the Spray River runs down the valley on the right. The Great Divide Mountain Bike Route follows that river south.

I really had a great time going back to Banff, visiting the incredible people I met down there during the summer, revisiting special places cast in the blue light of winter, learning new skills and discovering new spaces of almost celestial beauty and fun. Thanks so much to Leslie and Keith for being great hosts, friends and teachers. (Click on the link to check out Leslie's blog. She's a distance trail runner and her blog awesome.) Banff really is a little slice of paradise.

Moving on ...

I'm back in Juneau and have a total of six weeks to train before the start of the White Mountains 100, a snow-bike race in Fairbanks. I used to use this blog as a training log to track my mileage and hours, but quit doing that shortly after I got frostbite during the 2009 Iditarod Trail Invitational and became a bit ambivalent to training. My plan for the next six weeks is to narrow my focus and pay more attention to the specifics of my workouts - both riding and hiking - so I'm going to start tracking again. I may not have enough time to really dial in my fitness, but at least I can push my own physical limits up to the event. So, for today's ride:

Date: Feb. 6
Mileage: 35
Time: 2 hours, 3 minutes
Weather: 39 degrees, light rain, southeast wind 10-15 mph
Details: Tempo road ride to Herbert River and back, intensity 65-90 percent
Note: Tendons behind left knee still sore from skiing, otherwise felt strong.

High country

This is a place that I love.

It's the corner of the Continental Divide, where Atlantic meets Pacific meets Arctic. "The apex," one might say, the center; the place where life can flow in any direction - a single drop of water, a fractal flake of snow, a moment in time. It's near here, on the Columbia Icefield, in the Canadian Rockies.

Look East. Look West. Look North. That's opportunity. But to start at the beginning, we look up.

This is a place where few venture; a world of rock and ice and little more. Water flows down; we climb. Trees give way to a sterile moonscape of pure beauty.

This is a place where I put on my sleeping-bag coat; turn to face the frigid wind and blasts of cold. I'm a biosphere of warmth, as long as I'm moving. I huddle in my sleeping-bag coat and march strong.

This is a place where I wander; both over the snow and inside my mind. I think about the far-away places the flakes atop these pinnacles may someday reach; the Mackenzie River, the Columbia River, and Hudson Bay.

It reminds me that nothing is permanent and nothing stays the same. It helps me feel more secure with uncertainty; more comfortable. I bundle up my sleeping-bag coat and start down.

This is a place; just a place. The Triple Divide is just an idea, someone's theory, somewhere else. We're just a couple of hikers out for a stroll - somewhere high, somewhere quiet, flowing home.

Today I rode a really nice bike in the snow

Keith and I are registered as partners in this year's Trans Rockies, a mountain bike stage race that takes place in British Columbia and Alberta in August. Keith is a rep for Rocky Mountain bicycles, which means I found a way to become a sponsored racer without actually being a real athlete. Hooray! One of the perks of our team sponsorship is use of a sweet, high-end mountain bike. Today I had the opportunity to try this bike out.

These are our team bikes - Rocky Mountain Element 90s. I'm not nearly enough of a gear geek to rattle off the different parts, but they're full-suspension, 26" aluminum bikes, weigh in at about 25 pounds, and have super bomber wheels, drivetrain, shocks, blah, blah, blah. The bike is worth nearly as much as what I paid for the car I've driven for the past decade (and for what my car is worth today, I'd have to sell 10 of them to buy myself this bicycle.) Needless to say, I was itching to take it out for a ride.

Drivetrain shot! Check out those sweet platform pedals. :-)

We took them on singletrack just outside Banff. Trail conditions were ideal for a ride on a lightweight, full-suspension bike: about 2-3 inches of fluff on top of frozen dirt, with just enough crust and narrow tracks to really make things interesting. We cut through the snow and floated over hidden rocks and roots. We hammered through wind-drifts and powered up steep hills like they weren't even there. This bike is significantly lighter than both my hardtail 29" Karate Monkey and Pugsley, which unloaded weigh in at about 30 and 36 pounds, respectively. Amazing how much a difference those 10 pounds can make. You don't even miss the big wheels because you are hovering above the ground.

Not to mention shifting and braking more smoothly than you ever thought possible because you have spent so much time riding lackadaisically maintained bicycles that have lived in soggy, icy Juneau for far too long.

Of course, snow is snow, and eventually powder will steal little wheels' traction. We did get spun out on a few hills, but for the most part our ride was best of both worlds - all of the fun of singletrack riding in the summer with all of the serenity and scenery of the mountains in winter.

After our singletrack ride, we headed out to Lake Minnewanka for "resistance training." I highly recommend this workout for other "sponsored" athletes like myself. Just put three inches of wind-crusted fluff on top of glare ice and be amazed at how hard you have to work for slow progress on a flat surface.

Keith isn't usually an outdoor cyclist during the winter. It's always fun to introduce snow-biking newbies to the initial shock of how much more difficult and challenging cycling really is during the winter. And it's not the cold factor (although I have to admit conditions for us today were downright tropical - just below freezing with intermittent sun and clouds.) But, no, the biggest challenge is the stuff on the ground: snow and ice and slush. The surface is ever-changing, but the one constant of winter cycling is that there's always something waiting to trip you up. And powering over, through and around these frozen water obstacles is, in my opinion, every bit as fun as rocks, roots and sand. Seriously. Did the groundhog see his shadow today? I hope so, because I'm not nearly ready for winter ... or my vacation ... to end.