Singlespeed Zen

I took this photo of the San Francisco skyline from a ferry on Monday afternoon. I went to the city to meet my college friend Anna and her 3-year-old daughter, who were visiting from Utah, and this is what they wanted to do — "boat ride." It's humorous how stressed out I become about these sorts of activities. Anything involving large crowds, confinement and schedules causes anxiety. (I've long believed my own private Hell would be a lot like a Vegas-themed cruise ship. Or the Badwater Ultramarathon.) But I rallied, and it was great to see Anna again. Visits from long-time friends is one of the benefits of living near a big city. And a beautiful city at that. I'll probably never be a city person (see causes of anxiety above) but San Francisco would have to rank as my favorite urban area. Seattle and Vancouver B.C. are up there as well.

Today I went mountain biking with my singlespeed. It wasn't a structured ride, nor did I attach any agenda to it. I was just going to ride and see how I felt. I should know myself better than this by now — that if I set out for an open-ended ride it is probably going to turn into a long ride. I actually had a long list of things I was going to do today, but ...

I have a dynamic relationship with the Karate Monkey; one might call it a love-fear relationship. I love this bike because of our history, because of its blingy new parts, and because, for reasons that are mostly unknown to me, I really am a better rider on this bike. (My theories attribute the 29" wheels and the long history that increases comfort levels.) I fear it because it weighs more than a modern snow bike, retains a few old parts that have more miles on them than the average Prius, and has this frustrating singlespeed tendency to turn difficult climbs into pure pain.

And yet, there is something about this pain that is so, well, purifying. I began the ride with a ten-mile climb on pavement and gravel. I pounded up the first several steep sections until hot blood was coursing through my entire body. My legs begged for rest but the singlespeed would have none of that whining; the grade steeped and I had no choice but to respond with even more intensity. At the crux of the climb, about halfway up the mountain, I could only manage a rotation every two seconds or so. I was out of the saddle and hunched over the top tube in perfect L form, death-gripping the handlebars, gasping and sweating and probably even drooling. A roadie pedaled beside me several seconds later, took one look at my twisted face and sped up. I showed him, though, as I ended up shadowing him about 200 feet back for the entire rest of the pavement climb. I didn't chase the roadie on purpose; I was already cranking my slowest possible speed. The only way to achieve a lower gear was walking.

Similar to my run two days ago, I arrived at the top of Black Mountain feeling physically spent. But as I launched into the singletrack, a strange sort of relief washed over me. My mind went blank, my fatigue subsided, and I simply flowed with the trail. I can understand why Beat enjoys singlespeed riding so much, and also why I both love and fear it — singlespeed mountain biking is similar to running. By removing the mechanical advantage of shifting, I find myself using my body more dynamically to respond to the terrain. Huge bursts of power on climbs give way to high-cadence "speed" movements on flatter ground, which give way to gravity relief on descents (however, singlespeed bikes actually coast, as opposed to runner coasting, which runners seem to enjoy but I haven't found it to be much like coasting at all.)

I became caught up in the moment, almost mindlessly moving with the landscape. When I came to the end of one trail, I crossed the road and linked into another, which then linked into another, and before I even realized it several hours had passed and I had connected a surprisingly large loop around Skyline ridge, almost entirely on trails. And if I hadn't run out of daylight, which is what finally chased me home, I could have expanded even farther. I ended with 37 miles and 5,286 feet of climbing. Just a short ride. Oops. (Map here)

But I have a feeling the Karate Monkey will be receiving much more love in the near future.

Life on the run

To casual readers of my blog, it probably seems like I've had a busy year so far. But everything has just been build-up to my big crescendo for 2011, which happens to be most of the month of November. In the first week of November I'm traveling back to Utah for my sister's wedding and also to compete solo in the 25 Hours of Frog Hollow. Then on Nov. 16 Beat, myself and two friends are traveling to Nepal for a six-day, 155-mile stage race through the Annapurna Foothills with Racing the Planet. And right now, October, is when I have to get my body ready for all of this.

How does one train for a 25-hour solo mountain bike race followed by crazy travel sandwiched around a 155-mile, week-long run, and still be at least partially productive in other aspects of life? I wish I knew the answer to this question. For now I'm just trying the strategy of ride, run, write, ride, visit with friends in town from Utah, send-emails, write, run, blog, and maybe occasionally sleep and eat. For an unstructured person my days seem surprisingly busy.

I actually rallied for a fairly full week of training directly after my 68-mile weekend. So I settled for a more "moderate" schedule this weekend, which means I only did a 4.5-hour mountain bike ride and 3.5-hour run. On Saturday Beat and I linked up a network of trails along Skyline for a solid 35-mile ride with 5,300 feet of climbing. He rode the singlespeed to test the new shock, so he really had to work hard for every foot of elevation gain. I enjoyed the relative ease of my geared bike, but I was still encouraged by how painless the ride felt through 35 miles of steep grades and loose descents. "Riding a mountain bike is easy," I thought to myself. "This doesn't even feel like work. Just float up and coast down. I am so going to rock the 25 Hours of Frog Hollow. This is going to be awesome."

Then, on Sunday, I paid for my shameless hubris. I wanted to complete a "long" run in preparation for Nepal. I planned to climb Black Mountain, a 17-mile loop with 3,600 feet of climbing. Beat, who is still recovering from the Slickrock 100 and our ambitious singlespeed ride, joined me for the first four miles. Even when he's tired, Beat is still a significantly stronger climber than I am. I had to push hard to hold his pace up the steep trail. As I sucked down ragged gulps of air through my congested sinuses, I took small comfort in the idea that as soon as our four miles were up, the trail would get "easier" and I could run "slower."

But I was wrong. After four miles the trail does not get easier, it turns to singletrack and becomes even steeper. If I wanted to run at all, even just to shuffle at a pace only slightly faster than walking, I had to push my effort to the redline. My ragged gulps of air turned to desperate gasps, sweat streamed from my pores in full shower mode, and the 74-degree air felt unbearably hot. But I was going to *run* the *whole way* because I was *running* so just harden up and ...

I'm not sure how I actually made it to the peak. I'm suspicious that I may have even blacked out for a half mile, but when I staggered onto the final crest I had a strong urge to just curl up in a fetal position next to a rock and maybe if I was lucky I would die quickly. I'm only exaggerating slightly; I really haven't felt that bad during a workout in a long while. I was six miles into a 17-mile run.

This is the part where I knew the learning experience would begin, and I knew it would be painful. I began shuffling down the steep trail and developed a side stitch almost immediately. I was already breathing badly through my congested nose; the side-stitch made oxygen even more scarce. I continued to gasp and shuffle on a downhill grade that I can normally almost coast. It was bad. I was in pain. Running is hard.

It took four slow miles for the side stitch to finally loosen its grip. By then I had reached a rolling section of trail, gentle climbs and more steep descents. This is the part where my IT band started to tighten and hurt. By now, I was just angry. Running is hard. Why is running so hard? When I ride a bicycle, even if the ride is long and difficult, it's almost never painful. Running, even when my route is short and easy, almost constantly is. This is the part where fellow cyclists nod their heads in agreement and say, "Yes, this is why humans invented bicycles, so they wouldn't have to run." I'm inclined to agree. And yet — in my own strange universe where struggle and pain travel arm-in-arm with reward and bliss — this is what makes trail running so appealing to me. Running is difficult. It's so disproportionally difficult that I can't simply accept the difficulty at face value. I want to accept the challenge, embrace it, and run with it, so to speak.

So today I suffered for the entirety of 17 miles and I wasn't even fast, even relative to myself, nor did I take a single photograph. But I did it, and I learned some things. And perhaps when I'm in a really amazing place like Nepal, I'll be able to take what I've learned and run that extra mile, the one I didn't think was even possible. After all, that's what running is about.

The many makeovers of Kim

After the sun set, the entire sky turned a pale shade of pink. I made it home just before darkness set in, after another lap around Steven's Creek Canyon. The numbers are good for a solid mountain bike workout — 25 miles, 3,200 feet of climbing on a mixture of pavement, gravel and singletrack. I've been aiming for intensity during climbs this week, but my head cold and its accompanying congestion has made that difficult. I've also found I have no confidence on the descents. I'm beginning to wonder if I'll ever get that back.

I was using a rag to peel off chunks of dust-and-grease paste from the drivetrain of my Rocky Mountain Element when Beat rolled outside on the Karate Monkey, sporting a brand new Rockshox Reba XX fork. "You already put that on?" I was surprised. He only told me yesterday he even ordered it, and when I left for my ride it hadn't even arrived. Beat's been talking for a while about putting a new fork on the Karate Monkey. The old Reba Race, which I bought used on eBay before putting untold thousands of my own miles on the thing, had finally given up all together, and no rebuild was going to save it. Beat seems to prefer singlespeeding to all other types of cycling, so he wanted to fix what is becoming his bike (which is fine, as I've commandeered a couple of his bikes for my own.) Still, the Reba XX looked almost comical on the rusty old steel singlespeed. Sort of like putting a souped-up new engine in a Geo Prism (RIP, Geo.) Beat promised that someday we'd put the fork on a better 29'er. And yet I think I prefer my Karate Monkey. She's been such a good bike. And she's been through so many incarnations in the past three years.

She was just a wee frame when she arrived in Juneau in March 2008. I didn't really want a new mountain bike. I had been perfectly happy with my Gary Fisher Sugar. But my then-boyfriend coerced me into a Surly Karate Monkey, reasoning that I'd need a hardtail 29er if I ever wanted to ride the Great Divide Race (to which I just laughed. "Like I'm ever actually going to do that.")

I mined eBay and Performance Bicycle for parts, trying to build it up as cheaply as possible. The Reba fork, which cost about $400 used, was my one conceit. The rest of the components were fairly low budget. I think she came in under $1,500. Karate Monkey seemed like an unwieldy name, so I shortened it to Kim. This picture was taken just before her test run in April 2008, through a typical Juneau drizzle. She would never be so shiny again.

Kim and I hit it off immediately, and she proved to be a capable mountain bike. Here we are at the 24 Hours of Light in Whitehorse, Yukon (first woman and second overall. One of our proud moments together. There would be many more to come.)

As autumn approached I decided the swap out the Reba for the rigid fork that came with the frame, switch to skinny tires, slap on my Surly Pugsley's bike bags and create a touring bicycle for my 370-mile ride around the Golden Circle. The set-up worked beautifully. Nighttime temperatures dropped into the teens on that trip and I was grateful for every stitch of warm clothing and the winter sleeping bag that I brought.

As winter deepened, the studded tires went on, and Kim became an ice bike.

Then, in 2009, we set out to do what what Kim was born to do, which is ride the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route during the 2009 Tour Divide. I can't really gush enough about how beautifully Kim performed throughout that 2,740-mile race, despite weather-caused mechanicals (failed freehub, worn brake pads and general drivetrain wear and tear were my only immediate problems. I didn't even have to change a flat tire.) I realize this mostly had to do with luck more than it had to do with Kim's build or (lack of) maintenance. But wow, lucky me!

During my short-lived stint in Anchorage, Kim served a short-lived stint as a rigid mountain bike-slash-randonee bike. Here we are during our first (and only) randonee, the Denali Classic —a gravel 200K that actually was 145 miles.

After we moved to Montana, I acquired my Rocky Mountain Element, but continued riding Kim on a regular basis when I deemed the ride called for 29" wheels, which was fairly often.

Several months later, my friend Dave stripped off the aging drivetrain and converted Kim to a singlespeed. I continued to ride my Karate Monkey nearly as often as I rode the Element, when I deemed the ride and/or workout called for a singlespeed (and then throughout the winter, when all rides called for ice.) The Element hung from my wall unused for five months but Kim just kept chugging along.

Here's Kim the Singlespeed getting some redwood singletrack action in California. Before I moved here, I considered selling the bike but couldn't bring myself to give her up. I'm glad I didn't, because she seems to have become Beat's favorite bike, and now with a brand new fork and relatively new brakes, she's all ready for another trip down the Great Divide. Long live Kim!