Iditarod Again, part one

Photo by Beat Jegerlehner

What does it mean, exactly, to return to the point of no return? It's not an oxymoron, but rather an inevitable cycle. For every threshold we cross — and in life, there are only a few — there remains a desire to wander back to the now-closed door and re-live the moment that everything changed. Maybe with renewed perspective, we'll finally be able to bring that jarring moment into focus and understand what it meant. And then we can turn from our threshold again, onto a beautiful new path. Like Frost's two roads in a yellow wood. We want to see what remains. We want to see what's different.

Everything changes, even memories, and yet emotions can be startlingly steadfast. Five years had passed, but there wasn't even a heartbeat separating the bewilderment of gazing through a barricade of birch trees along the shore of Knik Lake. Their shadows drew trenchant patterns on the snow, and everything beyond was still unnervingly unknown. 

Emotions were sharp but thoughts were jumbled at the start of the 2014 Iditarod Trail Invitational, with at atmosphere that was ripe for cognitive dissonance — as though a roving carnival had arrived at a mountain base camp. Temperatures hovered near freezing and the afternoon was intensely sunny, with low-angle light shimmering on the snow like a sequin carpet. Fifteen runners and forty cyclists, along with dozens of friends and family members, crowded the small parking lot of a community museum on the edge of Knik Lake. Clustered around the people was a jamboree of gear — carbon fat bikes still bearing the polish of nervous fiddling, steel fat bikes with bulging bags around their frames, sleds ranging from streamlined pulks to plastic toys with duffles strapped down by bungee cords. An enterprising hot dog vendor dragged her cart onto the snow and sold reindeer sausage and hot chocolate to lines of nervous athletes who, facing as many as four weeks on the trail, felt it necessary to force down one final pre-race meal. Few culinary experiences can match this sensation. Eating greasy carnival food and then immediately stepping onto a Tilt-A-Whirl comes to mind.

Anticipating the start of the Iditarod Trail Invitational, February 2008

The first time I started this race, in 2008, I was a child in my memory — a wide-eyed twenty-eight-year-old who had a rich imagination for possibilities but no real concept of the threshold I was about to irrevocably cross. The second time I started this race, in 2009, I was already old — perhaps too weathered and jaded for my actual experience level. My memories of 2008 held strong, and I was certain I could rewrite the story with fewer mistakes, more triumphs. In spite of this confidence, or maybe because of it, my heart never caught up to my ambition that year. Although I didn’t yet recognize the signs, my relationship at the time was failing, my job had become overwhelming, and I carried piles of dissatisfaction that I believed the Iditarod Trail could simply fix. But when I stood at the edge of Knik Lake that year, I didn’t recognize any of my pre-written script, or ambition, or hope. I saw only doom. It’s easy to say that in hindsight, knowing what I know now, but that is distinctly how I remember it — a wash of gray skies and flat light, and a feeling of undefinable dread. Within four hours, I had punched my right leg into an opening in the ice on Flathorn Lake. Within six hours, darkness plunged temperatures below minus thirty. Within twelve hours, I had serious frostbite on my right foot, and my race was over.

Anticipating the start, February 2014.

“I don’t feel any doom this year; that’s a good sign,” I told my boyfriend Beat, who was gearing up for his second attempt at the thousand-mile march to Nome. The last time I lined up beneath the banner stretched out over this frozen shoreline, five years earlier, I also stood beside my partner at the time. This is the point of no return — the reality that time is linear, and yet much about life is recycled experience. The Iditarod Trail Invitational is the kind of grueling yet addictive adventure that the same people keep returning to year after year, precisely because it can never be experienced in the same way. Those who knew the ITI would ask me why it took so long to return. Everyone else remained flabbergasted as to why I’d even return at all — I finished the race once, and then I was injured, and then I went through a break-up, and then I met someone new and wonderful, and then I moved to the warm and friendly state of California. There was no remotely rational reason why I should ever come back to drag myself 350 miles across Alaska wilderness, again.

 In many ways, an entire life cycle had passed in the five years that spanned the moment I hobbled out of Yentna Station with blackened toes, and the moment I marched back to the Iditarod starting line in shiny new Montrail running shoes. I had been old, and then broken, and then I cycled back to wide-eyed innocence. That childlike spark — and the desire to grasp onto it as long as possible — was why I was strapped to a sled this year. During my first two attempts in 2008 and 2009, I was a cyclist. I was only a cyclist. I rode bikes nearly every day of the year; I rode bikes in sleet and rain and streams of slush. I walked bikes for miles through places where it was impossible to ride, just to search for new places to ride bikes. I directed most of my disposable income toward cycling and fixated on parts and gear and shiny new components. My partner at the time was a runner, but I couldn’t relate to him on that level. Running seemed painful, slow; what was the point? No, I was not a runner. I was certain I never would be.

Life cycles have a way of masticating our assumptions, sometimes in the most surprising ways. I think I know myself, and then I crash into a whirlpool of change and realize my reality goes so much deeper. That my sense of self is just the exposed tip of an iceberg of consciousness. It’s thrilling and terrifying at the same time, to realize that there’s no way I’ll ever fully know myself, which means I’ll never stop discovering who I am. So, against wisdom I once possessed, I lined up at the reindeer sausage cart to drown my nausea in a lukewarm cup of hot chocolate. And I stood next to dozens of fellow winter cycling enthusiasts, sans bike.

My sled was the sum of my most recent answer to the ultimate problem. Endurance sports tend to generate a whirlpool of problems without obvious solutions: What gear will help me go faster? What food can I eat at moderate effort levels for twenty-four hours without barfing? How many electrolyte tablets should I take to avoid cramping? What shoes will prevent my feet from deteriorating into a cesspool of blood and puss? For every possible answer there are many variations and exponentially more questions. It can become dizzying and is one of the reasons I appreciate Alaska wilderness-based endurance efforts, because all of these questions are trumped the one — the only one — that really matters:

“How do I stay alive?” 

I’ve been mulling over this ultimate problem — well, all my life — but specifically related to self-sufficiency in subzero cold, since 2005. The answer is as simple as it is obvious: One must stay warm. Ah, but how to stay warm? That is where the whirlpool commences. Adequate insulation is important, but not the sole key to self-generated warmth. Bodies that are depleted of energy don’t produce heat, so sufficient calories are needed. Cells depleted of moisture are more susceptible to freezing, so regular hydration is crucial. Clothing, food, water — on a base level, that actually is all a human needs to survive indefinitely in deep subzero cold. But what to wear? And what to eat? And how to make water and prevent it from freezing? And how to carry it all, enough but not so much that it hinders forward motion? How to customize it to my individual needs — nerve-damaged toes that are always too cold and thighs that are always too warm? In real-life execution, even the most basic problems still have seemingly endless possible solutions. 

So what do we do? Trial and error, using what just happens to be the best-tested method at any given moment. Whatever this is, is bound to change — so it’s almost pointless to make assertions on paper regardless of how certain one is about their gear. Suffice to say that each item in my 2014 sled was different than those I carried on my 2008 bicycle, with one key exception: A fleece balaclava that had been a faithful head-warmer since I was a teenage snowboarder in 1997. My dedication to this pilled black fleece was more nostalgic than practical at this point, but it remained the single constant in an ever-changing repertoire. 

But, to answer the question of what was in my sled, without compiling too long of a useless list, and not including the clothing I wore at the start or the two liters of water on my back: A down sleeping bag rated to fifty below zero, a closed-cell foam pad, a water-proof bivy sack, a liquid fuel stove, twenty-two ounces of fuel, pot and spoon, an expedition down coat, Gore-Tex shell jacket and waterproof pants, spare fleece socks, spare liner socks, vapor barrier socks, synthetic puffy jacket, spare liner mittens, vapor barrier mittens, spare hat, goggles, buff, wind pants, thin fleece pullover, nylon waders, spare large plastic bags, repair supplies and med kit, survival knick-knacks such as fire starters and a personal locator beacon, electronics, forty-ounce insulated thermos, and twelve thousand calories — or about two and a half days’ worth — of nuts, chocolate, dried fruit, crackers, dehydrated chicken and noodles, and gummy candy. The total weighed in at about forty-five pounds, or exactly one third of my body weight. 

Beat’s sled clocked in at a whopping seventy-five pounds. An explanation is in order for this. Beat completed the trek to Nome in 2013 on the Southern Route of the Iditarod Trail, and soon after developed ambitions to trek to the South Pole. Although funding is the major obstacle to any polar endeavor, he thought it would be wise to test his abilities for an unsupported Antarctic expedition by conducting a dry run of sorts in Alaska. After much mulling on the prospect, he decided to take smaller steps, traveling the Northern Route of the Iditarod Trail over three self-supported legs. The first would be 350 miles to McGrath — the entire distance I was planning to travel — with everything he needed in his sled. Unlike me, Beat would not collect the two drop bags provided by the race organization, and at the time did not plan to go inside any buildings or purchase any food from lodges along the way. Even this truncated endeavor required more than thirty pounds of food and fuel, which Beat parsed out in high-calorie-density ziplock bags of peanut butter and dehydrated meals, among a few other items. 

Both of our sleds looked obese as we sifted through them in the final hours before the start, mulling last-minute crash diets. No one, including me, wants to drag forty-five pounds of dead weight over the Alaska Range, but the ultimate problem keeps me from tossing it all in the nearest oil drum fire. Ultimately, I want to stay alive. I could probably stay alive with less gear, but life is important to me and I’m not inclined to bet on the increasingly higher stakes of fewer supplies. Beat and I are both conservatives in this regard. And as residents of the San Francisco Bay Area, our testing opportunities are limited.

We were called from the museum parking lot down a steep bank to the lake ice below. This year, there were a host of familiar faces among the competitors, and amusingly, most of my friends were runners — longtime veterans Tim and Loreen Hewitt, Laurel Highlands co-race-director Rick Freeman, fellow Californian Steve Ansell, blazing-fast sled-dragger Dave Johnston, and going for her first attempt on Nome, Anne Ver Hoef. A buzzing vibration of nerves all but drowned the chatter in the crowd, and similar to past years in this event, I never actually heard the official "Go!"

Home roaming

Beat laughed we he caught me poring over Strava's heat maps again. "You're obsessed with this now," he said.

"I'm just trying to set a route for tomorrow," I said, wide-eyed as I scrolled over thin blue lines drawn across an area of the map that for me, until now, was entirely blank. Where I reside — in a metropolitan area of 7 million people that is surrounded by a patchwork of open space — finding new places to roam isn't as simple as just looking at a map. There's so much private land, watershed easements, gates, extensive and often convoluted use restrictions. It's easiest to just find routes that work and go to these places again and again. After all, once you've seen one oak-dotted hillside or redwood grove, you've seen them all, right?

 And yet ... I need new spaces. I recognize that I travel at a higher-than-average rate while enjoying the spoils of settled life. I don't think I could handle a fully itinerant lifestyle, and yet ... I need new spaces. Just when I think I've tapped out my immediate geography and there's nothing else to explore, new wrinkles and folds come into view. The heat maps revealed a slew of new trails that were close enough to shoot for from my house. I traced the map and then went out looking for them.

My fitness is not stellar right now. Interestingly, and opposite of my usual status quo, I have decent power for cycling in short bursts, but the power meter drains out quickly rather than kicking into good ol' endurance mode. I'm good for an hour, and then I suck. Perhaps this is what five weeks of inactivity, one week of semi-smart rebuilding, and two weeks of turning it up to eleven will get you. Muscles get tired, who knew?

But yes, my ride plan called for immediate 15- to 20-percent grades up the thick clay of Fremont Older, followed by pretty much carrying my bike down the hill when bricks formed around the frame and the wheels wouldn't turn anymore. (It rained Friday and Saturday. Yay! This makes me happy, but it also makes for a wet and muddy ride, for which I am embarrassingly out of practice.) Ten minutes were spent chipping away at concrete, then another twenty or so finding my way out of the steep, rolling maze of Saratoga. Then it was time to climb again, nearly 3,000 feet up to the crest of El Serreno.

 I pretty much spent my day's allotment of energy in the first six miles at Fremont Older, and had little to give for what was only the first of two huge climbs — that I knew about. By the time I dropped off the ridge, legs searing and shoulders aching, I considered the just descending all the way to Los Gatos and forgetting this whole silly exploration thing. But this path, this nondescript side road veering off a quiet neighborhood street, beckoned in a hypnotic way. It was a powerline access road that was overgrown with grass, strewn with deadfall, and eaten away by mudslides — calling out to me as though it was the most desirable trail ever cut into a mountainside.

And then it just kept on climbing. Like any good contouring powerline access road, it cut up one small drainage and down the next, direct and steep, up and down. I only acknowledged the ups. Climb and climb. Mist billowed around the forested mountainside. Curtains of rain fell through sunbeams thrown by a clearing to the west, and there were rainbows and sparkling raindrops. It was a beautiful afternoon on this most secret of trails, so close to home and yet so far away.

I turned a corner at the bottom of the drainage, into an enchanted woods with lush pines, real fall color, and a glassy secret lake. I exited the woods onto a paved road and saw the first trail sign of this secret trail, forbidding bikes. Oh, that explains it. I didn't see a single other person out there on a Saturday afternoon, in seven miles. It always irks me when public spaces that are clearly not frequented by anyone carry these restrictions. But I try keep it legal and don't intentionally poach trails, so I guess if I want to go back to this enticing place, I'll have to plan a long run.

 I couldn't dwell on my misdemeanor for long, because it was time to climb again. Climb and climb. My heart was developing that dull achy feeling that sometimes crops up when it's been beating too hard for too long. Climb and climb. I checked my watch and although I'd only ridden 23 miles thus far, I'd already climbed 5,000 feet and was still climbing. Argh. Climb and climb. Veered onto the Saratoga Gap trail, powered over some roots, more climbing. The sun went down. I turned onto Grizzly Flat with about twenty minutes to spare before twilight turned to darkness. Some mountain bikers who had just emerged and were packing up their car asked me, "Are you going in now?"

"I have to," I said. "It's the only way I can get home from here."

"You'll never make it," one of the mountain bikers said — presumably also aware of the no-trail-use-after-dark, you'll-almost-certainly-get-a-ticket rule. "We just finished, it's far."

"It's quick, mostly downhill; I can make it," I said.

"And there are bobcats," he warned, as though ranger danger wasn't scary enough.

I thanked him and turned into the dark forest in the fading light. Twelve miles and fifty minutes later, I was home. As far as I'm concerned, that entire ride was climbing.

Beat gave me a hard time for riding for six hours on Saturday when we had our official longish weekend ride planned with friends on Sunday. We met Pavel and Jan at the mouth of Steven's Canyon and headed back the way I came out just fourteen hours earlier.

Ugh, I was feeling the miles. Beat completed a long run yesterday, and Pavel is more of a short-range guy than an endurance cyclist, but Jan didn't take sympathy on any of us. He planned a punishing route — lots of singletrack and power moves and steep rollers that always feel like all climbing. Fun, of course; no one would argue that it wasn't fun. I certainly wasn't arguing. It's more enjoyable just to roll with it, and apologize when your tired legs cause you to drift farther and farther behind.

 All in all, it was a fantastic weekend of overdoing it — some bikesplorations, some social riding with friends, some sauna time for the sore muscles. I've got the heat maps out again and am already dreaming up the next adventure. Once I get my running legs back, there's almost nothing on there I can't cover. I'd love to see the whole Santa Cruz mountain range light up on my own personal heat map. After all, there's really no such thing as being stuck in one place.

Learning to run again

 After the third and hopefully final knee-flexing session with my doctor today, I was given the go-ahead to start running again, as well as encouragement to "ween" myself from dependency on a rigid brace while riding bikes. Lots of miles in the saddle and very few on foot have disrupted the balance, and I've noticed old overuse nags that I haven't felt in years — hints of patellar and Achilles tendonitis. I either have to reduce the cycling miles or slowly increase the foot miles. I'd planned on walking after the appointment, but after the encouraging assessment, decided to leave the trekking poles in the car and try a slow jog. Four miles on a flat gravel path at an average of 12 minutes per mile, and the knee felt surprisingly strong. I would probably be more excited about that, except for the rest of it felt discouragingly tough for a four-mile, 48-minute jog. It's going to be a long road back. It always is.

On Wednesday I rode in the Headlands with Leah. I'm actually feeling pretty strong on the bike right now — that came back fast. We enjoyed a mellow spin in the fading evening light, then went for Burmese food in the Richmond district. As we were enjoying our tea leaf salad, the streets outside erupted into mild chaos, with screaming, honking, loud bangs, even fireworks. Before this evening, I had no clue that the World Series was happening, or that the Giants were playing, but they apparently had just won and the usual mayhem and car fires were about to begin. I'm embarrassed that I didn't know about the World Series. I browse the New York Times site every morning, keep up with Bay Area media to an admittedly lesser extent, and have baseball fans as friends, and yet I missed this. It's evidence of how insular my world has become, and how I should probably pay more attention to what's going on locally besides extreme drought and eye-rolling political antics. I'm not against professional team sports; they simply aren't interesting to me, and it's gotten to the point of inattention where I've lost track of even major events like the Superbowl. But it is good to know when the streets of San Francisco might erupt into riots, just in case I'm out for a Headlands bike ride that evening. At least the trails were nice and empty.

In other news, my blog turns nine years old this week. Can you believe it? Nine! A cursory glance at the Blogger overview reveals that amounts to 1,796 posts, 21,874 comments, and 4,141,958 visits lo these many years. This is a small (yet obese) blog with a limited scope, but it continues to be a fun, relaxing project, and I enjoy having the record of nine years' worth of adventures. I am nearing completion of my book project that has involved poring over every post from year one of this blog, and that's been an interesting rehash as well. Many times I find myself thinking, "Was I ever so young?" ... which is a little embarrassing considering I'm still writing about virtually the same subjects on the same platform. But I value all of the connections this blog created over the years, the new friends and new ideas. I appreciate those who continue to check in even during the typical life lulls, like now.

On that note, I've also returned to my Iditarod 2014 race report and am considering starting to post that next week (contingent on continuing to make good progress on my book project.) I held off for so long because ... life ... and also because I had this conceptual idea that I wanted to spend more time hashing out, but it's proving to be difficult. A straight narrative might be the best way to go for now, just to make sure I get it all down before the memories start to fade. I can return to my original idea in future Iditarod adventures, which I plan to continue this coming March. So look for that. In the meantime, buy Tim's book! ;)

I am trying to put together a ~300-mile bikepacking loop around the Santa Cruz mountains, and was hoping to scout some trails on the northern part of the Peninsula this weekend. Beat scrutinized my route and announced it contained a large amount of hike-a-bike and some possibly illegal trails. So perhaps it's back to square one. If any readers know of good routes in Half Moon Bay, Montara, and Pacifica, I'd appreciate some direction for good touring (emphasis on touring) trails. Apparently I routed my tour through 30-percent-grade segments with names like "Cave Hike-A-Bike," "911 DH," and "XXX DH."

Speaking of blog connections, I recently learned that a woman who I knew while I lived in Alaska has been diagnosed with stage four colon cancer that spread to her liver. She used to keep a blog called "Karen Travels" and lived in Anchorage for a few years. She is a single mother to a two-year-old son and she is younger than I am, facing an extremely difficult battle. She has been on my mind frequently this week, even before she sent me an e-mail asking if I wouldn't mind sharing her fundraising page. "I am hoping I have at least a few good years, I am not done adventuring, and I want to take him out on some adventures too!" she wrote. Karen hopefully will have more great adventures. Her fundraising page, "Karen Kicking Cancer," is at this link.

Ridin' the range once more

As soon as I figured out that turning pedals no longer aggravates my knee during or after bike rides, this renewed sense of health opened the floodgate of suppressed cycling mania. Strava tells me I rode 172 miles with 22,150 feet of climbing this week. I realize that's not defensible given I'm trying to rehab an injury, not push its outer limits. But none of it seemed like much at the time. I did a little ride here, a routine ride there, and joined a friendly day trip on Sunday. Just like that, 18 hours on a bike. Where does the time go? 

 It's funny to contrast a big cycling week with my current walking efforts. Today I was carrying my trekking poles across the access bridge at Rancho when a man who was having professional photos taken with his wife and young son turned to me and said, "You going skiing?"

"Skiing?" I was confused.

"Yeah, skiing. What are those for?"

"Oh, these? These are walking sticks. For walking with a hurt knee. I use them so I don't lose my balance and fall."

"How far you walking?"

"Three miles. Maybe four."

"Damn!" he said. "Four miles on a hurt knee. You know there are mountain lions out there. Don't think you can outrun them."

"I know. I'm here a lot. I've never seen a mountain lion."

"Is that right? I like walking, getting started with walking. And you know what, someday I'm going to walk ten miles, and you will too!" He grinned and then the photographer waved to get his attention again. I didn't really have any idea what he was stream-of-consciousness rambling about, only that he seemed genuinely enthusiastic at this stranger's plan to walk four miles.

On my way up the hill, two runners who I recognized gave me a wave and a thumbs up. Another who I didn't recognize waved and said, "You do good for that knee." I felt like a fraud. I mean, occasional stumbles and tight sensations in my knee remind me that I need to pay attention to balance and ease my way very slowly back into running. So I continue to gimp along my usual running trails in an effort to work my way back to full mobility. This is the smart thing I'm doing. This was today.

This was yesterday —

 In the four years I've known him, Beat and I have only embarked on a select few long rides together (the long ride qualifier meaning six to eight hours, or more.) Back in Montana we'd make up hybrid bike-run adventures that sometimes involved him carrying my bike up a mountain. There was the 25 Hours of Frog Hollow in Utah, three times. Liehann and I dragged him along for at least one trip during our training block this past spring. These long ride opportunities are rare and cherished.

 Now that he has tough bike races on the agenda — not "just" the 25 Hours of Frog Hollow — he promises there will be a lot more saddle time in his future. He's even on the hunt for a useable saddle, which is not an simple acquisition for him. He's searching for something that's comfortable while not creating disconcerting numbness up front. Right now he's settled on a saddle that only achieves the latter. I consider it my superpower that I can sit on pretty much any saddle on not wear chamois and have no pain or chafing, at least for day-length rides. I am Iron Butt. But I can not sit on the saddle that Beat uses. It's a diabolical torture device. I flat-out refuse to use that saddle for any length of time, because there's no benefit in it for me. I really don't know how he puts up with it, but the saddle issue may partly explain why, up until now, he has mostly avoided long rides.

We planned an 80-mile loop of trails, fire roads, and some pavement connectors through Big Basin Redwoods and the surrounding drainages. Liehann was thrilled that we were finally embarking on a long ride again, and in celebration he went to Safeway and bought up half of their deli case. Among the items he pulled out of his backpack during our lunch stop were a massive brownie, a half-pound block of cheese, and a full 8-ounce container of chipolte mayonnaise. I'm so out of "long ride" mode that Beat and I didn't have anything in the house to bring on the ride. We had to make do with squished old Luna Bars that have been buried deep in backpacks for far too long, and Target brand fruit snacks. Liehann was sympathetic and shared one of his rolls and cheese. Beat also took advantage of his gallon-sized Ziploc bag full of sausages, exclaiming, "I can never eat like this when I'm running!" I can't really eat like that when I'm biking, either, so instead I ate an old package of separated almond butter that had the consistency and taste of wet cement.

 The afternoon drifted away as we plunged into the enchanted forest of Gazos Creek, skidded wildly on chunk gravel that was newly laid over a steep logging road, fought a fierce north wind along the grassy hills of the coast, and returned to climb into the mountains again. On this entire route there is only one reliable water stop, at mile 50. I nearly went into panic when we arrived at the campground to a sign that said "Closed Due to Drought." This past summer I was burned a couple of times by trailside pumps that I expected to produce water, but were dry. I thought this campground source was a sure thing, so the sign came as a special disappointment with 30 miles left to ride and an empty water bladder. Happily, we coaxed the spigot to give up a few liters before it began to gurgle and sputter. With water bladders full once more, we rolled into the moist, chilled air and thick shade of Portola Redwoods forest — the kind of place where you can almost pretend that the entire state of California isn't shriveling up from lack of precipitation.

 Liehann and I promised Beat that the mile-60 climb out of Pescadero, with its slippery dead leaves and 15-percent grades, would be especially fun. The hour-long climb did not disappoint. Beat lamented the state of his backside, but he didn't complain. I was buzzed on endorphins and having an immense amount of quiet fun — quiet because I had my own physical issues and no relatable reason to be enjoying this punishing climb as much as I was. But I was. Two months is not a long period of time, but it is long enough to renew appreciation for the wonderful freedom of simple motion.

 We continued on trail to the top of Black Mountain as the sun slipped beneath the Pacific-outlined horizon. Beat was incredulous that we'd were spending more than nine hours wrapping up this bike ride. He said it felt harder and more tiring than a mountainous 50K. Even though my own legs were aching with lactic acid surges and nagging aches in now-undertrained joints, I disagreed. Two months can be a long time to spend away from a bike, but it's not enough to interrupt intrinsic flow, the uncomplicated joy of moving and breathing.

Learning to walk (and fly) again

It's been a relatively productive week ... a couple of articles finished, newspapers out, interviews conducted, a few thousand words added to the book project, a second week of tedious indoor strength-training and knee rehab exercises completed (next week starts balance. Eek.) And I started walking again. This feels like a big step in recovery. While I did go for a few walks in Utah two weeks ago, these walks are now goal-oriented and pain-free, with fewer tentative steps and unproductive knee-locking. They aren't the most exciting workouts. My id just wants to run, and knows it would be so easy to start. I'm just so close, with my shoes and my trekking poles on a real trail. It takes a big lasso from the super-ego to reel it in. I Strava'd my walks just for #proof (that I may need to show Beat) that I didn't cheat and jog a little, and then named my Strava activities after lyrics from the Foo Fighters' "Walk:"

Learning to walk again
I believe I've waited long enough
Where do I begin?

After all of the walking and push-ups and shoulder presses, I thought I deserved a treat for the week, so on Wednesday I decided to embark on my first mountain bike ride in two months. I was so excited. Not only would I finally put some wheels (well, non-skinny wheels) to dirt, but they'd be brand new wheels.

Last month, Beat purchased a new mountain bike, a Lenz Behemoth with an XO group, 1x11 drivetrain. It's a sweet bike. I admit to not being terribly supportive of him making this purcase. Beat has this thing with bikes. Some people might call it "light hoarding." Even though he is a runner, he strongly adheres to the n+1 formula of bike ownership. "It's more fun to buy bikes than it is to ride them," he tells me. I used to enthusiastically support this, but then bikes began to take over our small apartment, and the living room turned into a bike shop, and there was drivetrain grease smeared on the refrigerator. So I unloaded some of my bikes. Now I own two bikes, and Beat owns nine or fourteen. I continue to complain about overcrowding, and then quietly reap all the benefits by riding Beat's bikes on a regular basis, arguably more than he does.

And to be entirely honest, I was thrilled about my chance to finally take the Lenz out for a test drive. It was late afternoon, around 4 p.m., by the time I set out, and my sluggish legs balked at having to propel such a heavy beast after a month of pure rest and a couple of weeks on the uber-light Specialized S-Works Roubaix (which also belongs to Beat.) By the time I neared the top of Black Mountain, every part of my body was annoyed at all of this hard effort business, and I nearly turned around early, but then thought, "Nope, gotta test out the Lenz."

Black Mountain is a place I visit frequently, and yet it retains a unique presence — this kind of quiet tranquility, with the golden sunlight reflecting on the Pacific Ocean and coastal fog pouring over the lower ridges to the west. A Zen place. I never grow tired of it.

Boosted by Black Mountain love, I jumped back on the Lenz and proceeded to float down Stevens Creek Canyon in the fading evening light. It's a beautiful feeling to recapture after many weeks away— flowing down a familiar trail, leaning into curves, lightly launching off water bars, squinting out the rocks against the harsh glare of the setting sun. I cranked up the short, steep rises as best I could in the saddle, and coasted through a tunnel of trees, breathing chilled air and listening to the whir of tires and crackle of leaves. A truly beautiful experience.

When I came home and plugged my GPS data into Strava, I saw an interesting statistic — my fastest time ever for the "Stevens Canyon Super D" — an eight-mile dirt segment from the gate on Montebello Road to the gate on Stevens Canyon Road that is mostly descending on singletrack, but also includes about 1,000 feet of climbing. This fastest time included my Black Mountain lingering and selfie indulgence (I meant to take a better selfie that showed more of the bike, but couldn't find a good angle.) I enjoy using Strava — not for its comparisons to others, which I don't find all that inspiring or interesting — but for its years' worth of stored data of my own efforts that I can effortlessly compare to myself.

Back in August 2011 — August 11 to be precise — I crashed my mountain bike while descending Stevens Creek Canyon and sustained a large wound in my right elbow. Without trying to be too graphic, what happened is a thin rock stabbed into my elbow and spooned out a sizeable chunk of flesh, which was promptly replaced with a small handful of bacteria-ridden dirt and pebbles. This crash was a large, negative turning point in my mountain bike hobby — not because it was a major injury, which it wasn't, but because it was so intensely painful, for days and even weeks later, that it left a permanent gouge on my memory, and in turn my confidence. My mountain biking has been notably worse ever since. And Strava is there to prove it — eight of my "top ten" times in this segment of trail that I've ridden many dozens of times happened before August 11, 2011.

Until Wednesday:

And really, it's Beat's Lenz that should get all the credit. That bike floats like a hovercraft, over everything. It's truly amazing.

But in necessary confidence-rebuilding of this learning-to-walk-again stage, it helps to believe that maybe I'm finally recovering from the psychological trauma imparted by the elbow-mangling incident that long preceded my current injury.

A couple of other notes:

• Beat and I signed up for the Backyard Fat Pursuit, Jay Petervary's 200-kilometer snow bike race in Island Park, Idaho, in January. This event was not on my radar, but when I was feeling bummed out about not being chosen in the White Mountains 100 lottery, a couple of different friends urged me to consider it. These friends are planning to be there, and since Beat and I are missing out on Frog Hollow this year, it seemed reasonable to move our annual endurance bike party north. It will also be a fine opportunity to test out some gear for bike touring in Alaska in March. Have you ever considered riding a fat bike for 120 miles in the Rocky Mountains in the winter? You should come!

• I created a books page for my blog, with full descriptions of my books, links where they're for sale online, and links to reviews. If you're a reader of this blog, I urge you to check it out. Every book sale helps, and goes a long way in supporting this blog and — hopefully quite soon — more books. Link here.

• While I was Google mining links for the books page, I came across a book review for "Ghost Trails" that I appreciated from a blog called the Dusty Musette. It's not overly praising, but it's a review that made me think, "Wow, he gets it" — and it's always gratifying as a writer to realize a mutual connection with a reader, even for a book that I wrote six years ago.

• Thanks for reading!

Pedaling through the flaws

 On Saturday Beat ran the Coyote Ridge 50K, one of our go-to autumn trail races. I'm still at least a couple of weeks away from tip-toeing back into running, but I do feel comfortable riding a road bike for six hours, so I headed up to the Headlands to tour along the coast for the duration of the race. I was both looking forward to my first long ride in two months, and dreading it. I keep hopping on my bike expecting to feel like I felt back in May, when miles and elevation gain came easy and I didn't return from rides with a foggy brain and stiff legs. I suppose a month-long break from most activity is ultimately a positive thing, but there's just no lying to myself about this rapid decline in endurance.

 I brought the road bike specifically to avoid dirt routes, which in the Headlands are usually steep, impossible to climb without standing out of the saddle, and swept with loose gravel that can prompt jerky joint movements if not crashes. But soon after I left Muir Beach, I succumbed to temptation and veered onto Old Railroad Grade, a relatively mellow fire road up Mount Tam. The skinny tires and shiny carbon frame (because I just washed it) prompted a couple of comments from mountain bikers, both positive. Bolstered by this perceived road biking badassery, I turned onto Old Stage Road, which is rugged doubletrack with much more descending than I predicted.

 Clearly a terrible idea; the bike jolted and bucked over chunky rocks and skidded on gravel. Just to minimize risk, I considered hiking it out — but I'm still at a point in recovery that I trust my road-bike-handling skills just a little bit more than my ability to take steps without buckling my knee. Walking is the issue; I am still struggling with wobbliness. To Beat, I characterized the feeling as a rubber band that held two parts of my knee together, but then it was overstretched and won't snap back into place. Beat said that didn't sound quite right, but that's about the best way I can describe the sensation. There's definitely still support there; it's just not as tight as it used to be. So I can turn pedals all day, but weight-bearing movements feel unstable. I'm beginning to question how much of this sensation is injury, how much of this is diminished conditioning, and how much is stricken confidence that continues to feed distrust in my own motor skills. Either way, I think the answer right now is to embark on fewer fun bike rides and more boring walks with my trekking poles, until I gain some of that confidence back.

 I connected up with some fantastic paved roads — Ridgecrest Boulevard, Highway 1, and Bear Valley Road alongside Point Reyes National Seashore. I ate a banana and peach iced tea at the little shop in Inverness before turning around. Throughout the slowish ride, my legs ached and my thoughts cycled between subjects that have been heavy on my mind this week: the current state of journalism, which seems to be chasing ever-diminishing profits further into a pit of pandering and fear-mongering; and, mostly unrelated, this book project I've been working on. A couple of weeks ago I resolved that I was going to cast my reservations aside and finally finish a memoir I started back in 2011, about the 11 months I lived in Homer, Alaska. The reservations mostly fluctuate around the usual — "no one is going to read this" and "people might actually read this" — feelings that strike most people who attempt to write memoirs. But for what it's worth (and admittedly it's probably not much) I very much enjoy working in this medium. Especially when dealing with events that happened nine years ago — what remains in memory is (at least I tell myself) what matters, and it's interesting to return to my own stories as a different person, with a more objective lens. Maybe someday I will attempt to write young adult fiction, which everyone knows is where the money is in publishing. But I'd rather be among those who help formulate new ways to monetize investigative and long-form journalism — after advertisers realize that print ads only draw a fraction of the eyes they did even five years ago, and despite the reality that Web advertising is so specifically targeted that ten-second kitten videos will always draw more dollars than a well-researched piece in the New York Times, and despite the fact Web content is so ADHD that even we navel-gazing bloggers don't bother too much with "writing;" we just skim our own stuff like everyone else.

Oh, there I went off on a long, unrelated tangent again. And suddenly my bike ride is done! How about that? I was rather zoned out there for a while. I pulled back into Muir Beach and waited for Beat and Steve at the finish, watching runners coast in and feeling nostalgic for the days (they seem so long ago now) when I could run. I many ways I still don't think of myself as a runner — more of a "cyclist and hiker who runs." But I miss it fiercely. Cycling is wonderful and it will always be my "thing," but there's something special about the sensation of running along the smooth corridor the Coastal Trail while waves crash on the cliffs over Pirate's Cove. It's pure freedom. It's time to start the slow process of finding my way back.

The time it takes to heal

Every injured active person probably fantasizes about a magical moment of recovery, when they can release all of their pent-up energy into the activity they love, and have their body respond with pain-free, powerful bursts of unhindered motion. Funny how there's no way a clean line can exist between "injured" and "all fine, 100 percent, no fitness lost and no remnants of injury at all." And yet we still sit around anticipating the moment we can cross this imaginary line, and feel frustrated when instead we find ourselves mired in gray areas.

After examining my knee and warning me about some ongoing inflammation, my doctor gave me the official okay to ride my bike. Surprising no one, I took this permission slip a little far over the weekend, logging close to a hundred hilly miles over three days on the road bike, which I justified because:

a. My orthopedic knee brace allows me to all but immobilize the joint, making the side-to-side movements that aggravate the ligament almost impossible (at the expense of nearly every other part of my leg.)

b. I'd have to do something majorly wrong to crash my bike while pedaling slowly on pavement, and if I did — especially if that crash involved a vehicle — I'd have worse problems than a bum knee.

c. Biking makes me happy. Happy!!!

d. Dr. Chiu said it was okay. (Okay, he actually didn't.)

e. Any sign of trouble, and I can call Beat and have him come pick me up. Eventually. When he returns from that awesome redwood forest trail run that I wasn't able to join, and probably won't for who knows how many more weeks or months because this knee that is okay at turning pedals still sucks at walking.

f. Hills are okay but flats are bad because I can't pedal a high cadence with my brace on, and put too much pressure on the joint when I try. So I better stick to hills.

g. I'm now nearly six weeks post-injury. That's the timeline for early returns to activity in most cases of ligament sprains/minor tears.

h. Happy!!!

The knee made it through the weekend without pain, but many muscles in each leg were significantly worse for the wear, with burning, throbbing, soreness, and other complaints that I haven't heard in a long time. On Sunday I joined Liehann and Trang, who were pedaling a tandem, as we coasted out of the mountains to the ocean and then turned around to climb back out. Temperatures were pushing close to 90 degrees in the sun, which feels especially brutal in mid-October, and declines in my fitness manifested quickly. Still, I was so thrilled just to be outside and riding my bike that I had to consciously hold back not to chase my friends on flat stretches of road, and fight the urge to relieve the searing acid pain in my legs by standing out of the saddle to chase them up hills (Right now I have to sit at all times, a riding style I'm not accustomed to, and one I've learned leads to an angry butt and quads.) I was slow, out of shape, in a decent amount of non-injury-related pain ... and I was so happy!!!

Today I had an appointment with an orthopedic massage therapist who both Beat and I like to visit when we need some realigning. He's very good. He said my whole leg was something of a mess, but worked out the tightness in my hips and demonstrated several physical therapy exercises I can do at home to strengthen the ligament-supporting tissues around my knee. This afternoon I pulled out my newly acquired yoga mat and did several sets of these exercises, along with some core work — the first day of a new strength-training regimen that I promised myself I'm going to stick with, this time.

Yes, this time I'm going to stick with tedious indoor exercises in the interest of building better balance and all-around strength. Actually, I'm quite excited about it. Of course, right now I still have that magical moment of recovery — the moment I can run again — as a still-unobtainable motivator on the horizon. That's really all I want — to move through the world, as often and for as long as I'm inclined, swift and graceful and free, without fall-induced injuries. Is that too much to ask?