Week 4

It's been some week, hasn't it? This is a boring workout post.

Monday: Treadmill intervals, 3 miles, 0:30; weightlifting, 0:40. 

Tuesday: Run, 0:55, 4.2 miles, 796 feet climbing. I had a half-round of allergy shots on Monday afternoon, cut short again because I'm having mild reactions to these higher concentrations. This one hit me especially hard the next day, when I felt like I was coming down with the flu. Election day was stressful enough, so it was nice to get out for a slow afternoon shuffle, even though I felt like crap.

Wednesday: Mountain bike, 5:23, 43.4 miles, 6,384 feet climbing. This is the strongest I've felt on a bike since my CTS surgery. Interesting juxtaposition to Tuesday's run, especially since I was feeling more emotionally distraught on this day. I crashed hard about 12 miles into the ride and bruised both legs, with pain that didn't subside for the duration of the ride. Despite all this, I was on fire. It was cathartic.

Thursday: Mountain bike, 1:35, 13 miles, 2,201 feet climbing. Another strong ride. I had no breathing issues this week. My moving times are only slightly faster, but my breathing has become much deeper and quieter, as opposed to the shallow gasping that I usually employ to boost myself up a hill. It's difficult to describe, but noticeable.

Friday: Weightlifting, 0:40.

Saturday: Run, 2:22, 8.4 miles, 2,813 feet climbing. Bear Canyon to Bear Peak loop with Beat. I aimed to hike faster up the steep climb and didn't succeed. My breathing was fine, I just didn't have the oomph from my leg muscles.

Sunday: Mountain bike, 5:31, 42.8 miles, 6,409 feet climbing. Beat and I haven't ridden bikes together once since we moved to Colorado, so I offered to show him the scenic loop that I rode on Wednesday. The weather continues to be remarkably warm — many days even warmer than it's been in my former home in California, which has also had a lot more rain. Sigh. But I suppose I shouldn't complain about all this short-sleeves November weather. I think Beat really enjoyed my go-to route, even though it involved being slightly lost and descending too slowly in the Blue Dot maze, excessive washboard, and a lot more Peak to Peak Highway pavement than he expected.

Total: 16:56, 99.2 miles ride, 15.6 miles run, 18,604 feet climbing. Well, it's been a week. Like many I've been distracted, determined, sometimes despondent. My workouts are not important, but they do provided moments of clarity and perspective, every time. The thought of returning to Alaska and riding or pushing a bike deep into a wilderness where only the most basic tenets of survival matter – this keeps me going. I'm considering putting my fractured book projects and ideas aside, and spending more time making contributions to something I believe is incredibly important — the free press. But one thing this world does not need more of, is blathering content. (Ha!) I'll have to mull it over. Outdoor activities are good for that.

A second reckoning of sorts

On Wednesday I woke up to bright November sunshine and unsettling dread. I don't venture very far into my personal life or politics on this blog for good reason, but I know that many people felt this way — as though we'd suddenly become strangers in our own country, poised on the precipice of a bleak future where the things we love and need will only continue to lose value: Public lands, open space, wildlife, water, friends and family who are sick or struggling, people who don't fit into the majority. And on and on. 

I don't need to rehash what's already all over the Web. Many have posted much better missives than I could write. But I was among those bewildered and distraught after Tuesday's election, much more so than I even expected. So I retreated to one thing that will, I hope, always bring comfort — moving through the outdoors. Bicycles still exist, so there's that.

 I spent much of the first two hours crying. It's true. All of these pessimistic thoughts about the future flooded in, and I did everything I could to shut them out. It's interesting what thoughts and memories took their place. In the young woods outside Nederland, I imagined approaching a stranger and asking them if they wanted to share a hug. Strangely, when I rode through town, I didn't see a soul on the streets. As though everyone just up and left.

 There was the trail where I relived the moment when I found out my grandmother died. I was 16 years old and working a day shift at Wendy's, cleaning tables when my dad came in. I remember so vividly the afternoon shadows across the carpet, so stark against the winter sunlight, and the sour smell of my rag as lukewarm water dripped through my fingers. It felt like acid. That's what I thought then. I still clench my hands when I think about it.

 There was this trail where I finally crashed on an easy surface after churning through a couple miles of chunder — loose rocks on top of loose dirt. Crashing has become such a familiar feeling — the sudden jolt, the throbbing pain, the warm blood trickling down my skin. I swore loudly until I heard a dog barking, which surprised me because I thought I was in a more remote area. I wasn't really swearing about my bloody knee, anyway.

 On the Switzerland Trail I thought about all the luck I've had, and how I reside in a place with so much beauty and opportunity, how I'm surrounded by so many smart and compassionate people. My health has continued to improve. On this day I felt almost "normal," riding easy again without any hint of hard breathing. I felt grateful for this simple ability to move freely, without anxiety and without pain. I try not to take this for granted. Just like every privlege I have in life. I try not to take it for granted, but I still do.

 There was Longs Peak, a 14,000-foot mountain mostly devoid of snow in November. I wondered if people in the future will miss winter.

 There was thick smog over the valley, and I wondered if the people in the city could taste it, if people felt acid in their breaths, like I sometimes do.

Recently I found an old iPod that I must have loaded up with music back in 2012, and relived memories from a year that seemed so wonderful. Hindsight often works that way. I climbed up Flagstaff for the first time since I had an asthma attack here a month ago, and marveled at this relative strength. Metric's "Speed the Collapse" came on, and I repeated the song a few times as I leapfrogged with another mountain biker. 

The wind presents a change of course 
A second reckoning of sorts 
We were wasted waiting for 
A comedown of revolving doors

Week 3

Monday: Weight lifting, 0:40. I received six allergy shots first thing in the morning. I didn't have a reaction like last week, but I felt down for the rest of the day. The weight lifting was more than I could manage, and stopped after two sessions of 12 lifts, 12 reps at the same weights as last week.

Tuesday: Run, 1:18,  6.2 miles, 1,171 feet climbing. Moderate pace.

Wednesday: Mountain bike, 4:48, 41.2 miles, 5,412 feet climbing. This was a pleasant afternoon ride where I traced a scenic, mostly dirt route from home to Gold Hill. There were plenty of steep climbs, but for the most part I rode about as easy as possible for myself on this type of terrain. I've been aiming to track my heart rate more closely, since my resting heart rate has remained noticeably higher since I moved to Colorado in April. When my breathing issues were at their worst — July and August — my exercise heart rates were lower than usual. But now that I'm feeling better, I'm also exercising with a higher heart rate. This ride earned Strava's "Epic Suffer Score" of 312 with a heart rate above 166 for 47% of the ride. It's perplexing, because this ride didn't feel hard, nor was I fatigued afterward. Still, I've decided to make an effort to go even easier on my long rides, although I'm not sure that's possible (at some point you're just not going to get up a hill.)

Thursday: Weight lifting, 0:40; Treadmill intervals, 3 miles, 0:30. Since I was feeling better for this gym session, I went through a series of treadmill intervals of 2 minutes slow, 2 minutes fast up to 6-minute-mile pace. The results were similar to last week — my highest heart rate was 191. The weight-lifting session was great. I'm in that beginner period that leads to fast improvements. It's so much more fun than going in the opposite direction.


Friday: Run, 1:26, 6 miles, 1,654 feet climbing. Our friend Roger came for a visit from Australia. He's been to Boulder before, but never up the iconic Flatirons, so I took him for a jaunt up Bear Peak.

Saturday: Run, 3:26, 12.5 miles, 4,110 feet climbing. Beat and Roger were headed out for an 18-mile run, but I decided to leave later and run a shorter route. I ran down Eldorado Canyon and cut across to Shadow Canyon on a somewhat overgrown social trail with a lot of shoulder-high grass. Despite walking slowly along this trail, I still had a breathing reaction where it felt like my chest and throat were tightening. This is one of the reasons I prefer running alone, because I don't feel as self-conscious about slowing way down or stopping for a while to sit on a rock. Beat and Roger caught up to me while I was resting. We left the grassy slope, and I began to feel much better while marching at Beat's pace up steep Shadow Canyon. So, another run with a mild breathing reaction, but I handled it much better than my episode two weeks ago. The breathing reaction happened when my heart rate was in the low 140s. But overall this was another high-heart-rate effort with a Strava "Suffer Score" of 405. This score is a generic calculation based on distance, elevation change, and typical heart rates. So a 405 score should be interpreted as a very hard run, rather than the recreational jaunt that I view it as. It's a little too soon to determine whether this is a bad thing, or just my own individual status quo.

 Sunday: Hike, 6:00, 14.3 miles, 3,185 feet climbing. We offered to take Roger on a hike into the high country, and headed to Hessie for an out-and-back up to Devil's Thumb Pass. There was surprisingly only slightly more snow on these slopes than there was a month ago, but temperatures were lower and the wind was fierce.

 Before this outing, I was not aware that ptarmigans lived in Colorado. We spent some time cooing at an adorable group of white-tailed ptarmigans and marveling at their living conditions. Gusts as high as 40mph would rip across the slope, and they just shut their cute little eyes and burrowed into the snow.

 Beat on Devil's Thumb Pass. High winds and the fast-approaching sunset deterred us from continuing along the Continental Divide to King Lake Pass.

Beat and Roger celebrating our miniature "epic" in the Colorado high country.

Total: 18:48, 41.2 miles ride, 42 miles run, 15,535 feet climbing. This felt like a good training week, except for the brief breathing issues on Saturday, and perhaps too little biking. I'm feeling better every week. I do need to continue to monitor my heart rate, as that may be a concern. (I might be sick. I might be out of shape (i.e. good endurance, less cardiovascular fitness.) I might be overtrained. I know. I have this theory about altitude adaptation that I'm currently researching. Also, the allergy shots are not easy on my body. That's definitely an additional stressor.) But all-in-all, more positive directions. All we need is a little more snow, lower than 11,000 feet.