Kinsanity

Date: June 24 and 25
Mileage: 168.2
June mileage: 647.3 (inc. 18 miles June 22)
Temperature upon departure: 63

I'm back from the 24 hours of Kincaid race - long, dusty, hilly. Surprising technical stretches. Moose on the trail. Hills. Psycho porcupines. Deteriorating judgment. Long. Not that I'm nearly lucid enough right now to post a race report. The race organizers haven't posted the race results yet, but I surprised myself with my progress. According to the last updates I saw before I left Anchorage, I placed anywhere from third place to sixth place among all solo 24-hour cyclists, with the top finisher at 22 laps, second place at 19, and three others that were near me at about 16. Out of two solo women, I actually came in first by several laps. Hopefully they'll post the results on the Web site soon.

For 22 hours and 55 minutes I pounded out 16 loops, at 10.5 miles a piece. I kept a consistent pace throughout the race - my fastest loop was 1 hour, 12 minutes and my slowest was 1 hour, 23 minutes, and I took a 5 to 25-minute break between each one. Besides somewhat debilitating but temporary stomach cramps and a sideways fall over an especially rooty stretch of trail, I felt pretty good and strong throughout the sleepless night. But sleep is what I need most right now; I'll fill in the details tomorrow.

Sure they're weeds, but ...

Date: June 21
Mileage: 16.4
June mileage: 469.1
Temperature upon departure: 57

All I rode was the full-circle commute today, so I am officially tapering. It left me with the better part of the evening to scrub all the little components on my MTB with a toothbrush, switch the wheels, change the brake pads and finesse the shifting down to smooth, clickless transitions. Mechanical preparedness is probably the third most important step in preparing for an endurance cycling attempt, right behind buying the right food and building up an amiable attitude that will keep you semi-sane in the suck. How could those things possibly be the top three, you ask? Sure, training is very important. But all the past six-hour bike rides in the world aren't going to help you when your front derailluer refuses to shift into anything but the middle ring and you're doubled over your handlebars with gastrointestinal pain.

Attitude, Food, Good Gear. After that, it's all just breathing and spinning.

I found some great articles on ultracycling.com about preparing for a 24-hour bike race. Sure, all that training info now is too little, too late. But all I really needed to hear from those who know was in the closing paragraphs:

"Don't worry: Things can get a little weird during the wee hours of a 24 hour event. When this happens, don't panic - consider it a bonus. Others might have to commit a criminal act or spend years in an ashram to experience some of the sensations you're going to enjoy in the middle of the night. Laugh, store it in your memory bank, and keep riding.

Ultracycling is your hobby - it is not your job, it is not your punishment. You've prepared for months to get to this race and now that you've arrived, there's nowhere in the world you'd rather be. So put a smile on your face, put a song in your heart, and enjoy every minute of it."

Barring the smiles and songs - (I don't know that collecting mosquitoes in my teeth or humming "Birdhouse in Your Soul" for 24 hours will really be all that beneficial) - all the secrets to endurance bike racing lie in that statement. Tolerance for insanity and pre-emptive enjoyment. That's all it takes. Simple, right?

Midnight sun

Date: June 20
Mileage: 39.4
June mileage: 452.7
Temperature upon departure: Warm enough for shorts ... 55

Watching the sun set out my bedroom window at 11:40 p.m., on the first mostly clear evening in weeks, on the second longest day of the year (reduced only by the sole second that solstice will add to the total daylight tomorrow.) In my neck of the woods, there is no actual midnight sun: by 12 a.m., it has already slipped just below the horizon, on that half-submerged arc that will keep twilight burning all hours of the night until the first sleep-deprived rays rise again at 4. Sure, you can't get a tan here at 2 a.m. (I know from personal experience that a 2 a.m. tan is a hard thing to obtain even north of the Arctic Circle, where clouds of mosquitoes tend to block out the sun.) But this is a latitude I can live with, the romantic allure of all-night daylight aside.

Not that a mere 20 hours of daylight is too shabby. Still, I think I've done a pretty good job of avoiding the new-Alaskan tendency to cram a million little activities into days that unavoidably still have the same number of hours. Part of this is because I lead an active winter lifestyle that garners as much satisfaction from snow and ice as it does from dirt and lupine. Also, I keep a pretty strict summer weekday schedule: Blurry-eyed awake by 6:30 to 7:30, work until 5 or 6, errands, one-to-three-hour bike ride ... sometimes four ... dinner at 10 or 11, shower, computer, with time to spare to stare wistfully out my bedroom window, watching the red glow that will never quite dissipate into the horizon and wondering where my day went.

At least I don't mow my lawn at 1 a.m.

But I could.