Like a virgin

Date: Jan. 7
Mileage: 34.0
January mileage: 183.6
Temperature upon departure: 29

As far as bicycle riding goes, 2007 is going really well so far. I figure I put in 14-15 hours this week, just on the bike. Since I'm not counting New Year's Day (and who has the energy to do anything on New Years Day?), I'm on pace to have a 200-mile first week. This morning, we had about 3 inches of new snow and patches of actual sunlight. My ride took me through five miles of deliciously difficult trails around Dredge Lake.

The best part about this first week of January is how diverse all of my rides have been. I started the week on the road bike and moved to dirt singletrack with Sugar. The past three have been snowy bike path jaunts with snippets of trail riding. Despite a parking lot full of cars, I just couldn't stay away from Dredge Lake today. The area is a tight network of trails cutting through a glacial moraine. I've been dying to try it all winter, but I'm afraid of receiving dirty looks from skiers (the trails are not groomed, but that doesn't make cyclists any less evil. Never mind that the skiers' unleashed 150-pound dogs make a lot more postholes than I could even if I tried.) Today I threw caution to the wind, looked both ways to make sure nobody saw me, and slunk toward a low-traffic side trail. Snowshoers had set up the surface nicely, and after about 20 minutes of steady cruising, I was hopelessly lost in a snow-drenched maze.

Another great part of this first week of January is the unexpected bursts of joy. They hit in subtle moments, moments when I am shimmying my handlebars away from the powder pull, when my thoughts are stripped of miles ridden and morning headlines and uncompleted projects, and my senses are engaged in nothing but the intense focus of flotation. With a mind bleached white and a perspective to match, a snowdrift throws me sideways and I narrowly miss hitting a sheet of thin ice. I slip off the bike as though waking from a dream. Where am I? How did I get here? Raising my head toward the river, I suddenly see Alaska as I did the first time I woke up in this state - stepping out of a tent into the loneliest wilderness, muskeg flecked in the soft gold of 4 a.m. sunlight, a jagged black-spruce treeline slicing through eternity.

It takes a minute to come back to frozen, winter, Southeastern reality. The trail continues forward and I am not lost. I am right where I have always been.

Goal driven

Date: Jan. 6
Mileage: 25.1
January mileage: 149.6
Temperature upon departure: 31

I am slowly amassing my Susitna 100 gear collection. I had all the gear last year, but because Geoff signed up for this year's race, and all of that gear belongs to him, I pretty much had to start from scratch. Yesterday, I ordered a -20 degree-rated sleeping bag. I'm not going to admit what brand it is or how much I paid for it, because it's embarrassingly low (yes, I know this bag could save my life. It's not cheap because it's ineffective. It's cheap because it's heavy :-) 6.1 pounds, actually. But I figured since I barely made the 15-pound weight cutoff last year, an extra pound or two won't be too hard to shave off elsewhere. As for the rest of my gear, I still need a bivy sack, a small closed-cell sleeping pad and some kind of lightweight mid-sized drybag that I can strap to the top of a bike rack. If anyone out there has this kind of gear lying around and doesn't need it before early March, maybe we could work out a lending deal. I'll pay all the shipping costs and ... I'll send it back with a delicious batch of energy-packed pumpkin cookies. I'm actually serious. Let me know.

I've been thinking about setting some goals for this year's race. Last year, my goal was to survive, to keep all of my fingers and toes, and if all that happened, to finish ... maybe. I'd like to set the bar a little higher this year. Actually, a lot higher. I'd like to shave 8 hours off my time. For a 100-mile race, this probably seems pretty extreme. What's even more extreme is how little control I actually have over my finishing time. I figure that, of the variables that will determine my final time, my physical fitness counts for about 10 percent. Mental condition is another 10 percent. How well my gear and bike holds up matters to the tune of 20 percent, and the overall trail conditions make up the final 60 percent. I base this equation on last year's race, which took me 25 hours to finish. The first 50 miles were a very comfortable, very leisurely 8 hours. The last 50, in which I essentially returned on the exact same trail I came out on, were a 17-hour slog through the colder levels of Hell. What changed? The trail conditions. That's all. The trail is All.

Given that Great Unknown, I still think I can do the race in 16 hours, and I'd really like to try. I have six weeks to prepare. I'm going to try to put in more trail time during the coming weeks, more high-heart-rate intervals (probably indoors), longer distance days and more weight training (I will be strong. Carry loaded bicycle like ox.) It's probably going to be a huge time suck. But oh well. It's January. What else am I going to do? Go snowboarding? And Geoff is so busy training to be ultramarathon man, he won't even notice that I'm gone all the time. It might even be fun.

Alas, all this counts for is 10 percent. But it's the 10 percent I can control. Now where do I begin?

Snow's back

Date: Jan. 5
Mileage: 28.0
January mileage: 124.5
Temperature upon departure: 32

New snow today ... About nine inches of fresh, cement-thick Juneau powder when I woke up this morning. It was a friendly sight - after the successful castration last night of the Timberwolf tire, it was time to really see how deep this snowbike could go (sans knobbies, of course.)

I'm glad to report that the first experiment was a raging success. I was bummed to see that by the early hour of 11 a.m., the city had already plowed most of the bike paths. But the road shoulders, sidewalks and dirt trails were beautifully buried. Even at 20 psi (pretty high, really), I was able to plow straight lines through nearly all of it, from two-inch deep sections all the way up to nearly a foot. The sanded, slushy shoulders threw me a couple of times. I can't even imagine what life would be like on a truly big-wheeled bike. I probably should have just dropped for the Pugsley before I got entangled in Snaux bike. But he holds his own. And he leaves a decent footprint.

The air was pretty warm ... right around freezing, and every once in a while a pile of snow the size of my couch would come shooting down from the forested unknown. The sound was pretty spectacular. Almost enough to hear over my iPod. Almost. (OK. I admit it. Sometimes I turn it up pretty loud when I'm alone on a low-traffic trail.) Today, I actually turned it off for a while. Pillows of powder muffled the squeak of my tires enough to listen the snow melt in a symphony of drips. I had promised Geoff I'd meet him for skiing, and after about 2 1/2 hours, I realized that I wasn't going to be able to put that off any longer. By the time I switched over all my gear and staggered over to the trail, he had already skied a loop and decided the conditions were bad. But he skied another loop for my sake. We met a friend and looped the trail in a mildly indifferent shuffle combined with engaging conversation.

Skiing ... eh. I don't know. The trail was ungroomed and none of the skiers seemed to think it was a great day for the activity. Too warm ... too slippy ... still snowing but not sticking. And I thought biking was a picky activity ... that whole thing about needing something resembling a trail slanted at preferably less than a 45-degree angle. But give me that and a bike, and I'm going to at least make an effort to rip it up. Give me this and skis, and I am a timid puppy on a leash, restlessly toeing the line.