Still can't ride

Date: March 2
Mileage: 1.1
March mileage: 1.1
Temperature upon departure: 11

I tried. I tried.

The bike box was covered in several inches of snow by the time I finally dragged it into the house and sliced it open. I went to work restoring Snaux bike from a duct-tape-covered mass of aluminum and cables to something that might move forward again. But I had to make sure.

Juneau was in the midst of a "blizzard warning," but it seemed pretty tame ... about nine inches of new snow and only light powder falling at the time. Most of the streets weren't yet plowed, so I couldn't just coast and spin easy for a while. I had to set right into the crank, and the knee pain came instantly. I winced through it for a about a half mile, thinking that my knee was probably just stiff and needed to loosen up. But it just became worse. Eventually, my leg started involuntarily jumping off the pedals. If I had pedal cages, I probably would have just let it dangle there. But I needed the leg's dead weight just to keep the crank turning, and the angle of the up-stroke of was too much. I got off the bike and pushed it home.

As I was carrying my bike down the stairs, it somehow slipped out of my hands, bounced a few times and dropped into the yard. I'm not really sure what happened then. I lost it, a little bit. I plopped down beside it and had my own private temper tantrum, right there in the snow, swiping up clouds of cheek-stinging powder and everything. After that humiliating little pity party subsided, I propped up the bike and got out my camera to document the meltdown. I'm not sure why I did that, either. I'm still really embarrassed about it. Why am I writing about it? But it seems important to remember the low points. And today was definitely a low point.

I can't say why I became so consumed with frustration. I'm not exactly suffering, and there are people out there - like Lynda, who broke her collarbone in a mountain bike race on Feb. 17 - who obviously have it so much worse. But I guess that, as with any injury, there is always a lingering thought that "this knee is never going to work again." It's easy to push the thought in the back of my mind when I have an inexplicable little injury with no known origin and no real reason to exist. I can even tell myself that it's all in my head. But when that thought of permanent disability comes raring back ... no amount of denial can hold it off. And there I am, sitting in the snow, clenching my mittens so tight that my fingers hurt and thinking, "It's not supposed to happen like this. Not here. Not now."

I know. So much melodrama. I'm usually even-tempered, but every once in a while I revert back to the maturity of a 16-year-old. It's a good emotional release. I'll be OK. I promise. I even went a short snowshoe hike after that. With all of the new, deep snow, I really worked my calves without putting much pressure on my knee.

I have an appointment at a sports medicine clinic on Tuesday. I look forward to finding out that it really is nothing, that it's all in my head, and that I'm just acting like a toddler.

I want to ride the Fireweed

No bike and no new race updates make Jill crazy.

Here I am, watching some amazing weather blow by - sideways snow, zero visibility, wind gusts to 65 mph, single-digit temperatures, wind chills down to -25 - and I'm thinking "What luck to be stuck indoors with a bum knee."

And I'm seriously thinking that in a sarcastic tone. Because it could otherwise be an oh-so-rare opportunity to really test my mettle.

Instead, I'm surfing the interweb for some sort of summertime dream ... something to burn for now that Susitna's a distant memory. And what I've found - that for some unknown reason has captured my imagination more than anything else - is the Fireweed 400.

Not the 200. The 400. Who knows why? Here is a race for people who own aerobars ... who don't have a tire philosophy based on "the fatter the better" ... for people who appreciate the virtues of pavement and not so much the virtues of peanut butter sandwiches and iodine and filter-top water bottles that you can dip right into a stream.

Maybe I'm just enthralled by the distance. It's a decent month when I break 400 miles (haven't this month, that's for sure.) And I'm enthralled by how much cycling I'd have to do to get ready for such an intense event. Last summer, I spent some time getting better acquainted with sustained mountain biking technique. This year, it would be fun to become more acquainted with rhythm and flow, with cadence, with speed ... to some degree. But I'm not going to drag my flat-barred Ibex touring bike out there with any speed demons on my shoulder. I just want to finish the *$#@ thing. Last year, only one woman completed the 400 solo. Her time was incredible, but if a similar number of entrants finish this year's race, I'll always be able to gun for second. No matter how distant ... second is second.

There's a big hurtle (as I see it) in the 400 with the requirement of a support vehicle. Now, I understand the need for safety above all, of the danger of riding at night on the highway, etc. But there are ways to always ride safely, even at night ... including riding lit up like a Christmas tree and pulling off the road if a car's approaching and there's no shoulder (We're talking rural Alaska. I bet three cars go by in the middle of the night, tops.) And - on top of the fact that I'll never be able to convince not one but two Anchorage-based friends to putter behind me at 13 mph in the soft twilight of the earliest hours of July 6th (and possibly 7th) - I'd just really like to ride it self-supported. The idea is so much more appealing than the one where grumpy friends hand me Clif Bars from a car window and I finish the race one hour faster. I've already e-mailed the race organizers with the self-support question, and expect to be summarily shot down soon enough.

Anyway, I was hoping someone out there could clue me in to some other endurance cycling events happening this summer in Alaska or the Yukon. I need to get Fireweed out of my head.

No bike and no new race updates make Jill crazy.

March 31, 2009 toe update

I have buried this post in the archives to protect the squeamish.

March 2: At the Mat-Su Valley hospital, about 18 hours after I first discovered I had frozen the tips of all five of the toes on my right foot. (Despite appearances, the left foot is normal.)

March 12: This is an "after" picture. My doctor has the "before" picture, taken before she removed black-purple blisters on three of my toes; and the tips, which aren't really shown here, were still gray.

March 26: This is the first day I could truly put all my weight on my toes and walk normally without pain. The general feeling now, four weeks after the injury, is still one of tingling numbness and intermittent streaks of a burning pain. I still have to bandage it daily and still don't wear a shoe on that foot, to keep the circulation moving. As far as the level of numbness now, however, I have definitely had more severe numbness in my hands after long bike rides in the past. To the touch, I can feel most everything, even on the still-calloused tips. And, much to my doctor's annoyance, I haven't yet lost a single toenail yet.