Just ... can't

Date: March 15

Mileage: 8.2

March mileage: 14.4

Temperature upon departure: 32

When I was 17, I wrote an editorial for my high school newspaper that I was really proud of at the time. It was our special "fitness" issue, full of exercise tips, nutritious recipes and columns about working out. And right in the middle of all that was my article, arguing - essentially - that exercising for the sake of exercising was asinine.

"We have classes to walk to and friends to visit and pickup volleyball games to join and punk shows to dance at, and you want me to wake up at 5 a.m. and go jogging? No thanks," I wrote. My point: Life was an exercise, and "exercising" was just a redundant waste of time.

I think of that article from time to time when I wonder how 17-year-old Jill would regard the fitness freak she's become. She had that idealistic slant that convinced her she would actually be able to spend her life in pursuit of intellectual and cultural enlightenment. The way she saw it, her body was basically just a vessel to carry her to the desert, the library, the basement of club DV8 ... anywhere that appealed to her academic sensibilities. I think she may have actually convinced herself that how she looked was not all that important ... good to be healthy, better to be smart. She also had a bit of a freewheeling hippy streak and listened to a lot of Phish at the time. One lyric that she scrawled across her notebook was, "Never understood what my body was for. That's why I always leave it layin' out on the floor."

I don't miss her music. But sometimes, I do miss her.

Another Thursday down, another attempt to ride the bike. New, soft snow required the use of Snaux bike, so I didn't have the pedal cages to lean on. But I decided that I was going to double pedal it today, or not at all. It became obvious pretty quickly that I just ... can't. But I wanted to. I can be so stubborn. I know it's detrimental. I can't help myself. But four miles was too far. I knew it before I even turned around. I already had some errant tears and an unwilling leg. I don't have an explanation. I don't have an excuse. I just have a reality. A physical hurdle that my mind can't beat. Or vice versa.

I spun a little and walked a little on the way home. The whole thing was a terrible idea. I was stiffening up again. Pain was increasing. I was regressing further with every mile. I was so angry ... mostly at my body, but with each step -as common sense settled back in - a little more at myself.

17-year-old Jill would be so ashamed ... Letting a small injury ruin an entire month, when it was obvious that it was just a minor setback that was taking a normal amount of time to heal (or would take a normal amount of time to heal if I gave in for a while.) Becoming so despondent over a stupid thing like a bike, when so many other pieces of life are so much more meaningful. "Limping down North Douglas Highway in a snowstorm just to prove your self worth?" she'd write in her editorial. "No thanks."

And I'm ashamed, too. When I was young and quick to rebound, I had little use for strong legs and high lung capacity. But now that I'm older and rickety, I'd gladly give up a few IQ points just to have two good knees right now. A larger part of me wonders why that's so ...

Acute angles divide my path that I have lost

March snowfall in West Juneau as of 3/14: 68.6"
Season to date: 220.8"

It seems like the snow is basically coming nonstop now. I think this makes me happy, although it’s difficult to tell. A hard seven miles on snowshoes definitely evens out my emotions for the rest of the day.

But during the hike, I felt positively giddy. I marched through the powder into the heart of Douglas Island, stripped down to bare hands, bare head and only a thin outer layer of clothing. Whenever the wind chill crept through my sweat-soaked shirt, that was my signal to work harder. One thing I’ve noticed about most Alaskans is they don’t get up very early ... or at least, they don’t get out very early. At 10 a.m., I was the first up the trail. At one point, a couple of snowshoers intercepted the path from the snowmobile trailhead, but I caught them pretty quickly. I climbed out of the woods and found myself in a bald, U-shaped bowl that really pushed the word “avalanche” into the forefront of my thoughts. I lost the trail across the sweeping meadow and continued for about 20 more minutes through thigh-deep snow. I stopped when I could no longer lift my right leg high enough to pull myself out of the drifts. All I could do at that point was plop down in the powder and soak up some of that delicious chill before commencing my race against the clock back down the mountain. As I was sitting in the snow, I noticed the other snowshoers winding their way along my erratic trail. I hurried back down the hill to intercept them and tell them they were going the wrong way, but they didn’t seem too keen on turning around. They told me they would just follow my trail because they didn’t think they were too far from the cabin at that point. I later learned from Geoff that we had likely all passed the cabin at that point. I feel a bit of residual guilt for leading people astray. But I can’t say it’s the first time.

One of the advantages to “cross-training” as a way to get around a bicycling disability is that it’s really pushed me off my plateau. Even though I’ve been by definition less active, I’ve spent more time weight lifting, stretching and snowshoeing, all of which seem to be great for building muscle. Just today, while examining my knee for swelling, I noticed new lines along my legs that I had never seen before. They could be fat rolls from all of the Rainbow Food I’ve been eating, but I like to think it’s the snowshoeing.

I haven’t made as much progress this week as I was hoping for. What keeps me off the bike is, to put it simply, pain when I bend my knee too far. It’s not pain caused by pedaling, sitting in a bad position on the saddle or pressing too hard on the joint. It happens regardless of the situation, whenever I bend my knee into an acute angle, every time. It’s almost as though a rubber band has been wrapped across my knee cap, and it snaps when it gets stretched too tight. I’ve been able to get away with riding on my trainer because my knee's “too far” angle is almost beyond what I need to bend it in order to pedal. And the pain is no longer prohibitive; it’s just nagging. But there’s no way it’s 100 percent yet. I still have a doctor’s appointment scheduled for next Tuesday. I'm still looking forward to it.

The day I quit mountain biking

( After the four-year hiatus: Me on the White Rim trail in April 2003)

Today I made it another 90 minutes on the trainer. My Netflix DVD ended so I started it over from the beginning. I really need to get back outside soon. But since I can't quite do that yet, I thought I'd share the story of my first and nearly last time on a mountain bike.

I still remember the date - April 7, 1999. When I think of that time, I remember myself as a giggly little girl ... but in reality, I was a junior in college. Back then, I had a boyfriend who - not unlike the one I have now - was better than me at pretty much everything. But unlike the boyfriend I have now, he was either unable or unwilling to reach into that vast reserve of knowledge and teach me the ways of the great outdoors. Whenever we went snowboarding together, I would spend an entire afternoon dragging my bruised knees down whatever black-diamond slope he abandoned me on. When we went backpacking, he would laugh as I juggled my gear - a full-sized pillow and a $10 sleeping bag strapped to the outside of my bookbag - and then bury me on the hike up. Then, one day, he suggested we go mountain biking ... in Moab.

"Sounds great," I said. And in my mind, I was thinking, how hard can this be? After all, I had a 10-speed as a child. I definitely knew how to ride a bike - or at least I believed that adage about never forgetting how. He took me to Poison Spider bike shop. "What would you like to rent?" they asked me.

"Uh, a bike?"

"Mountain or road?"

"Um ... for slickrock?"

"Rigid or suspension?"

"Uh ... huh?"

I think think in local bike shop speak that's code for "Give this girl the cheapest bike and the nicest helmet we have." They gave me a hardtail with a squeaky little suspension fork. We strapped it to the top of my boyfriend's car with bungee cords, then hauled it up to the Slickrock Trail.

"They have two loops," he said. "One of them is painfully easy, and the other is pretty fun."

"Fun," I said. (I mean, what would you say given those choices? However, I should have known from several snowboarding experiences that to him, "fun" was code for "you're not going to get out of this without permanent scarring.")

It's been long enough now that I don't remember much about how the ride started out. There was a little tentative pedaling, a lot of walking, and an uneasy distance between me and my boyfriend. I spent so much time fixated on white dashes scrawled across the slickrock that I began to lose track of him. And as I looked back, I realized that I could be anywhere on this vast plateau hovering over the Colorado River and he was carrying all of the water. I had to keep up.

I began to pedal harder, catching glimpses of his silhouette coasting effortlessly across a moonscape of red rock beneath the harsh April sun. I had a fair amount of elevation on him, but that perspective was lost on me at the time. I wobbled a bit and mashed at the pedals, feeling a surge of freedom and power. It was beautiful and fleeting, and it absolutely shattered the second I crested the edge of what can only be remembered as a sheer, sun-scalded cliff. My front wheel was the last to relish in that freedom and power as it sailed into deep blue sky before slamming into the side of the cliff. There was enough empty space below for the bike to turn a complete 360. If I had any grace or skill at all, I could have flipped a full head-over-heels turn and landed on my wheels. But instead, I set the twirling bike free and landed on my face in a pile of hot sand. By sheer grace, my legs must have hit the slickrock first because they ended up bloody and torn, but I didn't snap my neck.

I remember laying motionless in the sand - stunned. All I could think about was how my face felt like it was on fire - and with my eyes shut I almost convinced myself it was only sunburn. But as I rolled over and got my first look at my legs, dripping crimson from slickrock rash that would make even the most hardened roadie cringe, I thought, "My 10-speed never did this."

I staggered to my feet and collected the bike - no worse for the wear, although I admittedly didn't really bother to check. The boyfriend was nowhere in sight. I commenced limping along those white lines until I was convinced nothing was broken. Then I walked normally for a while, leaving a lightly sprinkled trail of blood in the sand. I think a couple more miles passed before I found him. He was sitting in the shade, sipping the water that he had waited so patiently to share with me.

"What happened to you?" he asked.

"Crash," I said.

"You feel OK to keep riding?" he asked.

"If it's OK with you, I'll probably just walk to the trailhead," I said.

"Hum," he said. "I think it's still about five or six more miles."

(Indifferent nod from me)

"You sure you don't want to try riding again?"

This argument went on for about a mile before he convinced me to at least try to sit on the saddle one more time. Then it was tentative pedaling ... a lot more walking ... pedal ... groan.

And when I wheeled the bike back into Poison Spider, legs still covered in dried blood that had only been half-heartedly scrubbed with a Subway napkin, the bike shop guy asked me, "So how was it?"

"Great," I said. And in my mind, I was thinking, "Thank God I'll never have to do that again."