Lead legs

Date: June 17
Mileage: 35.4
June mileage: 379.7
Temperature upon departure: 54

Shortly after heading out for a ride this morning, I noticed a sensation that I haven't experienced in months: sluggish strokes, blood pumping like peanut butter, invisible weights wrapped around my shins ... lead legs.

Sure, it meant I was going to have a rough morning. But beyond that, I was pretty excited about the development. Lead legs without knee pain mean I have finally hit a point in recovery where I can tire out my muscles without overtaxing my joint. That they were tired out at the beginning of the day means I've been riding too much overall, but still ... that's training! Actual training. Oh happy, oh joy.

Truthfully, I haven't had any major knee pain since just before the calendar turned over to June. Weight training and stretching finally earned me the range of motion I need to turn pedals, and since then, it's just been a matter of doing so. My recent mileage spike might make it seem like I've gone trigger happy. But in reality, I've just used cycling to replace my menagerie of lower-impact cardio exercises (indoor swimming and the elliptical machine ... who wouldn't want to replace that?) My overall activity has only increased ... well ... it hasn't quite doubled. Actually, it's a fair amount lower than double. Still, I do deserve the lead legs.

Of course I'm not fully recovered yet. I'd be an idiot to believe that I am. During my quad stretches, I still can't pull my right heel all the way to my butt without some pain. The invisible barrier still springs up when I walk down stairs. But I am so, so close.

(The ski resort is one of the few places on a summer Sunday I can go to be alone.)

Now that I've made my health case, this is the part of the blog entry in which I admit that I just signed up for the solo female category of the 24 Hours of Light. I mulled my different options, including not riding at all, and decided that I'd have the most fun if I had the freedom to decide when (and whether) to ride.

I know it sounds crazy. But you know, despite the implications of a 24-hour race, there's nothing in the race rulebook that stipulates that you have to ride straight through those 24 hours. You could ride for four. Or eleven. Or one. That's the beauty of a race against time. Everyone's a finisher. (Not unlike life itself, one might say.)

I feel like I should do something special, like wear a costume or commit to only eating Lucky Charms, just to illustrate my true intentions with this race. Any ideas?

And despite the voices of reason and common sense, I honestly believe that my worst worry will be lead legs.

Biking with Geoff

Date: June 16
Mileage: 30.7
June mileage: 344.3
Temperature upon departure: 65

Geoff and I both spend a lot of time cycling, but rarely together. There are several of reasons for this. Like many people, our schedules and abilities only brush together in thin strands. He works afternoons; I work evenings. He's training hard for serious races; I'm still leery about laying hard on the cranks. Geoff has technical experience that stretches back to the days when I still believed 10-speeds were the end-all of cycling; I ... well ... I'm still focused on keeping that whole crank-turning thing together.

So we have our different paces. We have our different priorities. He wanted to ride 50 miles. I wanted to be at work by 2 p.m. But like all those couples engaged in a constant struggle between ESPN and The Food Network, we make it work. He turns the volume down a bit, and I pretend that the joys of technical singletrack aren't terribly overrated (After all, we're only riding loops over the footprint of a melting glacier, not traversing the Rocky Mountains.) And as he ever more gently urges me to try cleaning a log I've already nearly endoed over, I'm definitely thinking, "we should do this more often."

Not that we're really that incompatible cycling together. I guess I just think it's funny that we have any differences at all, when we're both overzealous about the exact same thing. It's like sharing the same religion, going to the same church, sitting in the exact same pew, listening to the same sermon, and envisioning two different rewards. He's thinking "Go to Heaven." I'm thinking "Stay out of Hell."

But when we waver long enough to work our way to middle ground, we find ourselves riding together, here.

(I don't know why these pictures are so blown out. I think I'm not the only one overwhelmed by all of this clear-sky sunlight.)

(At first glance, this picture is boring. But I really like the distinct layers of green hues.)

Draw'ring

This time of year, by the time I crawl into bed, the sun is already on its way back up. This means I have sunlight blazing in my face for nearly the entire span of time I'm attempting to sleep. My summertime insomnia is back in all of its hazy glory; combined with a recent increase in activity, which also wreaks havoc with my internal clock. But being sleep-deprived is not the end of the world, and it does make for some interestingly dreamlike mornings.

Like this morning, I could not stop thinking about Equus. It's a play I went to see with Geoff and friends last night. It was by far the most graphic play I have ever attended; but its message was equally haunting - the tortured psychologist, who has nearly gone mad over the enlightenment that life is meaningless without passion, in the end realizes that passion itself is a hopeless pursuit. Heavy stuff. I chewed on it for a while as I prepared to go hiking, and for some reason - at the last minute - decided to throw a sketch pad and pens in my pack to do some drawing.

It was a strange idea, and a definite diversion from my usual hiking habits. I like to go as far as I can as fast as I can without stopping much. I like the idea of covering more ground and pushing for a destination rather than lingering on dewdrop-drenched spider webs and sprigs of grass. But that was the idea I had for today. I was going to stop, and linger, and make field sketches of ferns and chunks of glacial ice. But after a few miles and stopping and going, I remembered why I don't attempt this often. I have grand plans to create an image of the world as I see it, and I end up with drawings like this:

Awwww ... a black bear on a snow bike. These anthromorphized critters are the kinds of doodles I make when I am either listening intently to a lecture, or have my mind turned off completely (like when I'm in a meeting.) But more often than not, they're what come out when I'm zoned out. And it's interesting to me that I'd so quickly dive into doodling when I was really trying to be tuned in. But I think this is, whether I like it or not, the way in which I see the world. When I am truly lost in a moment, my mind fluctuates wildly between past and future without lingering long on the present. Thus, I'd be tempted to sketch out a winter-esque picture of a little bear in a hat, when what I was really looking at is the scene in the photo at the top.

Anyway, those are the doodles I make, and these are the blog posts I make when I am in the throws of an excessive-daylight-driven insomniac episode. I am really enjoying the summer though. We went to a barbecue tonight. It was warm enough out to wear a tank top (yes, I have lived in Alaska long enough to consider 65 degrees tank top weather.) And as I was gnawing on a juicy chicken skewer and looking across the channel with strips of orange sunlight lingering over the horizon, I felt completely at home. I think, someday, when people ask me what was the best thing about living in Juneau, I will say "June."