Training vs. survival

Date: Oct. 1
Mileage: 27
October mileage: 27
Temperature upon departure: 47
Rainfall: .94"

I think cycling is good physical therapy for an injured foot. I get all of the benefits of warm blood flow without any of the motion that sparks pain. That is my theory, and I'm sticking with it.

So I have this idea about training to be a faster rider. It is loosely based on ideas I culled from magazine articles and blogs, minus the necessary gauging equipment and coaching: intervals, climbing, and in general more riding near my perceived lactate threshold (i.e. sucking as much air as I can tolerate without passing out.) While ramping up my effort on the bike to improve my fitness seems like a great theory in abstract, I think it is going to be much more difficult to achieve in actual practice.

I rode an easy spin with a tailwind out to the glacier to check out the new slab of bright blue ice exposed Saturday during the largest calving in years (I couldn't see much of it behind the detached chunks of ice floating in the lake and blocking the view.) Deciding that my foot was a nonissue, I resolved to work on my speed by riding all-out for a mile, then recovering for a mile, than going all-out again, etc., all the way home.

The first interval went well. I was riding a bike path, huffing audibly and peeling off layers in the 47-degree dampness of the afternoon. Shortly after my first recovery period ended, however, I turned to face the brunt of the headwind. The rain kicked up a notch and, because I had stashed all of my rain layers away, needled through my jersey and stung my skin. I was hot and cold at the same time, unsure what to do about it, and already committed to the hard pedalling. I decided to tough it out.

By the beginning of interval three, I was just plain cold, and wet to boot, but I was nearing home, and it was time to ride hard again. As I launched into the pedals, the fountain of snot that I had been fighting back through my sinuses suddenly gushed into my throat, leaving me choking and sputtering and slowing my speed just to catch my breath. The horizontal rain was moving fast enough now to force my eyelids into rapid blinking. In the confusing midst of strobelight vision, I caught a long line of jarring potholes just as traffic was really bearing down. I regained my composure, put my head down, and spun the pedals. I no longer had any goals in my mind. I was in survival mode ... conserve energy ... keep eyes open ... move toward home ... move toward home.

I feel like I can rec ride in this stuff forever. But speed? There's got to be an easier way.

Off my feet

Today's rainfall: .08"
September rainfall: 12.96"

I spent the weekend lying low with foot pain that Geoff pinpointed as a likely case of plantar fasciitis. Basically, it's excessive wear of the tendon-like tissue that stretches across the bottom of the foot. The common term is "policeman's heel." Between that and my "runner's knee," I'm feeling a bit bogged down with overuse maladies that supposedly have nothing to do with my lifestyle.

I think this effectively ends my hiking season, not that the downward-creeping snowline wasn't already threatening to do so. I keep trying to convince myself that it's just as well. It's time to leave the unhindered days of summer behind; time to return to the bike and the more regimented lifestyle of training I have been known to say I miss. But I believe a larger part of me still clings to the hiker's high - the carefree zeal in which I attacked elevation and hoisted myself to the craggy tundra that seemed worlds apart from my home, mere miles away.

And now it's gone. I'm more than a bit annoyed. I'm hobbling around like Gimpy McStiff at work, yet again; and the frequency of my limping, I'm sure, has my associates questioning my basic competence as a bipedal human. You can call me whiny, I don't care, but I think my body is being wholly uncooperative and unreasonable. When my knee cried overuse and decided to stamp out cycling for a while, I re-evaluated the virtues of cross-training. Now that the foot has nixed the cross-training (because pretty much all weight-bearing activities fire up the pain), I guess it's cycling or nothing again.

It seems we can't win, in this battle everyone shares, when age is our enemy and experience our friend.

Three mountains

Even though I am done training for the Grand Canyon, I'm not quite done with my peak bagging for the year. Today I marched up to three different peaks, including my first Juneau summit over 4,000 feet - Sheep Mountain (Sounds funny, doesn't it? 4,000 feet. The home in the Salt Lake suburbs where I grew up sits at a higher elevation than that. But in Juneau, Alaska, 4,000 feet feels like a real accomplishment.)

At about 12-13 miles and ~6,000 feet of climbing, it was my most difficult Juneau hike yet. In hindsight, it was much too ambitious to attempt one week after walking across the Grand Canyon. I seem to have sustained a tendinitis-type injury on the bottom of my left foot, and it flared up in full force today. The last mile and a half was close to agony, and the whole time I'm just thinking "Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!" I hope this injury doesn't stick around. It's right on the bottom of my foot, which means it's painful to put any weight on it at all. I'm guessing, though, that I could still push a pedal.

The top of Sheep Mountain had a fair amount of new snow ... about three inches deep, windswept and frozen to a hard sheen. A thin layer of clear ice clung to the rocks, and the temperature with the windchill was well below freezing. And there I was, still sporting all of my summer gear ... no hat, no coat. Luckily, I found a pair of still-damp gloves in the camelbak left over from a recent bike ride. But wow ... I was underprepared and pushing through an overuse injury. Good thing I am, as my aunt puts it, "low maintenance." Otherwise, I might have been miserable.

But I had a great time. I was wrong about the last cruise ship having come and gone. The last cruise ship of the season came today, and with it, the last day that the Mount Roberts tramway was open. I stopped there to take the cheater/shortcut/tram ride to the docks rather than limp the last two miles of trail. I walked into the building to buy a recovery drink - a tripleshot skim mocha grande - in order to spend the minimum $5 required to hitch a ride down. The barrista insisted on giving it to me for free, because it was the last day of the season. He then plied me with free muffins, ice cream and even a T-shirt (I politely declined the T-shirt, which had a scribbly font scrawled over the image of a roaring grizzly. It was pretty much unwearable, even by the standards of cheese that are acceptable in a tourist trap T-shirt). I caught one of the last trams out. I sprawled out beside a window and sipped my hot drink. From the frozen edge of the wilderness to the lap of luxury in one hike ... it doesn't get much better than that.

The top of Sheep Mountain, looking northwest.

Looking back at Sheep Mountain from the top of Mount Roberts.

Looking back at Sheep and Roberts from the top of Gastineau Peak.