Training for pain

Dan V. asked a really good question today: What's my game plan for training for a minus 40 or minus 50-degree cold snap that could hit during the Iditarod Invitational? The truth is, I haven't really worked it out yet. I can buy all the gear in the world “rated” to these temperatures. But until I actually experience the danger cold, it’s impossible to know how my body will react.

Like at least 98 percent of Americans, I will never see those temperatures in the place where I live. Juneau is in the Alaska tropics. Only on rare occasions does it even drop below 0 here. The coldest temperature I have ever ridden a bicycle in was minus 18 degrees, pushing minus 30 degrees with the stiff gale windchill. It was brutal. I had to stop three times in a 150-minute ride to run up and down the highway just to warm up my feet. But I wasn’t wonderfully prepared back then. I think I was still in my cotton sock phase. And, when all was said and done, it wasn’t really all that bad.

At least once this winter, I hope to hop a ferry to seek cold-weather experience in the Yukon Territory. Maybe repeat pieces of my toasty August bicycle tour of the Golden Circle, only in January. There’s a couple of problems with this plan. First, taking a couple of days off work and buying ferry tickets means I’ll have to plan the trip weeks in advance. I may not get the cold snap I’m hoping for. I may get another toasty warm front that gives me Juneau-esque temperatures. And I will not likely be able to coordinate such a trip on a whim. I can just imagine approaching my boss with the request ... “But the weather is supposed to be terrible this weekend.”

Another concern is the border gate. I’m worried that I’ll plan the trip, pack all my gear, ride the ferry to Skagway, approach the gate that's a mere five miles outside of town, and be deemed so crazy or incompetent by the guards that they won’t let me into Canada. I can just imagine approaching the frost-coated building on a bicycle, requesting access to a remote road that leads to a 3,000-foot mountain pass, in the winter no less, with all of the earnestness I can muster ... "But the weather is supposed to be terrible this weekend."

Other suggestions I've heard is to simulate danger cold by going out biking in 25-degree weather wearing nothing more than a short-sleeved bicycle jersey and shorts. But this seems idiotic to me. I already know what hypothermia feels like. The idea is to avoid it.

There are a few things I know: It's better to keep moving through the danger cold. Stopping to bivy in the cold isn't the best idea, unless you find yourself in trouble. If that trouble is the cold, though, bivying might not be enough. You need to start a fire, eat food, drink water, eat food, and run in circles with whatever energy you can muster to generate warmth.

I've heard matches won't strike in the danger cold. But I haven't heard negative reports about cigarette lighters.

I need to practice changing a flat with gloves on. Mittens I imagine are nearly impossible, but touching a metal rim with bare hands is out of the question.

Gas stoves are likely not to work at all when the temps drop really low. Liquid stoves will withstand colder temperatures, but tend to be worse in the wind, and all the effort to set them up and light them may discourage use. Snow will melt inside the bladder of a camelbak next to the body, but very slowly. So drinking water can become an issue. I continue to consider solutions.

There's an obvious advantage to experience in this department. Racers from Fairbanks continue to shine in the Iditarod Invitational. Anchorage people also tear up the trail. I can't say I've ever heard of anyone from Juneau in the race. But if someone from California can survive it, well, so can I.

Hopefully.

Sun therapy

Date: Nov. 11
Mileage: 17.2
Hours: 1:45
November mileage: 278.2
Temperature upon departure: 35
Rainfall: 0.0"

I woke up this morning to lead legs. Stomped around the house, ate my carbohydrate-and-caffeine breakfast, and couldn't stop the sensation of blood congealing like cement in my veins. Clearly there would be no purposeful exercise this morning. I thought about building a cardboard divider shelf for my piles of winter clothing. I thought about cleaning the bathroom. I thought about reading Geoff's copy of "The World Without Us." I thought about the sunbeams streaming through the still-drawn blinds. I thought about the way the warmth of the sun trickles through clear air. I could probably go out in the 35-degree morning wearing polyester pants and a T-shirt. I thought about visiting the places where summer still lingers. Places best reached with a snow bike.

I shook out my legs some more and slogged over the bridge. The Gastineau Chanel was a stagnant sheet of glass. As a body of water connected to the Pacific Ocean, it's strange to see it so still. Like the world stopped spinning, and where gravity settled is where I stood. Strange to feel so heavy and light at the same time.

Out Thane to the Dupont Trail, a cliffside that holds onto its mossy greenness and thick shade well into November. The sunlight dissipated in the frosty humidity of the rainforest. I finally began to warm up, at least enough to melt some of that seemingly lead-based cement from my legs. Maybe too little too late, with a dozen places to be and no more time or reason to head further south. But for those few moments, everything looked like June. If I closed my eyes, I could almost feel it - as though summer is a state of mind, like tiredness. And suddenly I was lighter on my legs, lighter on top of the mud. Just lighter. And free.

Hit the beach on the way home. A stretch of jarring boulders gave way to perfectly smooth sand. I skirted the surf as it crept up so calmly it was nearly impossible to detect until it was on top of me, like a bathtub slowly filling with water. I returned home cured of my lead legs, feeling like I could go back out and conquer an entire afternoon if given the chance. Not what I expected ... but could it be true? Is the best way to relieve fatigue just to ride it out, ride it out? Or is the best cure simply to spend some time in the sun?

The hours

Date: Nov. 9 and 10
Mileage: 18.1 and 30.2
Hours: 1:20 and 3:45
November mileage: 261.0
Temperature upon departure: 37
Rainfall: 0.30"

My recent realization that the sun now sets before 4 p.m. has been a bit of a blow to my mood. At the beginning of the week, I was riding a sugar snow high and it was all I could do to straighten my face after hours of silly perma-grin. Now I am feeling the effects of greasy snow indigestion (not literal indigestion; just sort of a sinking feeling that not all is well.) At first I blamed the waning daylight. But now, I'm wondering if some of it could be mild overtraining.

For this race I plan to line up for in February, spending as much time as possible on the bike, on the toughest trail conditions, in the crappiest weather I can endure, is the most valuable training I'm going to get. Speed intervals, "time trials," weight lifting, hill climbing - these were all great exercises to build up my base. Now it's time to build up endurance. Even more so, it's time to toughen my morale. I need to learn to spend hours on the bike, days on the bike, learn to trudge beside my bike for hours, days, and not lose my mind in the process. It's a daunting task - especially because I there's a decent chance I could jump the gun and lose my mind in training.

The first 10 days of November, there has been a lot of riding. The miles don't show it, because almost all of the riding has been snow riding, muddy trail riding, road miles on the mountain bike, and trail-hopping road miles on the Pugsley (which so far I have been unable to coax over 14 mph without the benefit of gravity or wind.) So while the miles don't show it, the sheer hours of exercise have stacked up. I've probably jumped from 9-11 hours a week at the end of October to 16 this past week. Maybe more. I don't know. It's obviously not wise to make jumps like that, so I'm going to start keeping track.

It's funny, because I haven't felt any physical effects of "overtraining." There have just been a few hints of slipping morale. Like yesterday, when I purposely set out on my road bike in marginal weather and turned around at the first sight of snow flurries. Then today, riding the trails on a Saturday morning, I became overly annoyed with just about everybody I saw. Two people on the Salmon Creek trail stopped me to point out the girth of my wheels (Don't they know it's rude to call something "fat"?) and then chide me for not riding with studded tires. The trail was wet gravel covered by about two inches of slushy snow. I wanted to launch into a lecture about how studs are great on the street but nearly pointless in these kind of trail conditions - but instead I just smiled and through clenched teeth said "Yeah. We'll see how it goes." As I headed back up the trail, even as I vowed to never, never go trail riding on a Saturday again, I wondered about the real reasons behind my quick-tempered irritability.

I think I'll keep increasing the hours of my long ride(s) each weekend, the way I planned, but flatten out my weekday riding (I don't have much more weekday time to burn, anyway.) See how it goes. Hopefully it will keep me from snapping at a hapless hiker. Then, when training calls for the necessary dissection of my morale, at least I'll have happy memories from November.

*****

Late, completely unrelated tangent: I don't do political diatribes on my blog, but Geoff and I just returned from a showing of the documentary "No End In Sight" and I can't get it out of my head. This movie about the Iraq war isn't simply a vehicle to preach to the enraged choir, as Michael Moore's movies have done. It's a very simply laid-out, calm play-by-play of the events and decisions that led to the current situation in Iraq, as told my members of the military, former members of the Bush administration, and others who were very close to the process. The feeling it ends with is not anger, but an almost overwhelming sadness. That's why I highly recommend seeking it out and seeing it. Not because it will leave you in despair, but because it will inspire you to take action. It definitely has me asking myself what I can do. Especially today ... Veterans' Day.