First rides

Date: Jan. 1 and 2
Mileage: 14.5 and 36.1
Hours: 2:00 and 4:30
January mileage: 50.6
Temperature upon departure: 30 and 34
Precipitation: 1.03"

As I roll over the frozen Mendenhall Lake in a sleetstorm, the surface and the sky blur together in a wash of light gray. The lake blends into hillsides, which blend into mountains, which blend into air without borders or distinction. The world is a blank canvas broken only by brilliant blue brushstrokes at the center of the monotony. The color draws me forward like a distant light on a dark night, even as my conscience nags me to heed wise warnings and turn back. The warnings tell me not to go near the glacier, with its electric blue spires threatening to peel off the mountain of ice and tumble into the water below ... the threat of a spectacular death by ice-shard tsunami. The unlikeliness that such an event would happen keeps me rolling forward, but my heart rate shoots up and sweat beads form on my face in anticipation of that enjoyable fear - the fear of something that probably won't happen, but it could.

But in the true form of someone who's always willing to assume the worst-case scenario, I stopped about 200 feet shy of the last solid ice before the glacier's face, took a few quick photos, and high-tailed back to terra firma. But it's so irresistible, sidling up next to a glacier. It's hard to appreciate the scale until the glacier's right there, towering over me like the skyline of a city, with alleyways so deeply blue, I'm convinced they stretch beyond the bowels of the glacier into another dimension.

I was actually going to take a full week off the bike, but I became a little bored on New Year's morning while waiting for my friends to roll out of bed (we had a couple of friends visiting us from Palmer over the weekend. We love them, but they are in their own way unapologetically lazy when they're on vacation. I've never see anyone sleep so much in three days.) Anyway, I took out the Pugsley and was encouraged to find it didn't hurt to pedal. And after two hours, it still didn't hurt. Nor was there any residual pain after that. It seems I was taking a bit of an alarmist stance with my knee. Better to be safe and overcareful than reckless and injured, but I decided it wouldn't hurt to go out for a little bit longer today.

Because of my "injury watch," I allowed myself to do something I never do - I put my bike in my car and drove it to a trailhead. It was wonderful to spend the afternoon almost entirely on trails, but the lack of pavement commute to the Valley actually made for a much harder ride overall. The weather today was a fluctuating mixture of snow and rain that people around here call "snain." Trails started out wet and soft and gradually deteriorated to saturated and soupy. I've had a light week and brought a lot of energy to spend on the effort, but still I felt like I was slogging through quicksand. Only because I have a fat-bottomed Pugsley that I can run at <10 psi was I able to ride much of that trail at all. I have this theory that once I finally find my way to the cold snow of Southcentral Alaska, my Southeast-forged quads of steel will be so strong that I'll just be able to fly over the snowy trail as though it were pavement. Either that, or the cold will drive me into the ground. But if there just happens to be an extreme, snain-soaked warm spell during this year's race, I'll be ready.

This is turning into a longish post, but I wanted to thank Andrea Recht for nominating my site as a VeloNews "Site of the Day." That is really too cool! I couldn't believe the number on my hits counter. I think this blog received more hits today than it did in all of 2005. It won't be the Site of the Day anymore by the time this post goes out, but if you dropped in from VeloNews, hello. There are probably a lot of things in the cycling world that are more interesting than a soggy snowbiker in Southeast Alaska, but I appreciate you stopping by.

Also thanks to Laura Conaway for the mention in the Bryant Park Project blog's "Best of the Blog 2007." I came in a little late in the year, and only post about once a week, but it's nice to feel appreciated.

And, I wasn't going to mention this, but ... Oh, who am I kidding? Of course I was going to mention this. Nominations have started for the 2008 Bloggies. Last year, this blog actually was nominated for a Weblog award in what I thought was the unlikely category of "Best Sports Blog." But it was cool nonetheless, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't secretly hope it would happen again. Ok, I guess it's not much of a secret. But, if you feel like wasting a few more seconds, you should drop by the site and nominate someone for something. It doesn't have to me. We bloggers, all of us, pour a lot of time into our pastimes and relish in feedback. It's true. Even though most bloggers fling their heart and souls into cyberspace for entirely selfish reasons (the same reasons others watch TV), we still like to tell ourselves we're doing something worthwhile.

So thanks to everyone who reads and stops by this blog. I don't have a good exuse to quit writing as long as you're around.

Happy New Year

This is one of my favorite photos I took in 2007 ... serendipitously captured while I was wandering lost in the woods below Heinzleman Ridge in September. I like the way the beams of light slice through some shadows and slip behind others. I like the intense illumination on that single bush in the center. And I like the context ... the first streaks of sunlight to cut through the fog. Everything below here was shrouded in a thick cloud. Everything above was glaring and clear. But for these few steps in my meandering search for a trail, the two worlds collided, perfectly.

New Year's is a good time to write a reflective year-in-review blog post. Here's mine.

January: The holidays. January became consumed by my training for the Susitna 100. It was a fun month because nearly everything I did had some connection to cycling. I spent my mornings plowing through snow drifts and skirting icy roads. I wandered into work with wind-burnt skin and more times than not, a huge smile spread across my face. Then I would spend the rest of the day stealing moments to research gear and plot different rides and type up reports. It's amazing I managed to keep my job.

February: The race. Everything about February centered around the Susitna 100, which took place on Feb. 18. The first half of the month involved more preparations than training as Geoff and I tried to gather up required gear, tweak my bicycle and his sled, and somehow pack it all in boxes that we could take on a plane with us to Anchorage. But all that stress seemed to melt away when I set my bicycle on the frozen ground and began to pedal into an expanse of snow. I love that place, that Susitna valley. Even after those 100 miles left me with little more than an injury that stole three months of the year, I wouldn't take it back.

March: The knee debacle. That knee injury I sustained during the Susitna 100 followed me into the next month, when it became apparent that I was probably in for a long recovery. I remained defiant during the first few weeks, and continued trying to ride my bicycle through sometimes blinding pain and Juneau's snowiest month on record. Nearly 100 inches dumped in my backyard over the course of the month, a beautiful barrage that I hardly took the time to appreciate. But I remember it now.

April: The waiting. April was a quiet month; I might even say the cruelest month. By then I was fairly entrenched in a routine of physical therapy, doctor visits and mundane gym workouts. Meanwhile, I didn't feel like I was making any progress. Instead, I felt like I was cycling through an loop that offered neither hope nor relief. I remember traveling to Anchorage for work and visiting old friends from Homer. As we sat around a table at the Glacier Brewhouse, I began to wonder if my whole Juneau existence had perhaps just been a bad dream.

May: The desert. It was an ideal reunion - friends who went to college together and dispersed to far-away lands such as Alaska, Ann Arbor and northern Idaho, reunited in the remote Utah desert for a week of biking, backpacking and general debauchery. While setting up camp in a dry wash deep in a canyon on the southern edge of the state, we came across black bear tracks. So we followed them up a side canyon, tracing the path of the unlikely desert dweller until the walls of the canyon cut us off. At the end, I think we all had a better sense of the way life's mysteries interconnect.

June: The comeback. At the first hint of feeling stronger, I went on a bit of a cycling bender. And after a substantial stretch without it, I felt like a recently-reformed crack addict who suddenly discovered heroin. Even as toned down as my fitness was at that point, every mile I pedalled seemed effortless, from my first summer century to riding 12 hours of the 24 Hours of Light in Whitehorse, Yukon. Unless I'm forced to abstain from cycling for three months, I'll probably never again experience that inexhaustible feeling.

July: The summer. A friend came to visit us from Washington, D.C., and had the amazing fortune to experience a four-day stretch of consecutively sunny weather in Juneau. One Friday night, we were sitting on the beach in our T-shirts, roasting salmon and watching a brilliant sunset linger over the horizon. "Is it always like this here?" she asked. "Not even remotely," I replied, "but when it is, it could make you forget a month of grayness."

August: The distance. I set out to test my endurance by touring the "Golden Circle," a series of roads that connects the sister communities of Haines and Skagway in the most roundabout way possible - by stretching across a mountain range and meandering through interior Yukon for 371 miles before returning to Southeast Alaska. I experienced a startling range of highs and lows in that often brutally hot, aggressively hilly 48-hour whirlwind tour. I also gained more confidence that I can handle the distance when I need to.

September: The mountains. I took another subtle hiatus from cycling to prepare to walk across the Grand Canyon in late September. I spent the month stomping up and down all the major trails around Juneau, bulking up my quads and gaining a better sense of the sweeping geography that towers over the place where I live. The Southeast Alaska tundra above 2,500 feet has become one of my favorite places to visit ... windswept and barren and nothing like the light-smothering rainforest below it.

October: The rain. Nearly 16 inches of steady rainfall, drenching all but one of October's 31 days, pretty much defined this month. Fall in Juneau can be downright dreary, and I burned it up by embarking on a month of "speed work." I emerged with prune-like fingers, a runny nose, and a better understanding that as long as I live in this waterlogged place, I will probably never be "fast," but I will always be "tough."

November: The decision. I actually struggled for a while with the question about whether I really wanted to spend the winter training for a race like the Iditarod Trail Invitational. Although I have been eyeing this event since 2006, I had no idea if I was actually ready, and still don't. But in deciding to enter the race, I gave myself a free pass for a near-daily adventure.

December: The beginning. Back to the holidays, the training, the uncertainty. I don't know where I'm going. But at least I know where I've been.

Walkin

There's something underrated, and yet subtly satisfying, about putting on a pair of shoes, stepping out the front door, and going for a walk. There seems to be an cultural perception that it is difficult to have a good time outdoors without strapping oneself to some sort of toy. I definitely buy into this idea, what with my penchant for dragging and hoisting my bicycle over every near-unrideable trail I can find. The temptation to bring a toy on my walk today was nearly overwhelming. "I can bring my bicycle," I thought, "and only ride it downhill." But even downhill snowbiking involves a fair amount of pedaling, and I am trying to cut back on the deep bending of my left knee for the time being. Then, I thought about carrying my snowboard. But if cycling is bad for my knee right now, then snowboarding most definitely is. So, almost grudgingly, I strapped on my snowshoes (which could be considered a toy, but I like to think of them as a "walking aid"). I walked out the door and marched up the unplowed surface of Fairbanks Street, waving at children as their plastic sleds whisked past me.

The reason I can walk through my various knee injuries is because my pain is caused not by impact, but by bending the joint further than 90 degrees - achieving that ever-elusive acute angle that pedaling demands. The impact of running can be too much to bear, but walking I can do forever. I make it an honest workout by pushing as hard as I can uphill. Today I had stripped down to my base layer and snowboarding pants - no hat or gloves - by the time I reached the Douglas Ski Bowl. From there, I commenced my ongoing quest to find a walkable route to the ridge - and by walkable I mean a route where I can keep my snowshoes on my feet rather than removing them to kick steps up the steep slope. I follow snowmobile high-marking tracks because I feel that if they can make it up a mountain, so can I ... but that's really not the case. During my final attempt - while I was still sans hat and gloves - I lost my footing and began to slide, on my belly, backward down the slope. I decided mid-slide that this was probably a good time to "head down," so I flipped over on my butt and continued to careen downward, dragging my naked fingers through the snow and trying futilely to use my snowshoes as brakes. My coat ripped from my waist, and several dozen feet went by before I finally rolled to a stop and crawled back up to retrieve it. No more high-marking for me.

The knee's already making progress. My pain-free range of motion is increasing at a fairly encouraging clip, and I spend my day wearing these arthritis patches that smell like an old lady's medicine cabinet and make my skin feel like it's pressed against a hot oven - but they seem to be working. Optimism will prevail.