Not too bad for a senior and a girly

Date: March 21
Mileage: 48.1
March mileage: 370.7
Temperature: 37

So Kathi and Bill Merchant rolled into Nome at 2:48 a.m. Friday with a race time of 25 days, 12 hours and 58 minutes. Lots of milestones there: Bill's the oldest man ever to ride a bicycle to Nome (is he really a senior? I doubt it. He strikes me as a 30-year-old, but he's probably in his early 50s.) Kathi is the first woman to ride a bicycle to Nome, and now holds the overall female course record on the Northern Route. The two of them have probably had this goal on their mind for many years. I can hardly imagine the sense of accomplishment (or relief) they feel right now, but I wanted to send them my congratulations. Bill and Kathi, Carl and Pete, and everyone else who tackled the trek to Nome this year (six so far have made it, and one more is on the way): You are my heroes. How cool is it to have sports heroes that you can connect with in such a personal way? Most people have to settle for looking at Web stats and watching television and purchasing outrageously expensive sports memorabilia. I rode a whole race alongside my heroes, shared trail stories and food, expressed fears and future plans. I have as much respect and excitement for people like Bill and Kathi as I ever would for pro athletes like Lance Armstrong. And that's not a slam on pros by any means. This is just where my passion fell - this tiny, esoteric little branch of cycling where people push their bikes in the snow. I'm happy here.

I was kinda proud of my own surge this weekend, although it hardly compares. On Friday I followed Geoff on his planned 50-mile ride as he starts to begrudgingly put in base miles ahead of the Great Divide Race. It's been strange riding so much with Geoff. I long ago accepted that he essentially only likes riding bicycles on dry, technical trails and long, remote gravel roads - so, basically, nowhere in Juneau. He loaded up his mountain bike with a bunch of water and gear so he could carry a little weight on our ride out the road. Not to be outdone, I opted to ride my Pugsley (weather called for scattered snow flurries, but really, bringing the heavy beast was a completely unnecessary move.) I paid for my pride with the indignity of fenderless four-inch tires blasting me for four hours with an endless spray of grit, mud, dirt and goo. I looked like I had danced around in a mud sprinkler; I had goo in my teeth, behind my ears, down my pants, in my eyes. Not to mention poor Pugsley. And all we did was fight, fight, fight the goo and wind and passing snow squabbles, then rode home two miles short of our goal. (Geoff did not want to ride loops around the block to kick up the total.) Still, 148 miles would make my longest training weekend, mileage wise, of the entire year. That includes all my big weekends going into the Ultrasport. It goes to show that mileage pretty much has nothing to do with my cycling efforts. Because, although the time I made wasn't terrible, I don't feel like I put all that much effort into the endeavour (and yes, I do nearly all of my longer rides at my "endurance" i.e. perpetual pace.) 148 miles this weekend was easier than any weekend I put in during the winter. And the century was easier than the 50-miler.

I guess it's time for me to start intervals and weight lifting again. Maybe dig deep and find some speed ... or stretch out and enjoy the tour. I haven't yet decided. Meanwhile, look what came in the mail on Friday:

Hoo Boy.

First day of spring

Date: March 20
Mileage: 100.1
March mileage: 322.6
Temperature: 40

At 9:48 last night, just as I was rolling out the last newspaper pages and preparing the leave work for the weekend, the vernal equinox happened. And just like that, the days became longer than the nights, winter was no more, and the calendar heralded its triumphant successor: The first day of spring.

I lazed about most of the morning, unwilling to commit to any activity, watching raindrops hit the window. But then, just after 1 p.m., the rain stopped. I could see hints of sunlight over Mount Roberts. I thought I should go for a little bike ride. A trip to Thane sounded nice - 19 miles round trip, rolling hills, wind protected. I packed a raincoat, my camera, a $10 bill and a half-empty bottle of four-day-old water. I was good to go.

But as I crossed the bridge, warm sunlight broke through the clouds for the first time in what seems like weeks. I looked out over the channel, so calm I could see all the way to the sea floor. I thought, "I should stay out a little longer than Thane." I turned my bike north for a nice trip to the Mendenhall Valley.

But when I reached the valley, a cool wind began to brush against my face. "That will be a tailwind going home," I thought. "I should stay out a bit longer." And I kept going.

Then at Eagle Beach, it occurred to me that I was beginning to feel hungry. I didn't have any food with me, because I was supposed to be out for a 19-mile ride. I dug around in my frame bag just to make sure. Nothing. The cool wind kicked up sweet, salty scents from the sea. "I'll be OK," I thought. And I kept going.

I rode to the end of the road, skimming my skinny tires tentatively around sheets of black ice. And when there was nowhere left to go, I turned around.

The bonk hit me hard at mile 55. I was 20 miles from the nearest convenience store. I started to feel a strange, involuntary calm, as though I had just taken a strong sedative. I could feel my sluggish legs spinning, probably slower and slower, but my mind rapidly disconnected. I began to think only of two Snickers Bars I had procured in Nikolai during the Iditarod Trail Invitational. At 20 below, one would think a Snickers Bar would freeze into an inedible brick, but just the opposite happens. The candy becomes as breakable as rotten glass. The candy would practically explode with every bite; my handlebar pogies were littered with the shrapnel of nougat and nuts. What I did manage to get in my mouth I would greedily swallow before the thaw, choking as frozen shards of candy scraped down my throat. So today, for 20 miles, I thought only of deep-frozen Snickers Bars and all of their shattery goodness.

Snickers: The bonk food of champions. That, and a Quaker chewy peanut butter and chocolate chip granola bar. Total cost of fuel: $1.41.

Finally fueled with decidedly not-shattery candy, I began to regain my senses. I was still about 20 miles from home, without bike lights, when the sun began to sink low on the horizon. It occurred to me that the camera display I had been using to keep track of time had never been reset for Daylight Savings Time. It was actually an hour later than I thought it was. I began to sprint. The effort felt amazingly good.

I managed to make it home just after dark without being killed by a car. And no, I totally didn't ride loops around my neighborhood in the dark for a half hour just to run up the odometer. OK, I did do that. First century of spring!

By far the best ride of the season. Yeah spring!

In defense of music

Date: March 19
Mileage: 28.0
March mileage: 222.5
Temperature: 35

Geoff and I both set out for separate rides today (different departure times, different goals), but we both returned home at the same time. He seemed to be in a grumpy mood, said something about awful weather, but I couldn't figure out what his problem was. I hosed the slush off my Pugsley and the grit off my clothing, poured the standing water out of my shoes, regaled Geoff with the tale of the white-out blizzard I encountered at Eaglecrest (“You couldn’t tell the sky from the road”), sloshed into the shower and doubled over in pain as the hot water hit my frozen feet like hydrofloric acid. Then it kind of occured to me ... that sure was a crappy ride.

But for some reason, I was in a good mood. It was hard to discern why. Here I am, no training goal in mind, resting period, putting in all this junk mileage, and still happily heading out into the crappiest crap Juneau has to offer. Couldn’t I just sit back with a cup of tea and “Desert Solitaire?” Why am I still riding my bike? What is my problem?

There can only be one explanation, I think ... I really like to listen to my iPod.

For most of this month, my mind has been flooded with the kind of subdued introspection and memory-heavy thought patterns that music so beautifully accompanies. There will always be debate about how safe it is to wear headphones on a bicycle, and I don’t disagree. But when I am wending around an otherwise-deserted trail or churning along a wide road shoulder, I relish in the way music allows me to feel like I’m moving not only through space, but through time as well.

I lean on the white noise of my iPod shuffle for other reasons during most of my "epic" rides and races, but I always walk away with one song, one special song, that for me is forever linked to the pain and passion of the trail. Months, years later, I will hear these songs and instantly travel back through the mental landscape of those moments. I don’t actually choose these songs. They sort of just happen in the seredipitous way only a random-shuffle mp3 player can dictate. But I cherish them.

2006 Susitna 100: Before this race, I had never owned an iPod and never trained with music. But a number of people recommended that I not go into a potentially 24-hour-long race with nothing to sooth my mental agony. So I took a little FM radio. I didn’t switch it on until about 20 hours into the race. The only station it picked up was some horrible Top 40 drone out of Anchorage. Slightly better than static. I listened to it indifferently until the soft snow on the trail caught my wheel for the 100th time and tossed me into a drift. As I laid in the snow staring up at the sharp steaks of raindrops illuminated by my headlamp, “D.A.R.E.” by the Gorillaz came on. It was the first time I had ever heard that song. It was so surreal, so appropriate for that moment. I’ll never forget it.

Soggy Bottom 100: By then, I owned an iPod. I had it plugged into my car stereo as I drove from Homer to Hope. As I passed through Ninilchik, I came upon the scene of an accident where a little boy on a bike had been hit by a car. There were several people on scene but no emergency vehicles. The boy’s limp limbs were sprawled out on the pavement. His bike lay in a twisted heap in the shoulder. The people around him appeared to be talking to him, so I kept on going. But I was wracked with all of this guilt and grief. Regina Spektor’s “Consequence of Sounds” was playing. I went on to ride the whole race without music until I started to bonk at the top of Resurrection Pass in the last 25 miles. “Consequence of Sounds” was the first song to play. I kneeled down on the trail for a short time and let my grief seep through.

2007 Susitna 100: I cheated and switched on my iPod (low volume) right at the beginning of the race. Sufjan Stevens’ “Chicago” was the first thing out of the gate. It was a strange, mellow offset to the frenzy as I swerved through strings of skiers on the narrow dog track while other cyclists nudged by me. "Chicago" stuck with me as the one song I remember listening to during the race.

Golden Circle: I loaded up two separate mP3 players going into this 48-hour tour. By then, I was deeply iPod dependent. I burned the first one out during the first 10-hour block and spent the next day listening to nothing, suffering and sweating and swearing as I plowed into 120 miles of headwind on the AlCan Highway. I went to bed that night convinced that I was not cut out for multiday endurance cycling, because common sense told me that once you start to feel bad, it can only get worse. I suffered through the first 30 miles the next day, but then slowly, inexplicably, started to come around. By the late morning I had traveled 100 miles, nearly all of it over steep climbs and descents as I ascended the Coastal Mountains, and I felt great. Better than great. I had nearly reached my goal of cycling 370 miles in 48 hours, and inexplicably felt like I could turn around and do it all over again. And just as I crested White Pass Summit and rolled by the sign saying “Welcome to the United States,” I was listening to Sufjan Stevens’ “Sister.”

2008 Iditarod Trail Invitational: I bought a AAA battery-powered mP3 player that I was only able to load 88 songs on, got sick of them on the Yentna River, and really didn’t listen to music all that much over the course of the next four days. But on the last day of the race I pulled out my iPod Shuffle as a treat. I didn’t think the embedded battery would last longer than two hours in that kind of cold. But the iPod kept plugging along, just like me. And when I was really zoned into the wind-drifted slog, I became fixated on The Wrens’ “Happy.” Not even sure exactly why. “Happy” is breakup song ... a good song for such a moment ... but I was obsessed. I just kept listening to it over and over again, pulling my hands out of my mittens and exposing my poor bare fingers to the minus 50 windchills just to hit the “back” button. Toward the end of my loop I had learned all the words and started to sing along, obnoxiously, to no one but the trail itself ... “Are you happy now? Got what you want? I wanted you. But I’M OVER THAT NOW.”

It was great fun.