Hold back the rain

Date: Jan. 10
Mileage: 30.1
January mileage: 258.4
Temperature upon departure: 24

Saturday, tempo ride, 30 miles, 2.5 hours. My knee felt much better today. Still some soreness, but I've concluded the problem was almost entirely in having my seat too low. I originally lowered it to help leverage better steering control on the foot paths (i.e. winter singletrack.) I greased the seatpost heavily because it is a tight fit anyway and always a beast to adjust, and I'm guessing that caused it to slip down a little more before it froze in place. I fixed the problem today with a little help and a lot of leverage from Geoff. I am going to install a new seatpost soon.

But I felt a lot more comfortable and even a little faster heading out North Douglas today, despite yet more new snow. I pedal as hard as I can, until my quads are screaming, but that doesn't really translate to speed in these conditions. I've decided that any time I average more than 10 mph, I can count the ride as a "tempo" ride. Nearly 40 inches of snow has fallen since Jan. 2. That would translate to a 120-inch snow month if it continued at this rate, but it's not going to. A warming trend has commenced, and rain is in the forecast now. I wish the rain would hold off for two more days. After that, I'll be gone. But it probably will come Sunday. And when it does, rain on top of several feet of dry powder snow is going to make everything, and I mean everything, horrifically sloppy, nasty and completely unbikeable. Since I've lost my momentum in my 10-day training binge anyway, I see a bit of slumming at the gym in my near future.

But, on a different note, I wanted to share something I found during random Internet browsing:

It's a picture of guys in the U.K. reading my book! They didn't send this photo to me. I found it while I was browsing the blog sites of other 2009 Iditarod racers. I'm guessing one of them is John Ross, who's living the dream and training for the Iditarod Invitational in another typically wet, cold coastal climate. I was pleasantly amused. I never really thought about the possibility of other racers reading my book. I hope it doesn't dissuade anyone from showing up at the starting line. (I have to admit that I question my own sanity when I think too much about my experiences last year.)

I haven't posted about the book in a while, but it's still available. I've made a few edits since the original version and it is slowly becoming more polished. Such is the nature of spontaneous indie publishing. I've sold a little more than 500 copies since November, which is awesome! I'm slowly working on increasing the distribution. It's available now at Hearthside Books in Juneau and Speedway Cycles in Anchorage, and should be up on Amazon.com pretty soon. I'd love to further increase the distribution, but have taken close to no time to actually market the book. I still have yet to send out review copies to several magazines and publications that requested one (I keep running out of my own stash of books.) If you have a favorite little bookstore or bike shop that you think may be at all interested in stocking a book like this, send me an e-mail at jillhomer66@hotmail.com and let me know where/how I can contact them so I can send them my pitch. I'm happy with the lucrativeness of this book so far, but I think I've nearly tapped out the market from my blog. Time to branch out.

Powder dump

Date: Jan. 8
Mileage: 52.4
January mileage: 228.3
Temperature upon departure: 6

It's amazing how warm single digits feel after a short swing into the subzero range. Even when the sun is gone, and icy flakes are falling from the sky, there's a certain warmth to the air that can only be felt after dips into something much colder - like climbing out of a glacial lake on a cool spring day. I think that may be the only reason people can tolerate living in Interior Alaska. I check the current weather for McGrath almost every day. During this past cold snap, which lasted more than a week, every time I clicked on weather.com I saw current temperatures of -43, -47, even -55. Weather.com always includes a "feels like" reading with the actual temperature to account for windchill, but during the cold snap, the "feels like" temperature just read "N/A." I thought about writing weather.com and telling them they should change "N/A" to "outer space" or "standing on the moon." But maybe, just maybe, after a week or so of that, -45 just feels normal. Or not. Either way, if McGrath has a cold snap like that forecasted for the week of March 1, I am going to think hard and twice about starting the race. Cold weather training can only go so far for those of us who do not live in outer space.

Thursday, long slow distance and more weather exposure, 52 miles, 6 hours. Thursday was not really a great day on the bike. A snowstorm moved in, and with it a gray pall over the general cold. I pulled on my goggles and rode into the whiteout, plowing through the powder and trying to imagine what I could think about to get myself excited for many hours of that. It really was just one of those put-your-head-down-and-ride kind of days. It's good pshycological training to have days like this from time to time. One of the skills most endurance cyclists must hone is pushing through boredom. (And thanks again to Brian for the photo. I see him out often while I am riding, and it's a little like having my own personal photographer.)

After about four hours, I started to feel sharp streaks of pain in my right knee - old injury flareup. It happens from time to time. I am never quite sure how seriously to take these flareups. Whether I should turn around right there and soft pedal home, raise my seat up a little more and carefully push through it, or ignore it entirely. I decided on option two. But I couldn't get my seat to raise in the cold with the seatpost somewhat rusted and frozen in place. I finally decided to turn toward home and finish out six hours - on the low side of what I was hoping to ride Thursday, but still in range of my goal. The knee pain continued to bother me throughout the evening, so I decided Friday would be a bike-free active recovery day, even though I was trying to push through this 10-day period without any recovery. It was just as well, anyway, because the forecast was calling for 18 to 36 inches of snow Friday.

Friday, active recovery on snowshoes, about five miles, 2.5 hours. Geoff and I went on an afternoon snowshoe hike that turned out to be a little more strenuous than an actual recovery day. An hour of snowshoeing is generally more difficult than an hour of cycling, and two and a half hours leaves me good and tired. But I really like hiking when I am having knee pain, because it heavily works my lower quad muscles and actually helps me feel like I am pushing out the inflammation that is causing the pain (obviously, there's probably no real physiological proof of this, but that is the image I see in my mind while I am walking.) Anyway, like most placebo effects, it works wonders, and I actually feel much better tonight. I think I'll try to get back on the bike tomorrow and take it generally easy, and hope the pain doesn't come back. If it does, I may be in for a longer rest period.

I don't think the 36 inches of snow are going to pan out, but it's a foot at least and still falling. Even though I don't live in the "feels like outer space" region of this state, 2008-09 is definitely shaping up to be a harsh winter.

Much better

Date: Jan. 7
Mileage: 38.1
January mileage: 175.9
Temperature upon departure: -5

Wednesday, cold-weather acclimating, 38 miles, 4.5 hours. Clear cold weather arrived as promised this morning. I was giddy about it. Not only was it a (brief) respite from the snow, but it also was a chance to try out some gear combinations I have been thinking about running. I wanted to ride longer than four and a half hours. But it seems that although I possess the willpower to drag myself outside in subzero weather, I am still unable to drag myself out of bed earlier than 8 a.m. Before I receive criticism from early risers, I just want to say: You try working until close to midnight and then get up before dawn in the midst of a four-hour-a-day cold-weather training binge. It's not easy.

The last time I went riding in the danger cold - New Years Day - I found myself dangerously close to hypothermia. The last time I went riding in hard subzero windchill - yesterday - I sustained mild frostnip on the tip of my left thumb. So today I gave a lot of thought to how I dressed and what I packed. I added an extra layer on both the top and bottom - polyester longjohns and polar fleece pullover. I also crammed my helmet onto an extra thick fleece balaclava and wore a neoprene face mask. And I used my bike pogies instead of mittens. Amazing what a difference a few small additions can make. A world of difference. The difference between quiet suffering and exhilarating freedom.

It was about 5 below zero in downtown Juneau, with cold mist wafting off the "warm" seawater of the Gastineau Channel.

I rode out to the Valley for a couple hours of trail riding. Before I left the house, I loaded up my bike with an excessive amount of clothing, food, and a couple random objects just to add weight. I've resolved to start riding with more weight to get used to the sheer grind of a loaded bike. I also tried out the water system I am thinking about going with in the race - one 32-ounce bottle in an insulated sleeve on the handlebars, and a 6-liter MSR bladder in pack on my back. I don't plan to typically carry six (well, seven) liters of water, but I did today, just to see if it bothered me. And to tell you the truth, I didn't even notice the extra weight. At all. I'm sure I was moving slower, but when it's minus double digits out, there's an east wind kicking up, and the whole world is washed in stunning color and light, you tend to have other things on your mind than your excessively heavy backpack.

The air felt extra frigid on Dredge Lake (a sinkhole on the glacier moraine), so I pulled out my thermometer to see what the temperature was. The red line was barely there, a little sliver hovering above the bottom-out zone of minus 20. That would make it 17 or 18 below zero - officially the coldest temperature I've ever seen in Juneau, and, with the exception of last year's Iditarod race and its 30 below on the Farewell Burn, the coldest temperature I've ever ridden in. And the amazing thing about it is that I felt toasty warm the entire 4.5 hours. It feels like a big victory, getting my cold weather gear right. It's liberating to affirm that I can move freely through weather and seasons that most people find oppressive and debilitating. When I pull off a long ride in near-record cold without incident, I feel like I can do anything.

My friend Brian took a photo of me riding along Glacier Highway while he was out trolling for cold-weather photos for the Empire. I can't be certain, but I'm pretty sure I'm grinning in this photo.

It's crazy to think that temperatures will be nearly 100 degrees warmer in Honolulu next week. Melting will feel strange.