Piling up

Date: Feb. 15 and 16
Mileage: 25.4 and 28.7
February mileage: 450.5
Temperature: 25 and 29

I leave for Anchorage in one week. I have a lot to do. And for some reason my co-workers won't take "Eat, sleep, breathe Iditarod" as an excuse for not exactly having 100 percent focus. When I think about race preparations or things I have to do just to leave my job behind for two weeks, my stress levels spike. But when I think about the race itself, I feel a strange sense of calm, as though I were anticipating a week of laying out on a warm beach and not a cold-weather suffer fest. I think last year's experience lent me a new perspective about the adventure. I was so amped up before the race, and then somehow so calm during the race. There were times I was hurting and times I was deeply afraid (the fear was always worse than the pain) ... but most moments of those six days were so fulfilling and meaningful and - dare I say - fun. You might say I'm looking forward to this year's event as a vacation. A bike tour, if you will. That's all it really is. Sure, it has the word "race" attached to it and somebody out there will be recording my time. But all I really want to do is ride that frozen wave of grace into some of the most beautiful country I have ever experienced. My bicycle, whether I'm pedaling it or using it as a luggage cart, is simply a vehicle to help me get there.

And yes, I realize it might be stormy and awful; that I might have to deal with 45 below and soft new snow; that I might have to deal with rain and a trail churned up into mashed potatoes (like it was on Saturday for the Susitna 100); that I might have a mechanical I can't deal with and my knee might act up at the worst possible time. I'm mentally preparing for those possibilities, too.

Until then, I just wanted to post a few links. First of all, my book is on Amazon now! You can find it here.

Also, I am trying to set up a good SPOT tracking system to share on my blog. I have a shared page set up here. However, I'd love to set up something that can be embedded in my blog to somehow show my progress along a map, Tour Divide style. I'm worried the shared page provide by SPOT will only work for 500 page views. In all of my digging, though, I only found pages that will allow me to show a single dot, the last point I clicked "I'm OK" on. Not nearly as fun. Any suggestions with how to use SPOT would be greatly appreciated (Even if anyone could explain to me exactly how to get tracking to work I'd be grateful. I paid for it and the SPOT help team confirmed that I have tracking on my unit, but I haven't yet successfully started it.) I'm not sure I'll be able to spend much more time dealing with this. If not, I'll probably post this map at the top of my blog before the race:

It's where I am now. Or, at least, where I last used my SPOT.

The armor

Date: Feb. 14
Mileage: 30.1
February mileage: 396.4
Temperature: 17

I'm officially into the taper period of my training now, taking a few wind-down days to ride an easy two-or-so hours each day and sort my gear. I spent this morning collecting and trying on the clothing I plan to use in the race. I rarely wear it all together, "warm" as it is where I live, so I wanted to walk around in it for a while and make sure everything was comfortable and moved easily together. And I thought as long as I was trying it on, I might as well shoot pictures for a reference point when it's finally time to pack for this trip. So my photo essay today is "The armor:"

This is the base layer, an Under Armour syntetic-blend shirt, basic Canari bike tights with chamois, and RBH designs insulated high-rise vapor barrier socks. It looks like a silly super suit, so I struck a silly super hero pose.

The mid-layer is 2 mm neoprene shorts (to help combat that typically female problem of "cold butt syndrome"), a pair of Outdoor Research polyester long johns, J.B. Fields Icelandic wool socks, a Mountain Hardware fleece hat and a Go-lite vapor barrier vest. The vapor barrier vest is intended mainly to keep sweat from pooling near my back, where I will be carrying a backpack and several liters of water. It also works to funnel moisture up through my neck line, where it's easier to vent, so it helps prevent too much ice buildup on the inside of my shell. As you can see, this is the part of the photo shoot where fashion is thrown out the window.

Getting closer to the outer layer here: A pair of Arc'teryx soft shell pants, Mountain Hardware windstopper gloves and a polyester pullover. I haven't decided yet whether to go with this lightweight pullover or a Mountain Hardware Monkey Man jacket, which is furry and warm with a nice pocket but fits a little tight inside my coat, and feels a little over-warm above single-digit temperatures. Decisions, decisions.

This is likely what I'll look like for the bulk of the race. I have an Outdoor Research soft shell coat, a polar fleece balaclava and my Raichle mountaineering boots. I wrestled a lot with whether to wear these boots again or get a lighter pair of winter hiking boots and some N.E.O.S. overboots. All my experience with N.E.O.S., however, has been annoyance with walking in them and ripping up the nylon sides by pedaling in them, due to chain rub. There is enough walking and pedaling in this race that I started looking for ways to forgo the N.E.O.S. and still deal with overflow (these boots are waterproof to my lower shins, and I plan to wear gators, but I was looking for a waterproof layer that was knee-high or higher.) When I found one, these boots won out. I'm happy with their warmth and I'm comfortable walking in them for long hours, even though they're at least three sizes too big. And no, the boots don't have clipless cleats in them. I don't even like riding clipless in the summer with my road bike ... I can't fathom why anyone would try to deal with it in the winter when walking, ice buildup and heat loss is such a factor. :-)

I also wanted to note that the balaclava is probably the oldest piece of winter gear I own. I bought it at REI when I was a teenager because my neck was always freezing when I went snowboarding. No, I didn't care about fashion back then, either.

This is the rest of it, the 70-below-zero-windchill-I-hope-this-keeps-me-warm outer layer: A Mountain Hardware Subzero down parka with hood, a neoprene face mask, Oakley goggles and Outdoor Research shell mittens. The baggy layer on my legs are Wiggy's lightweight hip waders, a thin, waterproof nylon shell that will protect my boots and pants should I need to cross any open streams or overflow this year (Thanks to Martin for the suggestion). The hip waders are solely an on-off item for open water, to minimize the risk of ripping a hole in them. I also will be carrying a lightweight pair of nylon rain pants as an extra wind layer. I love the breathability of the soft shell pants, but I'm not totally sold on their wind-blocking abilities. The gear looks more like a moon suit than a super suit at this point. The bulk of it may seem like overkill, but I'd rather move slower with more confidence than faster with more uncertainties.

Still seems like a lot, huh? Now you see why I go on such long rides in the winter. It takes so long to get dressed that you might as well make it worth your while.

Friday the 13th

Date: Feb. 13
Mileage: 22.3
February mileage: 366.3
Temperature: 20

Today was an absolutely perfect day. In Juneau, you can't get a better day than a day like today, unless it's summer, and even then, I'm not sure it would really be better. Warmer, yes. Different, yes. But there is something about the silk-smooth sweep of snow over the mountains, the ice glistening on the cliffs, the power-coated trees ... something about winter that makes a blue-sky, no-wind, sunny day just ... perfect.

I dragged my loaded Pugsley up the Dan Moller Trail. It's a short trip, mileage-wise, even when I add an extra leg of highway biking at the end. I was still out for nearly five hours. Climbing to the ridge on this trail usually nets about 3,000-3,500 feet of elevation gain, depending on how long I spend traversing the ridge. I don't drag my bike all the way to the top, but I take it as far as I think I'll be able to ride downhill, which even on a soft day like today is generally pretty far. Minute for minute, it's the best workout there is walking up (specific to my upcoming race at least.) And mile-for-mile, it's the most exhilarating workout there is coming down.

I dropped Pugsley off just below the bowl and hiked to the ridge to take pretty pictures and dodge snowmobiles. Everyone was out today, everyone and their dog. It was the kind of Juneau day that leads to half the town calling in sick.

Even the ghost trees looked happy.

The air above the wind-scoured ridge was as calm as summer. My thermometer hovered somewhere in the low teens, but in direct sun with no wind after hiking from the bottom, I was warm enough to sit on my coat for a few minutes wearing only a T-shirt as I sipped my orange juice and gazed over Stephens Passage.

Geoff and I had a dinner party tonight and after that I put together my drop bags for the race. I'm allowed two drop bags of 10 pounds each. One goes to the 135-mile checkpoint and the other to the 210-mile checkpoint, over the Alaska Range. I figure I'll see an average of about two days between drops, less if things go well. I packed 12,000 calories in each drop, lithium batteries (lots of batteries) and chemical warmers. The calories are on the high side. That assumes I'll eat about 6,000 a day, which I know I won't, although I'll probably be burning at least that many. But we're allowed 10 pounds and whatever I don't need I can leave behind. I left a lot of food behind last year.

At dinner, our friends made fun of our food selection. On the surface it looks like a lot of junk food, and it is. But I've actually spent a fair amount of time thinking through this. My one and only goal is to get calories in. That is all. As long as they go in, it doesn't matter where they come from. Fat is good and sugar isn't so great, but sugar is what I like. Sugar is what I always like, even after six days. I can also digest large amounts of it it without issues, unlike most high-fat foods. So I'm going to eat a lot of sugar. I'll probably come home with a couple of cavities, but as long as I eat, that's what matters. I'll be burning through the calories so quickly that I really don't think it matters of they're not complex-carbohydrate, amino-acid, antioxidant, lycopene-infused calories. They just need to be appealing enough to go down in the first place. Thus, the miniature peanut butter cups (thanks, Richard!) with almonds in a handy 3,000-calorie zippy. Get in ma belly!

There's actually a decent balance of fat and protein in the mix, and I'll be supplementing it all with vitamins, antacids and electrolyte pills. But what I'm drop bagging is a delicious smorgasbord of peanut butter cups big and small, Kit Kat bars, almonds, walnuts, dry-roasted edemame, Corn Nuts, a mix of dried cherries, cranberries and chocolate-covered raisins, and home-made chocolate chip cookies (mmm, butter.) This isn't a performance race. It's a survival test.

Notice that I've given up on bars. I like to eat Clif Bars on training rides, but they're impossible to ingest once deep frozen. Freezing is actually a strong factor behind many of these decisions. Has to be good, has to be easy, has to be edible deep frozen. Healthy crap can come before and after the race.

There you have it. My next book will be called "How Cycling Turned Me Into a Junkaholic."