Good mileage push

Date: April 8 and 9
Mileage: 47.8 and 101.6
April mileage: 391.5
Temperature upon departure: 39 and 42

Sometimes I fell compelled to apologize to my journal for the frivolous way I burn up all my free time. I mean, I consider myself an intelligent person. I have a good job. I have friends. Most of them are even real friends, not just, as Geoff calls them, "Facebook Friends." I have a great cat. I love reading newspapers, even though I work for one. I devour New Yorker magazines. Every so often, I read a book. I've had a variety of hobbies - snowboarding, drawing, going to movies ... OK, not that many hobbies. But these days, I pretty much just ride my bike. I'm sorry.

There's just this thing about me ... I can't really explain it ... I just really like riding my bike. People pass me on the street and later tell me I seemed to be smiling. Everyone tells me this. Do I smile every second that I'm on my bike? I don't know. That's what people say.

It's just that biking is so monotonous and repetitive and sort of pointless. I go out to a random point and then I return to my home. The next day, I go to another random point and then come home. Sometimes I take my bike to work, and then I ride home. Then I go out to the first random point that I rode to earlier in the week, and come home. Day after day after day. What's wrong with me?

Sometimes it's raining. Usually, it's raining. The wind blows hard from the south. Even though the temperature has been above 40, I still have to bundle up pretty warm to help keep my ultra-sensitive toes from freezing. The trails have turned to mush. The roads are covered in goo, but at least they're rideable. There aren't many roads in Juneau. I see a lot of the same terrain. Day after day after day. And yet, I never see it in the same way twice. Sometimes strips of sunlight escape through the clouds and paint streaks of green on the gray-washed mountainsides. Sometimes deer bound along the roadside and waterfalls roar with the weight of spring runoff. Yesterday, I stopped at Auke Rec and saw a man swimming in the bay. His long, neoprene-covered arms cast wide strokes over the smooth water. I watched him for a few seconds and realized he wasn't alone. Sleek, shadowy figures bounded in and out of the bay near him. I squinted and realized the shadows were dorsal fins. Porpoises. The man was swimming with porpoises, or, more accurately, they were swimming with him. Either way, it looked amazing, in a beautiful, terrifying way, and I wished myself out there with them. The man just kept swimming, calmly toward shore, as the porpoises danced around him. I got back on my bike and coasted down the road, smiling.

I was stoked to squeeze in nearly 50 miles before work yesterday. I wanted to go for 100 today. The bike did not make it easy. It was a "bad bike day." I got three flat tires, and at one point had to backtrack five miles to a bike shop to buy new tubes. I sliced my hand clean open on the razor-sharp derailleur pulley spikes and bled all over my patch kit. My rear brake pads finally wore to nothing. My rear wheel skewer kept coming loose on its own, which could have ended badly, but I kept telling myself it was my fault and it wouldn't happen again. Then it would. I was starting to remember why I gave up riding this bike last fall. It has a lot of problems.

But when I wasn't wallowing in a snowy ditch and fumbling with my rear wheel, the miles just flew by. Traffic was scarce and I did a lot of singing out loud. I decided I am a big fan of Clif Shot Bloks. It's taken me a while to come around to them. I used to think they tasted like sugar-coated wads of snot. Now I think they taste like energy-stoking wads of heaven. I like the "cola" kind. They taste like Pepsi.

On the outside, I'm just turning pedals and going nowhere, wearing soaked nylon and splattered in mud, probably with a big dopey smile on my face and Pepsi-colored Shot Blok bits lodged in my teeth. But on the inside, I'm drifting in a peaceful sea, moving freely between the past and present, and absorbing almost obscene quantities of beauty that I could devour forever and never be full.

I'm riding my bike.

I'm not sorry.

The (next) ultimate bike tour

Date: April 7
Mileage: 27.2
April mileage: 242.1
Temperature upon departure: 41

So I’m thinking about heading up to Banff on June 11 and lining up with whoever else shows up for the 2009 Great Divide (formerly known as the Great Divide Race.) I’ve actually been thinking about this since 2006. When Geoff decided to enter the race last year, I certainly didn’t feel ready myself and wasn’t at a point in my career where I felt comfortable just dropping everything for a trip south. I still don’t feel ready for such an extreme physical endeavor, but I am at a good place to hit pause on my life in Juneau for a few months. This may be the best window I ever get. Might as well go as far as I can.

Why the GD?
Since I first found out about the existence of the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route, back in 2003, I’ve looked to it as an ultimate bike tour. I started out as a road tourist and I’m not bothered at all by the fact that this route mostly follows gravel roads and jeep tracks. In fact, I prefer it. I appreciate a good piece of singletrack as much as the next mediocre mountain biker, but I certainly wouldn’t want to ride a couple thousand miles of singletrack, or even a couple hundred, at least not until I become much more comfortable with technical riding. What I do want to ride is large swaths of vastly empty space, beautiful mountains, stunning desert vistas, punchy snow, soul-crushing climbs and soaring descents. The GDMBR is set up in such a way that a person like myself with my talents (turning cranks, hike-a-biking, looking past pain and generally outlasting myself) actually stands a chance of succeeding.

But why the race? Why not just tour it and have fun?
One of the more rewarding things I’ve done in recent years is my 2007 “fast tour” of the Golden Circle. I set a time limit of 48 hours to ride 370 miles of remote Alaska and Canadian roads that I had never ridden before, all by myself. I packed light, rode well into the evening, slept in a bivy sack in bear country with tuna juice all over my hands, saw beautiful country, sweated in 90-degree heat, fought fierce headwinds, suffered a fair amount, sought refuge with friends, shivered through subfreezing mornings, and finally crested that last pass knowing I “could do it.” I met my goal. The fact that I had that time limit on top of the crushing distance, that I pushed and pushed and pushed and overcame the loneliness and hardships, made the ride so much more rewarding. It still look back on that trip as one of my best accomplishments, right up there with my first Susitna 100 and the 2008 ITI. The Golden Circle wasn’t even a race, but it had the perimeters and therefore challenges and rewards of a race. And I realize that it’s one thing to push yourself near the limit for two days, and quite another to try it for 25. But you never know if you don’t go.

Are you and Geoff going to ride together?
No. Geoff has several ultramarathons he’s been planning and training for the better part of a year. And I’m of the opinion that ultrarunning is his true calling and he owes it to himself to give it his best shot while he’s near the top of his game. The truth is, if he did decide to drop everything and join me, I’d be inclined to try to talk him out of it.

My reasons are partly selfish, too. I benefit most from endurance challenges if I go it alone. The solitude is one of the virtues I seek, although I also value new friendships and comraderie ... that’s one of the main benefits of lining up with others in the context of a race. And the fact is, it is a race. It’s hard to commit to riding with another person for the entire distance. Groups are only as strong as the weakest rider (cough, cough, me), and are almost guaranteed to never hit their highs and lows at the same time. While teamwork most certainly helps fellow competitors work through the low points, it can be tough on a relationship. I’ve joked with other endurance junkies about creating a couples race on the GDMBR. We’d call it the “Tour Divorce.”

So why the Great Divide and not the Tour Divide?
For those unfamiliar with the whole issue of the two races, the race split in two last year based on differences of opinion about the route and rules among its participants. It remains two races, and anyone who wants to line up with other people has to pick one. So that’s my answer. I had to pick one. The GD has a race philosophy I’m already familiar with. It also seems smaller and more willing to fly under the radar, and that’s probably a good place for an in-over-her-head competitor to be. Plus, GD starts a whole day earlier than the TD, and that one-day head start may give me more opportunities to ride with others.

And just how qualified do you really think you are?
Probably the best ride on my resume is a 2003 bike tour from Salt Lake City to Syracuse, N.Y. Sure, we only averaged about 50 miles a day on pavement (propelling about 70 pounds of bikes and gear a piece, mind you.) But no other ride I’ve done could have better prepared me for the realities of camping in ditches, having to find all of your food and water, pushing through the bad days and relishing in the good, and generally just living outside among strange people in a strange land for weeks at a time. The 2008 Iditarod Trail Invitational, of course, helped me become more familiar with the realities of back-to-back 15 to 20-hour days of solid physical work. Life in Alaska has made me more comfortable with remote places and bear country. As far as endurance races, I’ve only done a couple solo 24-hour races and a handful of winter races. I’m of the opinion that race history does little to help a person finish the GDMBR. It’s really more about good planning, a healthy dose of luck, and heaps of mental fortitude.

So how do you plan to prepare?
Geoff and I leave Juneau on April 22. We’re heading to San Francisco so Geoff can run the Miwok 100K, and I’ll have some time amid the travels to amp up my bike mileage. We’re going to spend the month of May near Teasdale, Utah, where I can ride and camp in the desert and Boulder mountains and hopefully (hopefully!) adapt to heat and elevation, both big weaknesses of mine, living as I do in a temperate rainforest at sea level. I realize a month isn’t a lot of time to prepare, but it’s more than many people get. The idea for this forlough started out as being all about Geoff’s races and my fun forays into bicycle camping. I also wanted to spend more time focusing on my writing. Adding the GD as a big punctuation mark was a distant dream that started to make more and more sense. Who knows if I’ll be ready come June 11? The worst I can do is fail. But it will be incredibly exciting just to try.

What about your foot?
It's mostly better. My toes are still quite sensitive. I’m hoping the pain continues to wear off so I can start to walk longer distances more comfortably, but I am no longer in danger of doing further damage as long as I don’t freeze them again (possible but very unlikely on the GDMBR in June).

What gear will you take?
Super cool stuff! More to come ...

Adventures with Roadie

Date: April 5 and 6
Mileage: 76.2 and 39.1
April mileage: 214.9
Temperature upon departure: 36 and 37

We’ve had a fairly rainy weekend in Juneau, just in time to coincide with my efforts to log more hours on the bike. Right now I want to log miles for the sake of logging miles, to spend that time with my butt in the saddle and heavy weight hanging off my back so I can become reacquainted with the pressure and flow. When it rains the whole time, like it did on Sunday, the ride becomes one of those “put your head down and pedal” kind of rides. Or, as I like to think of it, “five hours of looking at wet pavement.”

One would think that such a ride would be unbearably dull, maddening even, but I never feel that way. The whirring wheel and fountains of rainwater put me in a meditative place, a place where I truly feel like I have room to think ... think openly, that is, not necessarily deeply. Between a high heart rate, focus on cadence and hours worth of fatigue, I’m certainly not composing any sonnets in my head. What I do most often is replay random memories from the past, often events or conversations I haven’t thought of in years. It’s like watching vaguely familiar television reruns through a haze of insomnia. Amid the sleepiness and indifference, the most mundane moments shine through with startling clarity.

I watched the crank spin on my creaky old touring bike and thought back to the day we first met. "Roadie" showed up in a box from Georgia. I left him in there until the night before our first ride. I attached the stock pedals and stock seat, tightened the headset and mounted the front wheel. Early the next morning, I wheeled him outside for the first time and teetered a bit down B Street en route to the start of the Salt Lake Century.

I was about 22 miles into the ride when a stranger pulled up behind me.

“Mind if I ride with you for a bit?” the man asked. I couldn't see him but he sounded non-creepy enough.

“Sure,” I said.

“You lose your group?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “I’m alone.”

“You’re not riding with anyone?”

“Nope. All alone.”

“You know these things are easier if you ride with people.”

“I don’t really care,” I said. “I’m not looking to set an Olympic record.”

“Well, I already got dropped,” he said. “I had to cut back but I’m going to try to catch up to them at the next station.”

We rode in silence for a few minutes, and then he said, “What’s with the big backpack?”

“That’s all my food and water,” I said. “I didn’t realize there’d be rest stops every 15 miles.”

“Have you ever ridden a century before?”

“Not in one shot,” I said.

“So have you been training pretty hard?”

I thought about my old bike, which for the past several weeks had been piled in pieces in Geoff’s basement. Then there was the mountain bike I was still mostly afraid ride. Truth was, since I returned from my cross-country bike tour a half year before, I hadn’t ridden more than a couple dozen times here and there. “Not really,” I said.

“So what made you decide to ride a century?”

“Cycling Utah covered my entry fee,” I said. “They want me to write an article.”

“How much do they pay you?”

“Oh, about 50 bucks an article.”

“You’re riding 100 miles for 50 bucks?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Sweet deal, huh?”

“Well, it’s more than I’m getting,” he said. “It was my brother’s plan do this. We’ve been training all spring. He has one of those training plans.”

“How’s that working out for you?”

He laughed. “I feel like crap. How are you doing?”

“Not so bad,” I said. “This is kind of relaxing, out here by the lake. But ask me that question again at mile 80.”

He moved ahead to pull for a while. He coasted beside me a few moments, checking out my bike.

“Nice bike,” he said.

“Thanks,” I said. “It’s brand new.”

“Brand new?”

“I just opened it yesterday.”

“Opened it?”

“It came in a box.”

“And you just decided the Salt Lake Century would be good inaugural ride?”

“I needed a bike,” I said. “My editor told me I’d be nuts to try this on my mountain bike.”

“I think you’re nuts to try it on a bike you’ve never ridden.”

“It’s pretty comfortable,” I said. “I like this bike.”

“What’s with the flat bar?”

“The what?”

“The handlebar.”

“Oh,” I said. “It’s a touring bike.” I sat up straight and grinned. “Built for all-day comfort. I’d rather ride far than fast.”

He laughed. “I’d rather do both.”

Not long after, he stopped at the next aid station to look for his friends. I already had a backpack full of food and water, so I just kept going. By mile 75, my gut had seized up with cramps, but I doubled over and kept going. Sweat gushed down my neck as streaks of red light shot through my blurring line of vision. My butt and hands throbbed and my legs felt like they were slowly being crushed beneath a blunt object. Through it all, Roadie kept on rolling along, carrying me farther than I ever thought I'd really be able to ride in a single push. And by mile 92, all the pain seemed to break free. A wave of peace washed over me. The final miles limped by in a happy haze.

"This is what it feels like to ride far," I thought. It occurred to me that my "Fast and Far" riding companion never passed me again. "Far and kinda fast," I smiled.

The Salt Lake Century opened up a new way of thinking for me. My cross-country bike tour showed me all the ways riding a bicycle can stretch out the distance between two points to an appealingly infinite space. The Century taught me the ways cycling can bring truly far-away spaces together, bridging a void that becomes even more meaningful en route.

Today, Roadie and I rode hard, seeking short dives into the pain cave and hints of sucker hole sunlight. I've been hedging on the same decision for so long that I think I should just go ahead and mentally commit to another big adventure. Open that brand new bike box and set out, so to speak. More on this tomorrow.