Spring fever

Leah and I coasted down Steven's Creek Canyon in a splatter of mud and explosion of green. Green everywhere — wrapped around tree trunks, saturating the canopy and littering the trail. Interesting weather pounded Monte Bello Ridge during my training rides and runs all week — gale-force winds, soupy fog, heavy rain, and even sleet. And somewhere in there, while I was squinting against the sharp moisture and rewarming my numb fingers in a drenched set of mittens, spring came, and suddenly the winter-muted landscape turned green.

The last remnants of what passes for winter around here are still holding on at the higher elevations. After the sun came out during our lunchtime run, Beat and I could see a film of snow on the peaks across the Bay. But spring fever hit me hard this week. I've been scheduling May visits from friends,  and scheming strategies for the Stagecoach 400, including a potential training weekend in April. I'm mulling a summer full of mountain binges that I've deemed necessary to train for the Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc. And I'm wondering if I can squeeze a mountain bike tour between it all, sometime during the summer. Besides UTMB in late August, most of my summer calendar is still a blank. I feel driven to keep it that way as long as possible so I can continue to dream and scheme, anticipating that adventure is inevitable. Times are good. Spring is here. Winter is done.

But wait ... it's not. Three weeks in Alaska followed by a return to a greened-up California set off the seasonal transitions in my brain, but the reality remains that Beat and I are still headed back to Fairbanks this week for the White Mountains 100. There's going to be lots of snow and it could be 20 below. Which is awesome, really — but right now, hard to comprehend. Today I found myself sorting through potential gear for the scorching-desert Stagecoach ride and contemplating a trip to the sauna to begin my heat training. I was just about to start boxing up my winter gear when the rational side of my brain finally prodded me: "You need those tights! You need that puffy! White Mountains! Twenty below! Twenty belooooow." Yikes.

In other news, I've taken up running again after a nearly month-long hiatus following the Sustina 100. Beat seemed to recover from the Iditarod in no time. He endured one week of a low-level cold and revved-up appetite, and then he was back on his feet, cramming in a few tune-up runs for the White Mountains. Yes, Beat is actually planning to run a hundred more miles on snow this weekend. If I understood it, I'd try to justify it, but I don't. But he looked fairly strong out there today, given he looked like this just two weeks ago:

(In this photo, Beat is thinking "Fairbanks will feel like a sauna after what I've been through." By the way, he has started posting his ITI race report with an awesome play-by-play map on his blog.  Also fun from the Web this week was a cartoon by EJ Murphy on iRunFar depicting my own Iditarod superfandom.

During my own training runs, my legs have felt slow but strong, like I could climb up a wall. I think this is a good indicator that I'm actually in decent snow biking shape despite a deficit of actual conditioning. I'm going to keep telling myself that, because I'm actually pretty nervous about the effort I'm facing on Sunday-Monday. But I'm determined to pedal hard, with the promise of spring to drive me forward.

The action kilt

When browsing through photos from the Iditarod Trail Invitational, my friend stopped at a snapshot of Beat and Anne at the finish in McGrath. "What's he wearing? Is that a skirt?"

"It's not a skirt!" I said with mock offense. "It's an action kilt!"

It's totally a skirt. This ingenious piece of gear insulates body parts that don't make their own heat while preventing sweat from the ones that do. Insulated skirts took off in the women's outdoor gear market a few years ago after women discovered they were the ideal way to keep their tushes toasty while avoiding the thigh chaffing and sweating that often accompany insulated pants. Plus, you can just wrap these skirts around your waist whenever a chill hits, no shoe removal required. In addition, they're pretty cute — especially the models offered by Skhoop.

I acquired a Sierra Designs Gnar down skirt a few months ago, then wore it on our New Years trekking trip in Alaska. When I raved about its abilities to ward off "cold butt syndrome," Beat noticed other potential benefits. Beat, like many guys, often has trouble keeping his man parts warm in cold temperatures. He has tried many things, from windproof tights to sewing a piece of neoprene to the front of his briefs, and still cold air manages to find its way in. Our friend Anne let him borrow one of her skirts during a day hike, and Beat was sold. He decided he needed one for the ITI.

Beat sewed his own skirt from scratch. Weirdly, insulated skirts are only sold in women's sizes, and tend to be tight in areas that Beat didn't want it to be tight, and not as protective of the areas he wanted to protect. He designed a skirt that was high in the back, loose in the front (he doesn't like having his torso constricted), with waterproof zippers for movement and venting, strategically placed on the sides to keep the front secure. He used a Gortex-like waterproof material for the shell with Primaloft insulation. Beat has become quite the seamstress with his $79 sewing machine, and the skirt — ahem, action kilt – came out really well. Not only did it survive 350 miles of the Iditarod Trail, but it survived with style.

I think there could be a commercial market for men's action kilts if men could only get over their hangups about the whole skirt thing. I guess it's just a matter of what's more important to men — asserting their masculinity, or protecting it. But I can already imagine the ad campaign: "Action Kilt — Warm enough for a woman, but made for a man."

Cramming for White Mountains

After we returned to California on Friday, I decided it was time to launch some focused training for the White Mountains 100. Problem is, the race is in two weeks, and I am back in a land without snow. My snow bike weekend with the girls and two three-hour rides in Anchorage were a good jump-start to my all-too-short fat bike season. These rides were also a reminder from my body that running muscles and snow-biking muscles are not exactly the same muscles, and the latter felt pretty flimsy and out of shape. There isn't much I can do about that in two weeks, but I figured it couldn't hurt to load up my Fatback with winter gear and ride up some hills. Long, slow climbs are probably the closest simulation to the resistance of snow that I can find near my home. Climbing on dirt or pavement more closely resembles riding flat snow trails, whereas the White Mountains are full of trails that go up, well, mountains. But every little bit helps ...

I am trying mightily to resist the urge to overpack my bike this year. The White Mountains 100 organizers allow racers to choose their own gear — which for a packrat like me can be even worse than being forced to carry required gear. I care less about how fast I ride, and more about being ready if I step into overflow. I think I've figured out a good compromise: Big down coat, bivy sack and small pad to sit on if I am injured and unable to walk; waders and microspikes for overflow; goggles; spare balaclavas and gloves; trash bags; extra mid layer; insulated pants (maybe); extra socks. Also bike pump and repair stuff, headlamps and batteries, medicine/foot kit, and food. I'm basically thinking about the stuff I actually used in the Susitna 100 and stuffing it into a couple of small bags on my bike. It is still far from "fast and light." This thing is a beast. On Saturday I took it trail riding. It was a blast to ride dirt again after several weeks on ice and snow. I felt fast and awkward at the same time. Twenty-seven miles and 4,500 feet of climbing in 3:27.

I wanted to put in a day-long ride on Sunday to "work out some kinks." But between the late-rising effects of Daylight Savings Time and a planned celebratory dinner for Beat with friends, I only had time for a moderate ride. Fatty and I climbed over the Monte Bello ridge and dropped into a state park currently on the chopping block in California's budget cuts, Portola Redwoods. I can't really blame the state for carving this one out of their budget, as there was almost nobody down there on a pleasant spring afternoon. I wouldn't mind if they put up a gate and took down all of those "no bikes" signs on all of the trails. Right now bikes are limited to the narrow gravel and paved roads, but it's still a peaceful way to while away a few hours on a Sunday. I love wending around the big trees and listening to birds chirp from far-above heights in this seemingly forgotten forest. Forty-six miles and 6,500 feet of climbing in 5:02. Three fewer hours than I hoped, but it was still my longest ride since the 25 Hours of Frog Hollow last November.

Monday and Tuesday brought "short" rides up Monte Bello Road. It rained on Tuesday and I used that as an excuse to test my pogies and waterproof handlebar bag. If you're wondering whether pogies actually help when it's 50 degrees, windy and raining — they do, especially on long descents. My fingers are nearly always frozen at the bottom of Monte Bello Road no matter what gloves I'm wearing, but with the pogies they were toasty. And it's easy enough to bunch them away from my hands on the climbs. I would probably use them more often in California if they didn't earn me so many strange looks and probing questions from strangers. I already have to budget about ten extra minutes into each ride for people who stop me to say, "Man, those are some big tires. What are those for?" On Monday I talked to a woman who flat-out refused to believe I had pedaled my bike all the way up Black Mountain. She seemed to interpret the Fatback as a downhill bike and thought I had taken a truck shuttle up to the gate (sure, lady, I always shuttle gravel and paved road descents.) "You can't really climb with that bike, can you?" she asked at least twice. Well, actually, yes. That's exactly what I'd been doing all weekend.

Monday: Twenty miles and 3,100 feet of climbing in 2:10.
Tuesday: Seventeen miles and 2,600 feet of climbing in 1:45.

For a four-day total of 111 miles and 16,700 feet of climbing in 12.5 hours of loaded fat-biking.

On Monday and Tuesday I strapped on the heart rate monitor to see if I was working as hard as I felt like I was working on these climbs. Today's graph was especially erratic and confirmed that I'm entering that overtraining zone. Time for a rest day and maybe a trail run, as I actually haven't been out for a proper run since before the Susitna 100. I'll probably fit in a few more loaded rides this weekend before packing up Fatty for the trip to Fairbanks.

But it was fun while it lasted. I heart bike binges.