ITI training, week nine

 Monday: mountain bike, 2:38, 25.1 miles, 2,987 feet climbing. I am considering using Beat's MootoX YBB fat bike in the Iditarod. This is the bike I rode in the 2014 White Mountains 100. Its set-up resembles my mountain bike, which I rode long distances in the Freedom Challenge and Tour Divide, so there's already a comfortable familiarity. The other bike is Snoots, the expedition fat bike. We've had some good, difficult times together. But she's a beefy bike, and I am concerned about the heavier front end given all of my struggles with pushing through deeper snow drifts. It feels like sacrilege not to use Snoots for the reason we acquired her, but as I've said before, I just want to take my best chance of making it to Nome. Even if I anticipate hundred of miles of pushing (I always do), I believe a bike is the best mode, but I'll take a sled if trail conditions or weather reports look especially discouraging (i.e. an ongoing El Nino warm snowpocalypse.) Snoots can go with me to Baffin Island, when I finally make that trip happen.

That all said ... I'm riding the Fat YBB on my training rides now. Beat outfitted the bike with skinny 29" tires and rims for the time being, so I can't call it fat biking. But trail riding is a breeze on this bike — it's unquestionably more responsive than Snoots. I think the handling might be an advantage if snow coverage is again low when the Iditarod starts, as it has been the past two years.

Tuesday: Morning, weight lifting at gym. Afternoon, trail run, 0:50, 5.6 miles, 675 feet climbing. This was a great gym session. Same weights as last week, but it felt almost too easy. This was almost disappointing, as I usually have to go into "high intensity" puffing zone to get through my reps. Did two sets this session, since I was planning to run in the afternoon. My usual "Tuesday Monta Vista" loop went okay. As expected, I am no longer becoming effortlessly faster, but I'm still fighting to hold this run under 9-minute pace. It's a hilly trail run, and the paces for each mile are pretty close to 8 minutes or 10 minutes.

Wednesday: Road bike, 2:43, 33.3 miles, 3,624 feet climbing. Rode Highway 9 to Page Mill, and I felt sluggish for most of the ride. It was quite warm — a record high, 72 degrees — and I've flipped over to the other side of winter complacency, so I had a puffy pullover in a backpack but not nearly enough water (Page Mill is often a complete freezer. I kinda like it. But it wasn't on this day.)

 Thursday: Trail run, 0:54, 5.1 miles, 341 feet climbing. I drove down to Pacific Grove for a couple of interviews. After we finished, I still had about 25 minutes of daylight left to go exploring, so I decided to embark on sunset run to find the beach. Once I reached the coast, I returned in what turned into full darkness on unfamiliar trails. Early in this run, a large German Shepherd aggressively and repeatedly shoved me by jumping against my shoulder and chest while growling and barking, as I yelled and backed up slowly. The dogs' owner, who was more than 100 yards back and not approaching quickly, did nothing besides call to his dog, who finally ran toward him when he reached us about six shoves later. Seriously. This is why I make a point to avoid off-leash areas, but I wasn't aware of the rules in this park. Between the dog attack and the darkness, it was an adrenaline-filled outing for a 54-minute run.

Friday: Weight lifting at gym. Did three sets — definitely harder than Tuesday, but I upped the weights by five pounds on six of the 12 exercises. I still struggle mightily with arm curls. It's like my biceps are their own dead weights, and they're just never going to get stronger. Biceps are an important muscle group when wrestling a fat bike out of a snow drift, so this may be a partial influencer in my desire for a lighter front end.

Saturday: Mountain bike, 4:07, 35.9 miles, 4,715 feet climbing. Beat, Liehann and I set out on a brisk, beautiful Saturday morning to ride up Grizzly Flat, along Skyline Ridge, and down the John Nichols Trail. A front moved through on Thursday and Friday that dropped temperatures into the 40s and a lot of rain on the trails, but they drained nicely for our sunny ride. I kept my pace well on the mellow side, anticipating a long run we had planned on Sunday. Still, I felt guilty about not putting in a better effort on Saturday. When I was training for the 2014 ITI, on this same weekend in December, I ran back-to-back 35-mile and 31-mile trail runs. I am basically in competition with my 2014 self, and feel I should at least be up for anything I did back then.

Beat excitedly anticipates running in the cold rain.

Sunday: Trail run, 6:17, 30.6 miles, 6,815 feet climbing. Beat and I signed up for the winter Woodside Ramble 50K — a great course through the redwood forests along Skyline Ridge. An atmospheric river was moving in on the Bay Area, and I couldn't have been more excited about the weather. They were calling for a possible chance of snow — snow! — above 3,000 feet, but it wasn't quite cold enough. Temperatures started out in the low 50s but dipped into the low 40s as the front moved through, dropping nearly an inch of rain, hail, 40 mph wind gusts, and much fun on the singletrack trails above Woodside. My hamstrings were very tight from the start — much tighter than usual. It felt like the tension level had been set to rigid, and I couldn't open my stride to save my life. It was perhaps a blessing in disguise, and the muddy trails were very slippery at times, and I become highly imbalanced (even more so than usual) when I try to place a foot anywhere but directly below the rest of my body. I took especially small steps on the descents, because otherwise my feet slid all over the place. This was disappointing, because the descents at Woodside are winding and gradual — perfect for a timid descender like me to really let go — and I usually do. Besides tight hamstrings, I felt great, and enjoyed the rainy day run: Splashing in puddles, punching at the wind, and keeping my pace just hard enough to stave off the convective chill. Beat was feeling rough today, but he won't let me get in front of him if he can help it, and finished the race a few minutes before me.

Total: 17:31, 94.3 miles ride, 41.3 miles run, 19,155 feet climbing. 

On gears around an uncaring sun

Even though it was only six months ago, I don't spend much time thinking about the Tour Divide. This is uncharacteristic for me, as memories of adventures are the background of my mental landscape — the colorful screen savers that pop into view during idle moments. Sometimes, while wheeling a cart around a grocery store, I still hear the crunch of footsteps on ice-crusted snow atop some Susitna 100 course that melted away a lifetime ago. But the Tour Divide ... that faded too soon.

When I try to think about the Tour Divide, what often pops into my mind is a flickering series of moments along the highway to Togwotee Pass, in Wyoming, one of those evenings that now sprawl like wispy clouds across an evanescing sky. I was pedaling my bike; it's funny because that's not what I remember. I remember stopping at intervals to put a foot down, slumping forward as my hands dangled over my red handlebar bag, and gasping until I caught my breath. As I looked around at pink-tinted pine trees and silhouetted road signs, these became moments of lucidity amid what is now little more than a wash of gray.

I was battling toward the top of the pass, where I knew I'd find a picnic area with an outhouse to stash my aromatic bike now that I was back in grizzly country. The decision to camp in this picnic area was one I'd made earlier in the day, and beyond that, the destination didn't hold meaning for me. I didn't care that there was already frost on the ground and my seven-year-old sleeping bag was proving less than toasty. I didn't care that I didn't really have a meal to eat beyond this bag of nuts I'd been carrying since Canada. I didn't care if rednecks came and stole my bike because I was sleeping right next to the highway, or if a bear came and gnawed on my leg. All I could feel at this end of this particularly difficult day was profound detachment. I'd been gasping all afternoon, taking longer breaks to force more oxygen into my blood while getting mauled by more mosquitoes, and I'd finally slipped into autopilot. It's endlessly interesting to me that profoundly detached autopilot, with what seems like almost no emotional investment or motivation, still generates forward motion. I'd be in Colorado before I defaulted to collapse.

The sun began to set, which only registered on an instinctive level. "The light is fading. It will be cold soon." I stopped again to cough up a glob of something thick and metallic-tasting. Coughing usually opened airways and helped me feel better briefly, but on this evening I experienced surges of fear. "The light is fading. It will be cold soon." It was almost refreshing, this fear, but it didn't stay. I fished through my seat bag to find my mittens, and while doing so, gazed back at the crimson light spreading across the sky. A tiny lake absorbed a perfect reflection, surrounded by glowing peaks of the Tetons. "This is perfect," a quiet voice whispered. "This is what you came for."

But the voice was just static on a television screen turned low and dim in the corner of a dark room, and I was an old woman staring blankly at the void. The depth of my detachment became startlingly apparent as I put on extra layers and looked away from the horizon. I did not care. My ability to care seemed to be slipping farther away. But what could I do? At some point after dusk, lyrics from an Modest Mouse song entered my flickering consciousness — "Talking Shit About a Pretty Sunset" —which, incidentally, is a song about battling indifference.

A few days later, I sought medical attention in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, for shortness of breath and congestion. At the time it was measured at the clinic, my blood oxygen level was 90 percent. It's not a particularly alarming level of hypoxemia, but this was after six hours of resting while awaiting my appointment, and after my outlook had become a good deal more lucid and optimistic. In all likelihood, I'd been starving for oxygen for days. While the muscle weakness and physical distress I'd experienced was minimal given I could still ride my bike a hundred-plus miles a day (until I couldn't), it's interesting and disquieting to contemplate what this did to my mind. "Milder forms of hypoxia can impair thinking, alter levels of consciousness, cause depression and stir up anxiety." — NYT, 2006

Is it possible I experienced temporary bouts of low-level depression? I don't think this theory is entirely unfounded.

Now, facing the 1,000-mile journey to Nome and all of the physical and mental difficulties I am sure to encounter every day, I'm spending more time reflecting on what I learned from the Tour Divide. I never again want to care that little about myself or the world around me, especially in an environment as immediate and severe as Alaska. But what will I do if I again struggle with breathing? Will an inhaler be enough to restore oxygen supply? Will I know where to draw lines? I didn't always make the best decisions during the Tour Divide, where I was simply lucky to have a wider margin for error.
 I may be somewhat of a paradox in that I relish physical challenges because of the intellectual and emotional stimulation they provide, but crumble to pieces when my mental faculties are truly compromised. Another negative life experience — trying to complete the 2013 Petite Trotte à Léon in the Alps while extremely sleep-deprived — brought this to light. I was hallucinating, I was paranoid, my eyesight was failing. I lost control; I had anxiety attacks. I'll never go back to that metal space if I can avoid it.

So what makes me believe I can handle the rigors of the entire Iditarod Trail? I'll be honest — I've never felt more uncertain about anything. Even now that I've gained considerably more confidence in my physical health, I understand that physical health is only a small part of the equation. If nothing else, the 2015 Tour Divide reinforced this belief.

This isn't to say I would back out of the ITI because I'm concerned, only that mental health is something I've been pondering. The mind-body connection is both nebulous and unwavering, easy to tamper with but difficult to control. This is the most pressing challenge I'm considering, moving forward. 

ITI training, week eight

Monday: Snow bike, 4:37, 25.3 miles, 3,522 feet climbing: This was a tough ride given I was mostly goofing off with Beat's new bike in Corner Canyon. Mashing pedals uphill through several inches of snow is hard work even if I am moving at walking pace. The worst part of the ride happened after I decided to veer downhill toward the town of Alpine, and found myself on this ridiculously steep jeep road covered in ball-bearing rocks that were masked by an inch of snow, and deep tire ruts. Walking downhill just made it worse — my shoes had poor traction on those icy rocks, and I fell on my butt while wrestling a bike that wanted to launch downhill without me. I really thought I was going to crash badly. Happily, the bike's brakes, stability, and tire traction were just amazing, and I was able to creep downhill, also at walking speeds, but upright. Then it was time to push the bike uphill on another similarly steep road, back to Draper. I was worked at the end, sweaty with minimal layers even though it was 25 degrees outside.

 Tuesday: Hike, 2:21, 6.4 miles, 2,611 feet climbing: Dad and I got out in the morning to hike Grandeur Peak before my work day, which on Mountain Time begins at noon. It was 9 degrees when we started. I know this isn't Alaska-level cold, but I don't think I've ever seen an extended cold snap this early in the winter in Salt Lake City. Temperatures were in the 20s during the day and the single digits overnight the entire week I was in town, which is relatively rare for November. I'm certainly not complaining. It was a great intro to winter for me. Grandeur Peak had minimal snow and we took it at an easy pace, jogging some on the way down.

Wednesday: Snow bike, 2:06, 12.8 miles, 1,996 feet climbing. A short but strenuous loop in the hills north of West Wendover, Nevada. Mostly what I was on this ride/hike-a-bike was cold. I was wearing the clothing I put on for driving, and set out with not enough extra layers. I needed extra gloves and socks, something warmer or at least windproof on my legs, and something to cover my face, as it was 15 degrees with a stiff breeze. I always manage to have a "freeze ride" in early December, and then the lesson is re-learned and I start making better choices. Usually it happens in California while wearing a jersey and shorts when it's 40-something degrees, so at least it was properly cold for this year's lesson.

Thursday: Morning, trail run, 1:52, 10.1 miles, 1,847 feet climbing. Evening, weight lifting at gym. I stayed with Ann in Auburn, and set out in the morning for a quick run on the Western States Trail toward No Hands Bridge. This was one of those runs where every step felt effortless. I intended to go at an easy pace for three miles and then back, but when I finally looked down at my watch, nearly five miles had passed. I attributed my abundant energy to being back in balmy California (it was 51 degrees in Auburn), but I actually think my immune system is the one to thank for this one amazing run. Have you ever heard the theory about the big blitz of fighting a virus — right before symptoms hit, your immune system kicks everything into high gear, giving your whole body a burst of power? Just a myth? Probably. Traffic was horrendous for the final 150 miles home, with torrential downpours and many accidents. By the time I hit the gym after 9 p.m., I was feeling pretty bad, which I attributed to stress from the drive. As it turned out, I was coming down with a stomach flu that my niece and nephew in Utah passed on to me. I sputtered through my weight session, but did do three sets at the same weights as Sunday. (No, I didn't yet realize I was sick. Yes, I do wipe down with disinfecting wipes before and after using machines at the gym.)

Friday: Rest. Ugh. I was sick. Stomach flu is a short-lived virus, but relentless. For most of the day I was so nauseated that I couldn't stand up without feeling dizzy, so I slept through the afternoon. Still, I waited until after 7 p.m. before I finally admitted to Liehann that I was too sick to join him for a ride in the morning. At least I'd come out of my haze enough to eat my first meal of the day — bland vegetable soup and Sprite at a Vietnamese restaurant with friends (yes, I did use hand sanitizer.)

Saturday: Evening weight lifting at the gym. Okay, I still did not feel good on Saturday, but better. I made it through two sets of lifting. I tried a run on the treadmill, but only lasted eight minutes before I felt like I was going to puke. (Yes, I did double down on the disinfecting wet wipes.)

Sunday: Trail run, 1:35, 8.6 miles, 1,101 feet climbing. I slept for 10 hours and woke up feeling amazing. 110 percent. Actually, what happened is I didn't feel quite like death anymore, but by comparison it seemed so great that I figured I could tack on a bunch of miles to the 13-mile run Beat had planned and salvage my week. Ha. As soon as we'd run 0.1 miles, it was clear I did not feel amazing, and by mile four I was about to keel over. I took a short break to get the nausea under control and then jogged home. Overeagerness noted. No harm done, really. Stomach flu is not one of those illnesses that morphs into pneumonia if you're too overeager. But pukey runs are not particularly fun.

Total: 12:32, 38.1 miles ride, 25.3 miles run, 11,077 feet climbing. Beat thinks it's a good thing I got sick and ended up having a light week. He lectured me the other day about "junk miles" — the derogatory term for what I call "volume training." Seriously, I hope to propel myself across Alaska all day every day for upwards of a month, and if I can't handle 20 hours a week of moderate-intensity efforts, then I have no business attempting this. This is my opinion. I do need to build strength, but volume is what builds endurance. Some people build endurance with lower amounts of higher-intensity training, but this has never been my practice and I'm not even sure how it would work for me. When I was training for the 2014 Iditarod, I mostly logged weeks in the 15-20-hour range, and rarely had rest days. I was pretty happy with my endurance for that event, but as always I was disappointed with my insufficient strength and lack of specificity (I had pulled a sled so little in training that I had difficulties with my hips and hamstrings, and shin splints because 350 miles is just a long damn way to walk in 7 days.)

As always in this sort of endeavor, it's never about how fast you go, but how slow you don't go. If I can establish a solid forever pace and maintain it for hours and days with minimal bodily breakdown, I'll have achieved my version of ideal fitness. The body can adapt to long-duration, limited-rest efforts. You see this in practice with thru-hikers: those who start fit and don't overdo it early tend to get stronger as they go. Setbacks such as the stomach flu notwithstanding. I hope to have a better week, next week.