Crutching

Since I came back to Juneau on Wednesday, my life has fallen quickly back into its old routine ... minus, quite notably, the biking. I'm not sure when I'll be able to ride, or even really walk, again. But despite a building reserve of pent-up energy, I'm not in any mood to rush it. I'm willing to set aside the time it takes to heal. Meanwhile, though, the late winter is passing me by.

Geoff has not been able to shake his cold, but has been feeling similarly pent up by biological forces beyond his control. So today he announced he was going to the Mendenhall Campground to ski "for an hour, tops." And as I looked out at the seductive sunshine hovering over 10-degree temperatures with fierce winds, I asked if I could go with him.

I wrapped my useless foot up in three socks and a down bootie and planned to crutch over to a nice sunny spot and wait for Geoff until my left foot (the one with the feeling, and therefore the indicator) became cold. But as I approached the shoreline of the frozen lake, the relief of hard effort and a well-packed trail beckoned me forward.

I tested the trail to make sure I wasn't leaving deep postholes, but the claws on the crutches didn't dig in any deeper than my footprint. I so badly wanted to go for a little walk, even if only a mile or so, that I weighed the ridiculousness of hobbling down a snowy trail on crutches with the likelihood that a skier might stop and scold me. It was still worth it. I tentatively ventured forward while planning my defense: "Don't the injured deserve sunshine, too?"

And to my relief, everyone I encountered treated me like a normal person. "That was me last winter," one woman told me as she skated by. "I thought I was going to go bonkers." Juneau skiers are the best.

I returned to the car to meet Geoff an hour later, my biceps and abdomen burning and my face dripping sweat. Both feet were nice and warm. It felt great to get out.

I know I've mentioned this before, but I wanted to take a minute to formally thank everyone who helped me with my stunted race effort.

• Greg and Pete at Speedway Cycles. As I write this, Pete recently arrived in McGrath in fifth place and the first-place skier. Honestly, Pete, after seeing you chop along that first day, I am extremely impressed. Way to persevere through tough conditions. Enjoy the well-earned rest, whether you go on to Nome or not.

• Eric at Epic Designs. The day we returned from Juneau, Geoff and I placed a brand new order for summer frame bags (It's about time my Monkey had her own seat and bikepacking gear.) Eric's stuff is so in demand that he's backordered about six weeks now, and the dude really does sew all day long when he's not skiing a sub three-hour 50K in the Tour of Anchorage (Congratulations, Eric! 2:55 is awesome!), so I recommend ordering soon.

• Ultrarob, who held a fundraiser for my race even though it turned out to be a short one. Ultrarob's store still offers deals on a great assortment of cycling and outdoor gear. Check it out.

• Fellow Yentna drop-outs, Italian cyclist Riccardo Ghirardi and Spanish cyclist Isabel Lopez. Even though the communication was limited, your friendship through those hard hours was priceless.

• Everyone who bought my book. I'm pretty bummed I didn't come out of this year's event with more stories to tell, but there will be time enough for that soon. (This book's still pretty OK, though, so you should buy it :-)

• Those who made unsolicited donations through my blog, which was a very nice surprise.

• And to family, friends, and the people who read this blog. I really feel like I belong to a great community of like-minded friends worldwide.

Watching from afar

I finally had a chance to go in to see a doctor in Juneau this afternoon. I wasn't sure who exactly to see in town, so I just browsed the Yellow Pages and became more perplexed with the choices before finally just calling a foot and ankle specialist (with the reasoning that, well, toes are part of the foot.) I was lucky to find an older doctor who had dealt with frostbite before (much less common in Juneau than you would expect in an Alaska city. People here are more likely to get trench foot.) Anyway, he informed me that "at worst," I'd lose the tip of my big toe. Most likely, I'll just lose my toe nails. The worst-case scenario isn't ideal because it will involve an outpatient surgery and prolong my recovery, but all in all, the prognosis is looking good.

Every single employee in the clinic crowded around my chair to take a look at my foot - apparently frostbite is a major curiosity. One woman brought out the clinic's brand-new camera and asked me to rotate my foot in various positions, giddily snapping shots like a fashion photographer. "We need to track your progress," she told me. But I somehow suspect a picture of my disgusting, blistered toes may turn up on some hidden wall of fame in the supply room. (They look way worse now than they did in the emergency room picture I posted on this blog.)

As I explained to my audience how I happened to come down with a case of frostbite, a younger doctor interrupted to say, "Wait ... do you have a blog?" When I told her I did, she said "Oh, I think I've seen it! I moved up from California six months ago and everyone told me I wouldn't be able to ride a bike up here. I Googled "Juneau bike trails" and landed on the blog of this woman who does all this crazy biking in the snow. That's you?" I nodded. "I showed it to everyone on my floor," she continued, "so now most everyone at (this hospital in California whose name I've forgotten) has read your blog!"

They carved off the latest blisters, wrapped up my foot and sent me on my way with a new bag of antibiotic goop and bandages. It will probably be at least another week before I'm able to put any weight on my foot, and another chunk of time before I'm really walking. Having frostbite is not unlike sustaining a serious burn. The pain, treatment and recovery are very similar. Fire and ice.

In the meantime, I am continuing to watch the progress of the racers still in the Iditarod Trail Invitational, and am in awe of their progress in continually tough conditions. The leader, much to my amazement, is still a cyclist ... Jeff Oatley of Fairbanks. He's on the homestretch to McGrath, looking like he may finish in just under six days. The lead woman, Tracy Petervary, who is traveling with her husband, Jay, is not far behind, which also is incredible. Even more exciting are the two skiers hot on their trail, including Ed Plumb, who is one of the nicest guys I've ever had the pleasure of letting examine a set of frozen toes. If the trail is blown in by high winds as has been reported, will the skiers catch Jeff? Stay tuned!

Tracking this race on the Internet has been cathartic, and helped me stay upbeat over the course of this week, where disappointment and regret still loom. Even though there is nothing I can do to change what has happened, it's also been theraputic for me to imagine scenerios in which I could have saved my race and stayed on the trail, where I still wish I was and feel I belong. In my gear on my bike, I had one pair of extra Smart Wool socks, several foot warmers and a pair of down booties. I've imagined this scenerio where I stopped right on the lake, removed my boot and wet socks, placed both dry socks and some warmers on my right foot, pulled the bootie on and wrapped the whole thing in duct tape to keep the down bootie from shredding. I'm not sure this would have been enough to get me through seven hours of pushing and pedaling in what was likely a -40 degree windchill, but it surely would have been better than a wet boot, even with all the insulation I believed was helping me. Live and learn.

It's interesting because I still really believe that the tough conditions this year would have favored a person like myself, who is not fast but who has been working to master the art of the slog, and who really believed she was mentally prepared to handle it. Like I said, nothing I can do about it now. And it's not like I really even know what's going on out there. But, for therapy's sake, I'm going to let myself believe that I could have caught up to the main pack bottle-necked at the pass and kept pushing on toward McGrath.

12 hours of fun

The 2009 Iditarod Trail Invitational did not exactly go well for me, but it was amazingly fun while it lasted. The fun and almost relaxed nature of those 57 miles into Yentna Station came as a surprise after the general gloom that hung over me all day Saturday. Thick flakes of snow fell on Southcentral Alaska for most of the afternoon, accumulating by the inch and promising to obliterate any sign of the trail out of Knik. My cold had flared up again, compounded by anxiety and, much to my annoyance about the timing, cramps. I was nauseated and on the verge of vomiting for most of the afternoon, chugging Alka Seltzer out of a water bottle and catching little cat naps as we drove around to pick up our last "Oh, I forgot this" items and watch our friend and her band play at a Fur Rondie gig. To make matters worse, Geoff had caught my cold and was plunged into the worst of it. As we crawled up the Glenn Highway in the fresh snow, passing at least 30 buried and upside-down vehicles that had careened off the road in the storm, Geoff said, "So this is what impending doom feels like."

I took a sleeping pill and passed out for nine solid hours. And then, just like the calm center of a swirling storm, Sunday morning arrived. I woke up to clear, beautiful skies and a renewed sense of peace. My strength had returned and my nauseated anxiety had converted to almost overwhelming excitement. I felt like a harnessed sled dog as I arrived at the race start in Knik, nipping excitedly at the cold air and shaking with the desire to run, run, run. We purposely arrived just minutes before the start to avoid that last-minute anxiety, but as I unloaded my bike and wheeled it to the starting line, I felt confident. "I can do this," I thought. "This is my year."

The minute Kathi yelled "Go," most of the cyclists were off their bikes and pushing across the fresh drifted snow over Knik Lake. Ten inches of fresh powder promised at best slow riding conditions, at worst an indefinite amount of pushing. But I started the race expecting it. I knew if I had to push my bike all the way to Skwentna, it would take me at least two days to get there. "But that's OK," I thought. "I have all the time in the world."

Luckily, enough snowmobiles and been through that the trail had set up nicely as soon as we left Knik Lake. It took a while to pass all of the runners and skiers that had gotten ahead of me. The last skier I passed was Pete Basinger, a veteran Iditarod cyclist who decided to try to mix it up this year by skiing all the way to Nome. "Hey, Pete, thanks for fixing my bike. It feels awesome," I said to him as I passed him. "Can I borrow it?" he replied with a laugh. (Skiing is much more physical work than biking this trail, even in marginal conditions, so I'm hugely impressed with what Pete is trying to do this year.)

I joined a pace line with several other cyclists - a few Europeans, Anchorage rookie Sean Grady on "skinny" wheels and Catherine Shenk, a rookie from Colorado. Catherine and I hit it off immediately. I was excited to ride with other women in the race, and Catherine was excited to be riding her bike in Alaska. "This place is unreal," she said as we traversed the rolling hills and crossed the Little Susitna River. "Isn't it?" I said. Catherine and I seemed to be comfortable riding a similar pace and I thought we might make good companions for the duration of the race.

The wind picked up and our pack broke up as we hit more open and drifted areas that required us to get off our bikes and push. I noticed I was a little bit faster of a "pusher" than the people I had been riding with, and also seemed to be able to ride more of the marginal sections of trail (maybe because I was willing to run my tire pressure lower than some of the rookies, but that's just a theory I have about it.) Anyway, I soon broke out in front of the pack, somewhere ahead of the main group but behind the dozen race leaders who took the legal shortcut. For a long time I just shadowed skier Cory Smith, who was cruising across the drifting snow like it was groomed trail. As we dropped onto the slough before Flathorn Lake, I landed in shin-deep drifted snow and had no choice but to push. Cory shot out ahead of me, and I was alone.

I don't have a great memory of those last miles before I fell into the water. After sunset, it was still light enough to travel without a headlight, but the light was flat enough that it was difficult to tell a steep berm from a little bump, a ski track from a trench. I remember I was looking out across the lake a lot and not always looking down at my path, because there wasn't much of a path to follow. The wind was blowing so hard that snow drifted in tracks as soon as they were made, and I could hardly see the tire marks and footprints of the people who had moved through just minutes before. But it was clear enough that I could see exactly where I needed to go, so I just pointed my bike and walked toward the horizon. It was there, trudging slowly and focusing only on the distant shoreline, that I dropped my bike and one leg into a thinly-frozen crack at a weak point where a stream came into the lake.

After that, huge amounts of adrenaline kicked in and I moved with strength, excitement and purpose the next 30 miles to the Yentna checkpoint. I explained my decision-making process in my last post, but my physical state after I dunked my leg was nothing short of strong and healthy. The going was still slow with lots of pushing, low-pressure pedaling over lightly packed powder, and jogging in an effort to keep my foot warm. It took me seven hours to cover that distance, including a short stop to help out a fellow racer who had lost his pump, but I never once felt cold or uncomfortable. I thought I was OK at the time because I never felt my foot becoming cold, let alone freezing. This was probably because my foot was instantly numbed in the initial submersion, but I assumed it was because I was doing well to keep my foot warm. It turns out I was wrong about that, but in many ways I don't necessarily regret my decision to try to get to the first checkpoint. As soon as dunked my leg, none of my options were great. If I had stopped immediately on the lake to take off my boot, I would have halted my progress right there and become entirely dependent on rescue. In the time it took another racer to find me and send someone back to help me, I may have struggled with hypothermia or something more serious than frostbitten toes. Another option that seems appropriate in hindsight would have been to walk backward down the trail toward one of the unoccupied cabins on the lake. Breaking into a cabin to attend to a life-threatening situation is certainly acceptable in the harsh Alaska backcountry, but the fact is, it's private property and difficult to assess whether a situation is really life-threatening. It's also a controversial and discouraged practice with ITI travelers, who are supposed to be geared up to be self-sufficient.

Either way, what's done is done, and I know it's silly to feel sorry for myself. I was lucky in my situation. I initially thought I stepped into overflow, but in further discussing it with others who remembered that exact spot and realizing that my foot never hit bottom, I know that what I fell into was the deep, dark lake. I am extremely lucky that only my right leg went in and not my whole body, or even worse, my whole body and my bike with all of my survival gear attached to it. Taking a swim in subzero temperatures with 20 mph winds becomes life-threatening within minutes, whether or not you can pull yourself out of the water.

This race is hard. It is truly, for almost everyone who participates, more of an adventure than a race, more about survival and strength than speed. As I write this, those competitors still in the race are held up just below Rainy Pass, waiting for trailbreakers to forge a trail in the deep snow as a major storm moves toward the Alaska Range. This is shaping out to be a hard, hard year for the Iditarod Trail Invitational, and it will be interesting to see in the next few days who - if anyone - makes it to McGrath. I wish the best for the racers still out there. They have my deepest respect. I wanted to thank everyone who commented on my last post with words of encouragement, especially to the man who is recovering from much more serious frostbite down in Salt Lake City. I'm going to take care of my toes the best I can, I'm going to heal and be fine, and I don't for a second regret giving this race another try. I don't want to ever become the kind of person who doesn't dare to fail and fail spectacularly. I don't ever want to be unwilling to approach the unknown. I don't ever want to live a life free of risk.

Frostbite

So, what happened? As with most misfortunes, a little bad luck and a little bad judgment in a place where there's absolutely no margin for error, and I now have an incapacitated right foot. I spent six hours in the emergency room at Mat-Su Valley Regional last night. Most of that was waiting, but some of the waiting was connected to the fact that have a fairly serious case of frostbite that the doctors felt needed some outside consulting. Blisters have spread across all five toes and I have some black tissue on my big toe that is supposedly concerning. I will most likely not require surgery (i.e. I get to keep all of my toes), but I am in for a long recovery, and, as with all cases of frostbite, my toes will for the rest of my life be more prone to cold injury.

So what happened? Well, as is usually the case with bad judgement, I was feeling awesome. The day started out beautiful. Trails were slow and soft but rideable. I had everything dialed in. I rode with a peloton of six other cyclists and felt like I wasn't even working. The wind picked up over the course of the afternoon and began to drift in the trails with the 6 inches of dry snow that fell the day before. By Flathorn Lake, at about mile 30, all of us were off and pushing, and the group started to spread out. Evening fell and the light became really flat. Because I was pushing, I was not paying much attention to the trail, instead looking out at the beautiful alpenglow on Mount Susitna and the ground blizzards tearing across the lake like sand in the desert. Suddenly, my front wheel dropped sharply into a trench just as I was stepping forward with my right foot. I fell backward onto my butt and my right leg plunged up to my upper thigh in frigid water. My leg dangled over unknown depths of the lake as I frantically clawed backward up the trench. The overturned bike had also punched through the thin ice with one handlebar, but I left it there until I was securely on solid ice. I laid on my stomach, reached down and pulled it up by the rear wheel. A right pogie and a mitten that was stuck inside were completely soaked and the outside of my bivy bag was superficially wet. I'm pretty sure I lost a half-eaten bag of MnMs to the frigid depths of Flathorn Lake. But, much more concerningly, I had taken on tons of water inside my gators, boots, and both socks.

Now, I don't need lectures. I know how serious this is. At this point, I had to make quick decisions. I was out in the middle of a frozen lake in a fierce headwind and ground blizzards with temperatures already dipping below zero. I decided at that point that my best option was to get out of the wind and get into my bag in an area where I could build a fire, and I knew of a nice sheltered area between Flathorn Lake and the Dismal Swamp, about a mile away. However, on foot, pushing a bike through soft snow, a mile is quite a distance. By the time I got to the sheltered spot, by boot was frozen on. I could not even unhook the Velcro on my gators, let alone undo the laces and zipper and pull my foot out of a completely waterproof boot. So I was faced with a boot stuck to my leg and water sloshing around inside. What I should have done at that point was build a fire, wrap my sleeping bag around my body and try to melt enough of the ice to free my foot. But that's hindsight. What I did do was get this idea inside my head that my foot was perfectly warm even with the water inside my boot. I thought with the vapor barrier sock and insulated boot, my body heat would warm the water and create an equilibrium that I could work with, at least until the next checkpoint. Especially since I was walking at that point, and with all of the drifting snow, there didn't seem to be any end in sight to walking. I managed to wet my boot last year and walk for several hours in similar temperatures with no problems. Thus, the bad judgment. I thought I was fine.

The next seven hours were great. The soft trails set up enough to ride again, and I was feeling so strong that I alternated riding and running every 10 minutes just to keep my foot warm. I continued to wiggle by toes and they continued to wiggle for me. The temperature dropped to 25 below zero on the Yentna River. The fierce headwind drove the windchill down to minus a lot, but I never felt the effects of the extreme temperature. To deal with my frozen pogie and mitten, I put my left mitten on my right hand and rode with only a fleece glove on my left hand. I procured a new bag of MnMs and ate, and rode, and ran, and felt great. I knew I had a long layover at Yentna waiting for me, but I still didn't believe my race was over.

I arrived at the checkpoint at about 2:30 a.m. I was in 13th place. I sat down in the doorway and went to work removing my boot. Even sitting next to a wood stove, it still took me 10 minutes just to work the gator free, then the laces, finally the zipper. When I tried to remove my foot, I realized that my sock was frozen inside my boot. And as I worked the sock down to simply try to remove my foot, I realized with no shortage of trepidation that my foot was frozen to my vapor barrier sock.

It took nearly a half hour to get my foot out of my boot. The tips of my toes were rigid and white, but I was not yet willing to admit to myself what I had done. I quickly slipped on my bootie, went in the next room to check in, ate a meal and settled down for a nap.

I felt no pain as I slept, for the first two hours. Geoff arrived at about 5 a.m. and I told him I was worried I had frostbite. We moved upstairs and it was about then that the thaw set in. For three hours, I laid on the floor on top of my sleeping bag in a hot room, writhing in agony. Hard to explain that pain. Like the "screaming barfies," drawn out for three solid hours. I drew blood from by palms by clenching my fists so tight. By the time I stood up again, I could hardly walk.

I hobbled down the stairs to let the checker know about my situation. I showed him my foot, which still didn't look that bad. The sun shown brightly outside. The thermometer had climbed to 12 below. It looked absolutely beautiful. I so, so wanted to go out there and ride. "It's up to you what you want to do," the checker told me. And I'm ashamed to admit that I, after going through what I had gone through with the thaw, and knowing perfectly well that I absolutely had frostbite, and still had a wet boot, socks, mitten and pogie, seriously considered continuing in the race. Tim Hewitt, a man who has walked to Nome three times and has set out this year to do it a fourth time, who has to be one of the toughest men on Earth, walked up to me and said, with sincere sadness in his eyes, "You can't go on."

And that was it. Geoff, who was upstairs wheezing and coughing and struggling with a cold that had turned into a more serious respiratory illness, mulled over continuing for several hours before deciding to scratch and fly out with me. It was a horrible morning. The lodge owners and other racers were very kind, but I was in a state of disbelief, mostly about my foot and how much the condition had deteriorated over the morning. But dropping out of the race weighed very heavily on my mind. And I had to question my own mental state, and just how tied up I'd become in this whole thing, when I was more disappointed about leaving the race than I was about the fact that I had just sustained a fairly serious injury.

Looking back, I know what I should have done. Taken my boot off immediately, crawled into my partially wet bivy on the lake ice, and awaited help which was very close behind, in the form of other racers. I've mulled over all my options and I realize there was, with the gear I had with me, no way I could have saved my race. Falling into the pressure crack, because I wasn't paying attention to where I was walking, was my fatal mistake. But I absolutely could have avoided frostbite, and now have to question whether the misguided hope that I could save my race led me to drive on when it was clearly not the smart move.

This race has no margin for error. I love it still but I'm extremely disappointed right now, with concern about my upcoming recovery, and a fair amount of self-loathing for the decisions I made. It will take some time, some time when I'm on crutches and unable to ride my bike, but I'll work through this. As always, it's another life experience. I can't say I haven't learned a lot.

I want to say thanks to Scott for tracking me during my short time on the trail, to Sean Grady for his offer to help, to everyone who helped gear me up for the race and everyone who supported me. I'm sorry I let you guys down.

Done

Unfortunately, this year's journey on the Iditarod Trail has come to an end for both Jill and Geoff. From the race update:

There have been some scratches in Yentna... Geoff Roes also had knee issues. Jill Homer stepped into some overflow last night and as some frostbite on her toes. As far as I know it is minor, but not continuing on is a good decision to prevent further damage to the toes. Three of them flew out to Willow and Geoff and Jill are staying with friends in Palmer.

I know something of the disappointment of dropping out early in events like this, having done it myself. It's a tough place to be in, to say the least. But it's also the nature of these events -- everything needs to go right, otherwise it's better to live to race another day rather than push on and risk your health. It sounds like both of them made wise decisions. I'm sure they will indeed be back to race again another day.

Thanks for following along with these posts. I'll continue to host the SPOT leaderboard / map (http://topofusion.com/spot.php) with Billy's progress. Starting tomorrow it will also show Mike Curiak's SPOT position. Mike is attempting to cycle the 1100 miles to Nome, 100% self supported and without even so much as stepping inside a building the entire time. I'll be following him by SPOT and posting updates, starting tomorrow, at: lacemine29.blogspot.com.

For now I wish Jill and Geoff speedy recoveries. Thanks for inspiring us all.

-Scott Morris of topofusion.com

Walkin'

That's the speed plot of Jill's ride so far. It definitely indicates some bike pushing and slow conditions. It appears things got slow right around Flathorn Lake. The Race Update indicates there is drifting snow in open areas (like an open lake!) on top of the freshly fallen stuff.

She rolled into the first checkpoint, Yentna Station, at about 2:40am according to the SPOT (the leaderboard has not been updated with an official time). By contrast, last year she made Yentna by 9pm -- about six hours slower! I'm sure she's taking it all in stride, and remember that last year trail conditions in the first portion of the race were just about ideal, so slower is expected.

I haven't yet seen indication that Jill, Geoff or Billy have progressed beyond Yentna yet. I'll keep watching.

30 down, 300+ to go

Jill at the start -- Photo courtesy Evan Hone

The sun is down on day one and Jill is some 30 miles into the race. So far so good -- temps are in the teens and the trails appear to be rideable. Her average speed so far has been above 6mph, which means riding. I had read on another racer's blog that there was 6-7" of new snow in Anchorage recently, so I was wondering if even the first few miles might be slow. I'm sure we will learn more about conditions as racers begin filtering into the first checkpoint, Yentna Station, sometime tonight.

I've been working on a better SPOT monitoring page. Something that shows both Jill's current position and the route with checkpoints. Here's what I have so far:

http://topofusion.com/spot.php

Hopefully I will be able refine it in the near future. Right now the checkpoints show up as the same symbol as Jill's current position. You'll have to click around to see which one she is (as of right now, of course, she's between the start and the first checkpoint, so it's pretty easy).

Also, I can add any other racer carrying a SPOT to that page. If you know of any other ITI folks with a SPOT shared page, please post a comment. I know Geoff posted a link to his, but it's not working. If anyone knows of a different share page for Geoff, drop me an email at smorris AT topofusion.com or post a comment.

Special thanks to Kevin Montgomery of Tour Divide for his help setting up the page, and the use of some of his code.

For now, Jill will soon merge onto the Yentna River, which the Iditarod trail follows for many miles. It can be a bit of a monotonous stretch, especially in the dark.

Jill on the move

The first few SPOT points have started trickling in, indicating the start of the 2009 Iditarod Trail Invitational for Jill!

In the above map you can see the Knik Bar where the race starts, and that she is rolling out over the frozen lake.

Unfortunately it seems Geoff's SPOT page is having some issues. I'm not sure what's up, but I'll try to see if I can get some points out of it.

I've got nothing to prove this time, just something to improve on

The past few days have been a whirlwind of last-minute prep, illness recovery, exploration and social interactions. It always feels like a reunion coming to Anchorage - a place where I have never lived. Of course, my visits to Anchorage area always become the anxiety-ridden punctuation marks to some big event. This year, I gave myself more time than ever for the sole purpose of decompression, which turned out to be a huge mistake. I caught a nasty, gasping cold the day before I left Juneau. The cold itself wasn't that bad, but I mean it when I say I haven't been sick once all winter. The timing seemed comical at best. My condition continued to worsen as I rode around the city searching for scarcely needed little items, usually somewhat lost and struggling to keep my Pugsley upright on icy, traffic-choked Anchorage streets. Because nearly the only things I ever do in Anchorage are run errands and eat bad food, my opinion of the place is a bit skewed. But right now I'm a little shocked I came so close to moving here. I still think Anchorage would be a pretty nice place if it wasn't for the big sprawling city smack dab in the middle of it all.

One thing Anchorage does have going for it is an amazing trail system. I spent the first couple days crashing in the loft of Eric Parsons' house, just a small yard away from the place where all the magic happens at Epic Designs (in a just-above-freezing "sweatshop" filled with gear.) Eric was amazingly nice in not only providing shelter but also fast-producing a sweet set of pogies and fixing little tears and straps in the gear I've been relentlessly trashing since last year (I also, for the first time, had to own up to the creator for my notoriously harsh treatment of all of my gear ... "What did you do to this poor bag?!?" Me: "I thought they held up really well." On a side note, I received the same reaction and made the same response to Pete Basinger, who was also super nice in coming into the bike shop late Wednesday evening to overhaul my Pugsley. "Jill's bike is always in worse shape than she even realizes," he told Geoff. Me: "I thought it was holding up pretty well this year.")

Anyway, Eric took me on a tour of the techy singletrack up at Hillside. Kind of crazy riding for a winter trail on a bike that climbs like a pig and corners like a bus with a flat tire. But it was tons of fun. Between one little endo on those trails, a big hard fall on an icy patch on Spenard, and the worst day of my cold, I was feeling pretty beat up Wednesday night. So much for decompression before the race.

My time in Anchorage has for the most part been fruitful, though. I owe a huge thanks to Pete and Greg at Speedway Cycles for all of their help this year. Speedway not only overhauled my bike; they also outfitted me with a new set of wheels. The transaction happened so quickly and casually that I didn't even quite catch what kind of rims they are - but they're lighter and wider than my Large Marge rims, and will hopefully allow me to navigate through slightly softer snow, which I've heard there may be a lot of this year. "Worst trail conditions in years," has been thrown around once or twice, an assessment based on spotty trail reports and weather speculation. The weather reports still call for relatively mild temperatures, but there's more snow mixed into the forecasts. New snow and light trail use could mean a lot of walking.

Or not. That's what's so great about this race. No one really knows. And I feel a surprising sense of peace about the whole thing. I've certainly accepted the needed "come what may" philosophy and embraced that my presence out there has much less to do with time and distance and much more to do with raw exploration ... both of the landscapes inside my mind and out. Of course I'm anxious and fearful of the unknown and the solitude and the possibility of running into the extreme fatigue I experienced last year or weather conditions much worse than any I experienced last year. But at the same time, I feel calm. I'm on the verge of taking my last brave step into the inevitable.

For now, I just want to thank my sponsors:

Epic Designs, the go-to place for winter and summer bikepacking gear.

Speedway Cycles, home of the Fatback and the snowbiking center of Alaska.

Olympus Cameras, which outfitted me with a brand new Olympus Stylus Tough 8000 just days ago. I'm going to practice with the new camera a few times and likely take it in the race, because it has better zoom, more megapixels and is purportedly even more bombproof than my old camera.

And finally, if you want to follow my progress in the race starting at 2 p.m. Sunday, check back at this blog for updates from my SPOT tracker. You can also view my SPOT tracker shared page, and be sure to check into the latest updates from the race.

I might post a few more words tomorrow if I have time. It's coming fast.

Leaving warm and sunny Juneau

Date: Feb. 21, 23
Mileage: 25.5 and 19.7
February mileage: 601.7
Temperature: 34 and 36

I fly out Tuesday afternoon with Pugsley and two big bags of miscellaneous gear in tow. I'm going to spend the next several days in Anchorage and Palmer completing last minute prep, giving Pugsley a makeover, mad-rushing to buy gear I've forgotten and generally just getting my head out of the crush of things I have going on here in Juneau. I'm going to miss it here, though, because the weather has been so clear and seasonable and generally smile-inducing. I have been trying to get out for bike rides but haven't had a lot of time. I thought I was pacing myself well this year, but I'm still going to end up packing late into the night tonight.

Weather in Anchorage for the next week also looks pleasant - highs in the 20s and not a lot of snow on the forecast. Sunday's forecast in the Mat-Su Valley calls for partly sunny and highs in the 20s. Skwentna on Monday has a high of 30 and a low of 11. Puntilla Lake on Tuesday calls for snow showers, a high of 18 and low of 2. Nikolai and McGrath later in the week calls for intermittent snow showers, highs in the teens and lows near 0. All in all, a very encouraging forecast. Of course you can't put a lot of weight on long-range forecasts, but I can keep watching them and crossing my fingers than no -40s or 60-mph winds pop up.

I'm sure I'll post again before the race, which starts at 2 p.m. March 1, so I'll post up my SPOT shared page and race updates links then. I wanted to announce that Scott Morris, organizer of the Arizona Trail Race, mapping expert and all-around ultra-mountain-biking geek, has offered to track my progress on my blog this year. Those of your familiar with his coverage of Mike Curiak's 2008 self-supported tour know how thorough he can be. (Incidentally, Scott will be tracking Mike Curiak's ride again this year as well.) He'll probably stay busy with Mike's page, but I'm guessing Scott will provide at least some commentary about trail conditions, splits and other racer's positions along with really cool Topofusion-generated maps. So be sure to check in on this blog during the race.

Also, I won't be available to send out orders for signed copies of my book for at least two weeks. But you can still support me in this race by purchasing the book for yourself or your crazy outdoor-nut cousin using any one of the other Lulu or Amazon.com links in the sidebar of this blog. The eBook is only $8! Your support, as always, is appreciated.

Also, Ultra Rob is again holding a fundraiser for my race. For every item of cycling and outdoor gear purchased through his site from now through March 1, he will donate 20 percent of the commission to my Iditarod effort. If you have something in mind that you were thinking of getting, now is a good time. Check out the wide selection here.

Wish me luck! It's a total lie when people say just getting to the starting line is the hardest part, but it sure ain't easy.

Stoked

Date: Feb. 19-20
Mileage: 41.2 and 16.5
February mileage: 556.5
Temperature: 32 and 34

There is little I can do to improve my fitness ahead of March 1 at this point. So I set out this weekend to simply do "fun" rides, thereby hopefully shoring up happy memories that I can look back at wistfully when things get rough in the race, as they inevitably will. "Oh yeah," I will tell myself. "Snowbiking used to be fun."

It may be the mild taper or the fact that six months or three years (depending on how you look at it) of training focus is narrowing toward something specific, concrete and real ... but I both physically and mentally felt better and stronger than I have in a long time. Everything came together at the right time - the warmth, the sunlight, the speed, the snow. It felt like a big smile from the universe, directed right at me. I decided to believe that's a good omen.

Yesterday morning, Pugsley and I motored out to the Valley at 18, 19 even 20 mph. I thought there was some kind of crazy wind at my back, but it was just calm and warm and partly sunny, same as it has been for more than a week. (How can it even be February? This is solid April weather.) I hoped to hit up a few trails but assumed they'd be mush in the heat. Strangely enough, a cold air mass hovered right over the Valley. Temperatures fell to 25 or so. My front derailleur, covered in road slush, froze solid. But the Lake Creek snowmobile trail was hard-packed and recently groomed. I dropped my tire pressure, churned up to Spaulding Meadow and coasted back down on a feather ... snow almost too soft to ride, but not quite. It feels like riding on a cloud. It's probably the closest bicycles come to powder skiing.

Today was even more strangely perfect. It was 34 degrees when I left the house, not a good snowbiking temperature. Low-lying clouds hugged the mountains and I rode toward the Dan Moller Trail because I only had three or so hours to spare, and the Dan Moller Trail is the most fun trail close to home. I approached the trail expecting what I should have expected - mush, slush and fog. What I found was a perfectly flat, very recently groomed snowmobile trail. Nobody had used it since it had last been groomed, and I mean nobody. There were a single set of footprints that turned around about a half mile up, and after that, it was a smooth, flat, well-packed trail ... everything ideal for uphill snowbiking.

I took my rear tire pressure down to about 4 or 5 psi and left the front around 8 ... because I seem to get better grip for climbing when the front tire is little more solid. I set to the riding, 4 or 5 mph, which is flying up this trail. It takes all the effort I have to give ... running a heart rate of 165+, gasping for air, stripped down to my base layer and still gushing sweat. In marginal conditions - soft snow or steep climbs - riding a bike a 5 mph can easily take four times more effort than walking a bike at 2.5 mph, which is why bike pushing is so regularly employed in most endurance snow bike races. Only the strongest of the strongmen can afford to expend that much extra effort without an equal speed payoff. But on a day like today, when I'm only planning to ride for three hours and rest as much as I want later, I can burn as hot and high as I feel like burning. I was red-zoning at 5 mph, and feeling awesome.

As I climbed higher, the fog began to clear. The trail pitched steeper, and I started the push. I assumed that any second, a snowmobile was going to come up and chew up my perfectly smooth, perfectly predictable trail, making for a fish-tailing rough ride down. Last Friday, at the exact same time of day, I saw at least two dozen snowmobiles blast up this trail. I told myself I should turn around right then and enjoy what downhill I could, but the sunlight beckoned me higher. The edges of the hard effort were starting to cut through. My GPS ticked off feet of elevation like seconds on a clock, but I didn't slow down. I felt like I had to beat the rolling fog, had to beat the approaching snowmobiles.

But neither came. The sky became clearer. I crested the ridge. It was Pugsley's first ascent. I congratulated him. I took a drink of ice-free water and walked along the ridge, watching wisps of intensely illuminated clouds swirl along the mountainside.

The contrast of dark and light was intriguing ... hard to capture with a camera. But, then again, it's different up there, heart still pounding and hair still dripping from the hard climb. You squint against an expanse of snow and see every shadow and color with a pulsating intensity. Cameras never capture that.

After that, there was nowhere to go but down. I kicked off the ridge and shot down the steep face of the Douglas Ski Bowl, digging in deep with my rear wheel but hardly losing speed. I dropped into the bowl and mashed the pedals to churn up a 100-foot knoll, the last hard climb. I slowed but didn't put my feet down as I took a lingering look over the canyon, draped in clouds but clearing, and launched into the final descent. The trail, unbelievably, almost in a Twilight Zone way, was still perfectly groomed. Not a single snowmobile had been up there in at least three hours, and possibly all day. For the first time ever, I was able to ride this trail without a single mogul or snowmobile ski track or soft spot or chewed-up edge. The risk was gone so I released the brakes and let gravity reign. I glanced down at my GPS, registering a max speed of 25, 27, 29 mph. On snow! With a rear tire at 4 psi!

I arrived at the bottom of the trail less than 20 minutes after I left the ridge, five miles and 2,300 feet of elevation behind me. I pulled into the empty parking lot practically drenched in ecstasy, almost in disbelief at what just happened, just like being 19 years old and carving my way to the bottom of a black diamond run on a snowboard for the first time. After I did it once it was never quite the same, but today was just like that. Remind me to send a donation to the groomer with the Juneau Snowmobile Club.

I used to have a next-door neighbor who, whenever I told him about something cool that happened, would say, "You're stoked."

Exactly. Stoked, fired up, and ready to leave scorch marks on the snow.

Goodbye to a good car

Date: Feb. 18
Mileage: 28.1
February mileage: 498.8
Temperature: 36

The low-lying fog was just starting to break up when I wheeled my bike out of the shed just after 10 a.m. Streaks of sunlight tore through the gray curtain and dusted the road, which was already slushy atop a thick layer of decaying ice. I was dressed for springtime, a fleece pullover and tights, and it felt like springtime. In fact, this whole week has been unbelievably, unseasonably nice. It makes me glad I'm not moving away from Juneau just yet. If my original plans had worked out, this would have been my last week in town. It would have been a tough week to leave behind.

As I lubed my chain, I caught a glimpse through my spokes of Geoff's 1989 Honda Civic. The bike rack was gone, as was the strap that held the trunk shut. Melting snow dripped down the sun-faded paint and icicles clung to the rusted edges. I remembered Geoff told me a guy was coming to pick it up at 11 a.m. Geoff listed the car in the freebie ads last night for $100. He had six calls on it by morning. And as I rolled away, I realized that glimpse would likely be the last I'd ever see of that car.

It was early January 2002 when I first met the Civic. I was visiting Geoff and his family in New York when Geoff's brother offered to sell him a 13-year-old car for $700. Geoff, who lived in Utah, thought that sounded like a perfectly rational business deal. He bought the car and then talked me out of a perfectly good American Airlines ticket so I could help him drive it across the country in two and a half days. I took one look at that car - drooping bumper, rust holes all the way through the body, and 200,000 miles on the odometer, and said to Geoff, "That thing is never going to make it to Utah."

The cross-country trip was fairly uneventful. I saw Indiana for the first time, and Kansas. We spent the night in the car at a rest stop in Wyoming at 8,000 feet. Temperatures probably dipped below zero. I shivered in whatever K-mart sleeping bag I owned at he time as Geoff wheezed and mumbled with a fairly nasty flu bug he had come down with. I thought we were going to die, and I blamed the car.

I had to drive the rest of the way with Geoff unconscious in the passenger's seat, but we amazingly made it to Salt Lake with everything still in one piece. I gave that car three months tops. Geoff spent nearly every weekend in either in the Uinta Mountains or the Southern Utah desert, driving hundreds of miles a week and bouncing that car down the worst kind of roads the BLM and Forest Service can dish out. One time we took it on an excursion to find an over-mountain route from Heber to Little Cottonwood Canyon. Geoff dropped the car into first gear as we bounced over boulders the size of basketballs, skirting cliffsides and grinding up pitches so steep I didn't know if I'd be able to walk down them once the thing broke down. I couldn't imagine four-wheel-drive trucks going up that road, but the Civic kept churning along. Loathing boiled up from my gut. I thought we were going to die, and I blamed the car.

Later that year, Geoff bought a 12-foot aluminum boat in Wyoming. He drove the Civic all the way back to New York to visit family and had a friend gerrymander a towing hitch on the back. He then drove to Wyoming, picked up the boat and trailer, and drove it back to Utah. For the rest of the summer and fall, he'd head up Parley's Canyon twice a week to fish for perch and rainbow trout. Even when it got late in the year and there was snow on the road, there Geoff was, driving down an icy 6-percent grade towing a boat and trailer with a Honda Civic. I thought he was going to die, and I blamed the car.

But the years just kept rolling by, and the odometer kept rolling up. There were countless more trips to the desert, more trips out East, that first trip to Alaska, that first winter in Homer, the frequent hair-raising drives up the Sterling and Seward highways, moving to Juneau, a summer trip all over Western North America and then back again to Juneau. The odometer crept above 300,000 and then 310,000. I never lost my faith that the Civic was going to die, any minute now, and yet somehow seven years passed.

The brakes finally went out, completely, in early February. The '89 Civic has 313,000 miles on it. Geoff finally had to come to a decision ... $500 of brake work that would probably bring to light the myriad other repairs needed, or going car-free.

And Geoff, who mostly bike commutes these days anyway, put his car up for sale.

I know we're cyclists and not supposed to get all emotional about cars, but I can't help it. I'm gonna miss the clunker.

Semi-approved!

Date: Feb. 17
Mileage: 20.2
February mileage: 470.7
Temperature: 34

Way way back in the early days of bike blogging, back when Fat Cyclist was still uploading satire to that boxy Live Spaces page and Bike Snob NYC was still in etiquette school, I used to scroll through "Bad Idea Racing" and dream about achieving the kind of blogging notoriety that Dicky seemed to enjoy on a regular basis. I commented on one of his posts back in 2005 and my blog received more kickbacks from that single comment than any other link, for days. I thought, "Once I score a mention from Team Dicky, I'll know I've arrived."

I never thought it would come in the form of a virtual ogling. (Sorry, Dicky, it kinda does feel that way.) But I was given fair warning and we both had a good laugh about it from our respective computers thousands of miles apart. I do love the world of blogging. It's such a bizarre community.

The issue at hand was a scene toward the end of my book where I describe undressing to take a shower after the Iditarod race and catching my first glimpse of all the war wounds I accumulated on the trail. When I think of that scene, I see the peeling off of all those excess layers as a metaphor for shedding the skin of the race and cutting to the heart of the experience. Dicky saw undressing. Which obviously makes sense, but I had to laugh. I guess you had to be there, but I can promise you, it was anything but hot.

Just the same, I still feel like I've finally arrived. Dicky still knows where it's at:

"I know that Jill has been reading my blog for a few years, and I can't help but feel that I inspired her along every step of her adventure. When you think about that fact that she went into the race underprepared with untested equipment, and throughout the course of the race she ignored her nutrition and hydration needs while making poor decisions bringing her comfort level down considerably all the while detesting her very own existence.... and she never gave me any credit? Not even something inside the cover? It cuts deep Jill, very deep."

I think back to all of Dicky's race reports I've read over the years, and I think maybe we have more in common than I imagined.

Thanks, Dicky!

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."

Nine hours of recharging

Date: Feb. 11 and 12
Mileage: 26.7 and 97.4
February mileage: 344
Temperature: 30 and 19

I really can not overexaggerate the energy that surrounds me when I wake up to the first sunny day after a long stretch of gray. Winter or summer, snow or rain, after a while, it just doesn't seem to matter. Gray is gray. And sun is intense color and open space, dry snow and packed trails. Sun is light. Why it would really matter what the temperature is, I've long since forgotten. Today was 20 degrees and as beautiful and energizing as any day in June.

I'd hoped to squeeze in about a 10-hour ride today, but it took me a while to pack up this morning. I loaded my bike with a good chunk of the kit I plan to carry with me in the race - about 10,000 calories in food (today, because I wasn't planning on eating the majority of it, mostly nuts and dried fruit), stove, chemical warmers, all my extra clothing (because it was so "warm" today, I was wearing my base minimum), ~four liters of water, bike repair stuff and tubes, other random little things ... The only thing I was missing was my bivy bundle (sleeping bag, pad and bivy sack), because I am still waiting on a front rack. But the bulk of it, the main weight of it, was all there.

The road shoulders, while still coated in a tire suck of loose powder/sand and clunky ice, were in better shape than I've seen them in weeks. Even with the weight of bike, food, water and gear pushing 55 pounds, I was able to sit back and coast easy. I hit up all the side roads in the Valley looking for packed trails, but didn't find too much. It's still too soon after the snow dump. I pushed my bike on the foot trails for a short while before settling back in to cruise mode.

I greedily soaked up sun through a few square inches of exposed skin on my face and made frequent stops to practice all the little things that long-distance snow-biking usually entails ... adjusting my tire pressure, adjusting my layers, feeding my face. I experimented today with force-feeding. I've gotten better about taking in calories on long rides, but still end up running a deficit before the ride is over. Small calorie deficits are fine for daylong rides, but they add up quickly over longer efforts. Today I was determined to end the day somewhere closer to even. For a nine-hour ride, that's at least 3,000 calories ... ug ... but I tried to put it down. I snacked on dried apples for close to the entire day. They were delicious at first. And then not so delicious. And then downright revolting. I supplemented the apples with Luna Bars and peanut butter cups. Both went down smooth. I ended the ride pretty close to my calorie-intake goal - and somewhat nauseated. It was a strange feeling ... I was nauseated but I had a ton of energy. With the exception of never wanting to look at a dried apple again, I felt nearly as fresh as I had at the beginning of the day, before all the pedaling and heavy bike pushing and cold wind and 90-something miles. And I'm thinking ... food is the answer.

But, then again, maybe sun is the answer. Or maybe just having a whole day to ride my bike is the answer. After dinner, Geoff and I decided to go to Costco and Fred Meyer to buy all the stuff we need for our race drop bags, among other things (Costco runs always result in about 400 pounds of groceries.)

"Aren't you too tired?" Geoff asked me when questioning whether we should go.

"Are you kidding?" I said. "All I did today was ride my bike."

And, the more I think about it, it's a pretty relaxing way to live.