Alaskan Pack Fodder

I spent Christmas in the middle of nowhere. About  350 miles southwest of Fairbanks, smack dab in the middle of a whole lot of nothing. It was -24F outside, and I was recovering from a bout of food poisoning (or something like that). I was separated from my family for a second consecutive Christmas. It's pretty much the darkest time of the year.    It would be easy to get depressed in such a situation, so it's fortunate that I'm emotionally stunted. Basically my range consists solely of anger and apathy, and given that I chose to be here (got to pay for bike parts somehow), my go-to (anger) just doesn't seem appropriate in this case. I chose this. I make a choice every time I drag myself out of bed early in the morning to get on the trainer. My justifications for the decision may be weak, but it's my choice .     A couple of my friends were riding in Laos with Rebecca Rusch, and I was reminded that choice is too often a luxury. In this case, unexploded ...

When I really started getting in to the world of the roadie, I was on forums a lot. Before that, it was skiing forums. Before that, off-roading forums. It was a way of connecting with others infatuated with whatever fringe activity I was involved in at the time. I learned a lot, and some turned out to be useful. Most wasn't, but that was part of the environment.    I still check in with a couple of them occasionally. One mostly for the classifieds, because the regulars there share my tastes in bikes and good deals frequently pop up. The conversations rarely arouse much interest, centering mostly around which Rolex best matches their Audi or some such nonsense. I rarely jump in.    The other has been withering on the vine for years now, propped up by ads that are sold with the promise of high traffic, which is 90% bots. A few of us are around from the glory days, but now there are too many sub-forums with ancient posts that nobody reads. Even the doping forum, onc...

I wrote this a month ago and never posted it. I have no idea why. _________________________________________________________________ I'm clawing the skin off my legs.    About this time every year, my skin starts drying out. I start slathering on weapons-grade lotions to keep the itching to a minimum, but there's always a couple weeks that certain patches of skin get the best of me. I end up scratching until I bleed, which tends to ruin the aesthetic appeal of my smooth roadie legs. I've had road rash that looked better.    The dry air off the Chukchi Sea is really doing a number on me.  Taking two or more showers a day under the hyper-treated water at the radar sites doesn't help much. Since I usually split my workouts into morning and night sessions, I take a shower after each- the alternative would be festering in my sweat salt all night, which would probably be about equally as bad for my skin.    It will pass. My skin always adapts after ...

About a month has passed since I was hitting training numbers I hadn't seen in years. I knew it couldn't last, so I stopped.    When I got home, I didn't get on my bike. Yeah, the rain and 40F temperatures could have had something to do with it. The purchase of an expensive RV and the modifications it required might have had something to do with it as well. Spending time with my family and dog probably accounted for some of that, too.    But yeah, I slammed on the brakes pretty hard.     Other than a couple Sunday rides at the Dome, I didn't touch my bikes for two weeks.    When I left for my current trip, it took me a week to get back in the swing of things. My legs no longer responded as they had, and they still aren't all the way back- which is perfectly fine. It's the middle of the winter and I'm on the northwest tip of Alaska.There's nothing here to "peak" for. My only goal is to not gain too much more weight and try to sustain s...

I've been putting in the hours on the trainer.     The last time my Training Peaks squiggly lines trended this high was when I was doing 300+ mile weeks in Mississippi a few years back. By the end of that trip my legs were twin tubes packed with ache and I was getting on the bike somewhat out of obligation.  I'm not in the same shape this time around, thanks to a steady diet of mass quantities of food. I'm round, although multiple co-workers have stated I look thin and ten years younger than I actually am. This perception is based more on the physiques they see day-in and day-out than actual reality. It enables my more counterproductive tendencies.    What is the same is the aching legs. If I was still sitting at a desk most of the day and dying a slow death like a normal person, it wouldn't be much of an issue. However, my current position involves a lot of stairs and other stuff cyclists go out of their way to avoid. Nothing like following up sprint...

For the last three years, my "peak" (such as it is), occurred during the off-season.    That's pretty messed up.    Thanks to injury, ill-conceived projects, retirement, a new career, and any number of other factors, I managed to reach my best fitness (again, relative) when I don't have a good use for it. Instead, all of the days I'm out on the pavement I'm just flailing away, pedaling squares and suffering. Doesn't make a whole lot of sense, does it?    So now I'm at a radar site out on the coast, about an hour's flight south of Bethel. And I'm cruising along on the trainer these days. In one way I'm happy I can still cran out those kinds of efforts, but in another I'm frustrated I never seem to be able to line them up with anything that really matters.    I daydream sometimes about a return to "glory". Dropping the weight, actually planning out my training with a goal, and mixing it up again with the gang in a crit. ...

For those that understand the title's reference: Fuck dude, you're old.    Lately I've come to the realization that I need to change shoe brands. For over 15 years, I've been a Specialized shoe guy. Size 45 wide, mostly at the Pro Road level. They fit, were stiff enough to hold up under all 20 of my watts, and weren't S-Works expensive. There were a couple versions along the line that didn't work out so well, but the Pro Road was my go-to. I'd buy them any time a decent pair popped up on my size on eBay. The last few years it's been kinda quiet on that front, so while my existing pairs slowly rotted off my flippers, there weren't any new ones in the pipeline to take their place. Well... maybe 2 or three pairs, but how am I supposed to operate at peak performance without a sufficient number of spare shoess? What is this, North Korea?    I tried other, newer Specialized models, and was completely underwhelmed. They pinched my foot here, rubbed th...