More on imploding

After my strangely unanticipated Colorado Trail ITT disaster last week, I've dwelled on the reasons for the physical implosion to try to figure out exactly why my body shut down. I was especially intrigued after hearing that Jill and Scott both had similar experiences in the same week, though likely attributed to very different causes. I've come to the conclusion that my problems were due simply to nothing more than fatigue. Food consumption was right on target, the pace should have been manageable for several days, I was sufficiently hydrated, and was not low on sleep going into the race. I thought that eight days of tapering should have helped freshen up the legs, though a few days longer would have been ideal after the efforts of the previous 3 weeks.

Well, I just finished updating my training log for the past 2.5 months (oops). Fortunately, I have few notes and lots of photos to help me remember what I did on all those days. What I discovered after tallying up the numbers was a bit shocking. Between May 1 and the end of last week, my legs have logged 330 hours of training. That averages out to 30 hours of per week and 4.1 hours of training per day. So what's my point here? If you tend to lose yourself in the sheer enjoyment of what you're doing (i.e., when training no longer feels like a chore and becomes simply fun all the time), keep a better log of your hours than I've managed to do. Had I kept better track of how many hours I was logging, I would have spent far more time off the bike and on the couch (err, in my office) in the weeks leading up to my CT ITT.


That's all from Iqaluit, where it's partly cloudy, balmy, and the mosquitoes are quite hungry. We were supposed to be much farther north tonight, but our plane had some mechanical problems en route and we were forced to turn back. Nuts. Tomorrow we're flying out to Pond Inlet (hopefully) where we'll meet a helicopter to carry us out to set up camp and get this field season underway.

To Nunavut

Nearly a year has passed since my last Arctic adventures. Samples and data collected last summer are still being analyzed, but some incredibly interesting results have been emerging, and I'm eager to explore some new areas and see what more can be learned about the evolution of the glaciated landscape and Arctic climate over the past few million years. On the other hand, I'd be lying if I said I didn't occasionally wake up with a start from a loud noise in the night, quickly recalling the terror of our multiple close encounters with polar bears last year.


In just a few short hours, I'll be on a plane heading to Ottawa, Iqaluit, and then Pond Inlet, and then after a couple weeks near there, back to Iqaluit and over to Qikiqtarjuaq. Our research team is larger this season, with some very diverse scientific goals. We'll also be armed with more guns, and when working in the region with the highest bear concentrations, several armed guards and a helicopter devoted to keeping us safe.


This month will also serve as my annual forced recovery period. It's not easy work, but it's certainly considerably different from cycling and running, so my body benefits hugely. We'll see how the mental side of things holds up...bike desire has always returned with a vengeance after a couple weeks.


As much as I love the experiences of field work in such a remote area and spending more time learning about, Inuit culture, I always feel guilty about missing a whole month of Colorado summer. Summer in the alpine country is so brief, it's a shame I only get to enjoy a sliver of it on either end of the field work. Hopefully there'll still be a solid chunk of summer left for me when I return.

Of lowlands and highlands

The past two weeks have been an absolute blur, preparing for my failed Colorado Trail ITT, a very complicated month-long field season on Baffin Island for which I depart in a few days, and a day of coring on a local lake. The sediment accumulated over thousands of years at the bottoms of lakes often contains valuable records of past changes in climate, water budgets, ecological productivity, and sedimentation rates, among other things. My research group at the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research has been very active and obtaining and understanding unique climate records from lake sediment cores, but until recently, my focus has stayed well away from such records.

For better or for worse, a fellow grad student and I discovered one lake right in our back yard is quite different from all other lakes in the area. Despite having "reservoir" in its name, it is actually a natural lake (an outlet tunnel was added in the early 1900s, and since then, the lake level has been controlled, making it a reservoir). It is also a relatively deep lake at 9 m, and this depth is controlled by the height of the water table. This is all very unique for the plains of eastern Colorado, and we managed to receive funding from the Colorado Scientific Society and the Rocky Mountain Association of Geologists to see what kind of climate record we can extract from the lake sediment. There's a very good chance we could capture the last 25,000 years or more, which would be a find unparalleled in this region.

Preparing the coring system

Last Friday we headed out for our first coring attempt. This also served as a final shake-down to test our coring equipment for the upcoming field work on Baffin Island. Things went very well until a passing storm kicked up 2' waves that forced us to abort the coring operation and hang onto the coring platform for an hour until we could get all our gear hauled back to shore. But things went well, and we now have 2 m of sediment to work with.

Two Alpacka packrafts hold up the coring platform. We learned that the thing still floats with two people aboard when both rafts are completely filled with water.

Pulling up the first 1.5 m of core

The second 1 m section of core

Then this weekend, time was spent in the high country, escaping from the oppressive heat at lower elevations. On Friday, Flattop Mountain was the destination. It was a great run into the alpine, but no one had a camera, unfortunately. Then today, Caroline and I headed up to check off a peak that's been on my list for a while. We got a leisurely noon start and pedaled for a bit. Then pushed for a bit. Then more pedaling, pushing, and back to pedaling.

I didn't remember this road being rocky. Honest! Observe my non-hike-a-bike-friendly shoes as evidence.

Caroline pedaling west with the afternoon's goal looming high overhead

Eventually we hit the wilderness boundary, stashed the bikes in the woods, swapped out running shoes for cycling shoes, and headed up an overgrown singletrack. And for the rest of the afternoon, the photos speak for themselves. We waited out one angry looking cloud, sat around on the eastern-most point on the continental divide, ran back to the bikes, and bounced back down to the car.

Climbing into the lush tundra

One of my favorite flowers, but they are far more common on the west side of the Divide for some reason

Nearing the summit. Interestingly, all of these yellow flowers were pointed directly away from the sun, which is also in the opposite direction of the prevailing winds. Hmm.

Summit shot

Spectacular vistas to the north

Beginning the descent

Following forgotten trails through the forest

Implosion

On Monday morning, Stefan dropped me off at the Waterton Canyon TH for my first attempt at the Colorado Trail. The weather forecast looked perfect, my legs seemed stronger than ever, and I was eager to give the CT a go before leaving for a month in the Arctic. Stefan joined me for the first couple hours of climbing, and I enjoyed the company knowing that I'd have a few days of solitude and suffering ahead of me. By 6 hours in, I was in Bailey filling my bags with food from the gas station, and a couple hours later I was at the high point above Kenosha Pass. My legs were feeling great, and I was within 10 minutes of my time goals. The climb up Georgia Pass flew by, and I thoroughly enjoyed the rocky descent off the west side of the pass.



Much to my disappointment, my legs began to hurt on the shorter climbs that followed. I stopped to eat and fill up on water at the next highway crossing before beginning the climb up the Tenmile Range. There was still an hour or so of evening light remaining as I started up what I had heard was a very steep climb. My legs carried me up the lower sections without too much difficulty, but as the route steepened and became rockier, I struggled to find the power to ride much of anything. Hiking became the norm, and somewhere around 10,500', I hit some of the steepest hike-a-bike sections I've ever encountered. And my legs were toast. I could barely push my bike up, and astoundingly, I could barely walk up it without my bike! I stopped and sat for a few minutes, alarmed at the sudden weakness. Earlier in the summer, I had run/hiked this sort of stuff after many hours on the trail. But now my legs were empty.

The rest of the climb was a struggle, and the rideable singletrack above treeline wasn't really rideable for me at 11 pm. I tried a few times, usually not making it very far. At one point, the strong cross wind blew me off the trail and I tumbled down the steep slope below. I sat on the tundra for a few minutes, dejected about how bad I felt and the prospect of 3 more days of suffering of this magnitude. I managed to continue on, though, pushing up the last steep pitches and then hitting the saddle at 12,500'. The lights of Breckenridge twinkled below on one side of the range, Copper Mountain on the other, and Frisco off to the north. It was downright frigid up there, though, so I immediately began to negotiate the steep descent. I think the trail drops something like 2500' in 3.5 miles. It's steep, loose, and after having been in the saddle for 16 hours or more, it was challenging in the dark.


After 115 miles and 16k of climbing, I found a nice soft spot to sleep for a few hours in the cold valley below, but it wasn't good sleep. I awoke at least four times in 3 hours, which never happens in these ultras. I was back on the bike just as it was getting light, but my body was in a sorry state. I still had no power for anything steep, and hiking the bike was a huge challenge, too. I made it to within 500' of Searle Pass, but my legs just had no strength left. I've dealt with some serious fatigue in the legs over the past few years, but nothing like this. Sore legs are one thing, but having legs that simply couldn't get you up a big step onto a rock? That was foreign to me.

Not far above treeline, I threw my bike to the ground and collapsed in the cool shade of a spruce thicket. I ate some more of my gas station food and debated about what to do. I could push on to Leadville, but I wasn't sure I'd have enough food for the slow pace I was going. And if I did that and decided to throw in the towel, it'd be a much longer drive for whoever I convinced to come out and rescue me.

Just then a group of 3 bikepackers emerged from the woods. They had apparently been camped just below, and we chatted for a while. They tried to encourage me to continue on, but by then my mind had settled on bailing. I was rather confident that my legs weren't going to feel any better later in the day, or for the next day, and so I watched the other guys head off toward the pass. After six or eight minutes, they had made solid progress, and I was still sitting in the same spot. So I stood up, flipped my bike around, and headed down. End of adventure.

My legs have simply been through too much in the past few months, and I didn't give them the proper time to recover before striking out on the CT. Another easy week and an additional week of tapering would have probably done the trick, but I didn't have time for that. Fortunately, the CT will be there in September, and next summer, and the summer after that. I'll be back, but after all the success I've had in the ultras I've attempted in the past few years, I'll accept being defeated without being too bitter.

Impending east-west oriented high pressure ridge

It's been a busy week, preparing for an incredibly complicated month of field work on Baffin Island that's coming up alarmingly soon and coring Calkins Lake yesterday. Fortunately, it was time to taper for the next challenge, so my training volume was way down for the past 7 days. This'll probably be my last racing for the summer. Two mountain bike ultras and two running ultras might be all I can handle, especially seeing what may be down the road a little farther. Stefan will kindly be dropping me off on Monday morning and then sitting back for a few days and watching my SPOT dot chug off to the west as I suffer like a dog in the unforgiving Colorado mountains for a few days. After how strong I've been feeling for the past few months, I've got some lofty goals set for myself, and I am really starting to appreciate the individual time trial approach to these things. This'll be an interesting one. Thirty hours until go time, so I'd better get a some sleep, because there sure won't be much to be had until the end of the week!

From a ride Dan and I did last summer...

Explorin'

This weekend marked the end of another cycle in what's been the most disjointed training season I've ever had. It started off in February and March with a nice mix of running and pedaling, and March was wrapped up with a huge week in Utah and an unexpected win in an underground race out there. After some recovery, my focus switched to running for 3 weeks for a 50-miler in Fruita. I finished that one, took a week to recover, pedaled for a week, and then spent a 7.5 days probing the edges of my physical limits on the Arizona Trail. My focus shifted back to running after a much-needed recovery week, and a month later, I really surprised myself at the San Juan Solstice 50 miler. Following that, I went straight into a 2-week block of 35-hour weeks on the mountain bike. Saturday wrapped that up, and despite some fatigue, there have only been a few long rides ever where I felt as strong as I did during those 13 hours.

Now it's time to taper for the next adventure, which will begin 9 days. I'm more than a little nervous for this one, but the fact that every race I've done this year has gone considerably better than I had hoped for provides some cautious optimism. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't going for another course record, but there'll have to be a lot of good luck involved for that to happen.

Anyway, back to Satuday's ride. I had nowhere particular in mind to go, so I simply rode around, looking for new trails I hadn't been on before, following anything I saw. It was a lot like caving - there are usually a lot of leads to follow, but most dead end before too long. But every once in a while, an amazing passage reveals itself. That about sums up the exploration results after 90 miles and 16,000' of climbing.

More forgotten 2-track

Flat, fast, and only marginally overgrown

Steep, slow, and very overgrown

Idyllic

This had been on my list of places to visit for a while

It's a shame how many great little trail sections there are around that can't really be used to link up big loops without them becoming incredibly contrived

I wish there had been a trail here, but alas, just an incredibly steep downhill hike-a-bike

One of my favorite views in the foothills

Damn loggers don't respect pre-existing singletrack. Somewhere under that mess is what was once a fun trail

Midway down the steepest, rockiest, loosest, gnarliest descent around. It's one of my favorites...

Alice in Wonderland

Yesterday I headed out on an ambitious adventure, but only on a whim I had the night before. Despite deciding to do this ride at the last minute, I had a number of objectives and a bit of nervousness. I had two destinations in mind, and I had no idea how long it would take to reach them, and I had to be home by 8 pm. That gave me 13 hours. Tick tock tick tock.

Within 2 hours I was on fogotten jeep roads that were new to me

How nice of the USFS. But are they really saving trees for monkeys? Or is that a cow?

More new discovery

I sure didn't think I'd end up on this ridge. But it had a trail, so I followed it. Eventually I hit a 2-track, and then no trespassing signs on a burly gate. So I headed off into the woods in the direction I thought I needed to go to get into the next canyon. After unintentionally chasing a deer for a few minutes, I popped out on a faint 2-track. That led me to a dirt lane. Big Rock Road the sign said. Then I passed Needle Disposal Road. Seriously. After a long descent, I found myself on the wrong side of a locked gate. Oops.


I climbed for a bit on a dirt road, then a mine road, and then discovered some amazing singletrack. Some was steep, loose, moto trails, and some was clearly ridden in by mountain bikes. I eventually came out of the woods onto pavement after weaving around for the better part of an hour.

Lunch. I must have been thirsty.

Climbing higher into lush meadows

Hiding just below treeline

Then I got stormed on. It was the first of no fewer than six storms to slam me during the remainder of the ride. I sought shelter from the hail in a spruce thicket as the thunder boomed overhead. I even dozed off for a few minutes before more thunder shook me awake. As the storm passed, I raced to beat the next one over the high point on my route, a jeep road that hits 12,000'.

No storms on the horizon for the time being. Better boogie, though!

The strip of trail I wasn't sure I'd be able to locate

Just below the summit, I rode around on the tundra for a bit until I found the elusive singletrack I was hoping to ride. It presented itself before too long, and I took off toward treeline. The trail snaked its way down for several thousand feet, getting rockier and gnarlier the lower it got. It was great fun, and amazingly, had no foot, hoof, or tire tracks on it at all.

Finally at the bottom, all objectives for the day had been met. But there I was, 8 hours in, very far from home, and with no route back planned. Time to consult the map...

The sun returns after several more storms

What a sweet trail this was

And more hidden singletrack

In the end, the ride took exactly 13 hours, including my time hiding from lightning. My route home only took 5 hours, but it included more hike-a-bike than I anticipated. I felt great at the end, despite the stats: 90 miles, 14,000' vertical, 75% dirt, and tons of techy singletrack.




Alice's Wonderland was a rather creepy, dangerous place if I remember the story correctly. This ride was through my version of Wonderland: only partially explored, unpredictable, deserted, and linked together by singletrack. Hopefully I'll get to return to Wonderland again before too long...