The Best Laid Plans. . .

 

I am not in Washington.

I was supposed to be starting the Cross Washington Race (XWA) today but instead I’m writing this blog post from home in Fairbanks. XWA is a 750-mile bikepacking race that traverses the state of Washington from west to east on mostly gravel roads and trails. 

This year I felt woefully undertrained. We had a long winter (even by Fairbanks standards), and I didn’t really start doing much biking until mid-March. We had so much snow this year and, if it wasn’t snowing, it was windy or bitterly cold. And sometimes all three together, which didn’t make for good biking. I did a lot of skiing, but my bike fitness had much to be desired. Despite being out of shape, I still wanted to do the race.  

Finishing the Chena River to Ridge race. I was supposed to bike but switched to skis.

I wanted to see new country on a route that had already been vetted. I wanted to challenge myself. How far could I ride in a day? How little sleep could I get by on? And I wanted to meet more like-minded people who do these races. 

So, I watched several videos and got excited about the terrain I would be biking through and seeing. I joined the Facebook page for the event to keep up on what others were saying. And I compulsively checked weather forecasts and snow conditions. There was no good news there. This spring was very cool and moist in Washington. Rain almost every day. Snow and more snow in the mountains with 4 feet of snow falling the first week of May. People were posting about 25 miles of hike-a-bike. Others were posting about slippery, muddy singletrack on the Olympic Peninsula. I know that there is some suffering with doing multiday bikepacking races, but this really didn’t sound like fun for me. There must be more fun than suffering for me to want to do an event. I don’t want to just endure, I want to enjoy my journey, too. So, after a bit of soul searching plus checking my work schedule and flight schedules and checking with Eric, I decided to not join the Grand Depart and instead do my own Individual Time Trial (ITT) a month later. I immediately felt relief. (Although I still had a little FOMO about not starting with everybody). 

From the XWA Facebook page a week ago - this does not look fun

(Note: Most bikepacking races are done on routes that people can do whenever they want, even if they don’t want to race. People who want to race, track their rides using a GPS device, which is then posted on-line so others can watch their dot moving down the course. The organizers usually schedule a “Grand Depart,” a time when a large group of people doing the route start at the same time.)

Dot watching the XWA race at 6 PM Sunday night

Doing the race a month later would hopefully mean better trail conditions and would give me more time to get in shape. And it meant I didn’t have to taper the week that a friend of mine, Linda Gryczan, was coming to visit. I could ride with her without worrying about resting.

Linda is amazing. I met her through friends on Facebook while she was training for her Tour Divide race. We had a few exchanges about gear, prepping for the big event, and racing at an older age (Linda is 68 and I’m 63). I really wanted her to finish and be the oldest woman to race the Tour Divide. Unfortunately, after starting in the Grand Depart, she had some health issues and had to drop out in Helena. After recovering, she finished the route on her own. 

Linda started bikepacking way back in the 1970s before it was a thing. She would just take off on her 10-speed bike to see the country. She still loves biking everywhere and almost never drives. She guided bike tours for years for a living and still occasionally does that. She used to be a bike mechanic and had a mobile bike shop. Besides biking, she does advocacy work in her community and state. And she and her spouse take in  kids that need help, many of which have become “nieces and nephews” to them. Did I say that this woman is amazing? She makes the rest of us look like slackers.

Linda’s wife was doing a Holland America Cruise that ended in Fairbanks, so Linda reached out to me about cycling possibilities. I invited her to stay with me and told her I could be her tour guide while in town. Linda was up for anything and everything. Since I didn’t have to taper, we could ride our bikes as much as we wanted! We spent one day just cycling around town and then headed down to Denali National Park for the weekend. Unfortunately, the forecast called for very cool temps (highs no warmer than 40F) and there was still a lot of snow in the park, so we decided to get a hotel instead of camping. 

On Saturday, we did a little out and back on a new road out of Nenana that Eric had wanted to check out. It was a little boring and a little muddy, but Linda had great fun riding in new territory. We then checked out the Ferry Road which has a long 10-mile climb on gravel toward the GVEA wind turbines. We were good biking buddies. We both like long climbs and although I was a little faster on the uphills, Linda was the faster descender. We biked until we hit snow at about 2900 feet elevation. Then we put on all our layers and bombed back down. I wasn’t sure what this would mean for biking in Denali where the passes are above 3000 feet. 

Back at the car, we decided to check out the Denali Highway about 30 miles south of Denali National Park to see if the road was open. If we couldn’t bike in Denali National Park, this might be another option. The views off the Denali Highway are amazing and since the sun had come out, I wanted to show this area to Linda. 

Less than 20 miles in on the good gravel road, we heard a loud pop. Looking in my rearview mirror I saw that my back window was shattered. What the heck? The road was good and there was nobody around us. Had we somehow thrown up a rock? Didn’t seem likely. Had our bikes hit the window? No, the bikes were stable on the rear rack. The car otherwise seemed fine, but we decided to turn back. With the help of a kind man at the gas station in Cantwell, we taped up the window with cardboard and continued to our motel. Linda took it all in stride.

What the heck?!!

The next day we biked in Denali Park. A lot of Interior people make an annual pilgrimage to bike the park road before the buses start for the summer. It was a mediocre day in the park for me, compared to other trips, but Linda was in seventh heaven. Yes, it was cold, and we weren’t able to bike that far due to the Pretty Rocks landslide road closure, but the mountain was out for a while, and we saw lots of wildlife up close. We passed several moose on the road on our drive in. We also saw lots of ptarmigan, a bird that Linda had never seen before. And twice while biking we had to wait for grizzly bears to move off before continuing. It really was a good day on the bike especially since I wasn’t fussing about my upcoming race. 

Denali came out for a little while

Waiting a long time for the bear to leave the road so we can head back down from Sable Pass

I now have a month left before my own ITT attempt of the XWA. In solidarity with the Grand Depart racers, yesterday I went for a long bike ride with lots of climbing and some hike-a-bike through mud and snow. I’ll keep training over the next few weeks. I hope that I can stay motivated while on the course by myself. 

I did reach out to Scott at Trackleaders. He said he will turn the course back on when I do my ride, so if you want to watch my dot, you can. I plan to start June 26 at 7 AM. It might help me if you text or message me some encouragement along the way. That way I won’t feel quite so alone out there.