Sunday, June 14, 2009

Up Up And Away

Got in one of the most fun weeks of "training" of my life this week. I hesitate to even call it training because it was so much fun. The snow conditions in the mountains here are perfect right now. Good and firm but with just enough give so you can climb up impossibly steep pitches by kicking into the snow and glissade down a few thousand feet in a matter of minutes. I live at sea level and have gotten up over 3,000 feet no less than 5 times in the past 10 days. I might take a day off from the climbing tomorrow but then on Tuesday I'm going to try to do a ridge route above town at pretty near 100% effort. The fastest known time for this route is about 2.5 hours. I did it very comfortably the other day in 3 hours. I think with how nice the snow is right now I might be able to do it around 2 or 2:15. We'll see.

I've also put some time into getting my bike set up to do some bike touring trips the rest of this summer. I haven't really done much biking at all since the Great Divide Race last year but I'm pretty excited to just load up my gear, get on the ferry to some small towns here in Southeast Alaska and explore old logging roads and trails. Places most people outside of Alaska have never heard of: Gustavus, Petersburg, Haines, Sitka, Wrangell, Prince of Wales Island, Yakatat, Hoonah, Tenakee, Angoon. They're all accessible by the state ferry system and I've only ever been to a couple of them. Hope to take at least two or three trips on the ferry with my bike in the next 6 or 8 weeks.

5 comments:

Betsy Fischer - Foggy Mountain Shop said...

Hi Geoff-
When you run the Juneau ridge, how do you measure the route? Is it from the Basin Rd. trailhead, up Mt. Juneau, down the ridge, out Granite Creek Basin and then Perseverance back to the trailhead? Just curious. Conditions are perfect right now, I agree. Three hours for that route is just crazy fast. Who in the heck did it in 2.5 hours? And where do you guys get your rubber knees? Good luck - you are amazing!

Anonymous said...

Knew your ego couldn't let you stay away from posting.

Anonymous said...

Good to hear your running is going well. Would have been great to have you compete in WS.

I'm looking forward to hearing how your summer of training shakes out leading up to Wasatch. Stay with it.

Geoff said...

betsy, 3 hours for me the other day was from rainbow foods and back to rainbow foods. the 2.5 was glen frick and that was from the trailhead at the end of basin rd, up mt. juneau, along the ridge, into granite creek, back down perseverance to the trailhead. i would have been about 2:40 had i started up at the trailhead. tomorrow morning i suspect i'll do it somewhere down around 2 hours... weather permitting of course.

Betsy Fischer - Foggy Mountain Shop said...

Amazing. Even at the height of my old trail running days I couldn't conceive of covering that much ground that fast. The route out of Granite Creek always slows me down way too much but maybe with firm snow you are able to glissade and fly out of there with no problem. We'll be thinking of you Tuesday. Be safe and run fast!