So, I am sure you are wondering… a fat tire bike in Kluane

[mouakter13]

world, watch a movie or offer cooking advice to your significant other as she or he makes sure your caloric levels are not depleted.

My goal was just to complete half, so my “trainer” was a porcupine on Perseverance. But underneath it all, I desired the full thing!

“There is a fine line between training for a bike race and training for a run,” Bursell said. “At some point one is going to weaken the other.”

Bursell is a world-class triathlete — part of the Juneau triathlon community — who was answering my question of why I was struggling on my return to running while at the same time getting in some decent fat tire excursions on Treadwell, Salmon Creek, Perseverance and the highway. (And by decent I mean, maybe one a week — look, I am a newbie. OK? A newbie. How new? Well, my cycling kit, which I will touch on later, flapped a bit in the wind and consisted of a mix of women’s XXL and men’s L apparel that I’d cobbled together from online sales and a variety of fabrics that tangled in bushes as I fell.)

Bursell explained wattage and output and a number phone number list of other things that left me looking through him and thinking, “What will I have for dinner tonight? Isn’t that a pretty cloud? My, isn’t the weather unusual today…”


Um, no.

Like I said, the race is similar to the Klondike, only on bikes. By that I meant, many do the event for different reasons and under different means.

I fortunately was offered the luxury of a very light, modern piece of biking perfection that my soul will be repaying through all eternity.

That cycle came into my possession before boarding the M/V Hubbard north a day before the race.

My shoes arrived two days earlier, a bunch of other stuff did not. Gurus Bursell and Ivanowicz provided pieces of my kit and advice I would need from that time after. I did take my significant other’s T-shirt as I needed a “skin tight” shirt under my racing bib. Ha. Racing bib. Just like a big boy.

The night before the race I WATCHED as my gurus attached clips to my shoes in a Haines Junction cabin. I walked my bike onto the cabin porch, clipped a foot in a pedal, clipped a second foot in and fell over into a barbecue, which, along with the gurus, kept me from tumbling off the porch.