Pinkie Toes. Do we really need them? (Part 2)

Read Part I here.
Warning: Don't read this if you are squeamish

"The local anesthesia should be kicking in now. Can you feel this?" The surgeon asked as he pinched my foot.

"Yeah."

"You should feel pressure but no pain." He pinched again.

"I feel pressure AND pain. I don't think it's working."

"Alright, let's give it a minute."

After a few minutes he started the procedure. I was feeling skeptical about the local anesthesia. It didn't seem to be numbing my toes at all, but I wanted them to get this over with so that I could get back to my Nana's 80th birthday party. I thought about all of my relatives waiting for me that I get to see only twice a year and couldn't believe I was spending this time in the emergency room.

For the next twenty minutes I watched in pain while the assistant held open my new wound and the doctor used the forceps to dig around under the skin of my foot to find the detached tendon. It went something like this - he would find something that he thought was my tendon, pull on it with the forceps and then realize that it wasn't the right thing and release it. Repeat. Needless to say, under less than effective local anesthesia, this is not the most comfortable of procedures.

I flinched a few times, and said, "Ouch", very quietly, but on the inside I was screaming. The surgeon would look up and say, "Does it hurt? If it's too much for you to handle we will stop."

This is one of those things that doctors say to get you to shut up. You'll stop? Then what? I will walk around with a lame toe for the rest of my life? So I let him keep going, and decided I would work on my pain management.

I breathed in and out slowly and tried to think of other things while hiding behind my magazine. Unfortunately the magazine I chose to bring to the ER was Running Times and it was hard to concentrate on knowing that I would probably not be having any "Running Times" anytime soon. 800 meter repeats? No way. Run your best marathon? Not this summer. The 10 best foods for runners? Eww, food.

My curiosity got the best of me and I kept watching the surgery. Finally the doctor found the tendon and pulled it out through the wound to be revealed. I felt immense pressure in my entire foot as he stretched the tendon. It looked just like the tendons you sometimes find in a piece of chicken. Then I realized this was the inside of my foot and almost threw up all over the table.

I got it together and sighed in relief until the surgeon said, "Okay we got that end, now we just have to find the end that is in your toe."

"Oh, right. There's another end to it."

Pinch, pull, repeat for another ten minutes.

Finally he found it and put two stitches in it. He asked if I could try lifting my toe and it seemed to work a little. Then it was time to sew up the skin. Let me just tell you that there are about one thousand times more nerves in your skin than in your tendons. That is all I have to say.

"Okay your all set!" The surgeon said after bandaging me up and putting a not-so-attractive boot on my foot.

"So I have some questions."

"Go ahead."

"How long will this take to heal? I mean, what can I and can I not do and for how long?"

He glanced at my magazine. "Well I would say no marathon training for at least four weeks."

"Can I... ride a bike?" I was hesitant to ask because I'd rather not know if the answer was going to be "no".

"Do you use your pinkie toe when you ride?", he asked.

"I don't know, I think I probably do."

"I would wait to see what the follow-up doctor says in Anchorage. You may heal faster than others. You should wait to see how you are progressing in a few days."

And that was that. I wasn't going to worry about it until I got back to Anchorage. At least he gave me a little bit of hope. But I had a feeling it was going to turn out bad.

To be continued...

Pinkie Toes. Do we really need them?

As I laid on an emergency room table in Pennsylvania on Sunday afternoon, I looked around and thought, This is a becoming an all too familiar scene. I was surprisingly calm as I watched the doctor stitch up my foot. The local anesthesia that he had given me was not really working. I could feel every stitch pierce into my skin, but that was no match for the thoughts that were running through my head about how I may have just ruined my summer with one slip of my hand.

***

Earlier that day, while getting ready for my Nana's 80th birthday party, I was cutting something with a chef's knife that was really sharp. It slipped out of my hand and dropped to the floor.

Judging by the lack of pain that I felt, I thought I had pulled my bare feet out of the way. I then looked down and was surprised to see a large pool of blood on the floor.That couldn't be from me? I don't feel anything.

But it was my blood. The knife had fallen straight down into my foot just above my pinkie toe and bounced out. After we got the bleeding to stop I decided to investigate the damage. The slice was about a half inch long. The cut was pretty deep (the skin on my foot is pretty thin) and everyone thought that I would need stitches. I still wasn't convinced. "Couldn't we just hold it together with some fly bandages?"

I decided to wait until my Nana arrived and then decide whether or not I needed to go to the ER. In the meantime we bandaged up the cut with some fly bandages to hold it together. When I went upstairs to put my flip flops on I noticed that my pinkie toe was hanging down and I couldn't lift it. I decided a trip to the hospital would be unavoidable and felt a little twinge of panic with the thought of not being able to move a part of my body, no matter how small or insignificant the pinkie toe may be...

***

The doctor walked into the room, took one look at my toe, and said, "I hear you cut your foot. Wow, does your toe always hang down like that?"

"Um, no, that's why I'm here." I said.

After examining it further he said, "You cut through the tendon that holds your pinkie toe up."

"Oh. Well can you put it back together?"

"I'll stitch up the skin today and refer you to a podiatrist that you can meet with tomorrow. He'll reattach your tendon."

"Well, I'm supposed to fly back to Anchorage tomorrow. I live in Alaska. I'm just visiting my family."

"You live in Alaska????" This was followed by all the usual fuss that is made over the fact that I live in Alaska. People in Pennsylvania cannot fathom why anyone would ever want to move to Alaska, but after spending a week in 90 degrees and 100% humidity, I was eager to get back.

"Well we'll have to get a surgeon in here today. We'll get you fixed up."

There was an hour and half wait before the surgeon came in. It gave me some time to think about what this might mean for my summer.

A cut on the skin would heal in a week. A severed tendon would probably take longer. How much longer? I am in the middle of the hardest training weeks of the summer. Was all of the training I did this winter and spring for nothing? I would surely lose fitness with a month of doing nothing.

We wait for the months of June and July all year long, making plans, booking cabins, entering and training for races, dreaming about the days of perpetual sun when we hike until midnight and ride our bikes in overnight races. I thought about how we may only be in Alaska for a few more years and how I may have just wiped out an entire summer because of my clumsiness.

Maybe I can convince them to just cut it off? That would certainly heal much faster than a reattached tendon. If I had no pinkie toe, there would be no need for the tendon, right? What does a pinkie toe do anyway? My friend Ken lost one of his in a lawn mowing accident and he seems fine. He's faster than me on a bike? Maybe without this toe I would be faster? I snapped back into reality as the surgeon walked in.

"I hear you live in Alaska?" He said.

"Yes, and I have a dead pinkie toe."

To be continued...

Spring Peak Bagging

Every year around this time we start lugging our fat winter asses up the peaks along the Turnagain Arm south of Anchorage. These hikes climb straight up from the highway offering some of the best views of the cook inlet and back into the depths of the Chugach.



It's bittersweet as we suck air and realize how out of hiking shape we have become. Although every year we start out just a little bit stronger than the last. Can you believe we have now lived in Alaska for 4 years? We've survived 4 winters and are about to enjoy our 5th summer. Philadelphia has become a distant memory.

It's great to get out in the sunshine and I think anyone who was here last summer has a little bit of anxiety about when the nice weather is going to end. Sometimes I fear that at any moment we could get socked in for days, weeks or months, so I've been getting out every day biking, hiking or running.

Rainbow Peak...



Bird Ridge...



Brian attempted Indianhouse again last Saturday with some hiking friends of ours, I was sore so I missed this one...



Peak bagging is Niko's second favorite outdoor activity...





Today I plan on an easy paced long ride around the paved trails of Anchorage. Tomorrow we are heading up South Suicide Peak. I haven't done this one before, but I don't think it's as scary as it sounds.

Exercise becomes addicting at this time of year. Seeing the sun shining through the window right now I feel bad about being on the laptop. Gotta go!

Mount Marathon Training

Starting in April after they announce the winners of the lottery, I get a lot of hits on my blog for "Mount Marathon Training". I think it's people who, like me, signed up for the lottery on a whim thinking they would never get in, and then were like, "Oh shit, I actually won, NOW WHAT?"

I can probably help you if you want to finish, but not if you are trying to win. If you think of it as a really hard and fast hike, it's not so bad. I started training two weeks ago. Here's my strategy.

1. Hike up the steepest mountain you can find as fast as you can. Do this about twice a week. Bird Ridge and Rainbow Peak are dry in early spring and are great for this. Keep in mind that Mount Marathon is steeper than these hikes though.



2. Find the nastiest scree field in the Chugach and run down as fast as you can. Actually you may want to start out jogging down at a more moderate pace until you get comfortable running on scree. Wearing gators helps keep the rocks out, but if you really want to toughen up for the race, leave the rocks in there and then try running on pavement.

The scree field on Mount Marathon is like a luxury scree field. Since people run up and down it so much, all of the scree has been ground up into tiny pebbles and you have a huge cushion underneath you. But I like to practice on nasty uneven scree fields, that way when I get to Mount Marathon it seems easy.



3. One thing that is overlooked, but very important is the run to the bottom of the mountain at the start. This is a gradual uphill for about a half a mile, but you need to run it FAST if you don't want to wait in line at the bottom of the hill. So do some fast intervals on paved ground with a gradual incline.

4. Lastly, but most importantly, if this is your first year, GO HIKE THE MOUNTAIN. It's especially important to have a route ready for going up the cliffs and back down. You don't want to get stuck in a spot where you are uncomfortable or lost.



When I reach the bottom of the mountain, I go into the trees to the right of the gully. Then I go far right and climb up the roots. You'll find the best footing and handholds there, but try out a few different ways and see what works for you.



On the way down in the past I have taken the sissy route which is the trail to the left of the gully (that is if you are at the bottom looking up). This takes too long and people don't cheer for you when you come out that way. I'm working on a new route this year. I have hiked straight down the rock cliff in the gully (see above photo), but that can get really sketchy if it's wet and when your legs feel like jello. This picture shows my proposed route down, if the cliffs look bad. Behind those trees to the right and then down the dirt to bypass the cliffs.



That's about it. Good luck and most importantly have fun! Be sure to soak it all in when you turn the corner and into the crowds on 3rd Avenue in downtown Seward. In this race they cheer for everyone that finishes, not just the winners.

My First Road Biking Race

I'm going to test ride a road bike tonight. Really! I'm serious. I have been resisting this ever since my mom tried to buy me a ten speed when I was 12, enticing me with the words "big girl bike".

I just wanted to get a new dirt bike. "All of the other girls are upgrading." "Kate and Laurie have had ten speeds for a year." Upgrading? Why does some fancy boring bike that I can't ride on trails and take off of jumps make me a "big girl" and how is that considered an upgrade?

But last week I gave in and road Brian's road(ish) bike a few times and decided that I loved it. I want to be able to get more miles in without killing myself on a mountain bike every day. I can cover miles in about half the time as on my mountain bike, and I get in a really go workout.

So the next logical step to having ridden a road bike twice is to enter a race, right? I was a bit skeptical when Laura asked me to be on her team in the Bike For Women a few weeks ago. I knew that it would be a fun team and not a scary hardcore team with 3% body fat and alien helmets, so I said yes. I honestly thought it would be boring, but it was only 9 miles so I gave it a shot.

Laura and our other teammate Mel started 40 and 20 seconds before me. The format was that one woman starts every 20 seconds. I set out from the start thinking I would take a leisurely ride on a Sunday afternoon. There were a few big downhills at the beginning and I held back, because I had never really gone over 25 mph on a bike before. I was just trying to stay in control. The headwind was intense and the bike was wobbling. Once I got that worked out, I was able to let go of the brakes and let the bike fly.


Photo came from Alaska Digital Visions

And I noticed I was coming up behind some women that were in front of me pretty fast. I started passing people. I really didn't think I would get the competitive bug in me, but I did and I felt unstoppable. I knew it was only going to be 30 minutes of riding, so for the second half of the race I pushed as hard as I could and passed as many people as I could.

Now I find myself wondering how fast I could go. Well, if I had a proper road bike and knew how to ride it, and didn't hold back in the first half, and pedaled fast through the corners, and didn't have to stop for a truck that they let go right in front of me as I was making a turn... well.. I could shave at least five minutes off my time.

"Are you turning into a roadie?" Brian asked me last night. Is this how it starts? You do one race and then try to go faster and faster. Mountain biking for me is not really about speed but more about having the endurance to finish and finish strong. This is totally different. And a nice change.

No, I'm not turning into a roadie, just having fun riding a bike.

The Champagne Brunch - The end of winter

Last weekend was the 25th Annual Champagne Brunch held by the Anchorage Nordic Ski Patrol up in Hatcher's Pass. I have been to this ski party before but have never fully dressed up in "formal wear", so this year Laura and I decided to go all out.

We found the two most perfectly awful dresses at Value Village...



Ya just gotta love her taffeta puffs shining in the sunshine.



We had a mix of clouds, snow, and wind, but all of this eventually gave way to an intense Alaskan spring sun. I think I actually got a little bit of a tan!



It's that time of year that we are all amazed at the length of the days. Despite the fact that we go through this every year, it never ceases to amaze me the amounts of sunlight we get here even in April. I heard one women exclaim, "It's 6 o'clock at night?!!!!" Surprised to look up at the sun hanging out above us in the sky.



On the ski down it felt like my dress was getting heavier and heavier. I finally stopped to check it out and after pulling up my skirt, I realized that about 10 pounds of snow was balling up in my taffeta dress liner. These are the hazards of skiing in a ball gown. (Did you ever think I would use the word taffeta twice in one post on this blog?)

It's been a good winter, but I am so ready for summer. No matter how much you love winter, an Alaskan winter can wear you down with darkness and cold and the longevity of it all. And just when you think it's over you still have to wait for melting and then cleanup and then finally, finally the trees will start to bud and the grass will start to grow green sometime in May. Then within a week the city of Anchorage will be socked in with green everywhere. It's amazing how fast it happens.

Here is what the city looks like right now...



I'll post another picture in two weeks to compare.

Spring Riding

I've been doing a lot of riding around town lately, mostly on my mountain bike, but I did do my very first ride on a semi road bike on Friday. Actually it was Brian's cross bike, which is basically a road bike with knobby but skinny tires.

I kept forgetting that I was riding an almost road bike and got stuck in some mud and almost launched myself off the bike when I hit a curb really hard on the Coastal Trail.

I really like riding this bike, despite the fact that I couldn't figure out how to shift and essentially did a 35 mile ride in one gear. But this bike goes fast!

Here are some photos I took last week of the many surfaces of spring riding in Anchorage.

Dry pavement!

Volcanic Ash...

Frozen mud flats...

Puddles...

Ice gravel...

Slush...

Roots...

Dried leaves...

And yay! I even found a dry patch of dirt trail...

I've got a lot of climbing to do...

Yesterday I did my first "Force" workout. That is where you put your bike into a high gear and mash on the pedals up a series of hills. Sounds awful right? Actually, it felt amazing.

Once I was able to think about climbing a hill as part of a workout, it didn't seem to hurt as much. I knew that my goal was to work really hard for 4-5 minutes and then I would get a break. This worked out really well. It made me push harder on the hills, and really recover during my rest.

And this has put a whole new outlook on climbing hills for me. If I see each hill as a chance to get stronger, and not as a force of gravity that is trying to push me down, down, down into the shadows of self doubt, shouting at me to quit and saying things like, "What? You think you're a mountain biker? Ha! I laugh at you.", then I stand a chance of actually getting through this training and finishing this race.

So I'm taking on hills on my bike, like I take on hills in my boots when I'm training for Mount Marathon. Which by the way, the lottery results came out yesterday and of the three people I recruited to do the race with me, none of them got in. But that is another story for another day. Right now I'm really enjoying climbing on my bike. I never thought I would be able to say that.

"I feel like I've seen this get up before..."

"... do you ride near APU a lot?" I saw my friend Zac on a trail near Campbell Tract and stopped to talk him. He said this after looking me up and down and pointing to my boots. And then for the very first time, I realized how ridiculous I look when I bike in the winter.

Anytime someone calls your outfit a "get up" it's usually not a good thing. I had to laugh. So I took this picture for my own benefit and so that I could capture the full view. After a lot of tweaking this is what I have come up with for the most comfortable and functional outfit for winter biking and commuting.

I just can't believe I walk into the Atwood building like this every morning. I have a problem of thinking about fashion last these days. Comfort and being warm is key. But not too warm, hence the tights tucked into the oversized boots.

So when Zac said he's seen this get up before, and after looking at myself in the full length mirror, I knew that it had to be me that he saw. Because well, who else would wear this in public.

What a difference

I have never been a huge proponent of spending a lot of money on bike gear. Like I have said many times, I want biking to be a simple part of my life. The act of riding a bike is pretty simple and I think that's why many people are drawn to it. Maybe we have so many complicated projects, relationships, and schedules in our lives that sometimes we just want to get on a bike, pedal and forget about everything else.

That being said, this week I have come to appreciate the value of having a decent bike. In the world of mountain bikes, mine was relatively cheap at $600. I did get it for half price, because it was an older model, but even at $1200 that is still on the low end of bike prices. But compared to the $50 bike that I used as my snow bike last winter, the bike I ride now is awesome.



I sold my old bike (pictured at the top) to my friend Laura, who moved to Alaska in September, for 25 dollars. So Wednesday we went out for an easy ride with the dogs and she kept falling way behind. This is a recovery week for me, so I was already riding realy slow. She complained of sliding tires and just generally feeling uncomfortable. I decided to switch with her to find out what the problem was.

Woah. This bike sucks. It just feels bad to sit on. You have to work really hard to pedal and you still feel like your going nowhere. I tried ALL OF THE GEARS. They all suck. I asked her how she felt on my bike and she said, "Great!" Then I felt bad and didn't make her switch back for the rest of the ride. My recovery ride turned into a real workout. I'm starting to understand why I was so slow last winter.

I guess I was wrong. I used to say that you don't need to spend a lot of money on bikes to have fun, and that is still true. But if you ride a lot and you don't want to cripple yourself by the time you are 40, you should probably spend the money and get a decent bike.