Thursday: Glennallen

Once we were on the road, after we'd eaten breakfast and dragged our bikes through mud and out of the forest, it was almost noon. We rode 15 miles, met up, and rode the final 16 miles into Glennallen pretty quickly. Through it all my achilles tendons were still sore. We stopped at a hardware store in town to by a washer and nut to fix my pedal (a $.26 fix!) and rode through the town to see where we could find to camp, eat, and restock our larders. Kayla rode to the library and explored a fire damaged building while Ben and I celebrated our travels with coffee and peanut butter milkshakes.

We met up later at the library where, putting to use the medical searching skills I've acquired over the last 2 years with HSIS, I searched common achilles tendon or ankle injuries. I suspect, though I'm no doctor, that I've got acute achilles tendinopathy. What I mean is that I've the common symptoms for it: tendon swelling; pain; impaired performance; and I am guilty of many of the common causes: increased exercise amount, duration, and gradient; less time for recovery between intervals; failure to sufficiently stretch before exercise. From what I've read this take days, weeks, or months to properly heal, and that stressing the injury before it is healed can make an acute case a chronic condition. Knowing this, I told Ben and Kayla that I wouldn't be ready to ride to out towards Tok on Friday. They were supportive and agreed that I shouldn't ride and that we'd all take a day off in Glennallen.

After milkshakes, library, and groceries, we camped at an RV park that had a few dedicated tent sites, warm showers, nice bathrooms, and free internet. That night we made a delicious vegetable stew with a tomato soup base. There are some definite advantages to being in a town with a grocery store. You can't really carry delicate or perishable food on your bike for days at a time, and unfortunately most vegetables are perishable and delicate.