Training Log Archive: Swampfox

Funny to see after the fact that PG's and my paths literally almost crossed on Friday, probably just a few miles off. Small world strikes again, or nearly so.

C • I was in Asheville Thursday... 4

Out running at night up in the very cold Happy Jack forest. Then strange, muffled mechanical sounds--not moose, not sound enhanced flesh eating microbes, not any blood based carnivore known to man. Then an unearthly glow advancing, advancing relentlessly. Trouble. Bad trouble, if you ever read even a single Steven King novel.

What to do? Flee? Quickly sift through time's memories and conclude that, all in all, it hasn't been a bad life/ Final prayers? But no. It is only the grooming machine, out on the season's first pass, rolling the new snow.

First orienteering of the winter season, at Remarkable Flats. To celebrate the occasion, I wore Susan Komen flo-glow pink tights, which to any hunter should mark me pretty unmistakably as *not* an elk. Actually I've had these things for a ridiculously long time, since 1989, and it seems like a worthy goal for the winter is to wear them enough to wear them out, and then toss them out. It's been an almost equally ridiculously long time since I last wore them, which may well have been at some long ago Blue Hills Traverse (and thinking back on that, it's hard to understand why a few passes through the rugged understory of the Blue Hills didn't rip them to shreds.)

Early in the course, I looked up through some pine trees at movement in the sky, and saw 3 birds flying in the same direction, seemingly together. It was snowing and the light wasn't great, but the rear bird looked like some non-descript smaller black colored bird, the middle bird looked like it could have been a very large crow or raven or maybe even larger than either of those birds, while the lead bird was a bald eagle.

Later in the course I received quite a shock when I glanced behind me, and much to my surprise spotted a set of what could only have been the fairly fresh tracks of a fast moving swampfox, and moving in a direction nearly identical to the course I was on. What could the odds be, two swampfoxes out on Remarkable Flats on the same winter day???

C • pink tights 8

Mmmmmm--running at night in fresh snow with more snow falling down! Funny how after the past several days single digit temps tonight felt toasty.

-22F this morning? Unreal. It's exactly what the moose have been praying for. When it gets that cold, the moss doesn't know what side of the tree to grow on, and frozen water wonders if it should enter some other state of matter.

How odd--I don't see anyone outside shoveling snow.

It was -9F back at home after running, so I'm guessing up top it was colder. I may need to add some antifreeze to the system at this rate, but I'm not quite sure whether it's best taken orally or intravenously. And is using antifreeze considered doping? Thankfully it was as close to dead calm as it gets around these parts.

I think it's going to be less cold tomorrow, and that should be nice.

C • antifreeze 6

Winter is the real thing here in Laramie, and it's not unusual at all for the end of the day to feature winds kicking up and temps falling right on past the 0F mark. You try to get out early enough to at least catch a little sunshine, and you count on an exercise amped up internal furnace to stay warm while you're out. But it is somehow a teensy bit tougher when you get out in the early afternoon and there is no sun, it's already 0F and falling, there's a bit of wind, and it's only November 11! It's funny to think back to running on Sunday in a t-shirt with the sun out and mid 50s for temps--it feels like that was more like 2 months ago rather than just 2 days ago.

But I made my decision a long time ago and have never felt the need to question it: I want to go outside and do something active every day. It's what I like to do and it makes me feel good.

So the question was never whether I was going to head out into the cold and wind--it was just a matter of what to wear and where to head, and then getting out the door.

It snowed lightly all day long, and the ski trails were beautiful. I think there's enough snow on the ground now that the trails could be rolled, but I have no idea when grooming might actually start. I do know that there are a fair number of trees down across trails that will need to be sawed up and moved out of the way.

On the way out of town I looked up ahead and saw a flock of large birds in the sky. Visibility was poor enough that I couldn't make them out distinctly, but I had the impression they were larger than Canada geese, and while they were flying in formation, it was rather disheveled compared to the usual crisp V's geese fly in. That made me think they might have been cranes, and if so, they were the first ones I've ever seen locally. It's probably pretty late for cranes to be migrating through, but then it has been an unusually warm fall up until yesterday.

Local basketball fans had been despairing that it wasn't cold enough for basketball yet, and despite that the start of the season was nearly here--what to do???

Crisis averted. Winter arrived today. At 6 am it was 44F, and by 12 noon it was about 12F. It's not going to get warm again anytime soon and in fact it's going to get colder first.

To properly celebrate the onset of winter I took a long run up in the hills in the snow. I dressed appropriate to the temperature, and really it didn't feel bad at all. Though surely it helped hugely that yesterday's fierce winds were much subdued today while I was out. Otherwise it would have been fairly miserable. A number of trees were down across trails and while maybe not all of them were blown over yesterday, many of them probably were. Running behind a dead tree yesterday would not have been a good idea.

Tomorrow is supposed to be even better, I mean chillier!

C • Running behind a dead tree ... 4

O' at West Medicine Bow, in rather sweltering conditions for the month--it was well over 50F, and that's no joke. I saw a moose on the way out, and it was clearly suffering in the heat of the sun; hard to understand why it wasn't seeking out some tree shadow. But maybe it was afflicted with Sauce Dog Syndrome which is classically diagnosed by an inability to not seek out the sun, with accompanied panting.

The wind was a torrent--much windier today than any other time I've been out orienteering this year. An unyielding clinching of the map was essential. Most undergraduate introductions to physics don't deal with the relativistic effects of the winds, but today I could see that firsthand. I went out in the morning, ran for a little over two hours, and and yet by the time I got back home the sun was already setting, showing that real time for the world outside of West Medicine Bow was ticking away at a rate of nearly 3 minutes for every minute I was running. Quite astonishing and hard to take in unless you experience it for yourself. And yet another arrow in the quiver of proof that the sun sets too damn early this time of year--ha!

I didn't see any hunters on the ground while I was running, but I did see some people driving in pickup trucks who might have been hunters. It is probably considered very bad form to get out of your truck while you are hunting, or at least that is the only thing I can come up with to account for this otherwise odd seeming behavior.

O' running at Pelican Bay. Cut the course short at the 34th control when I saw the full moon had already risen up over the prairie to the east, and headed back for my truck. Saw one owl and otherwise that was it. Odd to think I haven't heard a single elk bugling up on the Laramie Range this year; surely the hunters haven't been *that* successful. Or maybe the elk have all got iphones these days, and just tweet each other instead when they want to link up for a rendezvous.

After analyzing the election results, it's hard not to conclude that the big loser is the president. While the president is apparently still mostly liked by his inner circle (which may or may not include his dog), it's clearer than ever that Republicans really, really, really don't like him. (The one exception being Republican gun shop owners, who really, really, really like Obama, though they can't say so openly.) And even the president's once avid supporters don't seem to like him as much as they once did back in those more hopeful times 6 years ago. To be sure, there are still 2 years left for the president, the tale is not concluded yet, and things can change again. Perhaps Obama, Boehner, and McConnell will sit down together and negotiate acceptable bi-partisan legislation that will revive WOC qualification races, with 3 starts guaranteed for every nation in every qualifier.

In race after race, voters unhappy with having too many details on their maps voted against Democratic candidates. Except for in detail oriented New England, where voters love their detail rich maps. "Even more details on our already detailed maps!", they exhort up there. Well, that's why you have elections. Live and learn, and everyone is no doubt already looking forward to hearing even more from the always charismatic and presumptive new Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Will he really follow through on campaign pledges to prohibit the addition of all minor root stocks to championship maps? (In truth, nearly all root stocks are minor.) We shall see. Campaign pledges have a way of disappearing more quickly than volunteers before control pick-up on a cold rainy day.

And the big winner? No question about it: Taylor Swift.

O' running at Remarkable Flats. A large pack of coyotes started yipping at sunset, from right behind a control location just as I was approaching the control. I've often heard coyote packs start yipping at dusk but I've never seen them while they're actually yipping away for the couple of minutes they do that. Until tonight. The large pack of yippers turned out to consist just two coyotes. Amazing that just two of them can create such a ruckus. Maybe kind of like Robert Johnson on guitar.

As seems all too usual this time of year, I was fighting to get to the last few controls before darkness seized total control. Unfortunate indeed that the sun takes a much steeper dip towards and beyond the horizon just when you really need for it to hang up there a little while longer. During summer when it starts to get dark it takes forever for it to get fully dark. Now when it starts getting dark, you don't have much time left to work with. But it kind of works to my advantage at the same time, because once the light begins to fade, it doesn't matter how fast I was running, I start to pick up the pace. The setting sun is an even more implacable foe than Racer XLR8.

It snowed almost all day in Laramie, and there were skiers both up at Happy Jack and the golf course (really the ski course which receives some summer golf use), with the numbers winning out in favor of skiers on the golf course.

I chose to run, half before sunset and half after, though with the fresh snow and a fair bit of moon, the half after sunset never came close to being dark. It was more like "not bright daylight". Map reading would have been a strain, but running? Not a problem. As an added bonus to the new snow, it was the case of being the calm after a storm. There was about 5"-6" of new snow, and it wasn't the least bit wet. Perfecto!

Sorry, but there's no getting around the fact that regular time sucks very bigly. If I were king, I know what the first order of business would be. I am convinced that when the time changes, it doesn't get dark just an hour earlier; it's more like 2 hours earlier, proof certain that evil exists.

C • time 9

Orienteering at Plains of Despair. Even though I went out early, it was already pretty late. Funny how that is, this time of year. I accepted the lighting challenge however, and gamely persevered, finishing up before dark struck. I didn't see any snow in the terrain, but there was still some snow lingering higher up, and I think it's about to get some reinforcements delivered.

Didn't see so much as a bird, let alone another human being.

Crammed a quick O' run into the waning moments of daylight, past dusk for the final 4 controls, but I nailed them anyway even without being able to detect more than a hint of what I was running for from what I was able to see of the map, just like a good boy should. One of those starlight scopes might have come in handy, if they weren't so darned hard to run with.

Unreal nice out for the first of November. We are surely getting spoiled by the weather; sooner or later things will revert to the mean (or worse.)