Training Log Archive: Swampfox

Very nice fall day out--perfect, really! I mapped in the afternoon, and while the amount of time wasn't long, it was productive and I left the area I was working on feeling happy with the way everything I surveyed looked on my map board--that doesn't happen every day you're out, and especially in really complex areas it's hard to leave feeling like all the tough question marks were rendered in 2-D land as successfully as one might wish.

Then followed with intervals on one of my favorite dirt roads, going out-and-back. On the way back, a hunter was driving by very slowly, and said something as I ran by, so I went back and said hello. He had spotted a bull moose off in the distance that I had run by 2 times without seeing. Though it was 150-200m from the road, and in trees in shadows, and if you're running intervals, moose spotting off to the sides doesn't apply to the task at hand. I wished him luck and got back to it. I gathered he was a rifle hunter and out scouting rather than a bow hunter; still guessing rifle season starts on the 1st (Saturday).

Yesterday's running left me with some slightly sort legs today, so something must have been about right with the effort. It was stellar blue skies out, so the choice of a longish bike ride in the afternoon was easy. Rode south of time and enjoyed the 360 degree views. Traffic on 287 between town and Ft. Collins increases a little bit each year, and the highway these days is far busier than it used to be, say, 10 years ago. But not so bad, and there are wide shoulders at any rate.

Ran easy at Happy Jack at the end of the day; the parking lot was packed with mountain bikers, but I did see several other runners for a change. And several running dogs as well.

Following mapping at Diamond Bay that was more productive than yesterday, I ran a course at Remarkable Flats in the late afternoon. Even when I was off, I was still on, so good. Ha!--just joking. I did the course the way I was supposed to, so still good. Didn't see any hunters out today, but I think it's just bow season, and those dudes can be hard to spot.

Saw lots of doe mule deer. And not a single buck. Somehow, they seem to sense danger time is at hand.

Continued mapping at Diamond Bay, followed by some running. Worked in an area of much broken, off-height rock--pretty difficult mapping.

Back mapping at Diamond Bay this afternoon, and finished encircling Russell Hill. The hill itself is useless for orienteering on (too high, steep, and rocky) but it's still cool looking, and can be integrated as an obstacle on a route choice leg eventually. The terrain surrounding the hill, on the other hand, is top drawer, and I hope to add a worthwhile amount before winter shuts me down.

After mapping, ran an O' course at Diamond Bay, including one extra high speed section where I anticipated shooting (which there was some of). Nothing like living life in the fast lane. Spooked one buck mule deer that was trying to lay low, but so it goes.

This morning the scene was "Fast Grass".



Nice as it looked then, by mid-afternoon it was even better: gray skies, lots of good wind, and a bit of Scottish sunshine (a very intermittent patter of tiny raindrops)--perfect for bike riding!

After riding, I waited a bit so I could get some proper dim, and then ran trails at Happy Jack in the fading light as light amounts of snow were falling. First run of the season with gloves, first run of the season with knot cap, first run of the season with steps in snow--lots of firsts!

Well, it had to happen sooner or later: it is snowing as I write...(evening)

Went for a quick ride that started out cool, with decent wind and gray skies. Then it got cooler and darker as occasional rain drops started spattering around my general vicinity, and sometimes scoring direct hits. Still, not too bad. But once the rain switch to hail/sleet, it got cold fast, and by the time I got back home I was both pretty wet and cold--quickly rectified by toweling off, changing clothes, and sipping several cups of hot tea.

When it was time to negotiate what the bod was going to do today, the legs jumped in before anything else could say something, and said nobody better have any plans for hard running today.

The truth of the matter was I wasn't planning anything but an easy day anyway, but it was better to not show our hand. To mollify the legs we all said right away: "Oh, legs are you feeling a little tired today, sure, whatever you want, we'll go easy, no worries!"

So easy it was.

Elks started bugling a few days ago, and there was a good bit of bugling coming from the backside of Russell Hill while I was running today. That's in contrast to last year, when I don't think I heard any bugling at all--a first.

Change is in the air.

Spent the last calendar day of summer by beginning with some pleasant running conditions at Remarkable Flats--flat gray skies, just a tiny bit of breeze, and a mix of deer, antelope, and cows; somehow even 4 hooved company makes the running a little better.

I ran a Blue course drawn up last night. When I draw up training courses for myself, I usually draw them up very quickly without any thought to solutions as to how to run the legs and attack the controls, and mainly just stick to getting in the ballpark length I want, and whatever else I might want to emphasize (sage, hills, etc.--very often it's hills). The idea is to try to arrive at the start with as fresh a course as possible.

The running was a slightly odd mix today. I didn't feel like I had much power up the biggest hills, but the rest of the running felt pretty easy the whole way through even though I had the pedal pressed down. O' technique was dead on from start to finish.

Despite the cloudy skies, it was seasonally warm. That won't last and the first snow is probably not far off at this point.

One more map case down, thousands to go...

Legs felt a little beat afterwards, later in the day, but in the good way after a good run, and not a bad way.

Quite a bit of haze in the air today, after none the past few days--even though those days were dry and windy. I guess there's no telling with haze. But I went mapping anyway, which just goes to show a little or even a lot of haze isn't enough to keep a mapboard down.

All this after biking, and some running after mapping.

4th really nice day of fine, early fall weather in a row, and seasonally warm (upper 70s, practically torrid). Heading up a rocky, uphill section of trail up top, I ran into Dan, my orthopedic surgeon, who had stalled out on his mountain bike on the rocks. We chatted for a bit and compared notes. I noted that I was a lot happier to see him on the trails than in his office! He countered by saying you hadn't had a really good day outside unless you came back showing a little blood--but I believe that really reflects more a mountain biking mentality than a professional one.

This nice weather is so deceptive. It could linger for a few more weeks, or a dramatic cool down could come along most any time now. Different people want different things. Hunters want cooler weather so their meat doesn't spoil too quickly when they get an animal, skiers want snow, but folks like me are happy for the superb running conditions while they last.

Lots of colors in the trees and bushes now!

O' run at Remarkable Flats; re-ran a middle distance style course that I had designed and run last year, and of which I remembered nothing today. A fair amount of wind was blowing most of the day, including while I was running, but not so that it made the running tricky. The angle of the sun in the late afternoon, on the other hand....it helps to be running in any direction other than due west. It helps a lot. Seasonally warm out today with nearly full sun, but with the wind the running conditions felt quite pleasant and not warm at all.

However, remarkable as all that was, what was really remarkable was the note that PG posted today to Friday's entry. And what was remarkable about that was the coincidence of having a dream *last night* where for the first time ever I had a dream fragment set in Sunderland, and also for the first time ever the appearance of pg in one of my dreams; that is plain freaky.

The dream fragment itself was unremarkably weird as these things all tend to be: I was standing on some kind of bluff or embankment with a long trail paralleling at the base below, near the river, and a 100 miler trail race was in progress. Spectators were pointing runners and cheering, and one of the runners was PG.

Entirely separately, a week or so ago I had another dream which stands out: it was a dream of an O' race where everything was going as it should. In every other of my hundreds or even thousands of O' dreams over the years, they were all nightmares and not dreams, where everything was going wrong.

Enough of boring dream scribblings!

C • What dreams may come 11

O' run at Diamond Bay.

C • I detect a disquieting tren... 2

O' run at Pitcher Hill. Nice outing of "bustin' sage". Managed to elude several storm cells as they were closing in from different directions.

O' running at Twin Boulders. Intense fog banks were sweeping up from the south along the Laramie Range, but fortunately did not quite overwhelm the area I was running through until just as I was finishing. Sometimes timing is everything.

Found a small mule deer shed while I was running, and brought it along for the rest of the ride.

Yesterday I stumbled twice and nearly fell early in the training course I ran. I didn't mention it, figuring it would make the national news and that therefore I didn't need to. However, so far, I haven't seen a hint of it anywhere in the news, not even on Tweezer. Well, Twitter, whatever.

Also, at one point I knelt to the ground. That also didn't seem to attract any national attention, possibly because I was not an NFL player kneeling during the National Anthem at the start of a game. And, also possibly because I was not kneeling to make a statement, but only in order to make an adjustment to a shoelace.

Today, I went for an easy run up at Happy Jack, and I saw some clouds. I am almost positive this isn't going to hit the news wires either, so you will have to read about it here, as you have just done.

I can hardly wait to see what I do tomorrow!

Warm, dry conditions coupled with strong winds made for high fire danger today. And it was perhaps for that reason I saw 2 Forest Service trucks far out on a rough dirt road deep into Diamond Bay; I am guessing they were patrolling for unattended campfires.

By mid-afternoon significant smoke was blowing across from the Beaver Creek Fire, and the air was tinged blue with a very distinct smell of smoke at Diamond Bay. Not the best air conditions by a long shot, but I ran a training course anyway after mapping. Hopefully the smoke will shift away to some different direction soon, or the fire will die back down.

Frost was on house roofs again this morning, but no ground frost, thankfully.

Totally blue sky today from start to finish. At last--a day nice enough to go out mapping! It was beginning to look as if I might not map a single rocky dot knoll nor even one three line marsh this year, but now those fears have been put to rest, and I can put away the map board for another year.

Ran trails at the end of the day at a super easy pace where the goal was to lower my heart rate while I was running. That's not easy, but if you don't practice you have no right to expectation of success.

C • Practice 2

Biking earlier in the day followed by cruise intervals later, with dirt roads for a suitable running surface.

A repeat of yesterday.

Some biking and some easy running. My legs are still a bit tired from the weekend and deserved a bit more rest.

Pulled the last of the controls from the weekend out of the woods.

Only one casualty from the weekend that I know of: a second stud popped out of the O' shoes I use for training. Some people might take that as a sign of shoddy construction unless I add that I have been using these shoes--OROC 340s--for several years now for practically all my O' training. That is a lot of hours, and a lot of kilometers, and it is incredible to me how well these shoes have held up for me. They were comfortable straight out of the box on day 1, and have never given me any trouble. They've easily been the best O' shoes for training I've ever used--and I've used a lot of different shoes.

Day 3 of the training camp, with today running a Daze course from 2014 on the east side of Pelican Bay. Very fun course, at the short end of the Red spectrum, with very varied terrain and difficulty. A fun way to end the weekend. Nice for me to see that my legs were handling things well. 2 of my main gauges of fitness is how well I'm able to run uphill (does the running bog down or not?) and how quickly I recover after cresting a climb. Both measures were satisfactory. Tired legs by the time I was done and home, but if my legs hadn't felt anything at all from three days of running courses, then I wasn't running hard enough.

Coming home, there was a huge, linear cloud stretching SW to NE across the sky to the west. At first I wondered if it could be a smoke plume from the Beaver Creek Fire, but I realized the cloud wasn't really the right color, it was too big, and it was too high. Later in the day I did some easy biking, and kept on staring at the cloud. Gradually I could see that it was in fact a smoke plume. It's been quite interesting to see (from a distance) how this fire has gone on and behaved. Most of the days last week there was no sign whatsoever it was still burning. And then, when the weather and winds are right--like yesterday--it roars back to life and can send up an enormous plume of smoke that stretches from one horizon to the other. It's been burning now for 2 1/2 months; the Forest Service has just fought it to preserve structures and whenever and wherever it emerges from forest and meets sage and/or prairie, stating that it is too dangerous to try to fight inside the forest (mainly because of the chance of dead pine trees dropping on fire fighters, I think) and that it would be beneficial for the beetle kill affected forest to be burned anyway. Their expectation all along is that it would continue to burn until about mid-October, and put out by falling snows around that time frame, and it would appear they know very well what they are talking about.

Day 2 of the training camp, with today's training featuring a re-run of a Chase course from some years back at Pelican Bay (west side). The road to this part of Pelican Bay had been gated off for the previous 3 summers, and it's nice that it at last open again with easy access to that side of Pelican Bay.

My Day 2 began much earlier than planned. I went to bed at my usual time, and, at some point, started imagining crowd noises in the distance--not much of a dream. At some point I actually woke up at some noise, and it did seem like I could hear something off in the distance, a crowd-like noise that would at long intervals swell up, last a few seconds, and then totally disappear in the wind. Or was it just the wind? The wind can really roar so that seemed likely. And while there had been a football game, and a night game at that, with a start time of 8;30, I can almost never hear anything from my home from the games except for the cannon that is fired whenever Wyoming scores. Besides, it was 1:30 in the morning.

But then I heard the crowd noise all over again, and this time it was pretty distinct. What in the world??? Something had to be going on, so I got up and turned on the radio, and turned to the station that broadcasts Wyoming football games. Nothing but some very late night program was on. Then I checked the internet for game scores, and saw that--amazingly enough--the Wyoming-Northern Illinois game was underway. What had happened was there had been a very long lightning delay, and then the game stretched on for 4 1/2 hrs or some such thing, and went into triple overtime. It didn't end until 2:35 am, which one can only imagine must make it one of the later ending games ever. Or maybe it happens regularly? At least I've never heard of a game that lasts that long.

Even with a shortened night of sleep, I felt pretty good running, but then I always enjoy running at Pelican Bay. I didn't see anything of note while I was running (others saw moose and turkey), but while picking up controls afterwards I did see the first attack badger I've seen in a few years. By the time I noticed it I was already pretty close--really even a bit too close for comfort, but it seemed to be ignoring me rather than going into vicious attack badger mode. It turned out that was only because it hadn't heard me coming up. Once it became aware of me, it turned around to face me, flattened out, and started hissing horribly while it was deciding (I presume) which body part it would destroy first. Or maybe it was deterred by the map case I was holding out as a shield. Or perhaps it recognized I was not a ground squirrel and it took pity on me. At any rate, it started slinking off and I held up my fist in victory and ran off. I will confess I looked back several times to make sure the badger wasn't following me.

First day of weekend training--or a training camp if you like--with a small group of stalwarts from Colorado plus me. We re-ran a slightly modified version of the Red course from the "A" meet back in July at Diamond Bay. We had nice weather for running and campers camped almost immediately by the last control.

Hoping to avoid any hostile confrontations, after hanging the last control I walked over to the large camping trailer and found a woman outside, frying up sliced potatoes over a camping stove. She was very friendly, and, as I explained they might see some runners running right by later in the day, could not have evinced any smaller amount of concern--so, good, no problem.

I really liked this course, and one of the main reasons is that, while it's not completely obvious just from looking at the map, as you run through the course the terrain/vegetation shifts several times and can be divided into four separate sections, with different requirements for both running and orienteering technique.

Finished hanging the last of the controls (except several that go up at the last minute, to reduce pilferage) this afternoon, which was pleasant. Spotted some campers who had illegally driven way deep into the forest. They were lucky I didn't have my smart phone with me, and even luckier when I couldn't find the right number to call when I got back home. They will be less lucky if they are still there Monday.

Decided to hit September running hard, so intervals it was, 9 x 5 min. on one of my favorite double tracks. Legs felt blah warming up, and then felt pdf! while running, which is ever so much better than having them feel pdf! while warming up and blah during the running.

Met two dogs on the way out; one was tail wagging friendly and the other was friendly and wanted to jump up; neither was a pit bull. Not surprising to see some dogs, as there were a lot of campers showing up surprisingly early for the weekend.