Training Log Archive: Swampfox

Encountered 2 of the boldest turkeys I've yet seen up at Happy Jack. Besides the fact they were further west (and thus closer to the hub of activity) than I've seen any turkeys before, they had planted themselves squarely astride the path I was running down. And not only did they not immediately run off when I came into sight, they actually started turkey hissing at me!

I was pretty sure they were only bluffing, but you can never be certain. During the training week at WOC 2004, James Scarborough got attacked by a turkey-like bird which ended up chasing James up into a tree.

I kept on running towards them, and got my compass out and started slinging it around my head by the lanyard, and told those turkeys they better clear out or else I would go intifada on them.

That was about as much as they could take, and they started running off. I don't know what it is, but there's just something about the way turkeys run that I have to admire. You know they should be flying and they know it too, but they can't help themselves: they want to orienteer so bad!

Happy Jack trails, cruise intervals. Only one mosquito, which makes it acceptable.

The 2010 pine bark beetle has emerged and has gone right to work burrowing into the next round of pine trees. It's easy to pick out the trees under attack, either by scanning for sap tubes or looking for tell-tale rings of sawdust around the bases of the tree trunks.

There's one tree by a ski trail that has somehow already survived two rounds (years) of beetle attacks and is a prodigious producer of sap. Beetles are boring in right now; it's hard to believe this tree can possibly survive a third year of attack.

afternoon

Toasty--89F, which is about as warm as it gets around here, and probably the warmest day of the year, so far.

C • Pine Bark beetles 3

morning

Remarkable Flats.

US Ultra-long Championships Blue - Splits

US Relay Champs, Lake George. Didn't have a team and so wasn't really expecting to run. But I got asked at the venue to fill out a team that needed another runner, so I ended up going out on leg 3. If you start at the corral at Lake George and run anywhere, it's pretty much got to entail some climb, and the course setter (Steve Willman) offered up some goodly amounts of climb for the first 3 controls. After the 3rd control, we were well into the above tree-line phase of the Never See 'Em Again Mountains, so high up that even half starved mountaing goats won't go up there no matter how green the grass is (and in Colorado nowadays, the rumor is the grass is really green and almost legal.)

The pace I ran at made the orienteering easy.

US Relay Championships Leg 3 (Orange) - Splits

US Night Champs, Manitou Lake. Ran Red; ran at a fairly easy effort. My light was OK, but not strong enough to run and read the map at the same time. Even at this easy tempo, I was still way slow to #1--where I saw no alternative than going straight at it and hoping for the best--and missed #5 badly. A lot of fun still, to be out at night and see all those other lights bobbing around. Nice courses by Doug Berling!

US Night Championships Red - Splits

Day 2 Westerns, Manitou Lake. Another good race, with only one tiny miss. 2nd on the day, won overall--a bit surprised at that. Manitou Lake is a super fun place to orienteer--basically contours only, in a very nice forest. If it goes well, it feels easy, but if you let your concentration slip even a moment, it's likely to cost you.

I managed these two races (yesterday, today) really well, with great concentration and good race flow. Together with the long race up in Canada, it feels like I'm orienteering the way I'm capable of doing for the first time in a long time, even if I can't run as fast as I used to be able to.

Helped pick up controls afterwards.

Western States Day 2 Blue - Splits

Day 1 Westerns, at Saylor Park. Pretty close to being a perfect race, and good for one more (one last?) win on Blue.

Western States Day 1 Blue - Splits

Still picking out those wonderful Moses Lake grass seeds out of my socks, and this is after several wash-n-wear cycles, a true testament to the seeds!

It would be fun to run at Moses Lake again, but maybe next time it could be before it gets hot, before the mosquitoes hatch out, and before the grass seeds have had the chance to ripen and turn brown.

C • Moses Lake 3

Easy run at Round Mountain after driving down in the afternoon. Round Mountain remains, for my money, one of *the* primo O' areas anywhere! It's especially beautiful this time of year, with the paintbrush, pink-purple loco weed, and scarlet gilia in bloom (the latter drives the hummingbirds crazy.)

Herrick Lane and back, plus a bit further out towards Centennial.

In The Flats, 8 x 5 min.

The river underpass is still closed due to highwater, but I possibly rode through it anyway. Not sayin' I did, not sayin' I didn't did, just sayin'.

The first new retailer since the so-called great recession began to come to Laramie has been announced: Murdoch’s Ranch and Home Supply. It's going to fill in 3 empty spaces on Grand Ave.

Quite a large crowd of bad ass mountain biker racers were thronging the Tie City parking lot this evening, but compared to the mighty mosquito, their number was as insignificant as a single grain of sand compared to all the cranberries within the Walmart supply chain--and that's a lot of cranberries.

You were OK as long as you kept moving, but if you stopped, you were mosquito toast. Nobody could have survived the "100 Test" tonight.

C • 100 Test 3

East Twin Boulders. After three days of increasing mosquito numbers, the truth can no longer be denied. We're not having a light mosquito season, but, rather, a late one. Bring on the dragonflies with all possible haste!

I saw another moose while I was out, this one a lone female, very dark coloring, almost black.

Killer Bee Test Loop--conditions were wet and heavy (relatively) owing to summertime lushness of the grasses and flowers, which had been thoroughly soggified by an intense thunderstorm that passed through the area right as I was arriving. There were several very close lighting strikes to admire!

Good thing this wasn't a stop-and-go type of a workout, because the mosquitoes were waiting and very willing, in battalion size strength. Mosquito season is the one time I don't mind having the sub-moron around, because you have to figure when they race around in their sub-moron vehicles, they must kill a fair amount of mosquitoes.

Sometimes the legs have it, and sometimes they don't, and today they didn't.

The eyes, on the other hand, were doing good and picked up the slack by spotting 3 moose on a single run! (one mama moose with two moosettes)

Dale Creek, course setting for the Laramie Daze One Cowboy Relay.

Dale Creek had its inaugural use as the venue for the 1998 US Night Orienteering Championships, wherein a number of intrepid night orienteers learned a certain, immutable truth about beaver ponds, which is while they are not usually a good route choice in daylight, at night they are a really, really bad idea. Probably an English prof would look at this sentence and say it was a really, really bad idea, too.

This coming Laramie Daze will be the first time Dale Creek has been used since that dazzling evening.

C • Dale Creek 13

Pitcher Hill; noticably humid for the area, due to cool, moist conditions yesterday followed by sun today. Saw a pair of owls which flew up out of some sage, and also a small herd of cows. The cows did not attempt a violent attack, possibly because of the faux black belt I was wearing to make me look like a skilled martials arts cow fighter.

C • Watch out... 3

trails, cool, overcast with occasional fog rolling through

N Ams Long race--again, very nice woods, terrain, map, and courses (which stands to reason, because it was the same as yesterday in all important respects. Orienteered decently with a little bit of nosing around 2 controls in the very early part of the race, and then again on 2 other controls on a tricky, rocky hill right before the descent towards the Finish area to set up the final loop. Never felt like I was running fast, but I maintained a decent, level speed all the way around and only had to walk several short segments of the steepest hills. Had no idea where I was in the middle of 9th leg relative to the logistical setting of the event (meaning, here, parking) and therefore I was very surprised to come upon a huge herd of parked cars more or less in the middle of the woods; for a moment, I was sure I had somehow gone seriously, seriously astray! Whew. Mostly just needed to have a little more speed in my legs.

One thing that especially interested me about the terrain was how in parts the area had a distinctly glacial feel (with sand, smooth cobblestones, depressions and little perched ponds, etc.) while other parts (mostly the higher, rockier lines of cliffs and other rock features) had a distinctly unglacial feel to it, and more like stuff I might associate more closely associated with, say, some of the rock at places like Stuckeys Pond, White Ranch Park (CO Front Range area) or Round Mountain. Pretty cool.

Overall pretty satisfied with both yesterday and today, and it helped considerably to set up things with somewhat "contrasting" run last weekend at Fishtrap.

Much as I love you, Fishtrap, I might not love you enough to come back and run my O-shoes across your siren lava rocks again! ; )

C • Same shock 1

Long - Course 10 - Splits

M21E NAOC Middle; 39:44 by the results posted at site, but I was started 1 minute late by the guy in charge of the maps at the start, so my actual time was 38:44; it looked like the Finish/results crew was going to straighten that out later. Nice woods, terrain, and map.

Middle - Course 10 - Splits

Trails.