Training Log Archive: Swampfox

Nothing to do with O', but rather "things learned" that would be better learned through study/education than via experience: when you are at the bottom end of a chimney sweeping operation, wearing a mask or kerchief or some equivalent over your mouth and nose is highly advisable.

C • Or perhaps, if you are invo... 9

After subjecting myself to a surprisingly realistic simulation of what it feels like to have black lung (turns out it's not near as much fun as it sounds!), I headed out to Pelican Bay to hang more controls. Between black lung or control hanging, give me the latter any day (as long as the controls aren't on stands, in which case I would take the black lung.)

Still lots of haze around from the various fires around the west.

Hung controls at Diamond Bay for the weekend.

I got a note from Michael Eglinski today bearing something sad and shocking: a link to Brian Graham's obituary. I had no idea Brian had been ill, much less that he had died.

It's not as if we were close and stayed in touch, and yet all the same I always liked Brian a lot. He was just fun to be around and to talk to. We were at a lot of the same races and training camps and such through 1993, but only very rarely after that.

The last time I saw Brian was at the N. Ams hosted by DVOA 4 years ago. I hadn't seen him for years at that point; we bumped into each other during the Sprint Relay and had a great conversation, talking for quite a while and catching up. It stuns me to think he's gone, and I wish I had known he had been ill--I would have been in touch. Very sad stuff.

For those who never met Brian, he was a great guy. For those who did know him, he will be missed.

"Life is a series of farewells; sometimes you know it at the time, a lot of times you don't."

Once I found out the news, I changed my plans for the rest of the day, and ran up to the top of Medicine Bow Peak, alone with my thoughts, quietly recalling Brian and times gone by.

C • Brian 12

Long bike followed by a short run that included getting a few control descriptions for the coming weekend.

O' at Diamond Bay; poorly concentrated, at least my legs were working okay.

Pretty fine day of O' at Remarkable Flats, except the part where I stopped my watch and forgot to restart it--the afternoon that time froze.

Ran from home on trails east of town. Some up, and some down.

Tested my chip sealed street bike handling skills--not much in the way of skills, but I didn't fall!--and then headed up for some more orienteering at Forrest Meadows, where the highlights were 1) discovering I can still read maps, and 2) finding a Rockstar energy drink can. Unfortunately, there didn't seem to be any ginkgo biloba left in the can; I assume the cows were responsible for sucking it dry. But that's okay--I wasn't feeling thirsty anyhow.

C • can 2

When I went out biking today, I sensed evil in the air.

Many people distinguish between evil and pure evil, with the latter being thought to be worse.

But of course there is a third category of evil: necessary evil. And what I sensed fell into this third category. I am talking about chip sealing.

Actually I;m glad to see the work going on. We came out of winter with a number of roads in town in pretty bad shape, and as summer wore on, it gradually became more and more mystifying that no chip sealing was being done--though in the case of several of the roads, more than mere chip sealing is probably required to bring the roads back up to standard.

I thought today would be a good day to take it easy running--after the exertions of the weekend--and it turned out I was right. My legs were utterly uninterested in moving any faster than a slow cucumber. So slow cucumber it was. Which was cool with me.

Last day of the mini-training camp for Neal; today it was just Neal and me, and the training was a single Greenish course at Bisbee Hill. Bisbee has become significantly tougher than it used to be--at least in the forested, hilly parts--owing to the prolific pine bark beetle kill with a good many downed trees making following a given line in some areas far from easy. Plus, a host of new younger vegetation is springing up, with aspen saplings already reaching chest to head high or higher--which really lowers visibility in places.

Orienteering was solid as was the effort, and the sighting of 2 yearling bull moose was the highlight. They seemed to be surprised to see an orienteer in their forest and were quick to move along.

While warming up, I tried to convey positive thoughts for the US racers on the Sprint Relay, who, at that moment, were probably close to warming up for their race as well.

C • Sprint Relay Vibes 3

Training much like yesterday--2 Greenish courses that could be run separately or else back to back with a map exchange for a Bluish course. I did the latter again.

Had a weird experience coming out of one control where, despite checking my compass well enough (I thought), I then immediately continued in a direction nearly 90 degrees out of my intended line. Otherwise--if you can say "otherwise" after such an egregious mistake like that--everything was fine. Didn't feel any strength on the uphills so it would seem to be a place where some additional attention and work should pay off.

Absolutely gorgeous running conditions with brilliant blue skies and crisp, fall temps. In fact, when I woke up, the roofs of the houses in my neighborhood were obviously coated in frost. No ground frost, but, still, frost on the 20th of August!

With WOC at hand, and--despite many difficulties and miscues along the way--a successful taper brought to its designed end, it was time for some determined training in advance of the highly anticipated sprints tomorrow. To that end, a small group of youth(ful) (well, I guess we were youth, I know I felt like a youth; at the very least none of us were M95s) assembled at the now again open west end of Pelican Bay this morning, where at Neal B's request I had set and streamered 2 Greenish courses. They could be run separately or back-to-back, in which case the 2 became 1, approximating a nice Blueish challenge. To make things even more interesting, there were some wild cows to chase us around if they spotted any of us lagging.

To make things even more interested, before starting we all agreed that while we were running we would play "Cow or Rosstopher"? It's a simple game: when you spot a cow, you yell out "Cow or Rosstopher?!" and if it's moving faster than you are, then you are required to yell out "Rosstopher!". What we didn't know--or suspect--is that the forest today happened to be thick with cattle. There were literally hundreds and hundreds of cattle in the woods. That made for an awful lot of yelling, and I'm afraid I am going to be hoarse for a while; I've already cancelled the concerts dates I was supposed to play this weekend. But it was totally worth it anyway.

The best part was perhaps the weather. The forecast intimated it could be quite cool with rain more or less anytime today, and cool with rain here means "cold with rain". Until I woke up this morning and saw blue skies and the sun, I was thinking it was going to be a supertroja day today for sure. As it was, if anything it felt more warm than cool while running, really quite nice. Now it sounds like the cooler weather is on for tonight, and there are frost warnings for the Laramie Valley and expectations there could be fresh white on the Snowies by morning tomorrow. (As I write, it is a toasty 53F, completely grey, winds to 20 mph, and not getting warmer!)

WOC in Sweden makes me daydream a little. To me (acknowledging it will vary from person to person), the height of orienteering is a Swedish WOC. I was lucky enough to get to run in 2 Swedish WOCs, which I think puts me in a pretty small and special club (if you orienteer long enough, there's almost no end to the small and special clubs you can devise for yourself!): orienteers who have run in 2 Swedish WOCs. I know for a fact that it's not a solo member club, as there is at least one other member in the club--who happens to be on AP also, as is just and proper--but I'm not sure how many other members the club has, or even if there are any other members at all. I do know the club will be expanding over the next few days, however, with names a lot bigger and well known than someone like me!

Funny to me that for this WOC the Swedes have selected the most Norwegian like little piece of Sweden that could be found, and that it would be possible for a WOC runner to find himself or herself actually in Norway during one of the races, if things should go really badly. I'm not sure why they did that, unless they were feeling a little sympathetic to the Norwegians, who in recent years have been far from the dominant force they once were. Who knows; they must have had their reasons. At any rate, the pictures seen so far surely show Strömstad as quite a charming looking town, with the possibility ever present of Aphrodite rising, riding her crimson shell where the sky loves the sea...

While running and approaching the tiny footbridge at Brown's Landing, I realized a bull moose was also approaching the bridge from the other side--confrontation!

I had the advantage and was much closer to the bridge than Mister Moose by the time we were both aware of each other, so rightfully the bridge should have been mine. But I did the polite thing and let Mister Moose have the bridge (also perhaps the smart thing.)

Confrontation averted!

As yet another blunder in my (apparently continuing series of blunders) WOC taper, I headed to the forested, hilly portion of the Bisbee map for O' training today. Up in the forest there, it was wild, definitely not open, and quite challenging--all due to changes in the forest vegetation due to the eminently fine pine bark beetle. Many dead trees are now down--requiring constant improvisation as you encounter areas requiring detouring--and with the now much more open canopy, much undervegetation has been taking advantage of the opportunity. Some areas look quite different due to all the new young aspen. It certainly requires more running strength to get through it all. That, plus the hills, equals good stuff.

But not good taper! Rats. : (

Maybe there is still time to salvage things, but now time is getting really, really, really short before WOC!

Btw, if you look at Bulletin 4 (you have looked at Bulletin 4 and memorized it from cover to cover, right?), you will have noticed that while the travel distances from many important points to Stromstad are given, but somehow Laramie was omitted. Luckily, I just happen to know what the distance from Laramie to Stromstad is, which is about 7448 kms. And now you know almost everything you need to know about WOC, at least through the first four bulletins.

In reviewing my training log, I realized that--oops!--I was supposed to be starting my WOC taper yesterday, but pretty thoroughly blew it by doing intervals. Oh well. There's always another WOC to look forward to. I will now reconcile myself with spectating (from quite a distance) this year and will try to imagine the sage at home are blueberries in Sweden.

However, I have not completely given up hope, and tried to salvage the situation with some extremely easy running in the early afternoon sun.

C • mmmm....sage... 6

Quick ride around town to run some errands, and while biking by the courthouse, I noticed many prominent signs reading "Vote Here Today". So I popped in and voted in the primary one day early. It could not have been easier or quicker: it took literally somewhere between 1 and 2 minutes, max. At least in Laramie, there can be virtually no legitimate excuse for one not fulfilling this most fundamental duty of citizenship.

Intervals in the afternoon.

Biked south of town tracing out a clockwise loop, which I won't do again (going clockwise, I mean) owing to a large construction project right off the east side of US 287 which is leaving large amounts of sand/gravel debris on the road shoulder. Good stuff for mountain bikers, I'm sure, but much less good for the "challenged" (I did fall, after all) on a road bike.

After nearly a whole week where there was no trace of the fire off to the SW, and where I was starting to wonder if it was finally out, it must have emerged from dormancy because today a considerable plume was emerging from it today. By sunset, everything to the west was very hazy--actually making for a sensational sunset.

O' at Twin Boulders, where I did my best to knock down some sage and invariably didn't succeed. I did however bring home one plastic and one glass bottle, doing my little bit to help keep the National Forest cleaner.

Now would probably be a good time to begin my WOC taper, so I watched some Olympic US Womens Beach Volleyball as an ideal way to begin. It is not a hard sport to watch, it seems.

Road north of town a little past the cable relay station and return. A demur ride, as the wind was making no effort today. A fair amount of motorcycle traffic was heading south, perhaps in a desperate search for bandana outlets still stocked with the goods.

I've lost track of when WOC is, and have the feeling it could be just a week away. I better get my legs together so I can run fast in absentia! ; )

Did a bike loop south of town. It was not very humid, so I pretended I was somewhere down in east Texas but I must not have pretended very good because it still didn't feel very humid even with all that.

Tweaked something in the upper left leg yesterday while running, and it was still sore today, so no running until it's better. Biked out to the airport so see what was happening, and what was happening was not much except for a lot of wind just as I was arriving. And even more wind for my departure.

O' at Remarkable Flats.

Hill work on Straight Up (the hill.) Heavy rain and hail threatened but all that fell while I was running were light sprinkles, which were refreshing, like 7Up. Lots of thunder and lightning as motivation to keep moving (harder to hit a moving target?). A fine way to end the day.

On the way home, I noticed the sun is setting behind the Snowies again, effectively shortening the day more than the calendar would suggest. By tradition, this marks the end of local summer.

O' at Pitcher Hill.

Easy bike followed by easy run on trails up top.

Race at Round Mountain (Colorado). Likely to be the only race I end up doing this year; couldn't pass up the chance to go down to Round Mountain and run a course where someone else has taken the trouble to design a course and set out controls, as it remains one of my all time favorite areas.

And extra nice that a Blue course was offered, otherwise I probably would have opted to draw up my own Blue course and run that instead of the Red.

One small moment of hesitation on one control, and on another control I either drifted off my compass or else it was the magnetic north lines (don't think they have been updated since the original work on the map) that led me just far enough to make me wonder what was going on. Otherwise it was a clean run. No reason not to be running nearly as hard as you can nearly all the time at Round Mountain and anyway that was the way it was on this course; I could note that I didn't have much power on the several little climbs we had, so it's something that some more attention to should yield a payoff.

C • Only race? 3

Blue - Splits

Biked for 2+ hours in the county, and took a break from running today to rest up my legs some.

An unusual weather day for these part--totally gray from sunrise to sunset, and it was hard to tell which part was clouds, haze, smoke form nearby fires, and smoke form distant fires. It looked the whole time like rain was eminent and yet I never felt anything more than about 5 tiny drops very late in the day while biking. And I could have as well imagined that.

I ran an O' course at Pelican Bay in the morning--quite nice, with temps about 20 degrees cooler than the day before, somewhere in the mid or low 60s. Not really summer temps, but I did not complain. ; )

Saw the first turkey I've seen this year (as far as I remember) and it was unusual in that it was running solo in the bitterbrush. You almost only see turkeys in groups around here and never solo.

While I was driving out from Pelican Bay I noticed that marker elves had been busy while I was running, and paint on the ground and direction signs had popped up to mark a portion of the Enduro mtn bike race course (the race is Saturday.)

After a vicious and hard fought battle, I overcame and removed another hedge plant, the first of the year. It was a pretty good test for my shoulder, which passed with flying colors.

It goes the same way each time: you dig and hack and struggle, and for the most part there doesn't seem to be much progress, other than a widening and deepening hole around the hedge plant object, which invariably is equipped with a massive and nearly impenetrable tap root/trunk. And then, if you keep struggling, you hit it with another mattock blow and there is almost magic as you can feel the thing start to give way at last. Then a few wrenches and twists, and the root snaps and it is free.

Ran some hills in some unanticipated occasional rain sprinkles. Didn't really get wet, but didn't stay dry, either. I went by some climbers at the Beehive, and was surprised to see they were still trying to climb on the wet rock. But they may have well been surprised to see someone was running at the Beehive instead of climbing while it was sprinkling.

If you do much O' training in the woods (though where else would you do much O' training--ha!), you go through a lot of socks--or at least I do. In light of that observation, it was a shock several days ago to discover that a reserve supply of 7 identical pairs socks have gone missing. Several searches have not turned up the socks, therefore the overwhelming odds are that somehow a sockosaurus was able to enter my house, consume the socks, and exit undetected. Quite alarming. Or even more alarming: it is somewhere still in my house, ready to spring out at most any time and consume more socks...

C • Sockosaurus 4

Ran an old Red course at West Medicine Bow in the afternoon. The course line took me into an area that underwent fire treatment by the Forest Service earlier in the year, which was interesting--it looks like they were targeting ground juniper. I could show them a lot more of that elsewhere (like up at Happy Jack)!

More recent beaver activity in the main drainage on the map made the crossing there somewhat, ummm, adventurous--yes, that's the word I want. ; )

Besides one big heron and several deer, it seemed I had the place to myself. Certainly there were no other orienteers.

Ran jeep trails at Remarkable Flats, picking up an unremarkable two beer cans along the way.