Training Log Archive: Swampfox

I noticed very mild throat soreness yesterday in the morning, which didn't get any worse during the day, but became more noticeable in the late evening.

Since I coudn't feel any other symptoms and felt otherwise 100% fine, I decided I could go skiing, and did so, keeping to an easier effort level, and shortening the duration form what I would usually do.

This morning my throat was more sore, but again, there were no other symptoms, and I felt fine during the day, and again decided some outdoor exercise would be fine at a very easy intensity. So I skied, and linked up with several friends for the last third or so of the ski. Still felt fine, so I jogged a bit after that.

This evening my throat is definitely sorer, however, and that's no good, even if I still feel perfectly fine otherwise. I will not be surprised if I wake up tomorrow not feeling so great. Normally when I get a sore throat, it is followed by fever within 24 hours, so this is unusual for me.

The skiing/snow was really good today, if thin in spots.

I could feel yesterday's skiing in my arms today, so it was strictly easy skiing today, shortened up, followed by running, finishing up right at nightfall.

It felt colder out than I thought it was, explained in part by some decent wind, and in part by the fact that it turned out that it actually was about 10 degrees colder than I thought. The briskness was added incentive to keep moving.

Started out skiing by myself, and then linked up with Mark and skied with him the rest of the time, for a total of just under 2 hours. Dusk by the time we finished, then went running in the dark--though effectively it was pretty bright out, with the moon casting shadows against the snow. At one point Brian B. went by on his fat bike w/ two of his dogs; only saw one other biker on the trails while I was out.

A bit toasted even before starting skiing, from being out quite late the night before, and therefore ending up on the short end of sleep time.

Windy but on the mild side of things, especially while the sun was still out. Not warm enough to do anything to the ski trails though.

Skied and then ran until the stars came out, and kept on going until the snow bikers came out, too. It was sunny until it got dark, and then it was just windy.

Thought I noticed some classic tracks. But maybe not. If so, they were the first ones set down this season.

And I definitely noticed some moose tracks, going right down the middle of the trail leaving the parking lot trail head. It was obvious the moose was walking up the trail in the middle of the day, after the day's grooming. It seems to me it must have enjoyed the fresh corduroy.

C • moose tracks 1

Decided to go moose hunting after skiing, so after skiing I ran and hunted moose. No moose but lots of tracks and one moon.

Trails firmer than yesterday, and should be super nice tomorrow.

Enough wind to feel cold if you paid any attention to it, but why do that? It was just wind.

Nice and glad to get a chance at some very fine Yowsa!!! this morning. It's almost like old times again, with a completely snow clad Laramie valley.

Skied until dusk. Crisp/cold--teens--and about 8" new, or so it looked. Trails rolled and neither soft nor firm. Glide was not so much thanks to sharp crystals on too warm glide wax.

It being Jan 21, and roughly a month since the solstice, it seemed like a good time to drop in on a perfectly randomly selected newspaper, as part of my continuing effort to keep abreast of what is going on around the nation of too much coal and too little cold. And today's perfectly randomly selected newspaper turned out to be...the Lawrence Journal World--how excellent! Several articles caught my eye:

1) The lead article was about the 2018 Women's March in Lawrence, which was attended by thousands. Lawrence's Vice Mayor Lisa Larsen made comments alluding to the speed dating potential demographic of the crowd, and judging by the accompanying photograph of the attendees, she nailed that. What impressed me was the wisdom of the Lawrence electorate, in choosing a Vice Mayor with such a powerful name, beginning both the given and surnames with the same consonant "L". The more popular technique of doubling consonants and placing them together--as in these completely random examples "Platt", "William:, or even "Mikell"--is obviously far weaker. Besides conveying a great sense of power, the name "Lisa Larsen" has such a fine Swedish ring to it, and I bet she could identify what Homeland Security nominee Kirstjen Nielsen couldn't--that ethnically speaking, Norway is pretty much white.

2) There was an article about a forthcoming book covering some of the favorite songs of Lawrence. I was intrigued by the song selections, having always been of the view that if you know what people whistle while they work, then you know a great deal about those people. "Within You, Without You", by George Harrison has always been a favorite of mine and I was happy to see it is is so well thought of in Lawrence, too. There were several selections by the Thorns, an obvious nod to the nature of the dominant native vegetation. There was even a traditional gospel hymnal: "The Wind Cries Mary (Jones)".

3) There were of course many, many articles about Jayhawk basketball, far too many to go into here.

4) Finally, an article about the KU jet piqued my curiosity. Who knew KU had its own jet! Anyway, the University Senate is recommending it be sold. Apparently the jet has mostly been used for conducting bombing raids on the Mizzou Campus, and after decades of near nightly aerial assaults, there just isn't that much left of Mizzou to target. Some defenders of the jet who want to save it have suggested it could be deployed to assist with football recruiting, but the Athletic Department put out a terse statement reading, in its entirety: "Why would we want to recruit football players?", which largely quashed that suggestion.

It's always fun reading the newspaper!

I didn't have to read the paper to find out what was going on locally today. Instead, I could observe and experience firsthand. And what was going on was at last a day of snow that looked and felt like real winter. It snowed lightly in town all day long, which was encouraging. I went up to the ski trails in the late afternoon and found about 6" of new snow. I skied until after dark, with more snow falling just about the whole time. It's first solid snow storm we've had since a few days before Christmas, and very much needed. With more normal winter temps, it will be enough new snow to get us through a good bit of February in good shape--really important, given that the state high school championships will be here this season.

Besides the snow, it there was enough cold plus enough wind to make it feel like real winter and to keep my hands from ever feeling toasty the whole time I was skiing. It was "only" teens (meaning it wasn't bitter cold) when I was leaving the parking lot, but enough wind that I stood still by my truck door and thought first about each move I was going to make with an exposed hand while I would be getting my keys and unlocking the door.

And it must be windy here in Laramie right now. As I've been typing the power has already flickered off very briefly twice--and the wind seems the most likely culprit.

C • double consonants 2

O' at Pelican Bay, 14 kms, 45 controls, snow everywhere in the forest and sage with areas of drifted snow while prairie areas were mostly bare, overcast w/ light breeze, 40F and dropping, and...

I headed up to run in the afternoon. Judging by conditions in the valley--overcast but fairly bright--there was plenty of time to run the whole course. As I drove past the Tie City parking lot and swung around the curve, however, I could look up ahead to the east and....see fog. Dense fog.

There wasn't any fog at Pelican Bay as I got there, but there was plenty of fog just across the highway over large portions of Remarkable Flats, and tendrils were headed south. It looked murky. I wasted no time getting going and decided I would just try to get around as far as I could, and if the fog got bad quickly, then I would hop off the course, and head up to Happy Jack and run snow trails (which I could almost do blind folded.)

The fog did sweep in, but wasn't as thick as it looked from the outside. Inside the fog, you could see fine enough for about 100 m or so, and past that for some extra amount of distance before things disappeared. But 100 m is a lot, well more than enough, and the main problem was trying to read some of the finer details on the map. Getting to the control rings was no problems, but seeing the fine details--especially things like small form line knolls or distinguishing what various black objects were--was tough at times. I had printed the map at 1:12,500, which probably would have been fine minus the fog.

The whole time I was running I was losing light as an unseen sun dipped lower, overcast skies got darker, and as the fog got thicker. In the end, I only made it to the first 36 controls before I judged it was time to head for the nearest trail and take the most direct route back to my truck. As it was, I made it back just as dusk was fading into night.

By then, the fog was quite thick, and the temps were below freezing. You couldn't see, and then there was the added thrill of fog freezing on the windshield. I drove back very slowly along the Happy Jack Road until the fog lightened and then disappeared at the higher elevation of the interstate at the Summit, by which time the windshield was warm enough to keep ice from forming on it. From there back home it was easy going, but it's always a relief and nice to get back home after experiencing uncertain or bad driving conditions.

Easily breaking a record high for the date--it's already 56F vs the old record of 51F. Substantial!

C • Substantial.. 1

Counting today, I've skied the last 8 days in the new year. Most years, I would have skied the last 19 days. I don't know if I'll ski tomorrow because conditions are again getting thin in more and more spots. Some snow may arrive tomorrow, and we'll just have to see.

On the other hand, I've biked outside quite a few days this year, and most years that would show a zero.

And normally the valley here would be white. As it is, if you look to the mountains to the south and west, they are snow covered. But the valley is very brown, as is the western facing slope of the Laramie Range--as brown as one of those old HVO suits (or am I thinking of Ramapo? not sure.)

Ran after skiing and saw a grand total of 2 mountain bikers after dark, and no moose.

Sunny and crisp out today, starting out cold at around 0F or just below, and warming up until the early afternoon. I had some errands and decided I could bike around in shorts from the way it felt, and did, but there was a colder wind out of the north that I couldn't feel in my yard, but which could be felt while biking. Fingers in regular biking gloves got somewhat icy, but they survived, and otherwise it was fine--beats melting down in high temps and humidity, that's for sure.

Then skied and ran some later in the day, finishing up well after dark. I cut the running short and did everything at a very easy effort level, because I had the vague sense my body wasn't quite there today. Nothing I could pin down as incipient illness necessarily--just kind of felt like I might be feeling very mildly achy all over, and feeling ever so slightly flattish. And yet, in my mind and head I felt fine, alert, and happy to be outside. Anyway, it seemed like a good idea to take things really easy and back off a bit, just in case.

There were as many bikers out after dark as I've seen all season. And some of them have lights that can burn holes through your eye sockets if you look straight into them. It's amazing to see how these lights seem to get more and more powerful each year. I'm sure the bikers must sometimes blind each other as they approach; at least I can step off the trail and turn my head away (which is what I do, and I don't mind yielding to the bikers at all anyway.)

It was very clear out and stars were extra visible tonight--so much so that a constellation was almost harder to pick out because so many fainter stars that you never usually see were easily visible also. I saw a very cool meteorite that was a good bit larger than most are, and which seemed to be moving more slowly across the sky than most do. After transecting a large arc, it disappeared behind a hill off to the west.

C • Meteor 6

Nice to have another very sunny day, but extra nice to have a sunny day that actually felt like winter for a change. Decidedly nippy in the cab of my truck on the way home, which is the finest measure of if it's winter or if it's not really winter. Lately it's been mostly the latter.

Trail conditions were mostly good, and considerably improved by some shoveled snow onto several critical spots.

I was on guard because I had seen a suspicious car bearing Colorado plates in the parking lot, but even so I was unable to avoid running into racer X8A7. Drats. And I had thought for sure if I simply avoided all the beginner trails I would be safe!

So we skied together from then, which was fine, though oddly we spent the time mostly talking about Hershey's Semi-Sweet Chocolate morsels. Well that wasn't the odd part. The odd part was we were both arguing strongly that semi-sweet chips were the best, and didn't realize until we were nearing the end of the ski that we both favored the same chip position. Miscommunication at its finest!

After X8AZ headed back to Colorado, with some favorable winds to speed his progress eastward down I-80, I headed back out on several select snow bike trails for some running, thinking about a bit of wisdom a snow biker had passed along recently: "Remember if you see a horse out in these woods, it's really a moose, and if you see a moose instead, then it's a moose, too; cows don't count, because you won't see any cows up here in winter."

Skied for a while, first by myself, and then I ran into Frank B. and skied with him until it was time to remover skis and don running shoes. Then ran well past dark, with two up-n-close personal moose sightings for added flavor and excitement. One was a bull moose of a few years of age with a middling set of antlers, nothing great, but at least more than just spikes. The other I couldn't be sure of, because it had no antlers. This is the time of year when antlers are coming off, so that's no longer a reliable sign. It was quite large though, and some combination of size and general appearance made me inclined to think it was a bull, too.

Beautiful sunny day, mild during the middle of the day in town, with the usual afternoon winds kicking in as the sun lowered.

Yesterday morning, returning home from some random errand, I happened to notice an isolated cloud situated over the Happy Jack massif. It looked like it might be dispensing snow, of all things. But I forgot about it, until later in the day, when then I went up to run, and found there was a fresh and unexpected 2" of snow. I think some passing crow must have noticed the bared grounds, and, taking pity upon the local skiing conditioned, signaled to some powerful god--or could it have been North Korea, instead--to deliver some snow.

My plans had been to run, and in any event I hadn't packed skis along with me, so running it was, and it was a delight to see the new snow. And it looked like it was enough to refresh the trail conditions in most parts back to "decent".

Today I knew better, and headed up to take advantage of the improved skiing circumstances; no way to know how long it will last, and without more snow, it will probably get thinned out quickly enough in the more notorious sections of the trail net, and then it will be back to all running and no skiing again.

First time out this year, on the 13th, which is remarkable when compared to any previous winter. It sets a new standard for a skinny snow season, almost no matter what might follow from here.

I was checking out one spot that is especially prone to be windswept when a figure emerged from around a bend, and started waving at me. At first I couldn't figure out who it was and the context of it was what threw me, because it was Doug Berling, and I just had no reason to think I might run into him up there.

He had some startling news: just in the past few days there had been an influx of large numbers of Norwegians to the Denver area, and the authorities were quite concerned: what if they were there to spread their jeans, or were planning on relocating to Nederland to embark on raising high altitude hip hemp? I wondered if any of them might have compasses and finger sticks with them, but Doug did not mention anything about that.

Strange times indeed, but after all the skiing was said and done--easier said than done, I must add, because my skis were sic slow--I went running anyway, looking for and finding several moose in the dark.

As a test of how ridiculously mild it is, I am going to go out and saw some wood in a t-shirt and shorts--dressed exactly as I would be if this were summer time. I will report back when I am done. If I don't report back, it will mean it was wayyyy colder than I thought, and I froze to death.

Btw, I should just add, in case anyone worries about this, nothing to worry about. After all, we have a self proclaimed stable genius in charge, which is easily the best type to have. Plus, it's like, really bigly mild outside, so the chances of freezing to death are very small.

I am back. Okay, I didn't break a sweat, but maybe I just didn't stay out long enough. Might be time for some iced tea, though.

Enjoyed running in record high temps (new all time high for the date here today)! Plenty of wind helped reduced the risk of overheating, fortunately. Any of the trails hit by sun had been transformed into slush, and it looked and felt like it could as well have been late March. Rumors of snow on the way tonight, and we shall see. Still haven't skied so much as a second in this new year.

Running on snow trails late in the day was almost 100% Fun, and the one thing that took a few percent out of the overall experience was seeing a sub-moron had ridden a horse out and back along the Summit Trail, right down the middle of the groomed ski trail. You just have to wonder what the thought process could be. It would be bad enough even under normal snow conditions, but with the cover as thin as it is, just about every hoof print brought up dirt.

Nominally mild out, and sunny, but some decent wind out of the SW while cycling took away all the mildness, as least as far as the hands were concerned. Still, shorts and a light jacket took care of the rest of me just fine. Road south of town, feinting as if I was going to make a raid into northern Colorado. It definitely would have caught them off guard,

Started out with a bike ride before running snow trails. Another mild day and another day I went out in shorts, but gray skies and some wind imparted a certain amount of rawness. My hands and head were comfortable the whole time, but the rest of me was chilled enough by the time I got home that some hot tea really hit the spot.

Darkness early today because of the overcast conditions, and I ran until well after dark.

Basically a repeat of yesterday. Maybe temps were a few degrees less mild, and there were a few clouds here and there versus no clouds, but it was still biking in shorts weather.

Ran snow trails after biking.

Man, toasty and sunny out today (upper 40s), and just light breeze. Clearly and occasion to get out on my bike, which I did. It's not often I've been able to ride outside in comfort in early January, let alone in biking shorts and just ordinary biking gloves. Weird weather. But pretty fine weather, as long as skiing is not your concern!

C • jealous 2

O' at Pelican Bay, mid 20s, sunny but late enough that the sun was pretty low, breezy, mix of bare ground, snow cover, and snow drifts for footing. Ran a short course of 5 kms, and then ran jeep trails and bike trails to flesh things out. Finished up as dusk was about to go over to night.

Lots of tracks, old and new, but didn't see any wildlife at all.

I think the weather for the moment here is better for O than it is in New England.'

Got out for running by the mid-afternoon, knowing full well that mid-afternoon on the 1st of January is already getting preciously near nightfall, but not caring because....no wind, snow on the ground, and full moon makes for perfect running conditions before or after dark!

I ran for a little under 3 hours--very easy pace--and the time flew by. I had no idea I had been out that long until I looked at my watch after I finished. A fun way to start the new year. Chatted with one skier who was out on rock skis, and I saw the headlight of one snow biker after dark, and that was it. But that wouldn't be totally unexpected; during Christmas Break, Laramie really empties out, and it is all but a ghost town.

Came home, made pizza--which was fantastic; 2018 starts out on both excellent running and pizza notes!--and sat down hoping to watch some of the Clemson game. Fail. No ESPN, therefore no Clemson game--ha!