Training Log Archive: Swampfox

Intervals, 9 x 5 min; interesting cattle for company. Who knew a cow could jump a fence? Saw a large snake in the road I was running on, too. Very large.

Of course, up on our maps anything over about 12" counts as large.

C • Mappable? 2

Checked 2 controls at the Granite Planite Middle day; moved one to a nearby feature (first location would have been fine, but it looked a little too visible from the highway and I would end up worrying that someone might see it and take it during the race), and moved the control location on the other to the opposite side of the feature--mainly because that's where the big hornet nest is, should be exciting for the runners and the hornets, too.

I had thought about running one of the courses after that, but I didn't in the end. I wasn't worried about the hornets--I can run way faster than they can (run)--but there were so many cattle out there, and I was wearing my nylon orienteering pajamas, possibly making me look invitingly like a tent to be shredded.

Then did some trail running, and while I was doing that, I heard some big cracking down a slope in the woods--obviously a moose. Except that it wasn't. It turned out to be a miniature excavator, smack dab in the middle of the woods, working on a new bike trail. For the life of me, I couldn't figure out how it got there, or how it is being re-supplied with fuel; and there was no signs of track imprints on any of the trails leading into the area.

I wonder how often excavators get misidentified as moose? Probably not often. Rookie mistake--I won't be fooled next time.

Fifth straight day of interesting weather and fifth straight day of tornado watches. Fortunately the tornadoes lately have been quite shy and do not enjoy being watched, and so have stayed away. Plenty of hail and rain though, so it's been good.

Some scary clouds snucked up on me while I was biking and I was so intent on battling a relentless headwind that I didn't even notice until it was almost too late. Like any number of times before I got home just in time before the ice cold rains could hit me in force, and it became quite good exercise trying to stay ahead of the rain.

Ran afterwards, and for a change it was dead calm. I tried to remember the last time it's been like that, and could not. It's been a lot of wind this summer, unusually windy for sure. But maybe this is going to be the new norm?

C • Snucked 2

"Hello there, ladies and gentlemen,
Hello there, ladies and gentlemen,
Are you ready to rock!,"


Today was calling for quite a bit control work, even though the weather was calling for quite a bit of rain, hail, and overall destruction. We would see who would win.

I began by randomly selecting 4 controls to visit from Day 4 for the O' Festival, using an algorithm I wrote and then coded aimed at: *minimizing* the chances of seeing any golfer or even golf balls, being consumed by a devastating wildfire such as those burning up California, and of being attacked by ravenous wolves (the state, for as long as I have been here, and according to nearly any politician in state running for office, has been plagued and overrun by wolves which are ruining everything that is good about Wyoming); and *optimizing* my chances of seeing moose. The entire process only took about 5 minutes, representing a good investment of my time.

So I visited those 4 controls and it all went well. True, I didn't see any moose, but I also didn't seen any golfers or golf balls, I didn't get burnt up in wildfire, and I wasn't attacked by any ravenous politicians running for office. *And*, when I got home and checked email, I found a note from Neil asking me if I could please check out 4 controls--which just happened to be the very controls I had visited!!!! What are the odds! Well, I did that calculation, and the odds were roughly 1 in 4.4 million.

People underestimate the importance of luck.

But that was just the warmup. The main event was checking and streamering the control locations for Day 3 of the O' Fest.

But first I had to consider the cattle situation. There were a lot of cattle out, with a number of bulls. Normally the bulls are pretty sedate, but the bulls with horns really don't like tents. Several of the bulls had bits of shredded tent draped over their horns. One of the bulls had a pair of tights dangling from its horns. I guess bulls don't like seeing tights in the summertime, and who can blame them? Really, if you're going to wear tights in the summer, you might as well head straight for the ballet or yoga class or whatever. Even golfers don't wear tights--at least I assume that's true, though I don't really know. When I drive by the golf course here, I avert my eyes.

I started running/streamering, which was the cue for raindrops to start dropping. It was so scattered however that it wouldn't even have qualified as Swedish sunshine. About halfway through, I could see the skies off to the SW were darkening rapidly and it wasn't long after that the scattered rain became less scattered and more focused. I picked out several controls I could hit on my way back to my truck, and when I wrote down descriptions I ducked into the cover of the best nearby ponderosa.

About the time I climbed into my truck the rain trailed off and then stopped. Excellent! I drove over to another vantage point and then finished off the last 7 dozen or so controls. It doesn't seem like you really need 184 controls for a simple middle distance event, but I you need what you need.

I was happy with the map. There was one spot coming out of a control where there's a small patch of fallen beetle kill trees. It's only 5-6 trees, but still, it's important to have standards and adhere to them, even if the standards are--as they are here--quite low.

There were some campers about 700-800 meters from where I was parked, and, as I was leaving, I could hear an upswell of excited voices and possible sounds of largish creatures. I couldn't make out any words, but the general tenor was of that hostility, alarm, danger, and confusion. There was no way to be sure at that distance whether the bulls had spotted the campers' tents or if a pack of ravenous politicians had spotted the campers. Either way, the best course of option seemed to be to drive home, and to keep my gaze averted as I drove past the golf course.

Day 3 of very active thunderstorms in the afternoon and well into the night, and third day in a row where i changed my running plans from O' related to running trails. Today that meant running in dense fog up top shortly after the last and biggest storm went through. More hail and hail shredded leaves on the ground.

Biked down to City Hall and voted. That took about 3 minutes (the voting, not the biking). Then went up to do some course setting/streamering work, and just as I was about to get off the interstate, an emergency broadcast came over the radio, warning of a dangerous thunderstorm about to hit Tie City, Vedauwoo, and other nearby places, etc., moving--unusually enough--from the NW in a southeasterly direction I looked over to the north, and, sure enough, I could see a very dangerous looking storm not far off, and bearing down quickly. So I parked at the Visitors Center and prepared to ride it out, hoping that the warnings of half dollar sized hail would not come to pass.

Waiting it out took a lot longer than voting did, but luckily the storm just grazed by the Visitors Center, and the hail there was no larger than nickel sized. Good thing I wasn't out 40 minutes earlier, because that would have put me out in the woods when the storm was hitting, and I wouldn't have heard the warning--and the area I was headed for ended up with several inches of hail on the ground. That would not have been fun!

Given what I did yesterday, I was surprised at how much lift I had in my legs today. Cool conditions at the end of the day, and very pleasant running. Saw one bull (moose),

Spent a good part of the day helping a friend plant basil seeds. You might think how hard could it be, and that's what I thought, too. But it turned out to be 2 acres(!!!), and many thousands of seeds--which are very tiny, and which have to go in at very precise depths and spacing. And you also might think "basil in Laramie, no way!", which is also what I once would have thought. But it turns out that seed companies have done some incredible engineering, and as that relates to basil they have developed a variety which is quite unusual: it is extremely vulnerable to cold temperatures (think below freezing) and therefore can't be planted where there is any risk of frost, *but*, once it has grown to the point where it has 2 full sets of normal leaves, it is extremely cold tolerant. Just incredible. So what it means is that now it is possible to raise basil in Laramie outdoors because with climate change the valley is getting more dependably mild late into the fall with each passing year. You just have to be sure to eliminate the possibility of a really late frost, so about the 3rd week or so of July fits the bill. The other amazing thing is that basil is a pretty high value crop--much more so than I would have ever guessed--so it actually works well even in a remote, unlikely spot such as Laramie.

Anyway, after all that--we started at about 9 and got done by about 3:30--I went home and napped for a while and then headed up and ran intervals (10 x 5 min), finishing up right as dusk. Beautiful to see Mercury, Jupiter, and the Moon all up and bright at dusk. By the time I got home I still couldn't see Mars, but it would be following soon.

Fittingly, later in the evening I listened to "Venus and Mars" while having a classic margherita pizza for dinner.

C • margherita 3

O' at Pelican - test ran Orange and Brown courses. Odd to have fog in the middle of the day in the middle of the summer, and it made for exceptionally nice running conditions.

Returned to Superfly Marsh and picked up where I left off yesterday with revisions, and finished up the job. Superfly Marsh is nice, but the High Coast would probably have been nice, too.

At one point I stopped on a bluff-like area above a beaver pond, and was outlining the area of the pond for my notes when I realized there was beaver activity underway. I had to stop what I was doing and just watch for a while, because two of the beavers were gigantic--by far the largest beavers I've ever seen. It was like they were football team beavers.

Could it be things might be looking up for the Cowboys this season???

Spent some time doing light revisions to the Superfly Marsh map (Day 6 of the O' Fest) before multiple rain showers began sweeping through the area.

Quite warm out today--or so it felt, in spite of some decent west wind. I think it was warm. Biked late in the day, then came home and waited a while before going running, partly to drink some cold water and cool down some, and partly to let the temps cool down some, too. Got started running at about 6:30, and it was still warm in the sun, but pleasant once I was out of the sun and in the forest. Took the running easy, and the time passed fast, probably because there were dragonflies on every twig and patrolling every glade. Didn't see a single mosquito.

I think tomorrow averages as the warmest day of the year locally, and today must have been a little jealous.

Intervals were the order of the day--and a set of cruise intervals in the amount of 50 minutes was the dose. A picture perfect summer day from start to finish, and even though it was warm, it didn't bother me as I was running--must be finally getting acclimatized to a bit of heat. Funny to think that snow could be flying in as little as 8 weeks, but it could be (even if unlikely.)

When I got back home, I drank 2 liters of cold water.

We had an inspiring deluge in the afternoon, enough to even create some modest flooding in some of the local drainages around town. I'm losing track, but I think now we've had good rains on 5 out of the last 6 days. Fire bans are still in effect nevertheless. It's been super great for gardens however, and that's for sure.

Got some good stuff done today, including laying out and getting the One Cowboy Relay maps ready for printing. Most people will not know (or have any reason to care, either) how the One Cowboy Relay came into being, but one of the precipitating factors was having thousands of small maps left over from previous events, and no real idea of what to do with them that would also be useful. How about a race with a bunch of loops for each runner, with a new map for each loop?

This year's race will be the first where we will be using all newly printed maps; the old stockpiles of maps having been all but exhausted.

Biked some after the storm, and then did a long trail run up top, where, to my surprise, it had done little but barely sprinkle. So trails were mostly dry and only slightly damp in a few places. The air was wonderfully clear, there was a light breeze, and the temps were perfect. It felt like being in Scandinavia on a nice summer day.

C • Trails 2

Set and streamered the One Cowboy RIelay. Moved several controls slightly, made a few small map revisions. And I dropped one control/leg altogether, when it turned out that the leg to the next control went through an old burn area that was once white--and was white when I mapped it now--and is now a luxuriant growth of young aspen. It didn't look like something I would relish running through, the map certainly didn't reflect present conditions, and so the easy thing to do was to remove the leg.

The final loop goes through a mapped area that has never been used or seen before by anyone other than me, and the motala section is basically confined to a corner of the map that has either never been raced through before or else has only just been brushed by--at least as well as I can recall. I will guess for 99+% of folks at this year's race, it will be 100% new to them.

It's an interesting area, it looked and felt fun to me as I was working through it, and hopefully the racers will experience it that way, too.

Saw one moose while I was out; I didn't get a good line on it, but I thought it was probably a bull based on shape, and also because I didn't see a calf with it..

Rained much of the morning and early afternoon, and then cleared out beautifully everywhere west of the Laramie Range. Up top on the Range, however, thick fog set in, with temps about 20 degrees cooler than yesterday.

It's rained 3 out of the last 5 days, with good or better amounts of rain each time, with one real gully washer. A pleasant change, and it's done wonders for both gardens and the air quality. For a change, it's not hazy out.

Biked out past the airport after the rains today, under clear blue skies and with a cool wind blowing out of the south. Thanks, Denver! There were a number of helicopters out at the airport. Not sure why, as all the local fires seem to be done.

Then headed up top to run in the fog. Thought it might clear off while I was up, but it didn't Saw numerous odd tracks in the trail in several places, all headed the same way. It looked to me like they might have been martian tracks, or maybe cows. Hmmm, probably cows.

On the way home, and just after exiting off the interstate, I saw--almost simultaneously--a nighthawk fly right in front of my truck, an owl flying over the road further ahead, the thin crescent moon higher up and slightly further away, and the planet Venus. It looked like Venus and the moon were planning an illicit rendezvous in the skies, if such a thing is even possible.

According to certain ancient runes inscribed on stones near Västerås, a man who sees all of these things is destined for greatness, and included in the pantheon of such men are Alexander the Great, Leonardo de Vinci, Albert Einstein, and Dennis Rodman (Dennis Rodman??). I'm no scholar, but personally I have long thought that some of that must have been mistranslated.

In the meantime, I await my destiny. And the crazy ants which Tom Carr is sending.

C • illicit rendezvous 1

Spent a long afternoon in the sun and the grass--a lot of grass, and a whole lot of grass seeds, with especially ample amounts of foxtails--making some revisions out at Twin Boulders. Today it was the ATVers that were out in force, with diminished amounts of sage buggies. As far as I could tell, nobody was listening to Chuck Prohet. Need more cows out at Twin Boulders, and when it comes to summer and cows, there is always reason to be optimistic.

Looking at the JWOC Middle Final area, and looking over the brand new Granite Planite map we will be using for the Rocky Mountain O' Festival middle day, my overwhelming thought is we are way, way vegetation deprived. Maybe we need to send out an urgent plea for orienteers everywhere to send as much of their thorns, vines, and invasive thick bushes as they can possibly spare.

Even then, it might not be enough.

C • On it. 7

For alternative training today, I changed guitar strings. I also did some biking and running, and watched a formidable downpour come pouring down. So that's like four alternative training things in one single day! But the real training effect for sure came with the string change--the other things were just icing on the cake.

Also, I finished drafting up Granite Planite and did rough course designs for our Middle day at the Rocky Mountain O' Fest. To test my course setting skills, I tried to set a really good Blue Middle using only 4 controls. I don't think I succeeded. Some people maintain less is more, but in this case after studying the result, even they might conclude more would be better.

I think more would be better.

Rode down to the river today to examine the dropping water levels and expanding sandbars. Ran intervals in the early evening, and had the particular dirt road I was running on completely to myself. Mondays do tend to be somewhat less frenetic up there.

Ran trails, easy. Loads of dragonflies are out now, so I can put away the bug spray for the season. Happiness is a flying dragonfly.

C • Yes! 2

Test ran the Day 1 course. Even in the morning, it was already pretty warm by local standards, and with very little cover and no clouds while I was out, the sun was baking away the whole run. The fact that all the cattle were hunkered down in shady spots made it seem even warmer.

It was fun, but it will be more fun in late August, by which time things should be cooler, the sun angle will be lower, and the cattle will be feeling more playful and will probably select special runners to sneak up from behind on, which could cause some people who are not accustomed to cattle to start running a little fast than normal--which may improve their race result by as much as a dozen or so places.

I became soaked in sweat nearly the instant I stopped--unusual out in this low humidity country--and was pretty well toasted the rest of the day.

Today's "must do" task being changing my front bike tire, I finally got around to it by around 4 o-clock--no sense in rushing things. When I got the tire off and examined the insides, it was clear what had caused the problem: some broken threads. I also had had a very slow leak from the tube in that tire for the past 2 weeks or so, so with the tire off I looked for, found, and patched the leak. Since I didn't have any patches handy, I just got out my soldering iron and applied some solder. At least now there's no question of it being a slow leak any longer. Then I got the new tire and patched tube back on--which I only barely managed, and no way I could have done it in cold weather (with cold fingers.) I am guessing that bike shop mechanics must quickly develop phenomenal finger and hand strength, otherwise they get fired as it takes them 20 minutes to get a new tire finally stretched out over the rim.

Then wheeled the bike out for action, and biked around town for 100 minutes or so, enjoying a stiff breeze out of the south. If it's been as breezy/windy down south in Colorado as it has been here, then it has surely been very tough going fighting all the fires they have down that way.

Ran trails afterwards. No mosquito bites, but I must admit I weakened and applied some bug spray first. With dragonflies emerging now, the end of the bug season up top is not far off.

Warm/hot out today, but nothing like other parts of the country are experiencing, fortunately.

Still surprised by something yesterday on NPR, of all places. I was at home in the afternoon, working at my desk with the radio on in the background. All Things Considered came on, and at some point there was the news about the Pruitt resignation, followed by an interview with someone. I wasn't paying attention until gradually I became aware that the person was pretty much extolling Pruitt, saying what a wonderful job he had done and sure, he had made a few minor mistakes but they had been blown all out of proportion by the media and the Democrats, who were all laying for him with their knives out from the very start--words to that effect. But I didn't catch the guy's name and I wondered who it was. Well, two hours later the same segment came on, and this time I was listening more carefully. It was Myron Ebell. Myron Ebell??!! On NPR?! I was stunned. What next? Perhaps in a review of the Trump Administration's accomplishments today, bringing in a dispassionate and neutral commentator such as Sean Hannity?

Perhaps it's just another Sign O' the Times though, and you have to get over it. So I did, and I in Ebell's honor and recognition of his decades of delivering wonderful science for the public good, I played Blue Oyster Cult's
"Career of Evil." What a perfect title--ha!

Felt a slight bump coming from my bike while riding today. A preliminary investigation followed by an MRI scan (discounted to only $1500--quite the bargain, I was told) revealed a squirm developing with some bulge as well. Time to discard the old tire and put a new one it its place, and thereby keep those tire factories humming.

I'm not sure why some tires fail while others don't, but as with tires, people.

Headed out to Lights of Cheyenne and set and streamered the Day 1 course for the Rocky Mountain O' Festival. I think the web site calls it a Goat style event, but it really isn't--unless what distinguishes a Goat event from all else is having a mass start.

Last fall I ran a simple training course out there just as a way of getting out on that map, which I hadn't been on in a while. When I was done, I thought it had been so much fun that I might save it for the O' Fest, and set it aside. Today I pulled it out again, looked it over, cut it down to the length I wanted (the training course had been about 10 kms). I moved several controls slightly--mainly so I could avoid having to use control stands--but otherwise I didn't have to change anything else, and once again came away thinking it is quite a fun course.

It will definitely be the blandest bit of terrain we use over the 6 days, and with a crowd to run with, no doubt pretty easy. And yet, there are--as always--places to go wrong if you drop your concentration. Never mind the fact that the crowd is not always right. One of the most amazing "crowd go wrong" things I've ever witnessed was the Chase at Round Mountain many years ago. People came back from that race convinced that what happened had all been part of a devious plan on my part, but, no! Someone early on started going the wrong way across a huge clearing where it was easy to see across, and runner after runner looked over the clearing, saw what the runners ahead of them were doing, and fell in line.

It's been unusually windy for summer time in the afternoons especially, and only a bit of rain (on each of the past three weekends, which, as you can imagine, has delighted campers). Fire restrictions were put into place across most of the county on most National Forest and BLM lands. But not up in the Pole Mountain Unit (where all our maps are. It's pretty dry up there, too, so it's hard to be sure what the thinking is on that.

John Lennon sang "Happiness is a Warm Gun", and for me happiness today was finishing the Granite Planite survey. For a while I wondered if it was going to be me that was finished instead. It was a fight right to the bitter end, with last strongholds in the terrain even resorting to calling in several rain showers in a final act of desperation. But I sensed the defenses were ready to crumble and I waited out each shower patiently and resumed my multi-colored pencil lead attacks as soon as the sun returned.

One day lidar will come to this area--if the country does not collapse first--and it will be fun to compare the contours I had to conjure up in this last bit of mapping versus what lidar might reveal.

Each day for the past week+, I have finished up with socks and shoes full of grass seeds. Much of the grasses out in the open prairie are fully cured now and are ready to drop seeds. Maybe one day instead of shaking out my socks at the end of the day, I will plant them, and see what kind of prairie grows up.

Finished off the afternoon by running trails at Happy Jack which, while not deserted, were mostly empty.

O' at Remarkable Flats, after mapping.

This last bit of the map is just a slog--the back (north) slope of a section of much beetle kill forest with complicated and vaguish areas of fallen trees mixed in with clearing and standing forest, some rock, several spur/gully systems, and contours that are all but worthless. So it's very difficult mapping of what is a trashy area and yet with some useful sections that aren't bad, and where probably the best end result that is reasonable in terms of amount of time dropped into it will be something that is workmanlike and usable. It certainly won't be perfection.

I'll be glad to be done with it!