Training Log Archive: Swampfox

I had planned to go out to Granite Planite and do some O' there, and I did drive out as far as the turnoff from the Happy Jack Rd. However, on the drive out, I noted that the winds were blowing snow over the highway in several sections, and that the sunny day meant that those section had iced or were icing, and then I could see looking up the Forest Service road from the first parking area that lots of snow had blown in on the road. Maybe I could have got in, but already I was concerned about what conditions might be like back on the highway by the time I was finished. No fun getting stuck out in the country, especially when it's cold with strong winds. So it was an easy decision to turn right back around, and run trails at Happy Jack instead, which I did. Better safe than sorry.

Back home in the evening, apres Halloween, as it were, I was reading the WSJ when I came across something remarkably applicable to the recent China World Cup races. It's from an interview with Mary Wittenberg, former president and CEO of the New York Road Runners, and former race director of the NYC Marathon. From the interview:

"WSJ: This is a tumultuous time in distance running. How should fans of the sport view the records that are being broken?

MW: When you see outlier performances today, you have to ask questions. That’s what I would say. And that’s an unfortunate reality. And I think asking questions is healthy. It’s what we should always be doing. I think there are distinctions among the different performances we’ve seen. The shame is, any super performance gets painted with the same broad brush I think right now.

What has surprised you the most in looking through the history of doping in cycling?

MW: Now reading books on it, I had no idea the extent of doping in the day. When you read about it and you understand how systemic it was, and it’s similar to the Russian anti-doping organization and what happened with the Olympics. I think every leader should read the detail because it makes you realize that a totally balanced, common-sense point of view of, ‘People would never go to this extreme or that extreme’ is just not the lens you can use, unfortunately. We’ve got to assume people go to great lengths to cheat, and really work on everything we can from culture to education to, obviously trying to stay ahead of science as much as possible. And look at new ways, as we do today: bringing in circumstantial evidence and not just relying on tests."

It is indeed appropriate to look at outlier results in a World Cup race, and it is healthy to ask questions. Making accusations without supporting facts would be a whole other matter, however.

And the comment about the lens used to view the possibility of cheating through is spot on. People will cheat for all sorts of reasons and motivations, and not just when money is on the line. I have personally witnessed several examples of appalling behavior at very low level races where where there was absolutely nothing of any tangible value on the line.

Ran at Happy Jack at the end of the day, quite chilly after the sun set, with the edge coming from the wind--not bad in the trees, but brutal in the open sweeps. Quite a few UW skiers (team) were up classic skiing, and maybe some high schoolers as well; still no trails packed or any sign that grooming might commence, despite the fact that there is plenty enough snow for it now.

Right as the last bits of dusk were fading, a moose startled me by jumping out of the woods right in front of me--50 feet or so away--and kept on going across the trail into the woods on the other side. I think it was about as startled by me as I was of it.

Tied at the moment for the record low for the date, which I think is pretty cool. It looks like the record should fall by a significant margin tonight, when it is forecast to get colder.

Ran in deepening snow at Happy Jack, and saw not one other soul. Didn't see any other creatures, either. And zero in the way of any fresh snow bike tracks. Maybe the whole area has been declared off limits, and I was the only one who didn't get the word?

It was definitely chilly, but I had on enough of the right garments, so it was okay once I got warmed up. I will guess that a new record low high for the day gets set, but that info is harder to find than record highs or record lows.

It was easy to see that the deeper the snow gets, the slower I go.

C • To avoid going slower in the snow 5

-10F at 9 a.m., with full sun, so pretty chilly for October. And beautiful with snow everywhere.

Ran up at Happy Jack in about 2-3" of new snow. I had guessed there might be double that amount form yesterday's storm, since 2-3" is also what we got in town. No matter, the base continues to build. Still no sign of grooming activity, though someone (presumably the Forest Service) closed the gate at the entrance of the Campground Loop, so things have at least started in some minor way to move on along...

Saw lots of fox tracks out around in the Brown's Landing area. There were also a few ski tracks. Surprisingly there was only a single set of snow bike tracks, where I had expected to see signs of gangs of bikers out there. And I didn't come across any new tree blow downs, despite the big winds Saturday night into Sunday morning.

Quite cold for October, with a high of about 14F, and big wind almost all day long, and snow as well all day long. The interstate was closed, so no running in the protection of the forest at Happy Jack, and wasn't really sure if I wanted to go out into the wind. But I did want to do something outside, and in the end, as the day was waning, I convinced myself I could go for a short run, and if it was so bitter that I couldn't get warmed up, I could just turn around and cut a short run even shorter.

As I was starting out, each time I was running into the wind I could feel it immediately, and I would pull up my neck gaitor. But running with the wind at my back or even to me side wasn't so bad. Very gradually the wind started to wane and eventually it settled down to a light breeze. Coming across the gold course in the night was almost magical, because with snow still coming down and snow on the ground, it was almost more like dusk and very easy to see everything. I ended up running for over 90 minutes when all I had hoped for starting out was about a half hour or so.

I took my resting pulse when I first woke up, for the first time in a long while: 36 bpm, so still pretty low.

The weather forecast was for another nice day with a "change in climate" arriving late in the day, so I knew what I wanted to do. Temps were in the 50s, with decent west breeze, and nearly full sun. And by midday, I was out doing what I wanted to do, which was:



15.1 kms of fun orienteering. There was scattered snow cover on the ground, but really it gets classified as bare ground running. I started out in a short sleeved O' top under a light weight long sleeved bike top, and up getting warm enough to dispense with the bike top (stashing it at a control), and never looked back. Considering the forecast for tomorrow, it might as well have been summer.

Didn't see any hunters; I did hear some "target" shooting at various times--with "target" being used euphemistically because it's hard to think of it as target shooting when someone is pulling a trigger as fast as they can, or else using a bump stock. To me it's more like "money" shooting, because the cost of all that ammo must add up quickly.

After getting home and seeing that Wyoming had won the game today (they were very lucky to get a noon start in the sun) and having a snack, I decided to take advantage of the hour and a half of light still left, and headed out for some biking, dressing still for mild conditions. However, within the first 10 minutes or so, and at 5:15 (I checked my watch), I felt the wind shift from west to east and immediately the first tendrils of much cooler air were streaming by. I kept on going, and ended up riding for about another half hour, and by the time I got back home the wind was blasting and the temps had dropped severely, to somewhere approaching freezing. Or at least so it felt to me, and my hands were just about numb as I rolled the bike into the garage. Ha--I was very glad to get back home!

Did training I had planned for Tuesday, out at Sugar Hill. Conditions were mildish in the lows 50s (funny how quickly some colder weather makes low 50s feel mild!), with breeze, and 100% sun. Snow was melting in all the ope areas and wherever the sun could get at it, and the roads were already almost completely free of snow (though not mud.)

After warming up, I ran a 10 minute section of jeep trail at race pace, then at the end of that continued with a 3.7 km O' course which finished near the start point of the jeep trail run. And then I repeated that. All done with short recovery jogs between each section. While planning the training, I had debated between doing this 2 times or 3, but when I saw I was already at the 95 minute mark after 2 times around, I decided that would do it; I wanted to do some biking as well, on such a nice day. There won't be many days this mild and nice left this year, and none next week (winter is coming back big time.)

Ran a different set of trails at Happy Jack, but began by swinging through the Campground loop to see if any signs of impending grooming activity were visible. There weren't any; nor were there any new ski tracks today. But lots of snow bikers!

Every so often you come across something that just hits you the right way. Here is something from the WSJ, an entire paragraph where each sentence is a pearl--though I don't think it was intended to be funny:

"A squirrel needs to obtain, then bury, more than 100 acorns to survive the winter, experts say. If the human foraging continues, most of South Korea’s acorns will be gone in the next 50 years, according to Park Chan-ryul, a researcher at the National Institute of Forest Science. “We should sympathize with the squirrels’ hardship,” Mr. Park says."

I put it here so that I can come back to it, on those odd days when the radio station is playing country bro instead of Jimi Hendrix or "Ballad of a Thin Man", and I need to laugh..

Snow overnight and then more snow, off and on today. It wasn't so much in town, and it all melted off on hard surfaces. But up top? A solid 6-8", and more towards that upper end. Several fat tire bikers had beat me to it, and there was a pair of ski tracks as well. I am sure more skiers would have been out had it been possible to guess how much snow was on the trails. This is looking more and more like this ski season is going to lift off with an early start!

I ran a mix of untracked snow, Forest Service roads where trucks had driven, and as much fat tire track as possible. Snow was falling at day's end for the final 40 minutes or so, and was still falling up top when I left. Glorious.

With high afternoon winds in the forecast, the plan for today was to get out for an O' run in the morning, however, before I could complete my various morning tasks, it was closer to 12:30. As I rolled by the highway sign right after the on ramp to the interstate, it was warning of 60+ mph gusts to come. By the time I was on a dirt Forest Service and stuck behind a slow moving grader (grading the road--shocker!), it was hard not to notice that trees were being given a pretty good shaking. And by the time the grader had moved aside to let me get by, with my destination just a little way ahead, I had already decided it was time for Plan B, where today's Plan B was to keep right on driving and take a circuitous route back up to Happy Jack, and run there instead. Which I did.

Shortly after getting started, I randomly decided to take a winter use snowshoe/snowbike trail--there was snow on the ground, after all, so it was legit--and shortly after that I started thinking randomly and the thought of JJ's recent fainting passed through my mind. And about 150' later, my thoughts were broken by someone coming towards me on the trail and saying hello. It turned out to be Georgia, who, of all things, owns and runs a local blood lab, and has seen it all when it comes to blood draws. True story.

Ended up running for 2+ hours in the snow, including a section of following some very fresh moose tracks for a while. The tracks looked so fresh that I thought there was an excellent chance the moose might only be minutes ahead, which was what led me to start following them, to see if I could come up on the moose. But after some hundreds of meters, the moose veered up through a steep hill with thick young aspen cover and with lots of fallen dead pine trees, and I abandoned the chase at that point.

Snow overnight and snow squalls off and on today. Average highs for this time of year are mid 50s, but it feels like winter is starting to set in--the next week is looking to average a good bit below the averages. Double averages!

I ran trails at Happy Jack expecting to see a good number of trees and lots of litter from yesterday, but there was surprisingly little to see. The one tree I came across which was completely down over a trail was also surprising--it was a green tree that seemed otherwise to have been in good health before falling, and not a beetle killed tree.

There was about 2" of snow on the trails, and several snow bikers had seized the day before I got out there. For sure there is now enough snow and it's late enough that some amount will not melt until 2020.

Not so windy today, but luckily some bigger winds seem to be headed this way tomorrow and the next day. Fingers are crossed.

Big Kahuna winds starting in the pre-morning hours and stretching all day long. And a good thing, because lord knows what we would do without sufficient amounts of wind.

The plan had been to head out for a long run at Happy Jack in the afternoon, but that plan got skewered by the fact that I-80 was basically closed for the day from border to border, thanks to the afore mentioned Big Kahuna winds. Too bad for the folks headed from west to east across the state, because the required fuel expenditure would have been de minimus, being able to coast probably about 99% of the time. Yee haw!

Anyway, in lieu of the planned run, I ran a mixture of dirt, pavement, and golf course from home. The "feels like" temperature was advertised as 15F, but it didn't really feel that cold. My guess is the wind was backing off as I was running.

It's rifle season now, so I thought about what I wanted to do for running, and when and where. The forecast was calling for wind, temps that might hit 50F briefly, and partly sunny skies. That meant with the sun out, it would be comfortable running in a long sleeved shirt and maybe even a t-shirt, but without the sun, probably something more would be good. It also meant aiming to get out as close to midday as possible--partly better with consideration for hunters, and partly because temps could drop pretty quickly later in the day. And because tomorrow's forecast is for a very windy day and temps only into the 30s, I wanted some quality. I settled on O' at Pelican Bay, and drew up a 10.4 km course with a bunch of tinier control features.

Luckily the weather was with me and I had mostly sun and ended up able to run in just a short sleeved O' top. I didn't see any hunters while I was running (and pretty sure there were none out there to see me), and for the first time in a long while, I came back with not a single cheat grass seed stuck in my socks. And since I also came back with three beer cans, it was a pretty good day.



It might look like I did okay, but really I didn't at all. I dropped focus twice (out of #13, thinking I was at #14 and started heading on line for #15, and #19, thinking I just needed to head down and round the rocks), and while the amount of time lost was at most tiny, the whole point of training is training to do the right things, and not train in bad habits. And when you're training in home terrain or some familiar area, concentration/focus is extra important; it's so easy to just look ahead and make an assumption that you know what's going on based on area familiarity, which you would never want to do in an actual racing situation.

With the end of mountain biking season near to hand (at least in terms of tolerable weather), it was time for the inaugural mountain bike ride of the year--ha! Don't know why I didn't go earlier, but it just didn't happen, in spite of a trailhead only a couple of minutes from home. But then, I'm not really a mountain biker, and much, much prefer running on trails to riding on them. And as far as skill level, I am at best at a not-so-good rank beginner level.

But out I went, and enjoyed some morning sun and what there was of the easiest single track. When occasionally I came to a harder spot, I would do what I usually do, which is to yell out "abandon ship!" and hop off the bike.

Very soon it will be snowing (like in 2 days) and it will be a while before it will be time for the inaugural ride of the next mountain biking season.

Intervals at Happy Jack. Lost of other folks were out, including the UW ski team, which looked a good bit larger than it has in recent years.

Temps hit at least 70F, which is pretty mild for this time of year. It won't last.

On my list of things to do today was getting a flu shot.

Actually, I had tried to get it done yesterday, and there's a Walgreens I bike by regularly, so it's really convenient. I stopped there while on a ride, expecting to be in an out in about two minutes. Which I was! Excellent! Except that I was out without getting the vaccination, because they were out of it.

As an outsider, it's easy to be critical. How can you run out of vaccines during the optimum time for people to get their flu shots, and when PSAs are flooding the air waves and articles are in the papers warning that the coming flu season could be a bad one (though it seems like every year there are warnings that medical professionals are worried the coming flu season could be a bad one)? How hard could it be to have enough on hand when it matters? But as an insider, you know that logistics is way harder than it may seem, and that things will happen no matter what. Maybe a delivery truck broke down. Maybe for the past week several hundred people have come in each day, when in the past there have never been more than 50. Maybe El Presidente sent out another stupid tweet. Who knows.

So today's bike ride was a different loop which would take me by Safeway, where, once again, I expected to be in and out in about 2 minutes. Plus, at Safeway, they were giving out coupons with vaccinations, good for a discount next time you shopped there.

But at the Pharmacy desk, I found out it would take about 30 minutes, not 2: about 15 minutes to do some required paperwork, and then they would want me to hang around for about 15 minutes afterwards to make sure that I felt okay and didn't have a bad reaction. Well, okay. I realized I would probably have to do some amount of paperwork anywhere else except at my doctor's office (which would necessitate an appointment), and, having been woozy any number of times after being stuck before, hanging around for a bit afterwords didn't seem like a bad idea. I wasn't in a rush, and I was there, so...

After doing the paperwork, I went into the aptly named waiting room, There were a few people in there already. Nothing happened for 20-25 minutes. Then, a light went on in one of two little side rooms, and someone called the name of one of the people ahead of me, and that person went into the room. A few minutes later, they came back out. Excellent.

Except not so excellent. Because instead of the next person being called in, the light went out. More waiting. I started wondering if this had been a good idea after all. I started wondering if I should just leave, or what I should do, if anything. I started thinking about sunk costs--clearly applicable to the situation. After about another 15 minutes, finally--finally!--the light came back on in the little room, and one after another people were called in and administered to, until it was my turn, and I was called in.

After I got the shot, I gathered up my stuff, and left immediately, figuring if anything bad was going to happen, it would have happened already, during the nearly interminable pre-shot waiting anxiety. And the Pharmacy Police weren't guarding the exit door, so too bad for them! It was very nice to get back on my bike and get back to more pleasant things.

C • Needle 7

Sunny, breezy, warm enough (or at least not too cool) for a short sleeved O' top, no cows (except for one stray) and also no rescue helicopters or C-130s flying by. Middle distance, ran course forwards and backwards. The second time through the sage was ready and waiting but knowing the world needs more cowboys, I got through anyhow. Legs felt a little heavy, but so what. Probably just pizza depleted, easily fixed. Or it could be that high volumes for a while now have registered, but with all the fine weather...you have to maximize!

Drew up a course for the west part of Twin Boulders, and then tweaked it to accentuate the available slopes a bit more. It ended up being about 6.7 kms, which I ran both forwards and backwards.

While I was warming up, I ran into a guy parked at the end of the spur road in the part of the map I was on, who was out with his dog--a German Shorthaired Pointer, or something like that. That dog could run.

I said hello to the guy and we chatted a little bit, and in the course of that he related that more than once his dog, which was very friendly--had run off so far out of sight that it had ended being picked up by other people who thought the dog was lost, and who called him and returned the dog. It made me think he was lucky, because it seemed like a really nice dog, and maybe not everyone would be so quick to return such a dog.

At any rate, I said bye, and continued warming up, heading generally back towards my truck. And then the dog came running by, at approximately the speed of a bullet, and went far ahead, past my truck, then turning onto the main dirt road there, and vanishing out of sight. It was almost amazing to see. I wondered if it would really return on its on.

As it happened, it didn't. I warmed up for another 10 minutes or so, and then really headed back to my truck, which was 500m or so away, and about then a van turned off the main dirt road, and stopped by my truck and a guy got out and looked at me and motioned something with his arms. I had a feeling that maybe he had a dog in his van.

Sure enough, he had picked up the pointer. I told him he could find its owner (who probably was exhausted by then from whistling for his dog) at the end of the road, and that was that.

Besides just wanting to get in an O' run, I was also out to check the forest and how things generally looked in that area, as a possible location for the next One Cowboy Relay. There are a fair number of beetle trees down in the one critical area I would want to use, but they've been down for a while and I knew about them, and mostly I wanted to check that things haven't become worse. And it looked okay, so there's a good chance this is where it will end up going.

For a change of pace, I headed over to the school section late in the day, and ran trails until past dark, with illumination from the (nearly?) full moon.

The mountain bikers have been very active this year and last there, and have built a bunch of trail. It's impressive to see how much can be squeezed in, in just one square mile. It brings to mind the fact that some pretty long courses can also be squeezed in fairly small areas, as long as all the terrain is usable. And then the course setter needs to have some amount of imagination, because the all too typical "let's trace out a circle" style thing won't do it.

Plan A was to go for a long run in the NW section of the national forest and do some exploring. But as I was driving up, it was hard not to notice it was windy. For one, the alert sign on the interstate was turned on and warning of 40+ mph wind, and for another it was obvious that the vehicles headed west were struggling to get down the hill. That made me think about how it was still pretty chilly from yesterday's storm passing through, and how most of the area I would be running through was open and exposed, and that made me think that maybe a Plan B would be in order.

It did not take long to come up with a Plan B, which was a long run in a mostly forested area along south facing slopes at Happy Jack. With a Plan B in hand, I compared the two alternatives, and it was clear which one was the winner.

Just about the whole run was in snow, though it was only an inch or so. Pace was "lagom", given the hilly nature of the area I ran through and sections of forest that were like giant lincoln log playgrounds. By the end of the run it had become effectively pretty cold, given the torrent of wind I had in my face.

Animal sightings? None. I think they must have all been down at the Cowboy Saloon.

It's not unusual to see big temperature changes occasionally in these high, windy parts, but even for here, the change from yesterday when I was running to this morning (11F as I write) stands out--60 degrees colder!

C • 93 — 46 2

Somehow--and I can't quite put my finger on it--when I look outside today, it doesn't look the same anymore.

First snow of the season just started, at about 8:25 PM. Time to start thinking about waxing skis. (emphasis on "thinking", not actually doing)

It's dropped from about 71F this afternoon to 29F, so far.

Sometimes timing is everything, and, with an eye on the forecast calling for "a change in climate", timing dictate that I would go back to back with quality efforts, and that today's effort would come earlier in the day and not later.

And so it was that I was out on site before the solar noon. Things were looking good--sunny and warm, over the 70F mark, perfect Indian Summer conditions:



Even the bitterbrush (lower right corner) was looking pretty good.

I got started with a quick warmup and headed headed for the start of the course I had planned--12.7 kms of sage and bitterbrush and all the cheat grass you could ever hope for.

But at the start I stared at my map for a moment and then asked a fateful question: Is this really what a normal person would do? Of course not. So I went back to my truck, got out my scissors, and made some adjustments to the the course and ended up with this instead:



I made my way around from 1 thru 4, and then I hit the trail and really picked up the pace to a slow jog as I headed for the Finish. Very efficient training, it hardly took any time at all.

Well, not really. I did the whole course, but everything east of the above map tidbit is highly classified and can not be revealed. It was my first run--actually, the first anyone's run on the new Sugar Hill mapping I've just finished--and it's always super cool to go running for the first time on new mapping, getting to check it out and see how it stands up. I was pretty happy with it, though I did see it would help to darken up the "rough open" yellow a little bit, to help make the tiny areas of white (forest) stand out better.

I made sure to include a control on the actual Sugar Hill itself. That was the highlight of the run.

Ah, what the heck, everyone's going to end up seeing the map eventually, so here it is, the full version of the totally excellent Sugar Hill map!



(much enlarged in this image)

Not sure what to call this workout. Not strictly an interval session, but not fartlek either. Maybe semi-structured intervals, with one big climb to start things off and a (much) smaller climb to end each interval, and concluding with a long piece at threshold. I figured I must have got a decent piece of work in because after dinner, I was immediately sleepy and ready for a nap--much as happens after a regular race.

For the first half of the time I was out on the trails, I had it to myself--a little surprising, since it was so nice out. But then I was out early, too. Gradually folks started showing up, and by the time I got back to the parking lot, it was almost completely full.

At one point I was closing in on a group of mountain bikers on an uphill section, and I decided to see what would happen if I ran in the "Lundanes" breathing style. I mean, you really need to let folks know in advance if you're going to pass them from behind, because otherwise sometimes they get really startled.

But from the horrified looks on their faces when I passed them, I guess the Lundanes Method isn't the way to go.

C • Breathing Style 8

Wrapped up the last little bit of another complete section of land, out at Sugar Hill, for a total now of 43 complete sections mapped.

There's enough new map now at Sugar Hill for whatever we will need for Laramie Daze next year, so I'm not planning on doing any more mapping this season. With longer shadows, shorter days, cooler temps, and bigger winds day by day this time of year, it's easier to retain enthusiasm for mapping by setting things aside until next year--though who knows what I might end up doing on any one of those few really nice (mild/warm) days we will have before winter sets in. There's not so much left to do to take the map all the way down to North Branch of the North Fork of Crow Creek--but it will keep until next spring.

Big winds all last night and through the morning. Expected to find some new trees blown down across trails up top, and I wasn't disappointed.

Windy enough in the afternoon to discourage mapping, so I took advantage of the fine biking conditions to ride a bit over two hours.

Orienteering at Granite Planite, sunny, breezy to windy, temps in the upper 50s to lower 60s, very pleasant running. Ran a Brownish course 2x, once backwards and then forwards.

On my way out, I spotted two groups of 3 of yearling cows, each in a different grazing unit. When I was thinking yesterday that surely all the cows were now gone, I wasn't considering the possibility of strays--there are almost always a few strays after the roundups, and gradually the strays are collected up to, as reports filter in and as the pastures are combed again. But occasionally a stray or two will not be found, and they spend the winter out there.

However, and quite ironically--given my thought yesterday about the cows--when I pulled into the Granite Planite area, it turned out that a *huge* herd of cows was scattered all over the map area--ha!, I couldn't have been more wrong! It was fun running with the cows, for what may be one last time this season.

Beautiful day, and a beautiful day to run some intervals, so that's what it became.

Now I'm 99.99% sure all the cows are gone, and based on what I saw today while I was up top, everything else seems to be gone, too. I didn't see a single animal, ATV, or other person the whole time I was out.

First frost, and first run of the season that ended with chilled hands.

Yesterday's wind out of the south was today's wind out of the west and north. It's been windy the past 5 days. According to forecasts, we should have decent amounts of wind just about every day from now until the middle of April. The wind farmers will be so happy!

I had big plans for this beginning of October, big plans to go mapping in the afternoon, and do other things, too. That is, until I looked to the south over the golf course, and could see the south end of the valley was sealed off by towering banks of fog. With strong, steady wind out of the south, I didn't have to look to the east to know that the top of the Laramie Range would be socked in by fog, perhaps stretching as far north as Casper (it was.) Ergo, no mapping today.

But it was totally sunshine in the valley itself, and the breeze offered some fine conditions for biking. Later, I went up to run in the fog. It's always fine to get in an early fog run before winter sets in, and especially with the aspens at height of color!

Because of the fog and wind, every tree was dripping, and to stand beneath one was to venture into the rain.