Training Log Archive: Swampfox

Orienteering, Medicine Bow map, 10.8 kms. Finished up as the first raindrops were falling (and first lightning flashing) from an early noon storm.

Pretty windy out of the east and my legs felt de-fizzed, so I thought I might try to hitch a ride to somewhere over by Cheyenne and just run home easy with the wind for a nice boost. That's a lot of alone time with the wind (the same type of time some refer to as "quality" time), but it turns out if you listen, you might hear.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/yvwcf9lk4tbe4u4/The%20Wi...

This one must have been for maprunner who was, what, all of 4 when it was written? So probably not, but you never know.

C • Yup 1

Wanted an easy day so I headed out to the crystal mines to do some digging. Amazing how easy it is to move a couple of tons of decomposing granite gravels and such, it almost feels like you are doing nothing but day dreaming at the beach. After that, it was time to stretch my legs for at least a little bit, so I ran at Happy Jack to where 2 days ago I saw the best clump of Fairy Slippers I've ever seen (they were a little past their prime today.) The whole thing was only about 6" x 8".

Intervals, 8 x 5 min, dirt road. Completely coincidentally, the amount of time i ran for was exactly the amount of time I spent not getting run over by cars on my bike.

Finally made it out to Twin Boulders for the O' I had planned for several days earlier. Flexibility is an advantage in so many ways. 11.1 kms was the dose today, and an added bonus was the course included more sage than I might have guessed. It's hard to find locations I've never run to out there before, because by now I've used up the largest majority of the nicest places, and who wants to go out of their way for the most awful of unvisited spots? But I did succeed in finding at least one boulder I've never used for a control before, so I circled it three times when I got there, just for the celebratory effect.

The best part was seeing a large rodent out there. No, not really. I didn't see a rodent of any size, and actually the best part was seeing a large cow moose. For a while, some sub-morons were shooting, but they were so far away it didn't befront me much (note: I just make the simplifying assumption they must have been sub-monic because seasonal shooting restrictions are now in place.)

The worst part was too many legs headed in the direction of a late day sun, which makes it pretty hard to see things you really need to see. In some strange way, it kind of incorporates some of the challenges of night orienteering, but in the day.

Nothing like a little snow mixed in with some rain to make the grass grow.

It's either snow or confetti:

Weather up top was "somewhat different" than down below, with snow, rain, fog, and grapple all interacting and interweaving in unpredictable fashions. For me, it meant once a gain a change in plans, and I outlasted the rain by running trails at Happy Jack, with a quick shower/chaser of grapple to brighten up things with at the end. Summer is due to return in a couple of days and for now a little more marathon weather did not feel so awful.

Drove up to run an O' course at Twin Boulders, but bailed on that and ran trails in the forest instead, because of how the clouds looked. It was a good call because we ended up with some amount of lightning and hail, and being out in the open for that would have had the excitement dialed up too high and the fun down too low.

Ran trails at Happy Jack, looking for bojos. Not sure what they look like, and that may be why I didn't find any.

Ran trails for a good bit than less than half the time, and cross country on some wooded back slopes for most of the outing, in the general vicinity of the great granite dome, for something over 2 hours. Happy to see that the gates into the National Forest are now open again. Less happy about...well, actually it was like most days around here, a pretty fine day with little or nothing to be unhappy about.

Easy run at the School Yard. About 2 1/2 weeks out from the State decision on the Pilot Hill land swap.

Intervals were up today, and I decided to run them on Summit Trail. On the way up the canyon, I could see the first big t-cell of the season off to the E/SE, nearing Cheyenne. I warmed up by running over to where new ski trails are being cut, and while I was doing that, it began to sprinkle. Then it began raining a little harder, and as running in soaking clothing hadn't been part of the plan, I took shelter behind a tree. While I was waiting out the storm, several mountain bikers road by, looking pretty wet and taking some hail hits besides. It was very hard to tell what was happening above and there was blue sky almost right where I was, but it seemed that the storm was following a NW track instead of a more typical NE track. After a while of this I started to get tired of waiting, and began wondering if I was just wasting my time away. I wanted to get running again. A few more minutes though, and the sun was back out and the rain was finally moving off, so it worked out well enough--this time.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/pz4dv2wrsxaraog/Giving%2...

Quite warm today at 79F, and basically summer. Maybe that doesn't sound all that warm, but for around here, it's warm. Consider for the past two months, temps 25 degrees cooler were quite mild, and then 79F is only two degrees off the all time high for the date here.

The trees in town certainly took it as summer. Yesterday, there was not a leaf in sight. By the end of the day, *everything* had either leafed out or was in the process of doing so. An impressive showing.

My favorite thing for the day was biking by a ball field that is ringed with evenly spaced evergreen trees outside the ball field fence. I glanced over and saw nothing unusual, then glanced again, and this time I saw that there was a mule deer lying down under each of three consecutive trees. Imagine that--even the mule deer are observing proper social distancing! Such discipline must be applauded.

I'm glad I got in a tougher workout yesterday, because I think I would have wilted doing the same thing today. After biking, I did some light running at Happy Jack, and was glad for the breeze up there. Much haze looking to the south into Colorado, and the mountains in RMNP were partially obscured. As I was starting out, I passed a couple who told me a mountain biker had just told them he had just seen a mountain lion. I never saw the elusive beast.

Even though sun was being filtered by light clouds much of the day, it was quite mild out. It was a good day for Remarkable Flats.

I ran an 11.1 km course, and when I drew it out, I included all the climb I could fit in on the first and last parts. I've felt pretty weak on hills so far this season, and the only way to improve is to train, so...

I hit everything dead on, though I did have to pause along one route that took me briefly off the edge of the map. I had seen the route while I was drawing up the course and it looked straight forward and would besides would furnish a good climb up into the control (proved to be true and the steepest little bit meant trading a few meters of running for walking). In reality, once you left the map, you were running along a creek and looking up to a hillside with several reentrants that continued further down through the edge of the map, so it meant hoping you would take the right reentrant--or less studying the situation and making a more educated inference about which one to choose. So I paused, looked around, and chose correctly.

The best part of the run was that the running itself felt better than it has so far this spring. I break down O' running into three elements: how "clumpy" it feels--just the running, not having anything to do with dealing with what is underfoot (most people would probably call this feeling light vs heavy on their feet, but for some reason the word "clumpy" is what I invariably think of when I am out running and it feels like that); how well I'm dealing with rocks or little bushes or sticks or whatever it is underfoot--think orienteering technical running efficiency; and then finally how much "push" I have--on flat areas that translates to speed and on hills it translates to feeling like you have some power to work with without that feeling that your legs are about to go under (lactic acid).

Tons of people were out. Numerous vehicles were parked at every gated road off the highway.

Best thing I saw was a group of elk that took one look at me and took off, and kept running until they had put about a kilometer between me and them. It was probably the ferocity with which I was running that spooked them. Either that or they were showing off. They were probably just showing off.

It felt coolish out today even though there was nearly full sun all day long--breeze out of the north played a role. And yet, despite that, it felt like maybe spring was truly here at last. The grass is certainly a deep green, and growing enough that lawn mowers have been moving about town, and some trees look as if they are on the verge of leafing out. And if they are only pine trees, so what?

Plus, grackles arrived today and were rooting around in all of last year's leaf matter and other of last year's debris, looking for delicacies. A ride down along the river revealed swifts have arrived as well, and all these things and more indicate the season at hand is spring.

I decided to run north out along the Pole Mountain road (my name; I doubt anyone else uses it), look for some beer cans, and swing by Sometime Spring along the way. I had a hard time finding it, because, to my surprise, it was dry. It's mostly a Spring spring and always dries up later in the year, but normally it should be flowing now, and I had guessed we had had more than enough snow over the winter to fund it with water.

I did find some cans, but the real find was something much better: a 4' long aluminum level. It was instruments like this that enabled the construction of the Egyptian Pyramids, the Hoover Dam, the Houston Ship Channel, and El Presidente's most magnificent and black painted impenetrable Border Wall--not to mention the wooden control stands that are constructed for any important O' race in Sweden. I will probably use it to swat flies and other such tasks for which it is wholly unsuited, but still it is quite a find. I may just have it mounted and hang it on a wall in my guitar room.

Kudos to all the Wyomingites observing excellent distancing; I did not see another person the whole time I was out, and in places I could see as far as the wind farms south and west of Cheyenne, and the Shirley Mountains to the northwest, and that's a lot of "far". And just writing that makes me happy, because it reminds me that we have no far ants around here, at least not yet.

C • Ants 3

The forecast for today was for more rain--as in more rain than yesterday. And, like yesterday, it did not disappoint. Also like yesterday, rain fell on me while biking and running. Appropriate to the forecast, the rain amounts that drabbed me today exceeded yesterday's amounts. To put the conditions in better context, today would have been ideal for the running of a marathon.

I crossed paths with Harper and Elise up at Happy Jack, and we chatted briefly, observing correct distancing, which seemed to be the right thing to do. Today the state is relaxing many restrictions, but doing so with the hope(?)/expectation(?) that people will continue to be smart about all this and not take unnecessary risks or pose unnecessary risks to others.

Overnight rains had thoroughly washed the trails, leaving them all bright and sparkly!

The forecast was for rain, and the forecast did not disappoint. I was lucky and managed to slip in some afternoon biking while only getting a mere few raindrops. While I was out, I looked for signs of castles made of sand slipping into the sea, but Laramie is perhaps not the best locale for castle spotting. I was more successful when I looked for trains.

Then I drove up through some fine rain with hail mixed in, with the goal of some fine trail running up on high. Timing was good (lucky) again, as the heavier rain bits ceased and sporadic light sprinkles took up the mission. I was dressed for that and was therefore able to enjoy a fine run in complete comfort. As a bonus, my legs were back to feeling fine.

Most snow has melted away at Happy Jack, but note that less-than-most is still a pretty decent amount. Some sunnier weather than we have averaged for the month will be required to complete the spring cleaning.

I ran trails at Happy Jack, and starting out my legs were a little sore from yesterday, a felt like twice warmed over sludge. Well, that's often how it is starting out and getting warmed up. An hour later and I was circling back to my truck to toss off my jacket, with the sun then out. But I hesitated at the truck, thinking that my legs still felt like barely strained celery pith--maybe I should pay attention to that, and call it a day. The thought brightened me up so much I knew it was the right choice. Ha--finally I was going to do the right thing!

Finished up with some core exercises at home, and tomorrow will be a new day.

When I was first learning Swedish, one of the hardest things was learning how to use the small words--things like at, to, by, in, and so on. Long words were easy. Take a word like "run". In my Swedish-English dictionary, there is a full page and a half of tiny text about usage of run.

But it turned out the hardest thing in spoken Swedish (and I will guess generally in learning language?) was picking out slang. Although not all slang was hard, and one of the first bits of orienteering slang I heard was the use of
"köra" for "run", in the context of route choice. At least in the group I was with, folks would often say "jag körade rakt på" instead of "jag sprang rakt på". "I drove straight" versus "I ran straight".

I understood what they meant, but I didn't understand the word choice/usage, so finally I asked someone. They said it sounded "harder", meaning "tougher", in some positive sense--almost more "manly", but not really quite that. That wasn't everyone, and it wasn't all the time. I would also hear "sprang" being used.

However, when it when it came to something like intervals, it was almost always "köra", at least with the guys. Intervals were driven, not run.

That's the kind of thing and nuance that to me was most fun about learning another language--seeing those kinds of differences.

Had I been in Sweden today, I would write: "Idag körade jag intervaller". But since I'm not in Sweden, instead I will write here that today I ran intervals. In America I "run" intervals, and "drive" my car. Right? Right.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/9jg86oi02kfg29v/Drive%20...

C • little words 9

Neatest thing that happened today was that I went out biking and after returning home I stepped in my yard and was looking at some plants when a couple walked by--neighbors from about a block away. They had moved here last May, and they said something about the poppies in my yard they had seen last year, and wondered when they would be blooming. So we introduced ourselves and talked a little bit. It turned out they had moved here from Austin, and so I told them about how I often joked about Austin being "my kind of town".

Somehow music came up (probably because of Austin), and it turned out that the guy is friends with Tommy Shannon and they've known each other for at least 20 years. That floored me--absolutely the last thing I would have guessed I might hear anyone tell me today!

Biked some and got partially doused; since I was not on fire, that was less fun that it sounds.

So I switched out, and once the rains eased up, I hit the trails at Happy Jack, and heard the first hermit thrush of the season, whose song can not be adequately described--but I will call it lonesome and sweet. As far as I can tell, no person living or dead has actually *seen* a hermit thrush. They are only heard.

The rain in town translated as a light amount of snow on the ground along the highest reaches of the Happy Jack trail net. I know, I was there.

Biked for an hour or so in cool conditions (not much sun) with decent breeze out of the east, which made it feel even cooler than I had expected. Thought about biking longer, but any longer without repeating what I had already done would have meant going west and coming back against the wind before running, and I decided I would stop and get started running that much earlier instead.

A hip flexor was sore from yesterday's activities, and I took the running very easy--which was the plan anyway. Saw more downed trees.

On days like this, snow melt is quite subdued.

Tyler linked up with me for some orienteering at Pelican Bay. Tiomila was supposed to have been run last weekend, and of course it didn't happen, and the weather here wasn't so favorable then either. So today was kind of making up up for not doing any orienteering on Tiomila weekend, and with that in mind I drew up a relay style course with two forked loops which we took in different order, for a total of just over 10 kms.

It was good challenging stuff--Pelican Bay is good terrain and it's easy to go wrong there--and made even more difficult because the maps printed up with only the barest hint of green or any of the yellows except for full open. I missed one control which I will blame on not being able to see a necessary bit of green (aspen), though really there was no excuse as there was enough other detail to go by, plus I knew what the sitrep was with the green today anyway. By the time we were done I could tell I got in a proper workout.

Tiomila is special, and special to me. I ran 4 Tiomila, and was lucky in the sense that all 4 were good competitions in good terrain, and really lucky because the weather was quite fine for all 4. And maybe really, really lucky because I did relatively well in all 4 outings.

The first of my Tiomila was just outside of Uppsala. I remember that we got there early enough to go out and do a training in relevant terrain, and after seeing how detailed the map and terrain were, I was wondering if I wasn't well over my head. But the race itself ended up going really well for me. It helped a lot that the visibility in the forest was quite good, and it was easy to see the details I needed to see. It helped even more that I ran a day leg, and did so in all my other Tiomilas as well. I don't think either the club (IKHP) or myself regarded my prospects at night favorably. Put more bluntly, I've never done much night orienteering, and basically I suck at night.

And yet, it's really the night portion of Tiomila that makes it special, at least to me. Once it gets dark, it seems like anything can happen, and back then a lot more did happen; the lights runners had were not nearly as powerful as today's lights, the maps were generally rougher, and the whole thing was much more mysterious and anticipatory, with fewer reports from the forest and no real time GPS tracking. At least to me, being able to see where all the leading teams are all time in real time takes away a lot of the magic of the event.

Even so, Tiomila remains a blend of the day and the night...

https://www.dropbox.com/s/n9rjx0bpglz06go/Day%20fo...

C • Plural 18

Biking conditions today were really too good--strong wind out of the north with cool temps and nearly full sun--and I felt guilty about taking advantage of them, when most other bikers elsewhere have to contend with becalmed mildness and such conditions that lead to soft training and generally slothful behavior, and have no chance to properly HTFU.

So I stuck to running trails in the hills, and discovered that many, many trees were blown down today and last night.

$0.99/gallon gasoline didn't last long. In the last two days, prices moved up to first $1.09 and then today to $1.18. Sharp as these price rises have been, economists at the University of Wyoming say the most recent statistics suggest that so far the effect on local orienteering activity has been muted, and is likely to continue to be so.

Sometimes people dream, and sometimes people have dreams. Some people do both, and maybe some people never do either.

Intervals were up today, and it was no dream--I did them, 8 x 5 min cruise.

Recently I did have a dream. It opened with me running up a steep slope somewhere around Northstar, in the middle of a rogaine (so maybe this was more along the lines of a nightmare.) And my partner? None other than Charlie, of all people, and even better, he was kicking butt on this big hill while I was dragging ass. At some point he started pointing out that I was kind of holding up the show, and in turn I pointed out that not all of had been able to make a couple of trips over to Italy earlier in the year for special training in the Dolomites. And then Charlie said something about like this: "You know what's really wonderful about Italy? You can walk into most any grocery store and they will have over 1200 varieties, and get this--they'll all be made fresh daily, by hand." Dreams are weird.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/toeoajdy4qzp1xa/I%20Do%2...

C • Dreams 5

Rain and hail in the morning made it 4 straight days of wet stuff, but by midday clouds were starting to lighten up and eventually conditions returned to full sun again. I ran off trail at a decent place, and in margaritaville style I blew out my flip-flop, except that in this case it was a running shoe. I hit the stub of a fire burned sage brush right above the toe of my shoe, and a few steps later I realized that things felt loose down there. When I looked, at first I didn't see what had happened, but then realized that the entire front half of the upper had ripped away from the rest of the shoe, starting at the toe and extending along both sides of the laces. That's never happened before in all the years I've been running. But once I got out of the sage and onto a dirt road where nothing could stick into my foot, it actually wasn't bad and I ran back like that for the last 25 minutes or so.

C • Margaritaville 4

On the way home, I noticed the price of gas had soared to $1.09. I stopped and got some anyway, since I needed some.

Skies turned gray early and I was only able to bike downtown and back before the first round of heavy rain hit. It rained off and on for most of the afternoon thus biking plans had to be postponed, and the main exercise ended up being a longer run at Happy Jack at the very end of the day. Lots of snow had melted off since the last time I had run there a few days earlier, and as one way to measure this, the last time out there the Troll Bridge had been completely out of sight, buried by a vast snowfield, and now it was completely snow free.

Drove up through the season's first hailstorm to go running. The hail was splooshy and didn't last long, but the accompanying rain kept on going on going. Plus it was very windy. At the parking lot, I sat in my truck listening to the news, and napped, and waited. After something over an hour, it wasn't looking any better, and I was completely under-dressed for the conditions.

So I returned home, by which time it was clearing off in the valley, and ran in the School Yard.

A little excitement was provided by some folks who had driven out to shoot. I didn't think they were allowed to do that there, but I wasn't going to confront them or even get near, not being able to see them or see which direction they were shooting, so I kept on going, and only a few minutes later I heard shots coming from a different area and this was much more alarming because these shots were ricocheting and it was impossible to tell where the rounds were going. I headed for a small canyon nearby and saw a mountain biker stopped down in it, and I hoped he would stay there long enough for me to reach him, to see if he had a phone. By the time I got to him, he was already in the process of phoning in a report to the sheriff. As I was about to leave the trails area, a sheriff's deputy arrived, and I ran over to his truck and gave him some details, but this was about a mile from where the shooters had been, with no way to drive directly there without having to drive a long way around. I have no idea how it all ended, but probably the shooters left before the deputy could reach them, as by the time all this happened it was already dusk.