Training Log Archive: Swampfox

Got out for some biking in the early afternoon, and then skied and ran later. Even in the late afternoon, lots of folks were out and about at Happy Jack.

Big volume in the month ended. Hip thing is still bothering me, but it's not worse and overall my sense is that it is somewhat better, in a very gradual way.

Skied some and ran trails on the north slope. Lots of people were out today. Actually, lots of people have been out almost every day this year--which is good to see. I don't know if this is left over from the corona virus, or because more people moving to Laramie recently are outdoor types or if it is simply randomness at work. Could be poor observations by me. Probably poor observations.

Mild day with much more wind than advertised. Skied some and ran more.

Temps well up into the 40s in town despite being mostly overcast, and the wind wasn't even up to "decent breeze" standards, so I planned a short ski followed by something better.

Something better in this case being an O' run out at Twin Boulders, 11.3 kms, lots of looping running along the course looking for the areas with thinnest snow covering or (sometimes) bare ground. Don't remember any places where running went down into the slog setting, but perhaps that's selective memory. Nice to get out, and if the sun had been shining, it would have been brilliant.

Saw one small moose, and I think it saw me, too.

C • Visitor 6

Skied and ran. Sunny with some 40 mph breeze.

Ski intervals were up today, and ski intervals went down today.

First day this year it felt more like a "normal" winter day--high of 13F. That's not normal compared to the average high of 33F for this time of January, but usually by now we've had a handful of chillier days, whereas this was the first one since maybe early December.

Skis were a little slow because of the (warmer) wax on them vs. the temps, but so what. You just deal with it.

Skied and ran. Light flurries at times during the day; didn't add up to anything.

Skied and ran. Really nice out--sunny with no wind. Lots of folks were out at Happy Jack, doing everything imaginable and even more.

C • Stampede 2

Sometimes you have one idea of how things will go, and it turns out you could not have been more wrong.

To wit, today I went skiing, and that went as I planned. I was out for 2 hours, enjoyed some new snow, and finished up a little after dark.

Then I got ready to drive home, and that did not go at all as planned. I was at the stop sign right before the on ramp of I-80 by the Summit Visitors Center a few minutes before 6 o-clock, and so were a a whole lot of other cars in trucks. In fact, the west bound lane of I-80 was filled with bumper-to-bumper traffic as far as the eye could see in either direction. And there were cars pulled off to the side all over the place on the roads around the Visitors Center, and on the on-ramp, and the parking lots were stuffed. And absolutely none of it was moving.

As far as alternatives to the gulch down to Laramie, the detours are all pretty long around. So I decided to join the crowd and wait it out. Maybe a wreck (the warning sign on the interstate read "crash ahead" would be cleared shortly. Maybe it was already cleared and traffic just hadn't been able to get rolling yet.

An hour and twenty minutes later, I was on the interstate. Progress! Though in this case progress meant literally having just leaving the on-ramp for the first bit of physical interstate pavement.

After that, I lost track of movement. Every so often traffic would roll ahead for a few car lengths or maybe more, and then it would stop for a while. Since it was dark, it was hard to see exactly where I was as we slowly creeped along, and all the tail lights and brake lights made it even harder to see what might be going on up ahead. One thing for sure--the interstate was about like a skating rink with ice.

After a long while had gone by and it felt like we must have gotten well down into the canyon just based on how much time had gone by, I finally was able to look off to the side and spot something I recognized out in the darkness--some angled barbed wire fence. That meant I was right on top of the cattle culvert that went under the interstate--the same one we used in the US Long-O Champs several whale eras ago. Which also meant I had only traveled a few hundred meters from the end of the on-ramp.

Eventually traffic started moving with some greater amount of consistency, at maybe about 4 mph. Which was really fine with me. At least we were moving, and the last thing I wanted with those iced over conditions was having some of the traffic moving at a much different and faster speed than everyone else. That greatly increases the chances of wrecks.

By the time I got home, it was almost 10 o-clock, so four hours to cover 9 miles from the stop sign up top to town, and a couple more miles to my house. That's smokin'.

It made me think that must be about what it is like to drive home on I-70 at the end of the day on Sundays from the ski slopes to Denver; lucky bastards!

C • Cattle culvert 2

While I was skiing, something odd, yet somehow vaguely familiar happened. At first I couldn't put my finger on it. Finally, it dawned on me that it was snowing!

It didn't last long and it only yielded about 1/2 cm, if that. But still, pretty neat.

Tomorrow we are forecast to get some *big* snow, however. Keeping in mind that this season is being graded on a curve, and what now qualifies as big snow here would be about the same amount that would qualify as a big snow in Austin or Atlanta or Columbia or maybe even Mobile. So 1" or so would do it. Ski poles crossed.

Earlier in the week something arrived in the mail from OUSA; this is about the time when information usually arrives for club re-chartering and dues paying, but this envelope was oddly shaped and weighted for that sort of thing.

And it turned out to have nothing to do with that, but was instead a buff and a request for donations (money.)

My thought after reflecting on that was that orienteering is not so much in need of more money as it is in need for more races. Without more races, the money thing is almost pointless. So I think the sport would have been better served by asking each recipient to organize or help organize a race, of any size or scope, instead of asking for money. Some will note that events themselves serve as a source of income for OUSA, from start fees to OUSA.

Of course last year was a special year, but the calendar of national events has been noteworthy in recent years chiefly for a paucity of events, especially when compared to earlier times.

Biked, skied, and ran. Biking was the best, in part because skiing was going to be very easy after yesterday's efforts, and in part because I hadn't been outside on my bike in a bit.

While I was riding, I found some sunshine, and also 2 new housing starts, the first of 2021. I was thinking if I looked hard, I might find some lidar laying that someone had thrown out, but I didn't see any of that--not yet.

Some amount of worries I have had hanging over me for a long time about the fate of our country have been dispelled and are now gone. For me at least, it felt like the first really good day for America in too long.

Ski intervals in the afternoon.

Crisp and sunny out. No wind today as it gathers strength for renewed huffing and puffing tomorrow. Skied and followed up with some running, feeling a little drabbed from yesterday's exertions.

My hip is still bothering me, but it's not getting worse with running (though O' running is where it's least happy), and skiing and biking are fine. So I plan to continue monitoring it, and go easy with running intensity for the time being.

3" or so of snow fell overnight, and this was enough to take care of a good number of spots that had been bare on the ski trails. It will still take at least one bigger snow to put things into normal mid-winter shape, but at least things are a good bit better than just 3 days ago. In the higher up woods, the snow is now too deep in many places to run through without really working hard.

Skied for 2 hours and then added in some running after that. On to Cowboy basketball.

Skied in the very early afternoon and then headed down the Happy Jack highway to Pelican Bay to get in an O' run. This was probably a mistake insofar as it was quite windy and a good portion of the road between the interstate and the ski parking was iced over or getting that way. But I had planned to do this yesterday and deferred it to today because yesterday it had been even windier, and usually the only bad stretch on the Happy Jack highway is the portion connecting the ski parking lot to the interstate.

So off I went, and it turned out there were lots of bad stretches on the way to Pelican Bay. Not horrendous, but definitely calling for much reduced speed. At Pelican, stepping out of the truck, it felt like entering a wind tunnel. It wasn't cold in terms of ambient temperature, but the wind had some chill well dialed up. There was snow cover 97+% of the time, but only a few places where the drifts had to be walked through. I was never really cold, but it felt chilly almost the whole time. I ended up cutting out two small pieces of the course in order to get back to the truck before dusk--really didn't want to have to drive back on iced roads in the wind after dark.

On the way back home and about a mile down the road I got confirmation that it really hadn't been the best idea to drive to Pelican Bay. There was a single vehicle wreck--some kind of passenger van or large SUV off the road and flipped over, looked like it hadn't happened all that much earlier, but early enough so that 4 sheriff vehicles and ambulance were already there, and two more plus a fire engine passed me heading towards the wreck on my way back. All that made me slow down even more. Hopefully nobody was injured, or, if so, not badly.

C • Wind 3

Woke up as it was first getting light out, and when I checked the clock on the wall, it said 4 o-clock, which was way too early for it to be light out. So I rustled out of bed quick as a ginger snap and looked out the windows to see...snow! I went back to bed as quick as a leek leaf, and when I woke up and got up for real later, saw the snow had amounted to only a dusting.

Up top was a different story, however. There was about 2" of new snow. That's not much, but in a snow thin year like this one I reckon that's the equivalent of about 3' of fresh snow in a regular year, so it was a pretty decent snow.

The snow hadn't been rolled yet and required some work, at least with my skis, and I stayed out for about 2 hours before switching over and doing some running. I expect some sore arms tomorrow--maybe good practice for when I'm in line to receive one of the vaccines.

Windy enough to blow lots of snow across the highway for melting and re-freezing excitement, but not windy enough to bring down trees. The majority of the trees downed earlier in the week have been chainsawed and removed, but the more remote trails still feature some fine beetle kill tree specimens down across them.

Given there was a tiny bit of new snow yesterday, I pulled out the skis to inspect the trails. Managed to find several concealed rocks and dirt bits, and with those successes in hand I switched gear and spent the rest of my exercise time running.

Big time windy today and chillier, maybe 20F for the high in town, effectively much colder than that because of the wind. I made the assumption that not much snow had fallen higher up so skipped skiing and ran longer again. As I was driving up a big cloud of something was sweeping in at ground level over the Range from the north and was just reaching Happy Jack. It turned out to be fog/cloud with some light snow. There was about 1/2" of new snow on the ground where sheltered, but of course the wind prone sections of trail were completely scoured. A good number of trees were down across the bike trails where I was running, and I could tell that some trees had fallen across ski trails as well. Good stuff.

C • Printing courses on yellow maps 5

Thinking the snow too thin and grim, I skipped skiing and ran longer instead, this time down the valley behind Vedauwoo. I started off thinking I would stick to trails, and after a few minutes of that and seeing how thin the snow cover was, I decided to run in the frozen marshes as much as I could, and complement that with some slope style running when necessary.

On the way back I spotted one large moose just at the edge of an aspen grove. I was going down a slope with some stuff underfoot and had to keep an eye on that, but I was downwind from the moose and far enough away that there was no chance I was going to catch its attention from there. Just as I saw the moose, I had to look down to get past a few sage clumps or whatever it was, and when I looked back up a nanosecond later, the moose was gone--just like that! I ran through the aspens and out into a big open slope on the other side, sure that the moose would have stopped somewhere in sight, and was surprised that even with a very big view, there was no moose anywhere.

Most moose these days aren't so shy around here, and many can't be bothered to move off when you get near them. This one wasn't one of those.

Rock n roll wind all night long with blizzard conditions part of the time. But the snow was mostly in the air and going horizontal and not stopping to settle down, so that by morning most places had a dusting at most. The bulk of the snow must have ended up in Iowa or maybe Illinois in that wind.

Skied and ran, and biked, too, as I remember. Snow was blowing across the highway and melting and re-freezing as some wind started to kick up. The forecast said the wind wouldn't be rockin' until tomorrow, but it seems it wanted to get in some early blows. Why waste time?

The running was better than the skiing, because more thin spots were emerging--and there were already many. I wonder when we will start hearing more about drought. Must be about perfect for the snow bikers though. They have all they need for complete trail coverage and an extra centimeter or two there would just be wasted.

C • El Nino 11

Pieced together sections of trails that I know have at least decent coverage, and skied them, then combined some running with some pruning work on an old section of ski trail that no longer gets much use for some reason. Crisp and sunny out with no wind. And, once again, no snow forecast for now for the next 7 days.

I took the radical step of waxing skis today. I know, I know--what's the rush, it's only Jan 9 and very early in the year. But I figured why not, it might even confuse the posse on my tail, if there was one. I don't think there is a posse after me, but you never know.

What made this was extra nice was I used a glide wax for what would pass for normal temps, while last night it got a bit chilly and stayed a good bit chillier up top than it has been lately, and plus there was some fresh overnight snow. So the skis were slow, and so what. It just meant I got more exercise.

Even with about 3" of new snow, it didn't help much. On the sections where there was already good coverage, it freshened things up, so good. But on the the thin spots, 3" of fluff was next to nothing and had been almost all skied off by the time I got up there.

Lots of folks were up. There were more cars in the parking lot and spilled over across the highway than I can ever remember for a non-race day or a non wee ski day. I like to see lots of people up and out and enjoying the national forest. It's also nice to be able to find a parking spot though!

The best part was leaving a very thin section of trail to traipse through some deep snow only to at one point have my ski bottoms go hard aground on some 1.4 billion year old granite. It hurt them more than it hurt me, and it didn't hurt the rock at all. Oh well, it happens. It just means I get more exercise. Wait, didn't I already write that?

Fine and sunny day, crisp, with almost no wind.

C • Exercise 1

I did not strike gold/moose during the moose run Friday, but tonight, while I was running just as I was about to leave the woods and hit a ski trail, there was a single big CRASH! off deeper in the forest and not too far away. I stopped to look and listen for additional crashing sounds, but it was night by then and dark in that piece of forest so it was hard to see much of anything from where the sound had come from, and following the crash sound there was complete silence. After listening for a few moments and concluding that was that, I moved on. No way to know for sure what it was. Possibly it was just a partially fallen tree settling more fully down.

From there it was about 3-4 minutes back to the trailhead and parking lot, and just as I was coming to the edge of that a skier was finishing up. I said hi and we started to exchange comments about how the skiing had been and as we were doing that I saw a largish dark object heading down an open hillside adjoining the parking lot, and then hitting the parking lot and crossing it, and continuing down the slope below until it finally hit the next treeline and vanished from sight. It was a yearling moose, and not hard to link to the sound I had heard a few minutes earlier. First time I've seen a moose in the parking lot, and clearly I should have spent last Friday running around in the parking lots rather than along a willow choked creek drainage--if I had had hopes of seeing moose.

C • CRASH 2

We caught a lucky break with the weather. As recently as Thursday, there was nothing special in the forecast today. And yet it ended up snowing all day long up at the ski trails, maybe 3". Not a lot, but this season it actually is a lot compared to what we have had so far, and it was enough to freshen up dirty spots in the trails and will add more to the base once compacted.

I skipped running and took full advantage of the new snow, skiing about 2 hours, until past nightfall.

I was surprised to see a dusting of snow on the window sill when I woke up, but there it was. Beautiful day--sunshine, temps right around 30F for a high, and no wind. My choice for today was to go moosing, and ran a long ways alongst and backst (is that how the Brits do it, or is it just whilst?) a particularly favorable drainage with loads of willow marsh. Which the moose were either scorning or else hiding in, because I didn't see a thing. No worries because it was so nice out that it hardly mattered.

I liked the way when I was running backst, now up the drainage, the sun was behind a ridge and I could feel the air rapidly growing colder against my face. By then it was i the high teens, but didn't feel like it (again, no wind).

The dusting of snow in town translated to at least a massive 1/3" or even more higher up where I was running.

C • Brits. 4

Did a little biking, a little skiing, and a little running, and a little looking around and wondering where all the snow has gone. Talked to a few folks in the parking lot before skiing, and one of them mentioned Washington (state) has been hammered with snow, so maybe that's where it all is.

Worst day for our country in my lifetime.

Maybe this will finally make it clear that you can be a Trump supporter or you can be for America, but you can not be both.

To say that what happened today is sickening doesn't begin to get at it.

Ran snow trails, easy effort, and concentrating on foot placement to try to avoid aggravating my hip and making it less happy than it already was after yesterday. It was snowing lightly the whole time, with maybe 1/3" new snow as I started and perhaps double or more by the time I finished. So, not so much, but much better than the zero snow we had over the past 2 weeks. I may take the skis up tomorrow and give the trails a shakedown; I could see that another rolling pass of the trails was made this morning.

And, after doing some further research, I think my hip problem is most likely a sore IT band. This was a surprise to me because up until now, I thought the IT band was just something that ran along the outside of the knee and connected right above and below the knee itself. I had no idea it ran all the way up to the top of the hip. Besides location, further confirmation is the pain/soreness feels almost exactly from what I remember when I have had a sore IT band before in the area of the knee.

C • tracks 2

C • Might also look up the TFL 6

Orienteering at Remarkable Flats. Maybe 50% snow cover, with no places too deep to run through.

Running at speed over terrain was clearly harder on my sore hip area than running on trails. Not so surprising.

Skied and ran, running longer today and past the 2 hr mark. Very windy, maybe windier than yesterday or maybe not--at some point it gets hard to say, just going by perception. On the other hand, there were many trees down across trails this afternoon, versus none yesterday. That's got to be pretty objective. Also there were many fewer cars left in the parking lot at about 4 pm than yesterday. But probably the downed tree count is still a better indicator.

I got home in time to see Saturn just about to pass out of sight below the horizon. Jupiter still had some time to go. The sun was long gone. Sometimes I wonder where it goes to sleep, and what kind of pillow does it use?

C • Wow 7

Had tentatively planned to ski at noon and then head further east to Remarkable Flats for an O' run and then get back home in time to watch the Wyoming basketball game.

I had some work to take care of in the morning, and by the time I dropped some things off at the Post Office, I was nearly an hour later leaving for skiing than planned. As soon as I got on the interstate, I realized it didn't matter, because it was really windy--the highway advisory sign was posting 70+ mph crosswinds--and there was no way I would be orienteering out in that. So I skied, and then ran trails on the backside trails at Happy Jack, where you could hear the wind roaring by above the treetops, without feeling almost any of it at ground level. I felt strong on all the uphill sections, even running on the snow.

The funny thing is that today was only supposed to be a warmup for tomorrow, when the forecast calls for some *real* wind.

C • Josh Allen 13

Skied and ran.