Training Log Archive: Swampfox

Very fun to see that Marc (Lauenstein) completely dominated the field today at the Pikes Peak Marathon! His ascent time would have placed him 5th in yesterday's Ascent, which had been designated as the 11th annual World Mountain Running Association (WMRA) Long Distance Challenge (unofficially the world championship of mountain running.

As anyone who saw him at either Laramie Daze or at the US Classic Championships will attest, Marc can flat out fly.

Marc ran the course in 3:37:21. By comparison, my best time (in three tries) was 4:05, for a 5th place.

O' training at Remarkable Flats. Back into the swing of things after taking a few easy days following the races last weekend, which made my legs happy. Stellar conditions outside--a perfect summer day in the Laramie Range!

Meant to add to yesterday's note that the purpose of the run was to explore the area immediately north of Devil's Claw as the next area to be mapped for addition to the same. Though it's not a dramatic difference, the terrain does change a good bit just on the other side of the road bounding the north side of the existing map.

While adjusting my shoes and about to get out of my truck for a run through Devil's Claw, I noticed a pretty gosh darned big bird sitting in the top of a dead tree at a considerable remove from me. As I began to wonder what it might be, it took flight. I never saw the head good, but the tail was unmistakeably white--a bald eagle. They are seldom seen in this part of the Laramie Range, or at least they have been by me. I think this is only the 4th bald eagle I've seen in the Laramie Range, not counting the scattered remains from one dead eagle.

Fortunately, from reading AttackPoint mostly, I knew I should pay attention because an omen could be involved. Unfortunately, for the life of me I couldn't figure out what the omen was though. The eagle simply headed down for the marshy valley floor and after a bit it was out of sight.

I went running anyway though, and afterwards had several cowburgers for dinner, since I couldn't totally rule out the possibility that that is what the eagle was telling me to do. (Note--cowburgers, as opposed to bisonburgers, which is what I really wanted.)

C • steerburgers 1

The US Classic Champs were such a blast for me! First, they were at Round Mountain, which remains one of my all-time favorite places to orienteer. Second, I hadn't raced since the N. Americans nearly 2 years ago, so to get to step up to a start line again at last, at a place like Round Mountain, was something special to look forward to. Third, this time last year I was struggling to even jog up relatively gentle hills and running in general was just plain work in a way that wasn't fun anymore. Tests in September after Laramie Daze revealed I was anemic. And not just a little anemic--I was just about depleted of iron. That explained so many various odd little things going back over several years, including several race results that I couldn't make sense of and just attributed to part of getting older. Getting iron levels back into more normal ranges has made a *huge* difference, and running these days feels like running used to again, and not just some kind of a death slog every time a hill shows up.

Even with feeling so much better again, however, it was still quite a shock (a pleasant one!) to see that I could run as well as I did against some of the other guys. All I had expected was to have fun running in an area I love, and if I was not too far back behind some of the better runners, that would be a bonus.

Looking back, I am sure it was invaluable that a few weeks ago I did 6 very hard O' runs with Dave Pruden, basically races where Dave had a head start and I had to run as hard as I could to try to catch him. That gave me a very good feel for how hard I could work and what kind of pace I could hold, and from how quickly I was able to recover after some of the bigger, steeper climbs I began to realize my condition might be better than I had been thinking.

On Day 1 I rushed several controls--both entering and exiting the control area--and that caught up to me at #9, where I dropped a good bit of time. I think that was mostly race rustiness. On Day 2 I made a conscious effort to be much more deliberate in and near the control rings, and the result was a very clean race with no outright mistakes--very satisfying, very fun. And on the longer legs where it was possible to run hard, I spent most of my attention on trying to just run as efficiently as possible through the terrain. At least for me, it sure didn't feel like there was any mindless running and I was very focused on the task at hand the whole race through. I don't think I could have done a whole lot better.

To turn the perspective somewhat, while the results were very nice for me personally, I can't help but thinking it's not exactly a sign that US Men's orienteering is in a very good place these days. I'm 56. By now there should be a lot of younger guys who are capable of beating me by a lot...

That said, It was a wonderful weekend all around, and as happy as I was with my races, I was even more happy to see that all the work various RMOC members put into organizing the US Championships paid off with a super event that they can be very proud of.

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