Training Log Archive: Swampfox

A look at a larger view of a weather radar map of the Mountain West shows lots of weather happening this afternoon around the region, with the largest amounts of snowier weather being conveniently arranged around Laramie.

Fitted in some biking in 2 pieces around light, but chilly, rain showers, and ran trails from home at the end of the day. A very West Point-ish type day (ie--a lot of gray!).

There was enough decent weather to get out today for a 2 1/2 hour-ish bike ride. When I went up top to check out the running, there was too much snow to run anywhere but on the road shoulders, so that's what I did--a rare run entirely along the shoulders of Happy Jack Road. Probably some of the snow will melt away in time for 4th of July, but we'll see.

Can't remember what I did today, but I do know that, disappointingly, no Yowsa! was required. Probably did something, but I'm certain it wasn't orienteering. (Actually I know I ran from home to trails in the open space east of town, where I was able to find some footprints and one set of snow bike tracks to follow in the deep snow.)

Whole lotta winter today, though not so much Yowsa! In the morning the snow was so deep and the wind so hard and the snow coming down in such large amounts that there seemed to be no point in Yowsa! until there was a let up. By the time the snow eased off a bit in the late afternoon, it developed that the wind had kept about more than half the sidewalk clear of snow, and it was relatively straight forward to take care of the remaining sidewalk. Disappointing in light of how much snow fell--I had really been looking forward to and hoping for maybe several hours of extreme Yowsa! But it is past mid-May, and I tried to be thankful for this. It helped to think about people in other parts of the country suffering through heat waves.

When I started running today, it was snowing. And just under two hours later, when I was finishing running, it was still snowing. And it was snowing all the way in between. Snow! So much snow! There was too much snow for it all to fit on the ground, so a large amount of it remained in the air, wandering aimlessly.

I remember talking to some grad student who moved here several years ago from some milder clime, and they were expressing their amazement about how "just when you think winter has finally ended for good, it gives you another refresher course."

Was able to add in sit-ups to core exercises today, for the first time since the rib injury a few weeks back. So I consider that injury said and done, even if I can still feel it a little bit when I lay on that side in bed.

I was surprised and puzzled when I noted that Spike has logged only a few minutes less in training time than biggins for the past week. When I mentioned this to an acquaintance who is a trainer for the UW football team, he said they were puzzled by this development, too. That was even more surprising to me--that folks over at the football team were following stuff like this--and I said so. But he said they are always looking to add a decent city auditor or a good biggins or two to the roster.

C • I assume 3

Began the day with an O' course at Diamond Bay. Even found a few ribbons, so there's a chance I was doing something right at times. For added speed, I wore bright pink tights, which the wildlife must have found very alarming, as I didn't see any (wildlife). A fair bit of the running was rougher, and it felt like I was moving okay everywhere, so good.

I ran at Happy Jack, running right over where the very large snowfield near the Visitors Center used to be (the last bits of the snow there melted yesterday.)

But not before waiting out a half hour of rain at the parking area, listening to the news. I didn't have the right clothing for the rain, and was very happy to see it more or less finish up at the end of the half hour.

Noted that some more trees have been cleared off sections of single track, done over the weekend. Still plenty enough trees down across trails to keep the chainsaws happy for a while.