Training Log Archive: Swampfox

Did some mapping and then ran trails at an easy pace at the end of the day. Pleasantly surprised both that I didn't feel any soreness in my legs from yesterday, and also to find there was some bounce in them. Good!

Less good: while I was mapping, a dun buggyish type vehicle zipped by, smack in the middle of the woods. Not only did it catch me by surprise, I've never seen one of these things off-road in the forest before. I hope this isn't about to become a "thing"--the newest trend. I had already noticed that whereas before it was nearly all ATVs running around on the roads up in the forest, this year I've already seen significantly more dune buggy type vehicles than ever before, maybe not up by an order of magnitude, but not far from it.

C • Dune buggy 5

Tick season officially ended on Thursday, but danged if I didn't get a gratuitous tick crawling on my wrist when I stuck my hand in some bitterbrush to retrieve a can. I may complain to the authorities or even launch a tick action suit, depending on my mood. But cows showed up yesterday, and that should mop up any lingering ticks.

Two ticks for the season is pretty bad, and I may have to rethink my tactics. Some people suggest simply staying indoors until winter resumes again in September, and it is something to consider.

Intervals after mapping, all under a perfectly cloudless sky that not even the gods could have arranged. 10 x 5 min.

Gave O' instruction followed by an orange-ish level O' course for Mark Jenkins' Gannett Expedition summer class this afternoon, all out at the humdrum yet still Remarkable Flats.

Everybody who went out came back, nobody left the confines of the map, everyone saw controls, and it seemed like everyone had a pretty good time. So another success, even though it's just a huge amount of information to throw at these folks in a very short amount of time, and a real jump straight into the deep end.

Very nice we had today's very fine weather, and not this past Sunday's very fine storms!

I came across an article listing 45 small towns in Wyoming that tourists could consider visiting for selfie and other purposes. I'm not sure what "selfie and other purposes" might be, but then I am way behind most folks when it concerns phones, apps, various social media, and even certain undelightful vegetables such as kale and rutabaga. At any rate, doubtless the Compleat Rocky Mountain O' Fester will want to devise an itinerary that takes in all 45 towns, and even Laramie.

However, recognizing that not everyone will have that much time to visit all 45--Wyoming is a pretty big place, stretching from one horizon to the other, after all--I have culled the list for a more select, manageable group of "must see" small Wyoming towns within striking distance of Laramie.

The list: Buford (official population of 1), Tie Siding (good for buying firecrackers and mailing letters), Centennial (regularly cited as having one of the finest, most effective, and most modernized police force in the nation, plus it's fun to go there and remind the folks who live there that Centennial rhymes with millennial), Hanna (very popular with Chinese visitors who like the very low coal prices there and the limitless real estate investment opportunities), Medicine Bow (can you say "The Virgininian"? and don't forget about the log cabin nearby where the logs are all dinosaur bones), and, finally, Bosler. Bosler sunsetted a long time ago and has never looked back. There is no adjective or set of adjectives adequate to describe Bosler, but until you've been there, you've never been there.

So there you have it--all you need to know for how to kill some time after your runs at the Rocky Mountain O' Festival, 2018 style.

C • Coming through Laramie 3

Some mapping followed by control hanging for a class tomorrow.

Today finished up a trio of pretty wet days. Laramie is green and rain swept clean and in no drought danger for at least a week or a week and a half. Ran at the end of the day, by which time sun had finally reappeared. But the highlight of the day was no doubt when I biked over to West Laramie and stayed dry, and then got caught out on the way home by an all encompassing downpour. At least ice wasn't involved. Got soaked and by the end I was rain swept clean as well. Recovered by listening to various Styx songs played backwards.

Saw that during yesterday's storm, hail of up to tennis ball size was reported at Buford on I-80. That's large. That's large enough to dent a car roof. That's large enough to do worse than that. That's even large enough to take pictures of and post online, for the Facebookies.

Ran a first version of the Blue course for the East Pelican day of the Rocky Mountain O' Fest. As currently set, it's a pretty rainy course and competitors may wish to have along polypro (supertroja) and umbrellas. But maybe some aspects of the course will change (this was just Neil's first stab at the course, on paper, and before any visits in the field.)

The course was in two loops, and while I ran well physically, my map reading was pretty sloppy in several places on the first loop. It may have been I was thinking about how the legs looked from a course setting perspective and how the control locations looked, rather than simply concentrating on running the course. Of course there were no streamers yet.

Looks like we're now 2 for 2 up in the National Forest. That is, 2 years, and a shooting each year. Some kind of a shooting incident between a sheriff's deputy and some unnamed individual took place off the road bordering East Pelican Bay on Saturday. The individual was reportedly badly wounded.