Training Log Archive: Swampfox

It wasn't bone chilling cold ambient temperatures today, but the winds were kind of screwed up--as in screwed up to full stellar death mode. Once the wind chill was figured in, it was pretty chill.

At one point while I was running at the far east end of the Brown's Landing area, and traveling perpendicular to the wind just below the ridge top there, I had to stop three different times to brace myself against the wind. Otherwise there was real risk the wind was going to knock me off my feet, and who knows where I would have ended up if I had gone over the crest of the ridge. There was no gallery of spectators to catch me, and I do know it would not have been fun. Snow was being driven in horizontal sheets that stung any bare flesh it could find. I had to protect my face with one hand.

Definitely winter, definitely more a Nico Evans type of day than a swampfox type of day. To a casual observer, if Nico and I were standing side by side, we might be mistaken for identical twins. We're both about 5' 9", and we both live in Laramie. We both often wear brown and gold. See?

But a more veteran observer might note some differences as well. Like Nico is the starting running back for Wyoming, and weighs (no kidding) 211 pounds, while swampfox isn't the starting anything and is a comparative light weight--at about 75 pounds less. Mere hurricane force winds wouldn't begin to bother Nico. It would take something more like an F3 tornado, at least.

I'm wondering how fast I could move if I weighed 211 pounds. It's not like I am fast to begin with. Maybe I couldn't move at all. At least not uphill--which would be a real disadvantage in orienteering.

Once I got fully immersed in the winter wind conditions, and could see how bad it was, then I thought "what the hell, I might as well enjoy it." I ran for a bit over 2 hours, which was long enough to hum the Alan Parsons Project "Pyramid" album in its entirety 3 times with room to spare. Love it.

Mix of snow and grapple much of the day resulted in a new accumulation of about 3" of "mixture" at Happy Jack. At the football game, the announcers opined about whether it was snow, grapple, or both, falling during the game, and started down the road of making some jokes about wrestling. And they definitely said "grapple". Loved it.

I ran up top in the new stuff, by which time numerous bikers and feeters had already trashed the stash of new, and there were even some venturesome rock skier types that had been out. It was overcast and breezy/windy just about all day long, with the merest interludes of sun several times. Biking (road) was chilly, or at least so it seemed to me.

Ran longish and well past dark--and it was dark, with an overcast sky and hardly the least little bit of starlight.

I biked before running, and I got chilly enough that when I got back home, the first thing I did was make some hot tea. I was still feeling chilled as I drove up to up, but it didn't take too long before I felt like I was overdressed. It was quite windy out, and that was probably what took the most toll on heat while I was biking.

Since I was feeling chilled, I was surprised to see that nearly all the snow that had been left had melted during the day, and the trails were soft and damp, and nowhere hard and frozen. It's also possible that it had stayed colder in the valley during the day and had been milder up top.

DIdn't see anyone or anything, unless you counted two hikers of retired age. But they were staring at their phones while hiking, and didn't pay any attention to me as I passed them, so I judged they didn't count. Lucky for them I wasn't a ravenous grizzly bear stocking up for hibernation.

O' at Pelican Bay (west part), 10.6 kms, mix of sun alternating with some nice grapple and occasional bits of snow, temps in the 40s with a good deal of wind--which made it nice to be in the forest rather than out on the open prairie. The weather reminded me very much of Day 1 at the last US Championships that were at Telemark, so much so that occasionally while I was running I went back in time in my thoughts and reminisced about that race. I was one miss from a pretty decent race that day (and did win the next day, but the damage had already been done) and the miss itself involved not reading the map carefully enough on what should have been a pretty routine advance going right into the control area. Maybe the most difficult element of all in orienteering is the combination of focus--so easy to let your mind wander on--paired with focusing on the right thing at the right time.

And my focus was not so great during training today! It's harder to keep focused in areas where you have some amount of familiarity, or at least so it seems to me.

I crunched through lots of sage and bitterbrush and, as usual, made no visible impression on those wiry little bushes whatsoever. But I did find three cans while I was running, so the day still goes down as a win.

Made it home just in time to grab a quick dinner before heading out to see the Cowboy basketball team open the season with an exhibition game.

C • Basketball 2

C • Telemark 6

Ran trails at Happy Jack, and did some work to prepare for the coming Dark Times (the part of the year when we make the stupid shift from DST)--meaning more than half the running was after dark, with no light other than furnished by the stars. There were only little tiny bits of snow left here and there, so no help from the snow, making it really properly dark. There were no goblins out and about, unless you count me. But I don't count myself as a goblin, nor do I think a good case for that could be made. There was enough wind and it was cool/cold enough that light gloves were really not quite enough for good comfort.

Looking at the latest Bottom 25 rankings, when has it ever happened before in history of football that the gods have cracked open the earth to reveal a new mighty triumvirate of the unimaginable power evoked by Wyoming, Nebraska, and CSU, in that ordering, with not even the merest whisper of Kansas? It is surely the end times.

Winter returned. Light snow during the day. Ran across mountains and ate lizards (Granite Planite), total of 9.3 kms of running/eating. Didn't see any moose. Except for one standing out in the Plains of Despair. So saw one.

I headed over to Chimney Park, for a long tour of the area. The main objective was to take a look at some of the area affected by the Badger Creek Fire (this past June), which I did. As always, it is fascinating to see how varying the burn was--many islands of forest within the burn area completely untouched, much that was mostly ground level burning, and on up to areas where all that is left are a few cindered logs out on the ground, and with the ground itself otherwise completely bare.

The secondary objective was to pick up whatever cans I might come across, and so now there are a dozen or so fewer cans in the forest offset by a dozen or so more cans residing in my garage.

The third objective was to set a new world (personal) moose sighting record. And while the odds were long that you're going to set a new record on any given foray, today the moose gods were smiling on me, because I shattered the old record easily, with 6 moose spotted. By the time I got home, there were already phone messages left by numerous news agencies who wanted to get all the details and share the excitement. Though nothing from the NY Times. I think the Times remains heavily engaged in the fight for truth and justice. Either that or else they are in a funk about the Red Sox winning the World Series. "Life is so unfair! Why can't the Yankees just win every year?!", they are thinking. Probably they're in a funk.

C • baseball 28