Training Archive: SwampfoxIn the 7 days ending 2008-02-23:
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| S | M | T | W | H | F | S | |||||||
Saturday Feb 23 | ||
| Event: Western States + Intercollegiate Championships | ||
| Orienteering race 1:40:00 [4] | |
| Tucson Day 1. After last weekend's outing in Texas, I was questioning my decision to run Blue this weekend, but as it turned out, the terrain and running was as fun as I had hoped and thought it would be. No mistakes, just needed some more speed in the legs.
The terrain had a lot similar in character to some of our Laramie areas. This was totally spur/gully with outstanding visibility due to the open nature of the terrain, which is a good deal similar to some of our spur/gully areas at home, also with outstanding visibility. But for visual differences: there was no water anywhere, no conifers (or any real forest to speak of, just some loose scattered oaks), and no mappable stone. And the actual running felt quite different too, with a need to keep vigilant against the ever ready catclaw, and a good deal of off-sized, loose rocks underfoot. The grass was a little higher and clumpier too. Overall, really fun orienteering and a great job by Tucson. Oh, and I should mention the weather was super nice too! What a great break from winter! | ||
Blue 1 - Splits | ||
Thursday Feb 21 | ||
| run 59:00 [3] | |
| Trail run in Guadalupe NP at dusk; much cooler here than down in Big Bend. Highlight of the run was right at the turn, spotting something that looked very much like the seldom seen sub-species of the Lympia Gnateater; the Guadalupe Mountains mark the extreme northern extent of its winter range. So fine!
No snow anywhere. Wonder where winter could have gone? | ||
Wednesday Feb 20 | ||
| run 1:40:00 [3] | |
| Nice run at the end of the day in the Chisos Mountains. Fairly rocky footing with multitudes of waterbars. Not exactly the little up little down sort of trail. And like summer in Laramie, only wamer! | ||
Tuesday Feb 19 | ||
| Note | |
| Travel all day from Austin--which is my kind of town--to Big Bend. Texas is big.
But before taking off, a neat incident. Miss Bee and I had gone down to the riverfront and we were getting ready to take a picture at the SRV statue when a runner, a middle aged man in fairly average middle aged condition stopped and asked if we would like him to take a picture of us together. We said yes, and he said I'll tell you a little story while we're doing this. And he proceeded to tell us that back in 1980 he and his wife were living in a little house in south Austin, and were living in the front part and leasing out an apartment in the back, and their first tenants were a young Stevie Ray Vaughn and his wife Lenny. He said that was back before anyone knew who Stevie was and of course they had no idea who he was, just some tenant. He also said he was a very shy person, had very little to say, but that he did ask if it was ok to practice in the apartment, which he was allowed to do as long as it didn't get too loud. So the fellow said he'd hear Stevie back there plinking away at his guitar all the time. True story? Well, it sounded completely credible as the runner talked to us, and not just some tale being foisted off on the touristos at the statue. But who knows. I thought it was beyond cool, at any rate! | ||
| C • Pilgrimage 7 | ||
Monday Feb 18 | ||
| run 1:42:00 [3] | |
| Ran some trails in Bastrop State Park, a pleasant enough outing. I saw some orienteers leaving the park as I was coming in, and while I was running, I was wondering what the orienteering there would be like. An awful lot of what I saw was pine forest with a pretty dense understory of what I'm guessing is some sort of invasive ornamental shrub, and that part of the forest would have been pretty tough going. There were also some more open parts of a scruffy sort of oak dominated forest with some scattered glades that would have been more runnable. Maybe other parts of the park were more like that.
But the highlight of the day was my visit to Austin, where I paid a visit to the SRV statue. Which proved to be much more difficult to find than I would have guessed. I google mapped it before getting there, and the address looked easy enough. In the end I walked around nearly an hour or more before finally spotting it--from the wrong side of the river after having been mis-directed there by friendly Texans. It turned out that an alarming 100% of all Texans I stopped and asked for directions were unable to give correct directions. It was almost like Jaywalk in real life! Bunch a BBQ eaters--what do you expect! ; ) The walk was well worth the effort, however. For one, I did persist and attain my goal of seeing the statue, and for another, the riverside area was plain abuzz with all kinds of runners, walkers, and onhanging dogs, making for great people watching. There was a fair bit of skin in plain view, and even one runner who by look and by form must have been a very, very good runner hailing from some highland region of Africa. Austin is obviously a very happening city and that's why I always say it's my kind of town. | ||
| C • So you're thinking of moving to Austin? 1 | ||
Sunday Feb 17 | ||
| Orienteering 1:20:00 [3] | |
| I woke up this morning with one side of my throat sore, but I didn't feel bad in any other way, and by the time I got out to the meet site it seemed like it was going to be OK to run, so I did. (By the early evening after running, I could hardly feel any sign of it left.)
Wasn't very efficient in getting through the forest, which tended a bit thicker and stringer than the forest we saw yesterday. It was more demanding woods running, and a lot of the time my running felt very clumpy and like I'm pretty de-trained for running through terrain, which is probably about the truth. In a couple spots the map, the terrain, and me were not in happy agreement, but in the end I found all the controls and came back home before the cows did. And not even one single far ant bite, so it was a highly successful day. One weird thing about the weekend was seeing hundred of other runners in the woods, and yet not even one other runner that I could be sure was on my course. There were tons and tons of kids, and relatively few adults, and only one applied mathematician (as far as I know.) Thanks to NTOA for all the work that made a nice weekend of Texas orienteering possible! | ||
| C • coincidence? 6 | ||