Training Log Archive: Swampfox

Frost was on house roofs again this morning, but no ground frost, thankfully.

Totally blue sky today from start to finish. At last--a day nice enough to go out mapping! It was beginning to look as if I might not map a single rocky dot knoll nor even one three line marsh this year, but now those fears have been put to rest, and I can put away the map board for another year.

Ran trails at the end of the day at a super easy pace where the goal was to lower my heart rate while I was running. That's not easy, but if you don't practice you have no right to expectation of success.

C • Practice 2

Biking earlier in the day followed by cruise intervals later, with dirt roads for a suitable running surface.

A repeat of yesterday.

Some biking and some easy running. My legs are still a bit tired from the weekend and deserved a bit more rest.

Pulled the last of the controls from the weekend out of the woods.

Only one casualty from the weekend that I know of: a second stud popped out of the O' shoes I use for training. Some people might take that as a sign of shoddy construction unless I add that I have been using these shoes--OROC 340s--for several years now for practically all my O' training. That is a lot of hours, and a lot of kilometers, and it is incredible to me how well these shoes have held up for me. They were comfortable straight out of the box on day 1, and have never given me any trouble. They've easily been the best O' shoes for training I've ever used--and I've used a lot of different shoes.

Day 3 of the training camp, with today running a Daze course from 2014 on the east side of Pelican Bay. Very fun course, at the short end of the Red spectrum, with very varied terrain and difficulty. A fun way to end the weekend. Nice for me to see that my legs were handling things well. 2 of my main gauges of fitness is how well I'm able to run uphill (does the running bog down or not?) and how quickly I recover after cresting a climb. Both measures were satisfactory. Tired legs by the time I was done and home, but if my legs hadn't felt anything at all from three days of running courses, then I wasn't running hard enough.

Coming home, there was a huge, linear cloud stretching SW to NE across the sky to the west. At first I wondered if it could be a smoke plume from the Beaver Creek Fire, but I realized the cloud wasn't really the right color, it was too big, and it was too high. Later in the day I did some easy biking, and kept on staring at the cloud. Gradually I could see that it was in fact a smoke plume. It's been quite interesting to see (from a distance) how this fire has gone on and behaved. Most of the days last week there was no sign whatsoever it was still burning. And then, when the weather and winds are right--like yesterday--it roars back to life and can send up an enormous plume of smoke that stretches from one horizon to the other. It's been burning now for 2 1/2 months; the Forest Service has just fought it to preserve structures and whenever and wherever it emerges from forest and meets sage and/or prairie, stating that it is too dangerous to try to fight inside the forest (mainly because of the chance of dead pine trees dropping on fire fighters, I think) and that it would be beneficial for the beetle kill affected forest to be burned anyway. Their expectation all along is that it would continue to burn until about mid-October, and put out by falling snows around that time frame, and it would appear they know very well what they are talking about.

Day 2 of the training camp, with today's training featuring a re-run of a Chase course from some years back at Pelican Bay (west side). The road to this part of Pelican Bay had been gated off for the previous 3 summers, and it's nice that it at last open again with easy access to that side of Pelican Bay.

My Day 2 began much earlier than planned. I went to bed at my usual time, and, at some point, started imagining crowd noises in the distance--not much of a dream. At some point I actually woke up at some noise, and it did seem like I could hear something off in the distance, a crowd-like noise that would at long intervals swell up, last a few seconds, and then totally disappear in the wind. Or was it just the wind? The wind can really roar so that seemed likely. And while there had been a football game, and a night game at that, with a start time of 8;30, I can almost never hear anything from my home from the games except for the cannon that is fired whenever Wyoming scores. Besides, it was 1:30 in the morning.

But then I heard the crowd noise all over again, and this time it was pretty distinct. What in the world??? Something had to be going on, so I got up and turned on the radio, and turned to the station that broadcasts Wyoming football games. Nothing but some very late night program was on. Then I checked the internet for game scores, and saw that--amazingly enough--the Wyoming-Northern Illinois game was underway. What had happened was there had been a very long lightning delay, and then the game stretched on for 4 1/2 hrs or some such thing, and went into triple overtime. It didn't end until 2:35 am, which one can only imagine must make it one of the later ending games ever. Or maybe it happens regularly? At least I've never heard of a game that lasts that long.

Even with a shortened night of sleep, I felt pretty good running, but then I always enjoy running at Pelican Bay. I didn't see anything of note while I was running (others saw moose and turkey), but while picking up controls afterwards I did see the first attack badger I've seen in a few years. By the time I noticed it I was already pretty close--really even a bit too close for comfort, but it seemed to be ignoring me rather than going into vicious attack badger mode. It turned out that was only because it hadn't heard me coming up. Once it became aware of me, it turned around to face me, flattened out, and started hissing horribly while it was deciding (I presume) which body part it would destroy first. Or maybe it was deterred by the map case I was holding out as a shield. Or perhaps it recognized I was not a ground squirrel and it took pity on me. At any rate, it started slinking off and I held up my fist in victory and ran off. I will confess I looked back several times to make sure the badger wasn't following me.