Training Log Archive: Swampfox

I see the University of Massachusetts at Kansas City is playing #3 Kansas tonight. Normally I would give UMKC some odds (though not big odds) of upsetting the Jayhawks, but not tonight, because they are playing on the Kansas home court, where Kansas is all but unbeatable.

That's what you call poor scheduling. Quite often when teams tell their players they have scheduled them to play Kansas at Kansas, the players get in touch with legal assistance to begin the process of drawing up a will.

C • Amazing the things that you... 2

Temps never got out of the teens, but the wind most assuredly did, so Dec 6 gets the crown of Coldest Day of the Season So Far! Better enjoy it while it lasts, Dec 6, because it's going to be even colder tomorrow.

Went running anyway, because otherwise what kind of an example would I be setting for the soft, unmotivated, out of shape orienteering youth of today? (Naturally I am thinking of PG when I write this.)

Was pleased to see two school busses in the Tie City Parking lot, and extra pleased to see two school busses worth of ski youth huddled together for warmth in the same parking lot. Of course that is utterly futile behavior--there is no warmth whatsoever to be obtained in that wind blasted asphalted desolation on a cold winter's day.

C • Silly kids 6

Temps were forecast to hit the lower 30s today, but it was one of those days where the high for the day is achieved one second after midnight. From there, it was down, down, down.

When I went out to run, it was 19F in town (colder up top), enough colder than anything I've felt so far this season that it felt chilly. A full fledged Wyoming wind provided the so-sought-after cutting edge, delivering the unmistakable message that it is indeed now winter here. Inside the forest and with the protection thereby afforded from the full force of the wind, it wasn't bad and in fact felt refreshing compared to the 70s experienced in SC just a week and a half ago.

I noticed quite a few trees down that had not been down 2 weeks ago, a testimony to some windy days in between now and then.

After spending most of the day re-obtaining order over the accumulated disorder resulting from my absence, I headed out in the late afternoon to sample some trails up at Happy Jack. This time of year, here, "late afternoon" equals anything after 3 o-clock. And in reality, it would be almost more accurate to classify anything after 3 o-clock as the "too late afternoon". Anyway, I headed up when I felt I could.

I didn't know what to expect, and what I found was a pleasant surprise: a good 6-10" of snow cover in the forest, with most of the ground covered by the upper end of that range. There were ski tracks, bike tracks, snow show tracks, and even a small amount of terrain that had been rolled to pack the snow. But to my eye the skiing looked pretty marginal unless you really were impatient to get started, and had some classic skis that were beat up enough that you didn't care much about the bottoms. In contrast, the running was great! All the bike packed trails were perfect. And nice temps, too, in the mid 30's, enough to take some of the edge off the wind.

Ran until after dark. Saw 4 skiers, 6 snow bikers, and one set of footprints that looked suspiciously like a swampfox had been out, too.

Got back home in the early evening after a road trip to the hinterlands, the outlands, the southlands, the trafficlands, and then back. In the nighttime it was hard to see how much, if any, winter there was, and the bright glare of the stadium lights (Wyoming football was underway) didn't help, but here and there I thought I could make out small amounts of snow by driveways.

The main purpose of the trip was to continue my ongoing research in the contrast in what many people say they like versus what they really like. For my examinations I have been concentrating on turkey consumption. It is truly remarkable how many folks exult over the roasted turkey at Thanksgiving, saying over and over how much they love it as the main course, but even love more the leftovers, and love most of all the carcass and the wonderful things that can be done with it. And yet the *only* time these same people ever buy a whole turkey and roast is at Thanksgiving, even while turkeys are available year round in supermarkets everywhere. And yet we all know that in truth turkey meat is quite bland, only slightly tastier than, say, ordinary sand. One of these years the movement to replace Thanksgiving turkey with Thanksgiving pizza is going to take off in a big way, and, when it happens, there will be no looking back.

On my way out, I adopted a route so that it was convenient to stop off at Hawn St Park, which remains one of my favorite O' venues. It's always fun to run at Hawn, and it would be a lot of fun to go back there for a big national event. As it is, it's a lot of fun (for me, at least) to stop there and even just run trails. If I had to live in Missouri, I would try to make it work so I could live close enough to the park so I could pop out the door and be in the park in a few minutes.

On the way back, I didn't stop at Hawn again, but I did detour through Lawrence, KS, and spent a very pleasant evening with maprunner and spike. We had pizza--reminding me again of how Thanksgiving is going to change in the not too distant future--and finished off with some chocolate chip cookies, which I had transported all the way from the trafficlands (read: northern Virginia) for that express purpose.

In between, I spent a few days with kissy and the always ferocious Black Beast. That was fun, and in a way a visit back to the past, as she lives in a townhouse identical to the townhouse a block or so away where Don and Marit Davis used to live. While I was there we visited the Bull Run battlefield and while I might not have run like a bull, I did have a fun time there running like a swampfox, running through some parts of the park I hadn't been in before. (I believe QOC still has access to a portion of the park, and I noted with some irony as I ran through that quadrant of the park that it appeared to be the case that of all the corners of the park, this part had the worst forest with other parts had lovely forest that were splendidly wide open; but all the better to develop proper toughness, one might suppose!)

I don't remember whether it was for dinner that day or another, but kissy made some incredible vegetarian steak that I would have insisted had to be the real thing, had I not known otherwise. It was *amazing*!!! Who would have believed such a thing was possible? And to think she bought it at a nearby 7-11....

Fun trip.