Training Log Archive: Swampfox

Biked for a little over three hours. That was probably excessive, considering I only needed to go down to the Post Office (15 minutes, round trip). But I just kept....going. Along the way, I gathered up three empty Red Bull cans. If memory serves, Red Bull used to be Jeff Saeger's #1 favorite drink of all time, which seems odd to think about. I think I only ever tried the drink once, but the design of the original can was standout, and still is.

C • Red Bull 3

Already 68F out, so the warmest day of the year so far. It must be broiling down in the warmlands (Denver).

I have begun my preparations for the Scottish 6 Day. I expect my preparations will mostly consist of listening to Mark Knopfler and possibly some older Dire Straits stuff. Though I will devote no less than 14% of my preparation time to visualizing moving efficiently and unerringly (ha!) through bracken in search of a control on an indiscernible (in the bracken) feature.

Somewhat hazy again in the afternoon. However, today it was easy to identify what was going on: wind out of the south and southeast was blowing haze up from the Front Range. It's almost always hazy down there, especially when it's dry. Ran up top at the end of the day; a good bit of snow melted today.

Returned to Remarkable Bay and ran an 11.6 km course late in the day. Legs didn't feel fully fresh, probably at least in part because of biking I had done earlier in the afternoon. The orienteering went well. I had to stop twice to read the map more carefully as I was approaching controls--a consequence of eyes that are not improving with time.

It was quite a nice spring day out--mild and sunny. The area felt pretty dry to me for April, even though I suspect I was probably unconsciously drawing too much upon a comparison to last spring (which was the wettest I've seen here) rather than to an average spring. Even so, only one bay (Are You Experienced? Bay) has standing water in it, and most of the marshy areas in the little drainage valleys headed east were possible to cross without getting your shoes wet. Somehow it just "feels" like we are headed into a dry spell, even though "feel" in this context must be a highly unreliable way of predicting an oncoming drought or very wet period.

By early afternoon, the "partly cloudy" part of the day was completely dominating, and that was that for sun for the rest of the day.

When I went out biking, I checked the temps online, and it was supposedly 55F. So I set out with a short sleeve t-shirt and a very light jacket thinking I might be overdressed. After about 10 minutes, I returned and put on a long sleeved t-shirt instead, and a windbreaker. Even with that, it was a bit on the cool side riding. Some generous breeze and no sun combined for the effect.

Easy running up top on trails after that. Not much snow melt today.

Today had a funny look to it, compared to the reality: it *looked* like it could be a typical day in mid-August, with full sun, and quite a bit of haze in the sky--which usually denotes one or more big fires somewhere far off to the west. So looking outside, you expected it to be warm. And yet, actually it was cool, and normally when it's seasonally cool, the air will be crystal clear (or as clear as it gets these days.)

Maybe there are fires going on down in the southwest, though I haven't seen anything about that in the news.

My legs still felt draggy and sore from Saturday, so I did some easy trail running up top, and let it go at that.

Chilly day for April, just in the 30s, and much chillier than the past week. What was really pushing the chilly feeling, however, was some decent wind gusto that had travel advisories up on the interstate.

I had planned an easy day, which worked well because my legs were a little sore from yesterday. Ran up top on a mix of bare trail and hard, re-frozen snow pack.

After biking around town some, I headed out for the main effort for the day: an 11 km course at Remarkable Flats, which got an extra bump from some pretty decent amount of breeze. I made sure to include a control at Remarkable Boulder. The area was deserted, since the gates to the jeep road remain locked for now. I was easily the flashiest thing around--not because I was moving so fast, but because I had on a blue and yellow top and flo-jo pink tights--with the nearest competition coming from scattered groups of early blooming lavender pasqueflowers. Birds constituted the only wildlife that I saw, including one blue heron.