Training Log Archive: Swampfox

Ran up Medicine Bow Peak, down to Dipper Lake, around Dipper Lake, and then angled back towards parking, incurring a large climb through a beetle ravaged fir forest. Of course I realized I was going to have to do the climb once I made the decision to drop down to the lake. Crossed several rock glaciers of large quartzite stones on the way back and tried to avoid the ones that looked like they could be friable.

At no point did I feel particularly strong, but then there was a lot of up, and it was all pretty high. And on the trail, whether going up or down, you have to be vigilant the entire time as the thing is about as rocky as it gets. It would be easy to take a bad fall if your attention wandered.

But utterly beautiful, and still fun to do once in a while.

Met several groups of pleasant hikers and a surprising number of (accompanied) dogs.

Test ran Rocky Mountain Goat course, and replaced several missing streamers.

I also took another look at a control I had been wishy-washy on when I was setting the course. It wasn't the greatest location--on a cliff in a rocky area that was difficult to map, and with scattered aspen that reduced visibility in the area. But at the time I decided it would work well enough and so I hung the ribbon for the control where I had planned to. Today I ran to the area, went to a small piece of rock also mapped as a cliff and right by the control feature, and of course didn't spot the ribbon, not until I turned around and looked at the base of the correct cliff, partially obscured by low growing aspen, and it made me re-think the control I ended up basically asking myself: "What am I doing here, why not just forget about this location and move it instead to something that is nearby and 100% fine?" Once I asked myself that, then it was easy for me to see I needed to discard the present control site and just pick something else nearby--it would be the exact same leg. And so I did. I guess part of being human is that sometimes it can be hard to let go of a preconceived idea or conclusion or whatever.

Ran trails at Happy Jack, including a detour to check out the Beehive (a wall of granite used by climbers). 2 blades for wind turbines were on the way down the interstate as I was headed up; these are the first wind turbine parts I've seen on the road locally in quite a while.

It's late summer now. Gentians in bloom are the reliable indicator.

Test ran the One Cowboy Relay course. Made one egregious error but am now re-phrasing: "only" made one egregious error--since that has been about par for the course lately.

Looks like a pretty fun course, and I hope those who will be there will enjoy it!

C • egregious 6

Ran trails; yielded the trail at one point to a large bull moose with antlers still in velvet (and therefore still growing.) To be fair, it was there first and so had the right of way. And I don't mind. I always yield to mountain bikers, as long as I see or hear them first. They invariably thank me, and I'm never in that big a hurry. And if I was? I could just run off-trail, right?

Eclipse update: WPR* is reporting very heavy traffic heading north on I-25, including a large backup at the Colorado border, where drivers are jumping out of their cars to take selfies by the "Welcome to Wyoming" sign and saying things like: "Wow! Who knew there was a whole another state up here!!"

Then there is another snarl a few miles north of that, at the Terry Bison Ranch, where tourists are jumping out of their cars to take selfies of themselves with buffalo in the background and saying things like: "Wow! They've even got buffalo up here!!"

* Yes, for J-J, that is indeed Western Poultry Recyclers, which has, among other slogans, this one: "Why eat hamburgers when you can recycle poultry?"

C • Selfies at WY border 2

I considered several options for experiencing the eclipse, 3 involving running/climbing up various peaks/summits. I was concerned about possible crowds with 2 of those options, while with the third I wasn't sure I would be able to get to the top unaided.

In the end, I settled on a 4th option which I was reasonably confident nobody else in the world would be doing: leave from home about 90 minutes in advance of the eclipse, and pedal north and experience the eclipse somewhere in the general vicinity of the always alluring Bosler, WY.

As it happened, the (maximum) eclipse took place while I was still about 1 1/4 miles from Bosler. Under typical conditions I would have made it to Bosler in time easily and gone some distance further, but today there was a brisk, steady headwind the whole way, and I chose to keep to a moderate effort rather than try to push, as I had a harder workout planned for the afternoon.

It got about as dark as dusk, but no darker.

To my surprise, I started seeing parked cars of eclipse viewers already a mile outside of town. This was with still an hour or so to go before totality, so any of these people could have driven further up 287, taken the turn towards the Shirley Basin and Casper, and probably have easily made it to the region of totality in time; traffic was light. But maybe they didn't know they weren't far enough north (these vehicles were mostly plated from Colorado)? Or maybe they didn't care.

People were having fun and celebrating(?) in various ways. One group was blowing bubbles. Most were picnicking and sitting in chairs. As for another, well, I never expected to see folks dancing in the nude by the side of a highway in Wyoming--and they weren't all that attractive!

My favorite group, though, was the last group I saw before the eclipse. As I went by, I could hear music. It was "Are You Experienced?"

I could tell the headwind had died away as I went up the last hill into Bosler--maybe the obscuring of the sun had robbed the wind of its energy.

Bosler was exactly the same as I remembered it from my last visit, except for another abandoned house having burned down.

I went a little further, and then turned around and headed home. By then, the wind--now a tailwind--was returning, and it was an easy and quick ride back, about 75 minutes or whatever it was.

Ran intervals in the late afternoon. As I was warming up, my legs didn't feel all that energetic, no doubt sapped to some degree by the ride up to Bosler. I thought about doing intervals another day, and then I thought about doing an abbreviated workout instead.

In the end, I did exactly the workout I had planned; as was so often the case, the hard part was not doing the workout, but simply getting started.