Training Log Archive: Swampfox

Saw 2 virginal white, miniature crocus blooming, the first I have seen this year anywhere. Spotting them was helped by the fact they popped up in my yard and not somewhere else.

Also, caught sight of my shadow while I was skiing in some very, very slow snow. Uh-oh! Could be 8 more weeks of winter!

C • 8 weeks of winter 2

Saw the first robin of the year, as it was sipping some water from a street puddle. With everything still covered in snow, there probably isn't much for it to eat yet, except for over at McDonald's, where there are always a few stray french fries on the ground.

Conditions for skiing had transitioned to something decidedly more spring-like. Ran some after skiing, and the trail I was on was still fairly soft--my shoes were sinking in from about 1/2" to 2" with every step, which makes for tough going. It wouldn't seem like 1/2" of give would matter so much, but in fact it does.

As I was stepping on the snow at the trail head with my skis, Tyler was coming down the trail, finishing up. He had done one circuit of the trails and that was going to be it, but when he saw me, he decided to keep his skis on and head out with me. He apologized in advance that he was going to have to go slow because he was a bit tired and had eaten practically nothing all day--just a couple of cookies, an apple scruff, and three Cheerios. I complimented him on his restraint with the Cheerios. But it was kind of a ridiculous apology because a) I don't mind taking it easy skiing with someone else and b) Tyler is a much, much better skier than me anyway, and I'm giving up many years to him. I think he finished in the top 60s or 70s at the Birkie this year, off a pretty subdued base. He could ski faster than me if he were skiing backwards and with only one broken pole.

We ended up doing 2 loops, for something over 2 hrs. Conditions were really good, and for a change my skis were pretty good, too. Funny to have snow so much better now, so late, than compared to what we had at any point in December, but so it can go.

I tacked on some running on one of the snow bike trails after that, and listened to the Embedded Podcast on the way home.

Very nice ski conditions this afternoon--sunny, below freezing, snow was dry and coldish (colder than the air temp, at any rate), and the trails were well groomed. Even late in the afternoon there was plenty of untouched corduroy. Skied for 2+ hrs, then did a short run. There is still very little packed on any of the snow bike trails since the last storms, and so really too deep to run in.

Skied for a bit over 2 hrs and followed that with a short run on snow trails. Snow was falling the whole time with about 2" of new snow at the beginning. Conditions were vastly improved over yesterday, partially because it had gotten cold enough over night to firm up the snow from the recent big dump, and partially because the grooming pass today got things mostly well leveled out.

Ran into Mark as I was looping through the Meadow as he was headed out, and ended up skiing about an hour with him of the middle of the time I was out.

No bikers (no bike tracks) out today, a little surprising. But maybe there wasn't enough packed trail for them, and word about that was out.

Got out on skis for the first time in a while. Trails had been rolled and some had been groomed on top of that, but things were very bumpy, somewhat rutted, and varying between warm and soft and cooler and getting crusty. Typical for right after a big spring snow, at least around here. Another grooming pass tomorrow should make things better.

I wasn't keen about any of the downhills, given the conditions. Didn't ski long, and switched over to running, and ran mostly in the prints left behind by snow shoers on some of the non-groomed trails. A lot of it was tough going, and it was fun. I was overdressed with a long sleeve t-shirt under a jacket--a short sleeve t-shirt would have been perfect. Or what I had on would have been perfect had there been some wind, but there wasn't.

This week was spring break for both the college and local schools, so not many people were around.

Finally we had a decent snowstorm. In fact, by far and away the biggest of the season, both by depth and water content. It made for some very fine Yowsa!, and the streets were transformed to rivers when the sun came out.

Unfortunately, as sometimes happens with these larger spring type storms, there was relatively little wind and so the snow coverage became quite uniform over the landscape. That turned the valley and surrounds utterly white, but it also meant that running was more or less a no go, except for on streets. I ventured up top at the end of the day, hoping that ski trails had been groomed, but they hadn't, and the parking lot was still unmolested and very deep in snow. The Happy Jack highway had been only plowed out as narrowly as possible, with no shoulders exposed and very high banks of snow as the edge of the plowing, so running up there was not really an option--not a smart option, anyway, as the road surface itself was still under a thin layer of snow/ice, and fairly treacherous for both foot and vehicular traffic. And in the case of a runner vs vehicle collision, it's clear who the big loser would be.