Training Log Archive: Swampfox

Temps well up into the 40s in town despite being mostly overcast, and the wind wasn't even up to "decent breeze" standards, so I planned a short ski followed by something better.

Something better in this case being an O' run out at Twin Boulders, 11.3 kms, lots of looping running along the course looking for the areas with thinnest snow covering or (sometimes) bare ground. Don't remember any places where running went down into the slog setting, but perhaps that's selective memory. Nice to get out, and if the sun had been shining, it would have been brilliant.

Saw one small moose, and I think it saw me, too.

C • Visitor 6

Skied and ran. Sunny with some 40 mph breeze.

Ski intervals were up today, and ski intervals went down today.

First day this year it felt more like a "normal" winter day--high of 13F. That's not normal compared to the average high of 33F for this time of January, but usually by now we've had a handful of chillier days, whereas this was the first one since maybe early December.

Skis were a little slow because of the (warmer) wax on them vs. the temps, but so what. You just deal with it.

Skied and ran. Light flurries at times during the day; didn't add up to anything.

Skied and ran. Really nice out--sunny with no wind. Lots of folks were out at Happy Jack, doing everything imaginable and even more.

C • Stampede 2

Sometimes you have one idea of how things will go, and it turns out you could not have been more wrong.

To wit, today I went skiing, and that went as I planned. I was out for 2 hours, enjoyed some new snow, and finished up a little after dark.

Then I got ready to drive home, and that did not go at all as planned. I was at the stop sign right before the on ramp of I-80 by the Summit Visitors Center a few minutes before 6 o-clock, and so were a a whole lot of other cars in trucks. In fact, the west bound lane of I-80 was filled with bumper-to-bumper traffic as far as the eye could see in either direction. And there were cars pulled off to the side all over the place on the roads around the Visitors Center, and on the on-ramp, and the parking lots were stuffed. And absolutely none of it was moving.

As far as alternatives to the gulch down to Laramie, the detours are all pretty long around. So I decided to join the crowd and wait it out. Maybe a wreck (the warning sign on the interstate read "crash ahead" would be cleared shortly. Maybe it was already cleared and traffic just hadn't been able to get rolling yet.

An hour and twenty minutes later, I was on the interstate. Progress! Though in this case progress meant literally having just leaving the on-ramp for the first bit of physical interstate pavement.

After that, I lost track of movement. Every so often traffic would roll ahead for a few car lengths or maybe more, and then it would stop for a while. Since it was dark, it was hard to see exactly where I was as we slowly creeped along, and all the tail lights and brake lights made it even harder to see what might be going on up ahead. One thing for sure--the interstate was about like a skating rink with ice.

After a long while had gone by and it felt like we must have gotten well down into the canyon just based on how much time had gone by, I finally was able to look off to the side and spot something I recognized out in the darkness--some angled barbed wire fence. That meant I was right on top of the cattle culvert that went under the interstate--the same one we used in the US Long-O Champs several whale eras ago. Which also meant I had only traveled a few hundred meters from the end of the on-ramp.

Eventually traffic started moving with some greater amount of consistency, at maybe about 4 mph. Which was really fine with me. At least we were moving, and the last thing I wanted with those iced over conditions was having some of the traffic moving at a much different and faster speed than everyone else. That greatly increases the chances of wrecks.

By the time I got home, it was almost 10 o-clock, so four hours to cover 9 miles from the stop sign up top to town, and a couple more miles to my house. That's smokin'.

It made me think that must be about what it is like to drive home on I-70 at the end of the day on Sundays from the ski slopes to Denver; lucky bastards!

C • Cattle culvert 2

While I was skiing, something odd, yet somehow vaguely familiar happened. At first I couldn't put my finger on it. Finally, it dawned on me that it was snowing!

It didn't last long and it only yielded about 1/2 cm, if that. But still, pretty neat.

Tomorrow we are forecast to get some *big* snow, however. Keeping in mind that this season is being graded on a curve, and what now qualifies as big snow here would be about the same amount that would qualify as a big snow in Austin or Atlanta or Columbia or maybe even Mobile. So 1" or so would do it. Ski poles crossed.