Training Log Archive: Swampfox

My legs were already starting to tingle on the way to #2, and things went downhill from there quickly, with full blown cramping for most of the course. So it goes!

I thought I had spent enough time traveling out with not any really long days in the car, but it still looks like for a trip like this I need 3 days minimum at the end of the trip (at the destination) to give my legs whatever it is they need to "settle" back in.

There are so many odd things about this, but maybe the oddest is that over all these years I've never once had this problem on the return trip home--I've always been able to step right out of the car at home and do any kind of running I wanted without the least sign of a problem.

It was still neat to go out into what was a brand new terrain type for me, and to get to take a tour around in it with a map.

C • Elevation 8

Red - Long - Splits

Red Rock inspection day.

Yesterday when I started running down a steep slope, unfortunately my upper legs started cramping. I didn't have anything worse than some mild tingles today when going down slopes, but then I was taking it easy on purpose. I'll have to be careful on any descents tomorrow and hope for the best.

Coconino Experiment day.

C • Coconino 3

Milk Ranch Trail day.

Fox Run day.

First stop on the trip was Fox Run. I had not been there since sometime back in the 90s, and my memories were that while the pine forest there was wonderfully open with a rich amount of finer contour detail, the contours on the map back then were really, really rough, and since it's almost just a contours type of map with almost no other features besides the contours, it didn't make for a great orienteering experience.

I knew that the club had updated the map a few years back, but when I had glanced at online images of the map, it didn't really look all that much different from the older version, and I was under the impression that the contours had come from a city DEM rather than actual lidar data. However, I found out from Doug Berling that the newer version of the map was in fact lidar based, which made me go back and look at the map again, more carefully, and I could see it was more improved than I had realized, but still it didn't show very much contour detail, and nothing at all like my very old memories from running through the forest there. Maybe the memories were just off?

Since I was going to be driving right by Fox Run on my way out to the desert I decided to make a stop there, and so one night a couple days before I was leaving I downloaded the lidar covering Fox Run and ran it through OCAD. When it was done, I was surprised by how dense the contours were, but it was late enough and I was tired enough that I just took some quick glances but didn't think about why it might look the way it did.

Then, on the night before I was leaving and as I was packing, I printed out the unimproved lidar map to take along with me. The whole thing should have easily fit on a single letter sized piece of paper at 1:15000, and yet when the print box opened up a single page didn't come close to covering the whole area. And then when I looked at the grid numbers showing distances, they didn't make sense--it was looking like the map covered about 9 km2 when it should have been about 1 km2. Once again, I was doing this when I was late and tired, and while I could see something was wrong, I just wanted to get finished with everything I had to do and get to bed. So I printed the map "as is" and figured as long as I had the contours, that would be good enough for a run through the park just to look it over again.

So the next day I drove on down, stopped off at the park, and got started running through the forest--which was every bit as wonderful as I remembered, with all the intricate spur/gully contour detail I remembered as well.

Fairly early in the run, it finally clicked in my mind what had been wrong, now guessing that the lidar had been in feet and that OCAD had taken that as meters. Which I later saw was correct, and that what I had intended to be 1m contours were actually 1' contours!

Even though it's a small area--about 1km2--the very open pine forest (with virtually nothing on the ground) and the rich spur/gully contour detail make it a truly great venue. That is, as long as the contour detail shows up on the map. Here, since the forest is so open and since there's so little on the ground that even the smallest ripples in the land are easy to pick out, and since it is that level of contour detail which makes the area standout, I think a much smaller contour interval is fully justified; I would go down to at least 3m and maybe a full set of 1.5m form lines, and see how that works. Maybe even go down all the way to 1m contours, because that really brings out and sharpens the detail usefully. It's a very special area that needs some specialization in the mapping, and 5m contours aren't even remotely close in capturing what is there.

Tisdags traning: intervals plus Kill Hills. Didn't think I was getting out too late for the workout at 3:30, but in fact I didn't finish the last hill climb until it was just about dark. Plus it was so nice earlier in the day when the sun was higher up in the sky. But now it's the time of the year when even if it's mild out at noon, by 3 o-clock or so at 8200', things cool off very rapidly as soon as the sun gets near the horizon.

Biked with Tyler in the late morning south of town, which is when the winds were up. But it was mild enough that I didn't mind the wind at all.

Ran a variety of trails in the early afternoon at Happy Jack, and didn't see anyone at all. There were a mix of fresh tire tracks in the snow on some of the trails--both mountain bikes and fat tire bikes. Though really the amount of snow on the ground fat tire bikes were substantial overkill.

I got home well in time for an early dinner so I could be fully prepped for the Wyoming basketball season opener.

C • Cuse or Cowboys? 2