Training Log Archive: Swampfox

During the Rocky Mountain O' Festival, several people asked: "Why is it so hot here, we didn't think it was going to be so hot, is it always this hot?"

Well, yes it is. On average, Laramie will have about 2 days a year where it's 90F or more. That's why it feels so hot here.

But it will only get worse. In another 20-30 years, this area could experience as many as three 90F days a year. That could be enough to lead some people to consider air conditioning (particularly those with some penguin genes running in them) but for now that remains unnecessary.

After the O' Festival, I had a note from Niels LO with some nice words about the sage (which I have no control over) and also asking about one of the legs from the East Pelican day, wondering about several route choices shown below. I judges that the leftmost looked most attractive from several factors, and that the rightmost looked the least attractive.



But you never really know until you test them, and that's what I did this afternoon, together with Tyler. It was actually something of a double test--I printed the map at 1:15,000 as a test for the new eyeball I had installed several weeks back. The results:

Part A

1) 6:09
2) equivalent to 3) or slightly faster with an adjusted time (I had a bobble near the end of the leg)
3) 5:39
4) 5:09

Note that 4) offered the most full open yellow, and had no side slopes, and perhaps slightly less opportunity to get caught up in deadfall (though that can't be inferred from looking at the map.) Another way of saying it would be this route, from all that I can gather, was the least like the Latvian bush.

This was done at race pace or the best pace I could manage, and running route 4) back each time, also at race pace, with rest at each control.

Part B

No challenge at all for the new eye; I should have printed at 1:20,000 for a real test.

Quite a nice, warm, sunny fall day, and I was out for nearly 2 hours on my bike before running.

I saw a small smoke plume south of the border late in the day yesterday while running. Today there was a good column of smoke coming from the same area with every sign of being a developing forest fire.

No snow today, despite the presence of roller skiers on one of the streets in town.

C • Clarification 5

Did some digging masquerading as upper body work, moving many pounds of material and relatively little volume, which is the way it works. I found about two dozen quartz crystals, all of which were of very poor quality. Still achieved something, as the brown "V" I was working in and the adjoining brown dot are now both larger.

Ran trails afterwards, which are now liberally strewn with golden aspen leaves. First snow will be when???

With nothing more than an easy run planned, I figured I might as well pull the streamers from the water crossings on Day 6. Except that it turned out there were no streamers left to pull. I felt so deprived that I ran back to my truck, got streamers, rehung all the water crossings, ran back to my truck, and then ran back out and pulled the streamers, which was highly satisfying if not even a little exhilarating. Such a beautiful afternoon, and I wanted to enjoy it fully, so I kept on going until I had picked up a handful of aluminum cans, too.

While I was riding, a young dude popped out right in front of me from the front of a parked care I was alongside. He was darting straight across the street; I couldn't tell if he had checked for traffic but he certainly hadn't seen me. If he had come across even a tiny fraction of a second later I would have plowed into him. As it was I hit my brakes as hard as I could and just barely missed him, letting out an involuntary "Whoa!" towards him. That was not fun. It really wouldn't have been fun for him, because he would have taken the brunt of a collision, and wasn't wearing a helmet.

Later, now running up at Happy Jack with the sun low in the sky, I was approaching Brown's Landing and looked up ahead and saw 2 moose on the other side of the little creek: a cow and its calf. A few weeks back it had crossed my mind that I had seen a fair number of moose this summer, but not a single calf. Now I have. That was a lot more fun than the above mentioned bike thing.

Ran late in the day at Happy Jack, it was cool enough that I wore a fleece pullover. Had the dates and/or weather been shifted by just a couple of days, people might have been surprised to see how many leaves are golden and down on the ground--both in town and up top. But what would have been really interesting would have been to race in the fog that was blowing in from the south while I was running. Both Superfly and Twin Boulders would have been totally different animals in the fog, and it's easy to imagine results being *very* different--not everyone would cope well with such a dramatic loss of visibility as would have happened with fog.

Definitely Fall.

Intervals, 10 x 5 min, some headwind starting out, trailing off to still air by the time I was finishing up. Quite surprised that after what was a long week without all the rest I usually get, I was exceeding all the marks I usually reach and it wasn't even close--with each one, I had 10-15 seconds to spare, so it wasn't like I ran the first one especially fast and then faded.