Training Log Archive: Swampfox

Day 2 of the training weekend, sunny again with some nice breeze, and a bit warmer than yesterday. In fact, it tied the record high for the day in Laramie.

I went out after everyone else, and ran around parts of the course and ended up pulling the first 6 controls. I was going to pull #7 as well, but from across Diamond Bay I could see two different groups emerging from the woods form #7 and headed for #8, so I figured there was a chance someone could still be out there and headed for #7.

There was a funny and unusual wrinkle on the day. Neal Barlow had set the course and had hung streamers several weeks ago, and then had gotten in touch to ask me if I was planning to run his day, and, if not, would I check his streamers for him. I told him I was planning to run, but would be happy to check the streamers anyway, which I did. I did end up moving the streamer on #11, which was on a bit of rock rubble not far from the intended control feature--a boulder. The actual boulder was right at the minimum height or just under, and really wasn't the best boulder in the world. When I was looking at it, I was thinking if I would map it or not if I were doing it all over again, or maybe marking it with a small boulder field triangle. Anyway, I let Neal know I had moved the streamer and made a few other suggestions.

Then, on Wednesday before the weekend, I went out with controls for Neal, which he had asked me to stash at one of the controls. But I had done a hard workout the day before and was looking to do something easy, and so decided I would just go ahead and hang all the controls for Neal, which I did.

Neal came up on Friday to check all the controls (and was going to hang them if needed), and that evening he sent me email saying that the control and streamer had been missing, and that he had hung a new streamer there. I thought about that some, and, given the area, it seemed extremely unlikely anyone would have been up in that general area during the last 2 days, let alone being in position to see the control, let alone that they would have taken the control and streamer had they seen them. And that made me wonder if Neal had been in the right place, given he had hung the original streamer on the wrong piece of rock in the first place. It's a tricky area with lots of rock and lots of places where parallel mistakes are possible. And I wrote back, expressing the thought that with both streamer and control missing, it almost certainly wouldn't have been a curious animal at work, and also the thought that it seemed quite unlikely to me that a person might have taken the control considering where it was and that it had only been out for 2 days.

So on Saturday after Neal ran the Day 1 course, he came to me for a spare control, and he headed back out to #11. He came back later and said he still couldn't find the control I had put out, but had put the control out on the boulder that he had streamered. I asked him to describe the boulder, just out of curiosity, and he described the boulder as being a good boulder, solid, and chest high, and that it had also not been that far from where he had been able to drive to. Well, there was no way you would describe the boulder marked on the map as chest high--it was waist high at very best, and that as only if you were on the tallest side of the rock.

Once we got all the controls back from the day's training and I could leave, there was plenty of time left in the afternoon, so I decided to head over to Diamond Bay and walk out to #11 and see for myself what was going on.

Which I did. And when I reached #11, the control was there, and the streamer, and they were hanging just like I had left them, and as best I could remember, on the same stick in leaning against the boulder just like I had placed it. And then I spent some time walking around trying to find Neal's boulder. It sure wasn't anywhere near the actual boulder. After while I gave up and headed back. There weren't even any good places to guess where his boulder might be.

When I got back home, I wrote Neal and told him what I had done, and that the control I had put out and his original streamer were still there.

At the next morning's training, now at Diamond Bay, Neal came over when he saw me, and proposed that we go out together at the end of the day during control pickup, and try to get to the bottom of the #11 mystery, and that it would bug him for forever if we didn't figure out what was going on. Sounded fine to me, so once it was time to pull in the last controls, off we headed. We drove to the spot where Neal had parked the day before, and then I had him walk in front of me, re-tracing what he done the day before. And he went out exactly the way I would have chosen, and remarked about each of the features I would have used to note my progress. We got closer and closer to the "correct" location (the mapped boulder) until all we had to do was swing around one last rocky knoll and then walk past a small aspen thicket, and it was clear Neal was headed right for the boulder on the map.

Which he did. So there we were, Neal, me, boulder, control, and streamer.
And then Neal bent over to the control, and looked at the control number written on a folded over, cut down bit of index card (that's how all the LROC controls are marked/numbered), which had the old number scratched out and written over with the correct number--which he had done with the spare control I had given him. Proof that the original control and streamer had been taken (or at least in some way had disappeared) and that we were in fact looking at the replacement control.

As for the boulder size discrepancy, well, it had just looked bigger to Neal in the re-telling. And it hadn't been as close to our parking spot as he had described it, but he had just kind of thrown out an offhand distance to me without thinking it mattered within a hundred or two hundred meters or so.

At any rate, in the end, mystery solved.

Day 1 of training weekend--warm and sunny, with enough of a breeze with cool undertones to keep things very pleasant. Really fun to see folks out running on the new Granite South map, and I ran the course as well after everyone else had gone out. I thought it was a lot of fun.

And running at a harder pace on a map is always useful to see how the map works to the racer's eye versus the mapper's eye--and it's not always the same. One thing I took away was that I need to darken the gray (bare rock) and light green some so that the smaller areas of each are easier to pick up.

It's funny what sometimes you think people might say as opposed to what you actually might here, and in this case nobody said anything about the balanced rock one of the controls was on.

C • rock 5

Hung and checked controls. Surprised to see 3 of the controls hung yesterday were already down on the ground; almost certainly it was the work of inquisitive cows curious about those pretty dangling pink streamers--because in all cases the streamers with those controls were either nibbled or missing, as were other streamers on controls that hadn't been disturbed.

Lots of campers out in advance of the long weekend--exactly what you would expect.

Hung most of the controls for Saturday's training. There were so many cows out there! It was almost like all the cows in the world had been collected iont one tiny area (my map).

And many of them looked way too interested in the controls than could possibly be healthy. I wonder how many of the controls will still be there on Saturday, versus being consumed? Already large amounts of the streamers had been eaten. I still like having the cows out in the forest. The only thing that would be better would be if they all had bells, like the cows do in Switzerland.

Did some biking at Pilot Hill, then hung controls for Neal out at Diamond Bay. I hadn't run there since the big rains hit, and many bare areas were absolutely scoured. As a bonus, I saw a bobcat, and it saw me, too.

I think I read in a course setting manual once that you have to be really good to see a bobcat. I don't know if it's true or not. Maybe I'm the exception to the rule.

Finished up working on the version of the new South Granite map we will be using on Saturday. There are a few things that could be fine tuned, and then I haven't drawn in all of the riparian zone that, together with the stream that runs through it, forms the southern edge of the map. But we won't need that for the weekend.

Tisdags Traning--intervals.

Had planned to get out early enough to have another go at my course for this weekend, and I was on target heading out the door, and until...my truck wouldn't start. It had been 100% fine the day before. After checking on a few things and trying to see what I could figure out on my own, I ended up concluding 1) the fuel pump wasn't working at all, and that 2) there was no way I was going to be able to change that status right then and there. That all took some time, so by the time I was in my car and driving out, I was thinking I might be doing good to get to about half the controls and streamer and describe them.

And in fact, it was at about the halfway mark that the sun set, and I was weighing if I should just call it a day, since it didn't seem there was any way I was going to get finished. But, I decided to press on and see how far I could get.

In the end, I got everything, and that was after scratching two controls, and adding in three more and spending some time thinking about the two re-routes involved. By the time I was leaving the last control, there was no more light to see by than whatever was afforded by a small glow from the disappeared sun to the west, and maybe the tiniest possible amount of illumination from a sliver of a moon. It felt great out, another really nice day, and a nice note to finish on.