Preparing the Back

I find that slamming down the hill on the boards is sometimes hard on the lower back. Particularly in poor conditions, such as ice and crud. Thinking of this is helpful to me as I erg along alone at a local gym. The folks at Concept are having their annual "earn your candy" event - the Skeleton Crew Challenge. It's basically an erg fest to erg as many meters as one can during the week prior to Halloween. I started this week on Monday rowing a half marathon, then 10k on Tues, then another half marathon yesterday where I began to feel it late in the session. I'll see if I can fit in another session of some sort today. There are two guys in Montana on the Honor Board this year, both over age 70, who have already erged over 65,000 meters this week! Incredible!

It's good for the back for sure, adding stability for the high speed descents on the boards. It gets a little boring at times, but it's fun to check on others around the world up to the same type of suffering. I mixed in a little hike to the L during the kid's dry-land training. Probably do that again tonight.

Saturday

Climbing up the Bowl, one can see the h/r decline and the fatigue set in. Not a very pretty file.

RMVQ 2009

Driving back following the antelope hunt (post below) on the 11th, I was wondering if Bill had decided to go through with his ride for Marcy (RMVQ) during the weekend. I doubted it given it was 14 degrees in Missoula (though you never know with Martin). It's interesting trying to explain to someone what exactly the route is for this little adventure keeping a straight face! Hard to believe. Bill from the antelope hunt had mentioned he spent some time in the past driving up the Camp Creek road in a jeep when one still could and wondered what it looked like and what condition things were in up there. Camp Creek junction below.

I was not sure if I was going to go duck hunting with LR the 17th or do part of this ride (race). It was a blue bird day in Missoula. I felt like post last weekend, spring had finally arrived! So, Friday night I began to look over the Big Sur and put together a drop bag for the Kona Bridge. Last year there were folks who went off at different times, but the general start was at 10:00. This year, I got there late having to drive back to the bridge and add the water to the bag I had dropped. I ended up going off at 10.30 and there was no one still around the Blue Mountain parking lot. Lolo below.

I hated wearing the pack as it was loaded with tools and general dope to see me through if I had a little sleep over somewhere or needed to repair something. Not to mention food and fluids. Other than the bridge drop I had no re-supply or helpers. I planned on going to the Rattlesnake parking lot and calling it a day. One thing about going off last, if any one up front had problems, there was a sweep person. Heading up to the tower, I stopped while I still had cell service and called Bill's voice mail to let him know I was on course. Marcy was a cool little peakbagger who traveled to a lot of Bill's races and on his adventures.

I took a quick picture of Marcy at the base of the tower and headed for upper Camp Creek to get another photo there for my friend. Motorcycles go across the top of Graves now, but not vehicles and there is a sign at the Camp turnoff indicating no motorized use. I doubt the place has changed much though. Sections along the Graves Creek Growler are pretty brutal with tough climbs and boulder rock descents. I was hoping my handle bar did not shatter, which as I've written, is cracked. Bill was stopped at the North turn off just prior to Telephone Butte and above Deep Creek where we enter a road section.

He was taking the headphones from his ears. I asked him if he had seen the size of the lion's tracks in the snow at the tower? Lions make me nervous! I said I noticed his were the only tracks along the way and wondered where everyone was? He mentioned that he was unsure who was hooking up and riding what sections with whom? It is a pretty loose program which makes it neat. Everyone is responsible for themselves. He thought Joshua was going to go over the Miller Peak section with him Sunday morning. Last year at night I rode this with Bill prior to the event. It was cold!We dropped out Dry Gulch and down to the bridge. Here for the first time I met Julie and Bob who are TNR regulars and who took the above photo. It was 2:00, or three and a half hours to this area. I realized here that Bill was in good hands and had put together a support crew to get him through. I told them I was going to the Rattlesnake parking lot and calling it a day. Julie mentioned the crew was having a BBQ up Lincoln Hills and to pop up. Most of the TNR folks were going to ride certain sections with Bill later in the evening or during the next morning.After Kona, we went up Butler Creek and to the A-Frame at the Bowl. For some reason I always feel it coming up this after Graves. At the top I had one bottle left to get me up Ravine and to the parking lot. I had planned on stopping at a friends at the base of the Bowl road if this occurred. However, Bill gave me some Carbo Rocket at the A-Frame and I quickly came back to life. Marcy on the back deck above.

I blasted down the Beargrass Hwy and up Ravine. On top of the Ravine junction, I spooked a large black bear that scampered off up into the hills. Actually, come to think of it, we were both spooked! I did not see much game along the route this day. A few grouse and the bear. One thing about riding with Bill is a person always learns something. Perpeteum mixed with Canola Oil into a paste is what he was using for his protein along the way. It tasted like cookie dough - literally. Eat too much though and dehydration was sure to follow. I loved it as he gave me some. Antelope plasma he called it. Mission range below.

Dropping into the parking lot, Bill was still there eating and visiting with the gang. The Dirt Girls and TNRers had moved the BBQ to the parking lot after learning I was stopping at this point! It was just getting dark and I'd been in the saddle for eight and a half hours, 76 miles and just over eleven thousand feet of climbing - about half of Bill's course. Knowing my way over Graves had saved me a lot of time this year. My shoulder and butt hurt (been hunting not riding). Other than that, I felt fine. Ed was in the parking lot with Bill's crew and we had a funny visit about how playing a set at the Union Club until three in the morning had somehow helped his ribs! Bill has a great core group of friends who fed me and gave me a beer. I felt right at home. My wife picked me up and we drove over to get my truck which was alone in the Blue Mountain parking lot. The next morning I got a call from Laurie (Ed's wife) that Bill had set a new record for his course, finishing at nine thirty this morning riding with Julie and Laurie. Great time!

10/19: Addendum's: Bill, I think, finished at 8.50. Not sure if Joshua made it out?

East of the Slope

Following school on Friday, our friend Bill picked us up for our annual antelope hunt. I've antelope hunted quite a few years with Bill, but this year my son was coming along for his first hunt on the prairie east of the Slope. I'm not sure where Bill came across the above Alaskan pick-up camper which normally sits in the bed of a pickup; however, he mounted it on the trailer and christianed it the Prairie Schooner, a 1950s antique. It has made numerous antelope trips. We arrived pretty late where we wanted to camp. Temperatures were in the single digits. Saturday we got up and did some scouting with my spotting scope above. Opening day was Sunday.

We were surprised that there were quite a few smaller herds about. Eventually, though we found a nice herd which of course were being watched by other hunters as well. The ranchers place their land in block management allowing hunters to sign in and access their land. This has been a successful state administered program. We also had access to another private piece of ground.

The lady who owns the small ranch that is adjacent to the block management site is 91 years old this year and it is always a pleasure to visit with her. My son Todd was amazed at the old furnace in her home and the old piano. An incredible lady who was a teacher and whose son now runs her ranch.After signing in we were set for Sunday morning. Did I mention it was cold? I think my friends who attended the Griz game said in Missoula at the game on Saturday it was 14 Fahrenheit. It did not get into the double digits where we were until Monday, and then it snowed a bit. I was not sure how Todd would handle the cold, but at least we were not in a tent, though he got to sleep on the floor between the two benches in the schooner. Bill parboiled potatoes (above) which served as the anchor for most of our breakfasts and dinners at the camp. This year I let the little guy use the .270 which I had always used for all of my hunting. A steyr mannlicher which I really like. He had shot a nice group at the Deer Creek Range in town and I thought was he was ready. For something new, I had a friend find a CZ full stock rifle for me this year in .308 which is significantly less cost than steyr's full stock. All of my rifles are floating barrels, so I thought it would be a nice change. Both Todd and I were using 150 grain noslers, though in the .270 I usually used the 130 grain. Todd had had his tonsils removed a few years ago and when that is done now-a-days they cauterize rather than stitch things back together. The cauterization somehow came apart and he had a massive hemorrhage shortly after the procedure, going delusional and close to shock, covering both of us with blood prior to my driving him to the emergency room in Missoula, where things were recauterized. Ever since this episode, Todd had been very wary of blood. So when we spoke about the necessary part of harvesting game, gutting and butchering, I knew what was on his mind.

Sunday, opening day, we were able to find part of the herd we had glassed the prior day. Bill was a regular Daniel Boone on the prairie, toting a Connecticut Valley Arms Cap and Ball black powder rifle. It's pretty funny carrying around all of that gear, the powder horn and what have you. At any rate, both Bill and I were surprised at how steady and patient LR was crawling across the field to get to an area where he had a decent shot. He took a rest on the top of my pack and squeezed off a shot. That was it, the doe immediately went down with a well placed shot. Bill (above) while I took a quick photo, helped Todd learn Bill's method of paunchlessly field dressing an animal where all of the meat is removed without getting into the guts. We place the meat into pillow cases and put it in packs. The little guy did great with out a single episode, other than pricking his finger at one point with a knife. I realized during this that sometimes kids do better under the supervision of others with whom they are less likely to resist and more likely to pay attention to. Bill, a Livingston native, has brought up other families' children on this prairie as well and is an excellent hunting partner.

He and some of the other Missoula folks (young kids at the time with Bill and their parent) who one year were hunting together in this area in the past tell of a day when it was also in the teens, but snowing. They were walking along and a lone sheepherder came up in the blowing wind. As the story goes, he had a long pony tail, large holes in his ear lobes with circle rings inside, and rifle in his horses' scabbard. He wore chaps and nothing else - nothing! He never said a word, just riding off in the frigid conditions. I have kind of a hard time with that one, but the folks who were there (who Bill had introduced to this area and were there this year hunting again as well) swear by the story.

Right as we were wrapping up in the field with Todd's lope, Justin, with MT Fish and Game, came up to us and asked who shot the animal. We pointed to the kid. It was an either sex tag, and he had tagged his animal properly. Everything checked out fine, and he said congratulations and went on his way (quickly back to his truck he said because he had hot coffee there and was freezing).In camp, we managed to keep warm using the schooner's propane stove (off and on to not get poisoned). I was reading Cold by Streever which I came across on one of the links on this site. It was appropriate, and I read some sections out loud. We ate a lot of things that are generally not good for you, like beacon and eggs every morning! Game at night, however. We romped (when not stopping for a quick nap) around on the prairie until late Tuesday, when I too shot a doe and called it a trip. We did not see many bucks this trip, though the Huns were surprisingly abundant (a pleasant change). We thought we were going to get close enough to one small herd for Bill to get a shot with his black powder rifle, sneaking behind some hay bails, but the animals had moved off too soon for Bill to get a shot. So, Todd got to shoot the big rifle and then we headed back home with new lean protein to start off this year's season.

A Couple of Rowing Works

Saturday, driving to Green Bluff, we drove over the bridge above the Spokane river and two eight man Gonzaga boats were being rowed up stream in the rain and wind. I told the kids prior to the bridge to look up the river when we went over to see if the eight man shells would be out and sure enough there they were. The women were rowing in the rain and cold - awesome. The scene reminded me of a couple of rowing oriented books I wanted to briefly mention.

Halberstam's work (Random House 1985 above) will be of interest, I feel, to anyone interested in sport (coach or athlete) as it covers the effort of four men to fill the US single scull in the '84 games. A couple of passages of interest:

American scullers tended to be former sweep oarsmen-that is, they had rowed on an eight-oar shell using only one oar each. In college, rowing had been the overriding- indeed , obsessive- preoccupation for them. Upon graduation, uncertain of what they wanted to do professionally, they usually decided to stay with rowing a little longer. The choice became to find seven, three or one other oarsman to row with every day, or to row a single scull. Many of them became scullers. But after about three or four years, even the best went on to graduate school or to work on Wall Street. Probably they were leaving sculling, Wood thought, just when they were getting better. His own body was much stronger now than it had been four or five years earlier (though the one thing he learned was that he needed more time to recuperate from all-out races than when he was younger). But the temptations of a normal life were strong, and it became harder every year to lead a life of such immense daily denial. Take his own training program, he said. The sky of predawn Boston during the winter months was not gray, it was black. There was a sense of acute loneliness sharpened by a wrenching cold. No sane person with an alternative to a better and easier life, a privileged life, was up and exercising at that hour.

'You have to force yourself to stay with rowing,' Wood said. 'If you put the first of the contact lenses in your eye, that is almost a sure guarantee that you won't go back to sleep. If you can get up and get past the bed, then you will reach the kitchen. If you can reach the kitchen, then you can reach the front door. If you reach the front door, you will reach the car, and if you reach the car, you can reach the boathouse. Each step leads to the next one. You keep pushing yourself so that you will not quit. You have to know when to listen to your body, because there is a part of you that always wants to quit and go back to sleep, and there is also a part of your body which on occasion is worn out and wants and needs rest, and then you have to listen.' [pp. 21-22]...

Burke had a sense that Parker's physical commitment was exceptional. But there was something more than just physical commitment. One of Burk's earliest memories of Harry Parker was of a young man working on his oar in the tank. Parker was gritting his teeth so hard that he drew blood, and even though the blood was running down his mouth, he paid no attention to it. He just kept on rowing. No one Burk had ever coached had as much passion for rowing, not just to do it but also to live it all the time. On weekends Parker and a friend would walk the eight miles to Burk's suburban house to talk rowing. Parker kept complete logs of everything he had done as an oarsman, and these logs reflected a remarkable knowledge of the sport. They were a coach's logs.[ pp.93]

The Rowing Pictures is a nice work as well detailing the work of Thomas Eakins. Cooper's work (Yale U. Press, 1996) captures Eakins' story, the history of rowing and rowing art. Rowing, like 19th century realism, was not exclusively masculine: Victorian women, for example, demonstrated (and were encouraged to demonstrate) as much interest in the sport as men (figs. 7,9) [pp. 118]. A coffee table worthy work - elegant.

Uncle!

It took standing in the middle of Cabela's yesterday near Coeur d'Alene to start being honest with myself. Limiters. There was (and still is) a huge part of me that wanted to go to Bend in December and race the 3 (age 40-45) category in cross and I thought I could still get in shape by then to make it happen. However, seeing the clear excitement of the first hunting season for my son gleaming in his eyes in that store, I then and there realized that Leadville was truly the end of my season this year. Following that race, I had backed off of the whole program. It had been a priceless experience - hell, just catching up with my old Culver Military Academy classmates had been worth that race. Yesterday was the opening day of waterfowl. The above two would never forgive me if they missed out on their season. This weekend coming up is opening weekend of antelope and then general big game. Then some skiing off piste with friends. I can't be in Montana and miss why we are here. Cross is awesome, but there are going to be too many conflicts to make an honest effort at the sport this fall. So, I'll be following the races and pulling for my friends.

Wallman w/ Friends New and Old

Yesterday was a great day. A great morning over coffee at 6.30 with friends, a great day at work, a great motivational erg session mid-day (post below), and lastly (but not leastly) a great spin up the Wallman Trail for my first ride with Alden's Thursday Night Group (TNR), culminating with a beer outside in the crisp fall night at the Rattlesnake Garden. Alden never ceases to amaze me. Like the Energizer Bunny. Here's Bill's post. I think Larry got a group picture which I'll post below at some point. Thanks guys/gals! Great way to wrap up a perfect Missoula day!

Today's Erg

Time to get lean again with the usual blend of bike and erg. Engine first.

More Random Thoughts

Thoughts following last night's first Wednesday night of the local cross series.

1. It's a race.
2. Cross is the exact opposite of an ultra endurance xc.
3. Faster starts. Work on these. Maintain high tempo.
4. If possible, get there earlier and warm up better.
5. Too much time off during transition.
6. Get back in shape, between hunts.
7. Make sure having fun, if not find something else to do (hunt more often).
8. Be patient. Two months is plenty of time to improve.
9. Cross will probably not improve 100 mile XC's, but it is something healthy, is good for handling and is a race that can be done with kids without worrying at mile 75 is he freezing to death in the rain at the third station waiting for me to come through?
10. Repeat, have fun.

Todd:

1. Great night.
2. Enthusiasm definitely there now.
3. Great job on heavy Marlin.
4. Work gradually on less spinning in smaller gears.