Monthly Archives: June 2012

The Agile Fox Friday Foto – 06.29.2012

After a year and a half of including a ‘pic of the week’ at the end of my weekly training summary, I’ve decided to let it stand as a post of its own. I’m also implementing a rule that the Friday Foto needs to have been taken sometime in the last week. No recycling. I am doing this to keep me engaged in building my photography skills, and to make me work harder to get fresh shots. Click here to see my previous Friday Foto posts.

Right time, right place, right lens.

This scene stopped me in my tracks while descending the final 14er of what had been a five summit day.Fires are raging in Colorado right now. This one, the Treasure Fire near Leadville, was 3 hours old at the time of this photo. It is in extremely difficult terrain, but remains on the small end of the spectrum and is not threatening any structures. It was burning on the opposite side of the ridge from the area we had been hiking in all day. Timberline and some green meadows are helping to contain the fire’s north and eastern spread, while 125 fire fighters work to construct a line to set the southern perimter and get full containment.

The smoke particles and heating of the air triggered the formation of a pyrocumulus. Literally, a fire cloud. There are many examples of huge and dramatic thunderheads forming over large fires (and even dropping rain back on the fire in some cases). I thought this one was unique because of it happening so soon after the fire started and while the sky was otherwise crystal clear. Thankfully I had my 10-24mm wide angle zoom to capture it all.

Treasure Pyrocumulus
f/11, 10mm, 1/320 @ 100 ISO

Posted in photography

Beauty and the Beast

Jun 26

Posted by chrisboyack

Tough times in Colorado this month, with no signs of letting up. There are 14+ active fires in the state now. I took this photo of the Waldo Canyon fire tonight, which intensified dramatically this afternoon due to 65 mph winds and forced the evacuation of 32,000 people as it marched eastward into Colorado Springs.

Posted in photography

2012 Training Log – Week 24

Jun 25

Posted by chrisboyack

A rough start to this one, then I rallied and ended up with a good week. The time number is heavily skewed by all of the hiking on the weekend, but it all counts as far as I’m concerned. Some good time on the feet and at high altitude.

Monday
11 miles

Felt great during the first 3 miles, and was already composing my training log entry in my head. Something along the lines of – wow, 3 days off and back in action feeling great.

Then the wheels started to wobble before coming off completely at mile 7. I had to stop several times. I was badly overheated and had gone for the all-you-can-eat special at the buffet of suck. What a miserable run. Record heat and forest fire smoke made it like running in an oven while sucking on piece of charcoal.

These guys were waiting to pick at my carcass.

Tuesday
10 miles

Another cr@p sandwich on the menu today. This run was so bad it’s almost funny. I stopped about 100 times, then ended up walking the last mile. My calves actually felt good for once, but I had big-time foot issues. Seriously thinking about hanging up the running shoes and switching back to cycling for a while.

A sign of better things to come –

Wednesday
10 miles

After the terrible past two runs I’ve had most people would take that as a sign to back off, rest, wait for some sort of recovery to take place. Not me. I knew good run was in there, I just had to dig deep enough to find it. It helped immensely that today was about 20 degrees cooler than the previous two.

I decided to hit some intervals for the first time in months. .5 mile, .5 mile, 1 mile, .5 mile, .5 mile.

The first two .5 were 6:15 and 6:12 pace and felt under control. The mile was gradually uphill and I did it in 6:22 without pushing too hard, which told me my previous efforts on the .5’s were soft. I did the last two .5’s at 5:54 and 5:48 pace. I was doing 5-6 of these in the 5:40’s last fall, so I still have a ways to go, but I’m extremely happy to have a decent run and get some quality work done.

Thursday
10.5 miles

Steady 9 @ 7:45 pace on a hilly route. 1.5 cooldown. Happy with how this went after yesterday’s harder efforts.

Friday
7.6 miles

Easy recovery day.

Saturday
13 miles

Malcolm and I had a good day in the mountains. 5 x 14er summits. Topped out on Sherman at 1:00 in the morning, bivied under the stars near the trailhead, then up at 6:45 to hit the DeCaLiBron loop.