2023 Wind River Day 2 7/18/23

 

Sunset over the Bighorns from camp. I failed to take a picture of the encampment.

Downtown Buffalo. A block away from the ice cream store that is frequented by many of the athletes 1-2 times per day.

Up for a run at the Spearfish River campground before heading out for the day. It's a bit tricky with the dog + camping to have both of us running; one that is constantly in need of management. Kate ended up doing a short run with Dash, with more coming in the afternoon. I ended up doing my main run in the morning. There's a nice trail that parallels the creek through town, and the Spearfish Canyon road is a steady incline, but gorgeous. Did a mixture of these two to round out the run. The Badlands aside, the Black Hills are the first "real" West in my opinion. Such a different landscape than anything we can find in the Midwest.

     It was a leisurely depart for the day after the run. We found a coffee shop/bakery (Ruby's Roast) downtown that was solid and ate outside before heading west again.

     The drive from Spearfish to Buffalo isn't crazy long, but still long enough. I downloaded Matthew Mcconaughey's memoir on tape, so we spent a fair amount of time listening to that to pass the time as the arid high plains rolled by. Large stretches of this stretch of 90 have little to no exits/towns. Just endless scrub and buttes. 

    Got into Buffalo in the early afternoon and ate some lunch from Subway before meeting up with the team. They camp out every year (Harris has been doing it for 31 years) at the YMCA in town. It's a good setup. They have 24 hour access to the "Y", with bathrooms, showers, a pool, and a gym. It's right across the street from a large city park with multiple picnic shelters and a huge municipal pool.

     We set up our tent of the edge of the collection. Kate got an afternoon run in and we spent the rest of the bit wandering around town exploring.

     Dinner with the group (there's ~90 people from 3 different schools) was served at one of the picnic shelters. Fried chicken (catered) and watermelon. I have no idea how Harris coordinates feeding that many mouths with the other coaches. It's quite a production, although I suppose he has a lot of experience and plenty of formulas.

     It's again tricky to balance with Dash. He loves adults and generally has been okay with teens, but probably because there's so many, it overwhelmed him and he freaks out, not wanted to be petted. Reasonable enough, but certainly an added challenge when camping with 90 of them. Part of what made this trip work though, was bringing him with, so that comes with the territory.

     Tuesday evening, the kids had more free time, and then the Hopkins team met for ~20 minutes or so to wrap up the day/trip. They've been journaling their running each day (a great skill to build) and there was some good reflection prompts to what habits they'd bring back to MN and the rest of the season. It seems a no-brainer to me, but I forget sometimes that at age 16, many of them see their training in Wyoming as an accomplishment, and it is, but it certainly doesn't make our cross country season. The weeks to come thereafter do that. Such is the blessing and curse of distance running. Anyone can see massive improvements if they put in the time, but it's a measurement of weeks/months, not days or individual runs.

     Cool to finally get out here and see the tradition that Harris has built over the years.