2014 Shallowater Stampede 10K

Well, I felt like I pushed it about as hard as I could and snuck in under the buzzer to go sub 44 minutes.  Official time was 43:58.3.

Cool and rainy for the last couple days, race time temperature was 47 degrees, 86% humidity, wind ENE at 7 mph.  Heavy overcast, but not raining.  Pretty close to perfect race conditions.

Got there a tiny bit late and my warmup was a bit short with just over a mile of easy running with just a couple short strides mixed in.  Made a pit stop right before the race and barely got in line and was still messing with my Runkeeper app when the gun went off. 

Went out and settled into a 7:05 pace which felt manageable, but by mile 2 I was starting to breath harder than normal.  This training cycle I spent a lot of time on intervals and hardly any time on tempos so I actually hadn't been breathing hard for an extended period in a while so I was hoping that it wouldn't end up being an issue.  Legs were feeling good and other than breathing a little harder than I expected to be, I decided I could stick with it and tried to keep a 7:05 pace for the first 3 miles.  Miles 1, 2 and 3 clicked off at 7:06, 7:07 and 7:05.

At the turn around I was breathing about the same and legs still felt decent so I tried to pick it up a little bit.  If I pushed too hard I could feel it and I would find myself thinking I was locked in on a solid pace and then my runkeeper audio cues would tell me I was actually slowing down so I would have to push it back up again.  Miles 4 and 5 clicked of at 7:03 and 7:03.  I thought I picked it up on mile 6 a bit and my audio cues kept telling me 6:5X split pace for pretty much the entire mile, but I must have slowed a little right at the end and it ticked up to a 7:01 split.  

With .2 miles to go I tried to pick it up again and felt that I did to some extent, but I was running out of steam and I wasn't going to catch the guy ahead of me but I still needed to finish strong to make sure I ended up sub 44 minutes.  I tried to break into a sprint for the last 100 yards, but it just wasn't happening.  I was hurting and didn't have much left in the tank.  My wife said that I looked really tight.  The clock was ticking down and I gave everything I had and crossed with 43:5X on the clock!  For a second I thought I could beat my time from last year by a full minute (last year was 44:51), but I just didn't get there.

I was gassed after I passed the line and it took me about 10 seconds to get my GPS stopped so my GPS splits for the last bit aren't correct.  I took 10 seconds off that last split duration and that would calculate out to a 6:40 pace for the last .24 miles which seems about right.

Here's the splits.  Very limited elevation gain or loss throughout the whole course.  The biggest change is a gradual 25' drop and then back up at about the 2.5 mile mark going out and 3.5 mile mark coming back.  Other than that it is pretty close to what most would consider pancake flat.

Splits (GPS Interval)
	Type	Distance	Duration	Total Duration	Pace
1	Manual	1 mi	7:05.23	7:05.23	7:06
2	Manual	1 mi	7:06.59	14:11.82	7:07
3	Manual	1 mi	7:04.41	21:16.23	7:05
4	Manual	1 mi	7:02.57	28:18.8	7:03
5	Manual	1 mi	7:02.66	35:21.46	7:03
6	Manual	1 mi	7:00.72	42:22.18	7:01
7	Manual	0.24 mi	1:35.82	43:58.3	6:40

Not sure I left much out there on this one.  Felt like I paced it just about perfect and those last few miles I kept thinking I was pushing it up and then my audio cues would tell me that I really wasn't so I would try to push it up again.  This seemed to repeat itself from about mile 4 on in.  I would push the pace up to 6:5X and then the next audio cue would tell me I had dropped back to 7:0X so I would push it back up, rinse repeat.  

Thanks for the input and advice.  Don't think I have a 6:59 pace 10K in me right now even with perfect weather.  Maybe that needs to be my goal for next years race.

My wife and 7 year old son ran the 2 mile distance of the same race and both finished in the top 3 of their age groups as well.  Here's the family with our medals after the race.

That's it for now.  Nathan

Labor Day Labor...

Well I'm a week late getting this posted, but I doubt anyone was sitting on pins and needles waiting for it.

Labor Day ended up being a work day for me on my hunting property.  Made the trip down there (it's 101.5 miles from my house to the property) and got some work done.  I'd been meaning to get down there about the 3 weekends prior, but life just kept getting in the way.  Based on looking at trail camera footage, I guess I should have been down there about 6 weeks ago, because my protein feeder has been sitting empty since the middle of July.

I recently purchased a new trailer to haul my tractor back and forth since the one I had previously just wasn't quite big enough.  I upgraded from a 7,000lbs GVWR 83"X16' trailer to a 10,400lbs GVWR 83"X20' trailer.  I'm happy with the new trailer, but it for sure let's my pickup know it is back there.  I think it must weigh close to 1,000lbs more than my old trailer by itself.

Here it is loaded up and ready to go.

600lbs of protein pellets, 600lbs of corn, 200lbs of wheat seed, plus the tractor, shredder and broadcast spinner, and a weed eater plus a bunch of other tools.

I keep on old disc down on my property so I don't have to haul it back and forth, so after doing some mowing I started plowing the food plots with the disc to get them ready for seed.  I have about 3 acres of food plots laid out in shooting lanes that I can see from my main hunting blind.  My trail camera setup on my protein feeder took pictures of me as I was running the disc.

Next came the seed.  Everything actually went pretty smoothly.  You can actually see my hunting blind up on the top of the hill above the tractor.

There are actually 5 different shooting lane setups like this one that I plant in small grains in the fall.  I still haven't ever shot a deer using them though.  

Note the temperature reading on the camera!  107 degrees according to it, the official weather said it was 105 that day for a high, I felt it.

Always fun to check the trail cameras and see what's been around.  

This guy is young and not sure if he's been injured or was born this way, but it almost looks like his nose has been smashed at some point.  Some crazy antler growth as a result.  It will be very interesting to see if he stays that way in the future or if this was a one year thing on the antler development like this.  Almost looks like a water buffalo or something on that left side.

6 different bucks in this picture.  Too bad they don't come to the corn like this during hunting season!  I guess it wouldn't be much of a hunt then though.

I've had a wildlife watering system setup for about 2 years now and have been disappointed with the wildlife using it (or lack thereof) pretty much ever since I set it up.  It is actually starting to get some use now so that's pretty exciting for me.  I was actually getting more consistent pictures of the best bucks on the property at the water than at any of the feeders but it was August so pretty hot and dry out.

I don't think any of the bucks turned out to be 10 points this year.  There are 2 that ended up being 4 x 5 and the rest are all 8 points or less.  I'm thinking I may not be super picky this year like I have been the last 2 years when I've ended up eating my tag here in Texas.  The nice 8 points may be in trouble this year.  This guy might be in trouble if I see him on opening day.

Oh well, that's about it for my Labor Day labor.  It was hot and ended up being all work and no play.  Didn't even bring a gun down there even though it was the dove opener here in Texas.  Lot's of stuff going on with life and working on getting ready for my big Wyoming hunts.

That's it for now.  Nathan

New Muzzleloader

I had no idea that shopping for a muzzleloader would be so difficult!  There are several different brands and then each brand has several different models.  I finally decided that I wanted a lightweight version, but then I still needed to decide on the brand.

I saw a decent CVA on sale at Cabelas with a scope for $429.99 and went to buy it, but they didn't have it in stock although it was one of the featured items in the flyer that week.  Evidently with no muzzleloader season, Texas isn't a hot spot to sell muzzleloaders.

I then found a Traditions Vortek on sale at Gander Mountain and they actually had it in stock.  It was already $100 off their retail price, but they were confused whether it should have a free scope or iron sights or what so they ended up knocking another $20 off on top of that.  So I walked out with it for $380 which seemed like a pretty good deal.

I've had a $50 gift card for Bass Pro Shops for almost 2 years now and never can decide on something that I want from them that is worth the shipping so I used it to buy one of the Nikon Inline XR scopes.  They seemed to be about the same price everywhere I looked so saving $50 sounded good and I got it ordered.

Next went back to Cabelas and got what I thought I needed to shoot the thing and confusion reigned even more.  What powder? What bullet? What cleaning and lubricating solutions?  I started a thread and got some good advice and ended up picking up what I thought I needed.

Here it all is except for the scope.

Turns out I bought the wrong primers and I didn't need the breech plug lube with the Blackhorn powder so after a few more trips to Cabelas I had what I needed to shoot it.

I have a 100 yard range setup at my house and after the scope came in I got out and sent a few rounds downrange.  First few were at 25 yards then out to 100 yards and got it sighted in pretty quick really.  Fired a total of 9 shots and didn't clean it once.  Evidently that's almost an impossibility with most blackpowder substitutes, but the Blackhorn evidently burns super clean.

Last 2 shots were on the bullseye at 100 yards so I decided to give it a rest and a good cleaning.  Everything cleaned up nicely and overall I really liked it.  Seemed pretty accurate and kind of fun pouring the powder down the barrel and all that jazz.

I still need to get back to the range a couple times before the season starts, but this for sure got me at least on target.  Next time I'll try to step it out to a couple hundred yards and see what it does then.