With a little luck (and a lot of hard work...)

General chaos of a day

2012-01-26T10:01:00.002-05:00

After getting back from the Bates carnival, and feeling like I really could handle these three jobs and keeping my life in order and all that, I managed to have a pretty massive fail of a day on Sunday. Sunday was the first EHS qualifier race for Massachusetts, at Weston, so we had pretty much every CSU kid to wax for. Then in the afternoon, I was hosting a ski orienteering meet at Weston, chosen because that was the only weekend where I knew I'd be around to host the meet. To complicate this, Ed was departing for California for the World Cup prep at noon, and I planned to take him to the airport. Wooo scheduling!

Things didn't get off to an auspicious start when I managed to break my french press. I think something died inside of me when I saw the glass lying all over the kitchen floor. I contemplated going back to bed and staying there, but that wasn't really an option. I still didn't have a finished map for the Weston ski-o, since we'd only just gotten some snow (finally!!), and I didn't know how anything was groomed, so I still had to update the map, set the courses, and print the maps. No biggie. First I had a race to wax for. So, coffee-less, I made it to Weston, and began testing wax. Being Weston, parts of the course were freshly groomed, parts hadn't been groomed since last night, and parts had fresh man-made snow on top - basically, it was a shitshow, and no one wax was going to run fastest. We still managed to get fast skis under our kids, helped when you have fast skiers to begin with, and placed 11 boys in the top 20 (top 20 qualifier for EHS), and 17 of the top 20 girls. We also swept both podiums! Every day we're creeping closer to world domination.

I couldn't stay for the entire race, as I had to get back home to take Ed to the airport. Driving back, I hydroplaned on some barely-noticeable water on the exit ramp, and kissed a guardrail. Just a kiss on the cheek, really, quite demure, but the guardrail went and got all feisty and tried to take more than what was offered. Pretty pissed at myself for that one; I knew my tires were bad, but turns out they're actually completely bald. Anyway, I got home, and Ed told me I'm never allowed to buy another Honda Civic, because all I do is crash them. I'll pretend it's the car's fault, and not user error. Ed, being a fixer, had also found that I can replace the beaker for my coffee maker, and so salvaged that part of my day.

I quickly finished updating the Weston map, planned a course, and we piled Ed and his stuff into the still-driveable car, where we went to the airport via Ed's office so I could print maps. Then back to Weston, where I began setting up the ski-o event. That went pretty smoothly, and everyone seemed to have a really good time, but I was starting to get really cold and hungry by the end. I'd rather be skiing. So when I finally got home around 5:30, I wasn't done yet - the folks in California had just finished putting together the text for bulletin 3, and I'm the person in charge of publicity and stuff, so I was up pretty late getting that to look pretty and catching all the typos and mistakes before we published the bulletin. Oof.

Monday morning; turns out the car isn't going to be too much of a hassle to fix, and it's in the shop now, and I've ordered new tires. What is it Tom and Ray on Car Talk always say? The cheapskate always ends up paying more? Yeah. Anyway, I leave tomorrow morning at the crack o' dawn with Ali for California, where I'll hopefully not die from the altitude, and we'll put together some decent races. Half nervous, half excited. At least now Ed is out there rallying troops and getting things organized; it's hard to organize things from half a country away.

We have people from 14 different countries coming for the World Cup; so this should be wicked awesome! Team giggles attacks the world again, wahooo!

Bates Carnival

2012-01-26T09:38:00.011-05:00

Sporting a Harvard jacket.

Last week, Chris City, the head coach at Harvard, approached me to see if I could assist him for the rest of the season. Being a sucker for people who need help, and also needing the cash, I signed up for yet another job, and now am an employee of the big H. I did actually think pretty long and hard about this, but in the end decided the pros outweighed the cons, and the commitments weren't overwhelming - I gave a very take-it-or-leave-it offer back in regard to my time, and Chris took it. One of the cons of being a last-minute addition to a ski team, of course, is that it'll be hard to build any rapport with the skiers, but they're a nice group of kids and so far we get along fine.

There's also the fact that almost nobody coaches two ski teams at once, but as long as there isn't any overlap, I think I can manage this. Given that I'm missing the next two carnivals to go to California (I'll get to that), I'm missing the one carnival that is also an Eastern Cup, where the only awkward overlap could happen. Nothing if not a master juggler, here.

So last weekend I headed back to Rumford, this time driving a Harvard van, for the Bates Carnival. It's been a while since I was on the carnival circuit, but not much has changed. The coaches meetings still deliver a solid 15 minutes of information jam-packed into an hour, the head coaches are all the same folk, and the skiers are just as speedy. Friday was a 5km/10km skate, and Saturday was a mass start classic 10km for both men and women. Chris and I quickly developed a working relationship in the waxroom, and ripped through testing and fluoring the skis with enough time to get out and watch the races. I know one of the girls from before, and I coached one of the boys as a junior at CSU, so at least with them I could scream my head off, as I'm wont to do; the others I held back a little with the cheering because I didn't want to scare them too much...

Testing wax with head coach Chris City.

The following day was the mass start classic race, and luckily the waxing was really easy; that's always a worry when it's mass start and you have 11 pair of skis to do. But the skiers performed, and although there are always crushed expectations in the first carnival, I think it gave us a really good handle on where we are, and where to go from here. Mostly, it's exciting - quite a future in this team!

Steam rising from the river, looking toward the smokestacks of Rumford's paper mill... as the sun rose, you could see the hazy glow of light diffused through smoke. Very pretty, but disturbing...

Rumford wax rooms are sweet. Love waxing indoors, and so do my hands. I get such wicked dry skin when I have to wax outdoors, and cuts all over my hands because I can feel a damn thing because my hands are frozen. So yeah: indoor waxrooms rule.

Slightly more snow in the stadium than during nationals. It was actually really great skiing, I snuck out for a workout after the race, and had a super fun time.

Chris Stock in the race. I coached him as a junior, and it's been really fun to see him progress. Actually, it's awesome how many CSU juniors were out there racing for D1 colleges - Chris at Harvard, Hannah and Isaac at Williams, Chris Burnham and Olga at Colby, Hilary at Middlebury, Jimmy at Bates, and I'm probably missing some... anyway, it was really cool to see them all in the college race, and to scream my head off for them!

Men's pack up highschool hill the first time. That hill certainly separated the wheat from the chaff.

Women's pack.

Titcomb Mountain Eastern Cups

2012-01-17T13:48:00.005-05:00

Photo credit Jamie Doucett.
After a super successful week at nationals, a week back home to recoup, and CSU was on the road again, heading back to Maine for a weekend of Eastern Cup races at Titcomb Mountain, in Farmington. Saturday was kind of disappointing for me - I couldn't get my head into the game. I regretted signing up for the race, because you have to do what you sign up to do, unless you actually have a valid excuse, and then after I qualified for the heats in 28th, I was resigned to racing a second time, because you have to finish what you've started. Just very unmotivated to be racing that day, and the course, a flat, double-pole power course, wasn't doing much to excite me. But a race is a race, and all races deserve to be treated with respect, and after doing a warmup running on the road, I'd at least thawed out my frozen feet and broken a sweat. Physically, I was ready.

Having the worst bib in my heat meant I picked my lane last, but I got a quick start, and managed to get into one of the three tracks after the scramble zone. Things stayed tight around the first downhill and across the flats, and then up the hill in the stadium, everybody was double poling, despite having wax on their skis. I moved into the middle lane and was able to kick double pole up to the front, but things were still really tight. As we crested the hill, Maria Stuber pulled away, being on skate skis, and the rest of us were in a tight pack down around the corner again.

Nearly done, I found myself in second place, and here I made the first of two errors - I chose the middle track, instead of the one on the left, despite knowing that there was a left turn coming up into the finish. Then I made my second error of the day - I remember thinking to myself, "make sure you end up third, because you don't want to have to keep racing today". That is NOT the mindset you should have in a sprint. I think this moment of hubris caused me to let up a bit, and the girl in the left track pulled even with me, two more girls close behind her. As we made the sharp left corner into the finish, they had the better line, more momentum, and I couldn't hold them off double poling. I was pretty disgusted with my mental state during that race, but put it behind me, determined to learn from my mistakes and never put on another bib if I'm not ready to treat the race with respect.

After an exciting night that involved both a fire alarm at the hotel and some serious insomnia, I woke up feeling like excrement. But I took the tough love approach with my head, and cursed myself into readiness, lying to me about how awesome I felt and how much I wanted to race up the alpine mountain six times. Unlike Saturday, Sunday's race featured a climb of ~50m up the alpine slope. The women did this loop six times, for 8.4km total. My goal for the race was to attack that hill six times, and keep the tempo as brutal as I could manage.

I was the first starter in the field of 114, so I had some fast girls starting not too soon after me. I hit the hill for the first lap, and decided that it wasn't so bad, because it was kind of gradual, at least compared to something like highschool hill. But of course then it flattened out drastically in the middle, and a good skier should be able to V2 that part of the course, and I sort of instinctively knew that if I V2ed that flat bit, before it tilted upwards again, I'd get mired in my pain cave and never emerge. So, I just jacked the tempo even more, not giving my skis any time to slow down, until I reached the top and did a U-turn and headed back down. The downhill was actually kind of scary; it was very fast, and there were some lumps and bumps in there that meant you couldn't really rest as much as I'd hope. The first time down, I caught an edge, and somehow managed to save it, but was cutting it pretty close to the outer limits of that turn. After that, every time down the hill I was frantically thinking: stay on your feet! stay on your feet!

The rest of the race was pretty uneventful, each lap getting more and more painful. Occasionally, earlier starters would pass me by, but then I'd slowly reel them in as reality hit. Going into my third lap, Maria Stuber passed me, from a minute back, I figured this meant she'd probably beat me by 3min, more or less, and she did. Although I'd picked up the pace to ride her draft across the flats, once I hit the hill I let her go - I had a pace that worked for me, and when you're pushing near redline, you have a limited number of times you can go over without paying the consequences. By the sixth lap, I was starting to get tunnel vision, and I was mildly worried about the descent down the hill with this much lactic acid swimming through my legs. Luckily, I made it, and hammered in to the finish pretty pleased with how I'd approached the race. I haven't felt that much good pain in a long time.

In the end I was 10th, and had almost perfectly even splits - nice. Just looking at the bit going around the loop (not the start of finish straight), I was 4:38, 4:38, 4:43, 4:42, 4:43, 4:41.

Sprint results

Distance results

Three weeks in a whirlwind of Alex

2012-01-08T21:34:00.006-05:00

As I rolled - ok, slid sideways across greasy slush - into the driveway in Vermont, the tiredness was starting to pulse through me, like waves, and each time the wave hit with more force. Inside, I peeled damp socks from feet that had been standing for most of the day, and the five days before that, and sat down heavily, each limb feeling like it was being pushed to the floor. My eyes felt gritty, used up, and occasional muscle spasms wracked my legs. Turns out, coaching can be hard work, but it only gets really hard when you're also trying to keep up with your supposed real life job at the same time. Skiing twelve hours in a week, or seventeen hours in a week up at the training camp, isn't hard when you're also sleeping enough. Alas, coffee really isn't a good replacement for sleep.

Is this dog not the cutest thing you've ever seen? She's the main reason I ever go home.

I started this trip filled with excitement and anticipation. I love going places! After a quick few days in Rochester, trying to catch up with social obligations and simultaneously finish some school obligations, I was feeling a bit run down, a bit short on the shuteye, but I figured I'd catch up while in Mont Sainte Anne, at CSU's annual training camp. Another nine hours in the car, this time listening to a spy thriller on CD, and I was in a winter wonderland, some place with hills, and snow, and all my happy little skiers ready to thrash me kilometer after kilometer. Part of the training plan is the mandatory nap after lunch - after having skipped said nap for a week, now I understand why it is mandatory. But when the skiing is so good, I just can't stop!

Speedy li'l buggers.

From Canada, I headed south, through some pretty crappy weather (unfortunately, not snow), and ended up in Vermont, in time for the New Year's party, with Ed. Happy 2012! A few short hours later I was on the road again, to the same spy thriller, now heading to Rumford, to coach at US nationals for cross country skiing. We had seven athletes staying in a house, and three others day tripping just to get some race experience, with four coaches and a shifting mix of parents, although Peter really did the heavy duty organization and cooking. You'd think that after a week of Peter's amazing breakfasts we'd all be ten pounds heavier, but it turns out that if you stand outside all day and test skis all day and and run around excitedly cheering all day and substitute caffeine for sleep, you actually lose weight. I think this is a Bad Thing.

Crammed into a condo in Rumford, ME.

The week went awesomely - the CSU juniors all skied well above their seeds, and above their expectations, and we qualified one for the Junior Worlds trip and two for the J1 Scandinavian Cup trip. I am very proud, and certainly take some of the credit. After Friday's race, the three making trips stayed for the banquet, and I was back in my car, heading to Vermont again, hoping for some r&r.

By Sunday, we're back in Boston, catching up on life, and the whirlwind is over... for now!

Ski racing! First round of Eastern Cups

2011-12-19T15:54:00.003-05:00

Despite the complete lack of snow everywhere in New England except Presque Isle, Craftsbury managed to pull off an impeccable 1.5km loop of manmade snow, to host 500 racers in the first round of Eastern Cup races this winter. The format was a 1km sprint qualifier-only in the morning, a 3km classic prologue (why does the prologue come second? Can someone answer that for me?) in the afternoon, and a 5km/10km skate race on Sunday. Most of the CSU juniors elected to only do one of the classic races, since none of us have been on snow since that freak Halloween snowstorm, and two classic sprint races in one day, when you haven't done it yet that year, is a recipe for injury. Luckily, yours truly doesn't abide by this silly "common sense" thing, and signed up for the entire weekend.

Did you know, if you do two classic sprint races in one day when it's your first day classic skiing, you'll be in a lot of pain the next day?? Who would have guessed it. At least I was able to provide amusement for the other coaches when my hamstring and groin cramped up completely and I was shaking and crying and clutching my leg and trying not to scream, Saturday evening. Good times.

So confused by those long slide-y things attached to my feet!

The course was pretty fun - it had three hills, of varying degrees of steepness, the worst being the wall in the field that everyone was herringboning up. I think that's where the groin cramp originated, because you sure don't practice herringboning on rollerskis. Lots of twists and turns and good transition-y stuff, I like that sort of course. With about 30 kids racing, we were ironing out some new ideas and techniques for the EC weekends, the most successful of which was the parental waxing army. Rob and Jamie and I tested wax, told the parental army what to apply, and they whipped through the kids' skis, producing some fast, sticky, rockets.

It was a bit of a pain to not be able to warm up on skis, since the only snow at Craftsbury was being used on the course, and that was closed as soon as the races started, but by Sunday I'd figured out how to manage. Saturday's first race I started almost completely cold, and my body really doesn't deal well with that. I also could have used much stickier skis, but was applying some panic wax for one of my skiers during the time I could have been panic waxing my own skis. End result were some slick skis, but at least they were fast. Sprint courses are just over so quickly, I never felt like I really found my stride, and barely remember any of the course. The post-race hack indicates I took it at race pace, luckily.

A brief break, and then it was time for the prologue. Things were pretty relaxed in the CSU waxing area, since we'd nailed the wax (that toko base green binder stuff works like magic in manmade snow), and although I wasn't much more warmed up, I was at least a bit tired out starting the second race. My upper body was tired from my four minutes of race pace double poling earlier in the day, which goes to show my dismal ski shape, but I added a bunch more wax to my skis, and this time felt way more comfortable with the whole kick and glide thing. We got to do two laps instead of one, and that helped me, I think, although herringboning the steep hill still felt awkward.

I'm pleased with the second race, and kind of just disregarding the first race completely; not much to learn from that in my case. My juniors crushed the world, taking first place in J1 girls, J2 girls, and J1 boys in the morning - I was proud of all of them, especially with how supportive they were of the kids who weren't so happy about their races. The team aspect is really what ski racing is about - results are so secondary.

Sunday morning, I was hacking up a lung and could barely walk for sore hip flexors, but I actually did enough warmup to shake things out; finally getting the hang of how this ski racing thing works. Given that skate skiing is a lot easier to transition to from rollerskis, I felt ready to hammer the race. My skis were rockets, and that just makes everything more fun. The uphills were already getting pretty chopped up, so I tried to stay light on my feet and just keep the skis moving, and this was definitely the right technique up the steep hill in the field. On the flats, I didn't feel super solid on my feet, but smooth enough to keep generating speed, and my skis continued to be really speedy.

The second lap I tried to maintain that calm feeling I'd had the first lap, and while transitions still felt a little shaky, I was definitely hitting my groove on the uphills. Coming through the lap I was starting to get fatigued, but my top J2 girl caught me just then, on her second lap, and I hopped in behind, to catch a ride. She still skis like a J2, but boy does that kid have some power. The steep hill felt a lot harder the third time 'round, but knowing that you're almost done is always motivational, and I finished pretty strong, basically not having passed or been passed the entire race.

I was happiest with the skate race - only 4% behind Sophie Caldwell is a good race, and although the points aren't out yet, I think it shows some good early ski fitness. I placed 27th, which basically just shows the depth of the New England women's field. Stacked. A few years ago, 4% behind the winner would be top-10 placing.

I'm kind of psyched about ski racing now. Not so much that I'm going to rush out and buy a USSA license to race at nationals, but enough that I've stopped doubting myself. Time to get on snow, somewhere... re-learn how to classic ski!

Prospect Hill time trial

2011-12-14T22:57:00.004-05:00

Last Sunday, the CSU juniors did a time trial up the road at Prospect Hill park, around the flat bits for a little, and then all the way up to the top. The course length was only 4.5km, but given that there was basically no rest, and most of the course was climbing, the times were more appropriate for a 5km race. Course map. I spent a while standing still at the top talking to Jamie, and then we all hiked down to the bottom (too steep to ski down safely), and I spent a while standing around talking to various juniors, and then I took photos while they all started, and then I was like, hey, I should do this too.

At this point I was thoroughly chilled, and completely cooled down from standing around for so long. I figured I'd use the first climb as a warmup, and that actually worked relatively well; I could ski at a consistent tempo with some power application without completely blowing myself up, and by the time I hit the rollers at the top, I was ready to go. Sort of. We did two out-and-backs up top, on a relatively flat rolling road, and that felt like a lot of work, although less work than the killer uphill to the finish. A good hard time trial course, and I ended up just behind one of my J2 girls (ahem), by 3 seconds or so. I'll blame it on taking the first uphill so easy.

As the last tune-up workout before the Eastern Cup this weekend, I'm hesitantly excited. I seem to have some good fitness right now, but I really haven't been on skis, other than an hour on Weston's gerbil loop the other day, and I think that is going to make it difficult to go fast this weekend. We'll see what happens...

Jamie took photos, and he has learned to just send me photos of myself, since otherwise I'll pester him for them endlessly.

Niflheim Nordic CL700 rollerski review

2011-12-09T14:11:00.005-05:00

Ed's company, Niflheim Nordic, started selling classic rollerskis last fall. I hadn't actually gotten around to trying them out seriously until this fall, a serious fail on my part, but most of the problem was related to the fact that I wasn't classic rollerskiing enough. Anyway, I've since put in a bunch of kilometers on the skis, and I have a favorable review for them. I've been skiing on a pair of Marwe combi skis for the last six years, so that is the standard to which I was holding the CL700.

Let's start with overall speed. Like the skate skis, the classic Niflheim Nordic rollerskis come standard with a speed reducer. Unlike the skate skis, though, striding up a hill with a speed reducer on your front wheel sucks - it feels like you're pushing your ski through deep, heavy, snow. So, you can't really use the speed reducer to modify your constant speed the way you can with the skate skis, unless you're just double poling. The skis run medium-slow, without the speed reducer, and I found it to be a comfortable-hard speed for a long ski (in company with some J1 girls who will probably be on the podium at JNs this year, so we weren't exactly dogging it), level 1 on the flats and level 2 on the uphills, for those of you who speak that language. The speed reducer is INCREDIBLY effective at slowing the ski on the downhills - when I put the speed reducer all the way on, I slowed down to a stop. Ed won't let me call it a brake, because it's not, but it sure functions in a similar way. I guess this is mostly due to the wider wheel for the speed reducer to work on, or the longer speed reducer lever-arm, or something like that.

The wheels of this ski are very flat - it is a very stable ski. This is great for striding, but it meant that when the road was deeply cambered, the skis wanted to roll off the edge when I wasn't paying attention. Usually, you only hit that much of a camber on corners, luckily, and I found that I could just adjust my ankle positioning. What was amazing about the wide wheels was how they absorbed bumps and road vibrations. I had always attributed the comfort of my Marwes to the honeycomb shaft, but the Niflheim skis are aluminum, and they are incredibly smooth on rough pavement. It makes for a really nice ride.

The skis also handle gravel well. Ed said something about the wheel having some space between it and the shaft, and that causes the gravel to not stop the skis, but whatever the cause, I could roll over stones that I wouldn't want to hit with my Marwe skis. I don't think it's good practice to aim for rocks when on rollerskis, but sometimes you find yourself with no choice but to go over a rock. These skis did not throw me down, the way I expected in that particular situation.

The Niflheim skis are also really comfortable when striding up hills. Because of the wide wheels, they're super stable, and they feel soft, if that makes any sense - very smooth.

The one downside to the skis is that the wide wheels make them a heavy ski. Being used to my narrow-wheeled combi skis, I had issues when I tried to do all-out sprints. I'm used to a narrow wheel that will let me quickly correct for a ski heading in the wrong direction, and I had trouble quickly moving these skis around. That said, very few people are doing all-out sprints on rollerskis, so I don't expect this to be a widespread problem! I didn't have too much of a problem edging off of the skis, although I suspect I'd be unhappy if I tried to skate on them for a long time. That's fine, though, because these are classic skis!

And, like the skate skis, the classic skis are anodized red, so they stay pretty and shiny. Overall, I'm a fan.

The price point is $199, without bindings, so as far as classic skis go, these are also cheaper. I guess the ratcheted front wheel bumps the cost, but it still saves a bundle of money compared to V2 or Marwe or Swenor.

Link to the Niflheim Nordic website. And here is a link to my review of the Niflheim Nordic skate skis.

Hot chocolate 5k race

2011-12-05T23:12:00.004-05:00

I raced six times last weekend, while doing 5.5hrs of running in two days. I would never have guessed it, but that sort of weekend will leave you really sore. What's up with that?

Phil Bricker set a chase sprint race at Cemetery Hill for Saturday, and though only 29 people showed up, they were all pretty serious orienteers. The format was that you ran two separate sprints, and then your time was added, and the final sprint was a chase start, a la pursuit style, so that whoever came home first won the day. I had some issues getting my legs going, and then had an up close and personal encounter with some thick spiky stuff in the final sprint, not my finest day. Results.

Punching the finish.

After some much-needed pizza, a whole crew of us headed out to do a night-o at a park that shall not be named. This went alright for me, although I didn't feel like I had a ton of energy. Most of the boys beat me this time, but I still had a good time out there and didn't make any huge mistakes. The night-o was followed with dinner at Peter and Gail's house, and then a respectable amount of boggle.

Sunday morning dawned clear and cold, and I was very stiff, and quite sleepy. Some yoga took care of the stiffness, and coffee took care of the sleepiness, and soon I found myself in a car heading down to Northampton for the annual Hot Chocolate 5k race, trying to figure out a race strategy. I expected to be maybe 30s faster than the xc races - so somewhere between 20:30-21ish minutes. I ran the course to warm up, and quickly discovered that my legs felt really light and snappy. I had unfortunately eaten the sort of breakfast you'd eat before a ski marathon, which, strangely enough, is not ideal for running, but my stomach quieted itself before the start.

With 3200 other runners lining up for the race, this thing had some serious potential to get crowded. Everyone I'd talked to had said to line up in an area a minute faster per mile than you think you'll run, and although I hate the "I lied because everyone else was lying" approach to this, I figured if I wanted a clear run I'd have to do that. People were pretty relaxed, and Greg Balter (a middle-aged orienteer doing this with me) lined up nearby, he was hoping to break 20min by a bit, so I figured I could start near him and see how that felt. I haven't really run too many track intervals lately, so I didn't have a sense of what pace would break me.

We started out, and the course quickly climbed a steep little hill up to the center of town, and then headed out on a gradual downhill grade. The traffic wasn't bad; there were people all over, but I didn't have to change my line or move around too much, and that first mile felt pretty effortless. They had clocks at each mile, and the first read 6:25 - bang on for 20min pace! The pace may have felt pretty effortless, in terms of cardiovascular effort, but my quads could feel that I wasn't used to going this fast, and Greg had a decent lead on me already. Luckily, we turned a corner and began a gradual climb up to the 2nd mile. This is where I really discovered that my legs felt light - I swung my way up that hill, and it felt like I was just rolling along, no extra effort. Awesome!

I hit the second mile at 12:42; now just under 20min pace. I still felt very comfortable in my breathing, and I found that a little surprising. My legs were beginning to be a little tired, but there was no lactate burn, and I still felt like I was flowing across the pavement. The third mile climbs, fairly significantly, and then descends, again somewhat steeply, into town, and finishes down the little kicker we climbed up from the start. I dug deep on the hill, since I clearly didn't have the leg speed to push the flats hard enough. I began to pass some people, and could see Greg ahead of me up the hill. The positive thoughts were flowing, and nearing the top of the hill I was breathing more raggedly - how I'd expect for a hard effort.

Turning the corner to start the downhill into town, I wasn't looking at my watch anymore. This was it, all downhill to the finish, and that hill had very successfully put me into my own private lactic-acid-filled hell. One of the guys I'd passed going up the hill came back past me, and I realized that feeling of doom, knowing you've dug too deep too soon. Greg was now dangling about 10m in front of me, but I couldn't close the gap, and every step felt like it was shattering my quads. Another middle-aged guy passed me by, but he gasped out - "work with me!" Somewhat unexpected, but I knew it was time to get tough, and lengthened my stride to match his. He pulled me up to Balter, and I knew I had this race in the book. I just had to not trip over myself.

The last 200 meters were excruciating. I wouldn't - couldn't - let up, but my legs and lungs were maxed out, and the downhill was steep enough that I was actually worried I might not get my legs in front of me enough to catch myself as I rolled down the hill. Gone was the floating sensation, instead there was just burning. I staggered past one last woman, and finally crossed the finish line. Oh sweet relief, I can stop running now!

I ended up running 19:39, a new PR by almost 1.5 minutes. MINUTES! That's not supposed to happen at this point in my life, but I'm not complaining. Results, 11th woman, 89th overall, of 3209 total runners.

The sixth race of the weekend, orienteering down in Connecticut that afternoon, was not performed very quickly.

Skiing is hard.

2011-12-02T21:36:00.004-05:00

Skiing is hard, yo. Frank convinced me to do a no-pole skate time trial, because I'd missed the one in the fall and he wanted the data from my times (to correlate to my double pole test, and add a data point in an obsessive study relating ankle compression to ski speed... or something along those lines), to add to his massive database of skiers. I was sort of like, how hard can this be? And then I really regretted it. This test is evil. Four times up a steep hill, no-pole skating, is considerably harder than four times double poling up that hill. I suppose this was the point that Frank was trying to prove to us - our skating needs a lot of work, and that weakness is exposed when you remove the poles. I'm glad there wasn't anyone taking video of me, that couldn't have been pretty.

By the time this was done, my butt was totally wrecked. My legs weren't feeling too good, but the gluteus medius was TRASHED. The good news is that my calf didn't blow up, so I was able to push through all of these. But today I can barely walk, my butt is so sore.

Anyway, the times were 3:20, 3:25, 3:29, 3:23, for a total of 13:36. Given that my first double pole test of the year was 13:18, I'm pretty pleased with the no-pole variant. Given my decent ankle compression, it fits pretty well with Frank's theory that good ankle compression --> good no-pole times relative to double pole times. Or something...

Above is the homework assignment that Frank sent to all the juniors. They had to pull out frames from a video of them skiing, and measure the ankle and knee ankles at three different stages - glide, compression, and kick. I didn't have a protractor, so I just copied my angles onto Frank's, since we were using him as a template. We have about 10 skiers who have actually gone through and done this, by now - they're the overachievers, and I approve!

Anyway, while doing time trials that are painful and exhausting, I remembered that skiing is hard. I forget this sometimes, especially as a coach. My athletes are lucky I do the workouts with them - it forces me to remember how much work they're doing, too. So I was in this tough-girl "skiing is hard!" mindset all day, and then that just faded, enough for me to remember why I love to ski. So I drew a picture. And wrote a blog post, that almost got too sappy, but ended up motivating. I think.

Skiing is hard, and I love it.

Thanksgiving

2011-11-26T23:02:00.011-05:00

I'm not going to go into the sappy "I'm thankful for..." blogpost that's been floating around my head, but I will say that I'm incredibly thankful to have the great friends that I do. A random assortment of us gathered around our coffee table to eat turkey sitting on the floor, and the evening was filled with laughter. Some choice photos below...

Alex's trophy shot. It was disturbing how satisfying it was to butcher that bird.

Leo in action cooking things.

It's also pretty awesome to have friends who come to your house and cook things for you. Oh, hi Ed.

Becky and Ros taking a break.

Tall guys with dark shirts.

Later in the evening, inspired by Epic Mealtime, we made experiments with bacon. In this case, attempting to candy it.
Unfortunately, most of it burned. The non-burned bits were utterly delicious, though.

I love to eat, and I love to eat with friends. Life is good.

Rochester, and other shenanigans.

2011-11-19T08:34:00.000-05:00

It's really been too long since I posted an artsy portrait of myself. This one is from a recent training event at Pawtuckaway, and features Vadim, Giacomo, Katia, and Lori.

Last weekend Ed and I were in Rochester for the Honeoye Falls Ski Swap, selling rollerskis - while it may not be the best time to be trying to sell rollerskis, at least it wasn't actively snowing at the time, and I think we made some good contacts. Supposedly this networking stuff is important, so in the sense that we sold enough stuff to cover gas, bar tab, and sushi bill, I think we had a very successful trip.

But then Ed decided that he wanted to stay in Rochester longer, and I really didn't have that option - had to be in Amherst at 8am this morning to take my comprehensive exam. First off, who gives masters students a comprehensive exam? And secondly, well, I'm an idiot, and I thought I could take the test next semester, but it turns out I can't, because that'll be my last semester, so I had about a week to cram in everything I could possibly know about ecology and quantitative ecology and human dimensions of ecology and research concepts. Luckily, I paid attention in those classes in undergrad because I found them interesting, so I remembered most things. Haven't seen grades yet, but I'm reasonably certain I didn't just fail out of school.

So Ed is still in Rochester, and I took my car home. This only works because his parents are heading to Boston for Thanksgiving, and he can get a ride with them. But it means I'm home alone, and between the post-exam relief and the general burned-out-ness I've been feeling lately, it meant that I was contemplating eating peanut butter for dinner. But then I was like, "no! I can't do better than this! I have cereal!" And then I realized that real adults don't eat cereal for dinner, so I cooked a cabbage. And now I'm sitting on the couch in the dark, eating cabbage, listening to the dixie chicks, and feeling like maybe I'm missing something about this whole "real world" thing.

Lots of stuff has been going on and I've been wanting to write about lots of stuff, but unfortunately haven't really had the time to do it. Not like that'll be improving, since I'm heading out into the field soon to collect my temperature loggers from the West and Westfield watersheds, and once I have the data I get to spend all my waking moments frantically analyzing. Wooo!

Couple cool things - orienteering has actually been getting some press, lately. First, we were on NPR! Doug Tribou from "Only a game" showed up to the Middle distance orienteering championships, and interviewed a bunch of people, and then they ran a 7-min story on orienteering. Super exciting! You can read the text and listen to the story here. Also on the orienteering publicity side of things, the Boston Globe ran a story about the New England Orienteering Club, and I thought it was a nicely rounded article. Read it here. And it doesn't end there! Sports Illustrated interviewed Alison Crocker, in the faces in the crowd section - here. This is probably orienteering's highest profile appearance in the US since Peter Gagarin was featured on a Wheaties box. Cool stuff!

I've been slowly trying to shift from all orienteering training into doing some ski training, but honestly, it's just less fun. Coaching is a good time though, and I think I'm doing pretty well in my goal of having all my girls be faster than me this winter, and not just because I'm old, tired, and crippled. Right now I think four of my seven will kick my butt, but that's good, since I don't think I could make junior worlds right now =). Anyway, couple weekends ago I was helping Rob coach the Gaining Ground clinic in Sudbury, and that was really a good time. Good mix of masters racing for themselves and coaches looking to keep up on the latest stuff.
Yeah forward position!

Quick ski lesson:
Right:
Wrong:

And take it to skis. Mostly quick learners, and that makes it really fun.

The Sunday after that clinic, Ed and I headed to the Blue Hills to set streamers for the Blue Hills Traverse, that was just run last Sunday. This is only notable because I picked up a tick, the second bite of the season. Given that one guy had 18 ticks attached by the end of the traverse, we need some hard frosts, now! I hate all blood-sucking critters. More so when they carry diseases. It's actually also notable because Ali won the traverse - like, the entire thing, and kicked all the boys' butts. I was in Rochester, certainly a good move for my ego.

I think that may be enough rambling for now. Something more coherent may come after the 3k time trial I'm running on Thanksgiving morning. I leave you with happy photos from last weekend.

Mama, stop taking photos of us!

Ach, she got us.

A map! This one from the 2009 A-meet in Rochester, where I totaled my ankle. I finally went to re-run the course, actually as threshold intervals. It was a really solid workout, and a lot of fun. Speaking of workouts - I've finally gotten a chance to really test out Ed's classic skis, so a review of those will be coming shortly. Hopefully before we start skiing on snow!

Damn, the cabbage is gone and now I'm hungry again. Time to head for the peanut butter.

Double pole time trial

2011-11-14T21:44:00.003-05:00

Thanks to some elbow tendonitis, I didn't do any double pole time trials last year. CSU has a decent set-up for this - we do four repeats of a fairly steep hill, and just add the times together to get a final time. This is a good representation of both ski specific strength, and of strength endurance, and it correlates pretty well to performance in the Eastern Cups and junior nationals, for the juniors. Using this and the 3000m run, Frank can predict with good accuracy if a kid is going to make it to JNs or not. I feel like at this point I'd have a good shot among the J2 girls...

Jamie was standing at the top taking photos of us; I do tend to go faster if I know there is a camera around the corner, but sometimes there is just nothing you can do about going faster. Looking at the photos, at the very least I have a good forward starting position - my abs were definitely sore the next day! Unfortunately, things collapsed pretty quickly after the nice forward lean. Muscles what? I did this test in September, and finished in 13:18 - not a horrendous time, but not exactly something to be proud of. I was hoping to break 13 this time 'round; that would be just 5 seconds faster per lap, I can do that!

Ali graced us with her presence, and we both did some fun orienteering training in the morning. A quick stop for lunch, and then it was on to Concord for the DPTT. I definitely still had some lunch rattling around in my stomach, but at least it stayed put! A big group of juniors out for the test, but it ended up getting pretty spread out, as everyone takes a different amount of time up and down the hill (well, the down is supposed to stay pretty constant around 5min). Ali and I stayed pretty close, but she was beating me by about five seconds each time. We started out fast - 3:00 flat, and I knew I was in for a sufferfest - when you can feel the lactic acid pooling on the first time up, that's not a good sign!

We started the second rep with Olivia and Jacob, and while Ali pulled away early, I held even with Jacob. He's been working hard on his double pole, and the technique gains were obvious, as I couldn't drop him. My upper body was definitely tiring, and while focusing on good technique had gotten me up the hill, I was in search of more oopmh. At least the burning seemed to subside a bit; maybe I just did need more of a warmup! The third one we had some of the younger juniors to hunt down, and knowing that I was more than halfway done helped with my effort, but it wasn't easy. I managed to cut off two seconds from the second rep, and my arms were shaking by the top. The whole way down I was just dreading the last one - this test hurts so much! Off we went, though, and I kept repeating to myself "Bjorn Daehlie never slips". It was a good mantra, and got me to stand up enough to get my poles into the pavement without them slipping out; but I just couldn't move any faster near the top.

Lungs and legs burning, arms shaking, slobber flying, lunch jiggling... I was kind of a wreck. But, I had just set a new PR! 12:28, 11 seconds faster than 2009, the last time I did this (3:00, 3:08, 3:06, 3:14). I've been doing far less rollerskiing, and barely any strength to speak of, so I will take this record and run with it! I think this also gets me ahead of all my J2 girls, so that is a good thing. The J1s I have no chance against.

I ran a PR for my 3000m back in September, too, so maybe I am in better shape after all this running than I thought. One more 3k test, on Thanksgiving, to try and break 11:30, and then it's time to strap on the skis and see what I can do. I can't help myself - I'm excited!

23rd Annual CSU Rollerski race

2011-11-06T16:53:00.004-05:00

(photo courtesy of Chris City)

Jamie Doucett has been holding a rollerski race in Andover for a really long time. 23 years. As far as I can remember, this was my third time doing it, and so far, each time has gotten faster, although this year I only nipped 2 seconds from last year's time. My body seems to remember how fast I'm supposed to go when I'm ski racing, and it just sort of goes that speed, until it can't anymore. So then I dug deep and held on for as long as I could, and it was enough to win! For the women, anyway.

It was a pleasant day, although it started out a bit chilly. There was a good group of skiers, mostly from Harvard and CSU, but a couple from further afield, as well. I love pack racing. I was kind of worried about my fitness - I really haven't been ski training as much as I know I should be, and I know that this course is relatively flat, which means a lot of double poling. But I figured it would also just be a nice reality check - how bad IS my upper body strength right now?

We took off, and the pack quickly thinned itself on the first uphill. I kick-double poled the whole way up, which isn't something I've done before, but it seemed faster. We got to the top, and I was dangling behind Bob Burnham and Ben Smeltzer, with a thicker pack ahead of them. Unlike the last time I did this race, I was not exactly killing it on the double pole sections. In fact, it may be more accurate to say I was getting dropped. Jamie passed me at some point on the long flat bits, and I thankfully jumped in his tall-person draft. I hung on his tail through the rest of the lap, passing two other fast starters, and even leading up the far hill, but as we came through the start/finish I knew that this whole drafting thing wasn't going to last much longer. He had already gapped me on the flat bit, and I couldn't make up the distance up the first big hill. I could see Bob still dangling ahead of me, but once Jamie caught up to him, it was all over. I could see them for most of the rest of the lap, trying really hard to catch up, and feeling more and more jarred by the pavement as my body just refused to cooperate with this whole "strength" thing I was asking it to do. Going through the motions, but nothing is happening.

By the time I finished, even my butt was sore. I couldn't bear the thought of one more kilometer on skis, so switched to running shoes for a cooldown - apparently, I'm not nearly as ski-fit as I'd like to be, but I can still squeeze out a result - I just suffer for it. Tomorrow should be fun.

But, I won! And, I broke my previous "record" by 2 seconds, and I'll take any improvement. I did lose 2:15 from the first to second laps, but hey, I'll keep my strategy of "start hard, then hang on" for mass starts. When it works, it's golden!

Results.

Relay championships

2011-11-02T11:05:00.026-04:00

(more foliage on fire photos. Afternoon light after a windy day makes for super-bright leaves!)

Team CSU!

Last weekend, CSU headed out to St. Louis, Missouri for the US Orienteering Relay championships. Unlike the five thousand other championships that OUSA thinks it's necessary to hold, the relay champs are a club event, so it took some actual coordination to get enough people from CSU to commit to a team. But then we got the ball rolling, and ended up with two teams!

The way the relays work is that people are worth a certain number of points, given their age and sex. Given however many points you have in your club, you work it out so that you're racing in the 4-point, 8-point, or 12-point categories. You need to have 4 or more points to be in the 4-point category, 8 or more for the 8-point, etc. Men under the age of 40 are basically useless in terms of points, I think so that you can't field a team of four elite men, since not every club has the numbers to do that. Elite girls are worth 2 points each, so our first team had both Ali and me, each worth 2 points, and then two zero-point guys - Ian Smith, and Mikkel Conradi. The other team had Peter (3 points), Bill (3 points), Greg (0 points), and Brendan (0 points). So we ended up fielding two 4-point teams.

To make this even more fun, my friend Sharon, from Colby, is in St Louis these days, and agreed to come hang out with us all weekend! It was awesome to see her, and she even got to go out on a beginner course, shadowed by Ali.

Most of us arrived in St Louis Friday, in time to head out to Cuivre River park for a sprint course, that I used to preview the terrain for the night-o championships race that night. This was obscure championships week, by the way - we had a corn maze classic and sprint distance championships on Tuesday, courtesy of Peter, and then the rollerski-o middle distance and sprint championships on Wednesday, also courtesy of Peter. Friday was the night-o championships, and Sunday was the relay champs. Obscure sports quarterly, I'm coming for your front page.

Anyway, the night-o was a lot of fun. I was harboring secret hopes that I would beat Ali, as I think she tends to slow down at night and I speed up, but it's just too hard to ignore that 3-min difference in 5k times when you're racing a running sport, and while I was closer than usual, I still got beaten. I felt like it was a really good race nonetheless - I managed to catch Carol by #9 from 2 minutes back, and I could push really hard, physically. It was a nice night for running, and a silver medal is nothing to scoff at.

Saturday was a regular middle distance A-meet, and Ali had decided to run up with the boys on the blue course, so the win was there for the taking. I took it, but couldn't quite beat the guys who took 1st-4th. Another good race, and very clean, from a technical point of view. I relied heavily on my compass when approaching reentrants from above, and with the wide-open forests and gentle slopes, there was a lot of fast running on that course.

Sharon came out to the start with me, and was my very own paparazzi - go me!

How to eat funnel cake.
How to puzzle over what to do with sticky fingers from eating funnel cake.

Hanging out in the sun Saturday afternoon was nice.

Saturday afternoon, we headed to the model map - a sample bit of map on a sample bit of terrain, to see what it would be like for the relay. None of us had ever done floodplain orienteering before, and it turns out there aren't many features (other than the random dumpster), and there is no climb. Anywhere. It was a strange sort of area, and I'm glad we checked it out.

The sun was starting to go down, and the light made the trees across the lake look like they were flaming. Beautiful.
Fanning out to check out the footing and the mapping of this area.

This is how I felt about the terrain and the mapping style for the floodplain relay. Very strange, very different than normal.

Sunday rolled around and we were all pretty pumped for the REAL event of the weekend. Our main rivals were Delaware Valley Orienteering Association (DVOA) - they were fielding an allstar team, and we were definitely worried about how we'd stack up. Our order went me -> Ian -> Ali -> Mikkel. We had been unsure of the order for Ali and Mikkel, since the courses are different for each leg, and the last leg was longest, and Ali is in better shape than Mikkel. But, he settled it by saying that he could run a 25s 200m, and we figured that might be necessary, so put him on the last leg. Team two went Brendan -> Peter -> Bill -> Greg. I was kind of worried they'd beat Team 1, but we were ok =).
First team for CSU: Mikkel, Ali, Ian, and me. Why do I look like I should be the mascot or something?

Starting line, under threatening skies (Dan Barker photo).
On the start line. Sharon McMonagle photo.

The start. Greg Walker's photos.

We started off, and I could immediately feel my calves tighten up. This wasn't good, but I figured I had no choice other than to push through it. Brendan was pulling the pack out front, and Zac Barker, DVOA's first runner, was close behind him. Zac is young (therefore worth points), but he is speedy, and with good visibility he'll have no issues keeping up. I just hoped to stay close to Brendan, who I know is faster than me, but could potentially pull me to a really awesome leg and a lead-off to Ian in the front of the race. As we kept running, though, I knew I was in trouble. My calves felt awful, and I was at the point where I couldn't push off my toes, so my running was more of a stumble. I just had to make it through 4km, but with the soft footing in the floodplain, I was truly floundering. It helped that Zac and Brendan were in front of me, because I could take smarter micro-routes, but you couldn't hide the fact that I just couldn't run fast enough.

By the time I got to the open field and ~500m left to go, it was a pure mental game for me. I knew I had to stay within visual contact of Zac (Brendan was by now well off the front), so that Ian could reel in Vadim on the second leg. Do it for your team, do it for you team, keep running! But I had no power in my legs, I physically could not push off of my toes - I thought maybe I would trip over myself since I couldn't pick my legs up fast enough, I was just stumbling my way into the finish.

Me finishing my leg, before tagging off to Ian. Greg's photo.

It was good enough, and I tagged to Ian in 4th place overall, third among the 4-point teams. Ian was able to overcome the gap, but he couldn't drop Vadim, DVOA's second runner, completely. He opened up about a 20s lead, but that was still visual contact, which meant that we had no chance to fully escape from them.
The tag.

Ian's graceful tag off to Ali. The next photo in this series was Ian on the ground. Greg Walker photo.

Ali went out and ran well, but Clem, DVOA's third runner, closed the gap, and they were running together through much of the leg. There were four different spectator controls, that we could see across the lake, and it was super exciting to watch the lead changes! Ali succeeded in putting a bit of time on Clem in the last open running parts, but again, Wyatt (DVOA's fourth runner) was able to close the gap to Mikkel. This actually worked in our favor, as Mikkel didn't try to drop Wyatt again - he was happy to run with him, and to make things even more exciting, they caught up the top two teams in the 8-point category, so that the last spectator control saw all four runners coming at once. As they came flying across the last fields, you could tell that Mikkel looked fresher than Wyatt, but it didn't help the nail biting. My throat is still sore from cheering Mikkel in to the line, and he successfully out-kicked Wyatt, bringing the relay gold to the realm of CSU!

Mikkel screaming to victory after out-kicking Wyatt, for one of the closest finishes ever in the US relay champs.

Wooo! We won!

DVOA put up an awesome fight, and I was proud to get to run against these perennial champions. I was prouder still of CSU, for running smart, running hard, and running together. Yeah CSU!

US Sprint/Middle/Long Champs: the race report

2011-10-27T15:25:00.008-04:00

If I were smart, I wouldn't try to race while also in a managerial role, but we all know that I'm not very smart. So, I signed up to race all three days, since that is three more A-meet days to add to my ranking, plus a WRE - very cool stuff! The sprint was really the only day where I felt good, physically, but I thought maybe I could get away with not feeling so awesome, and still managing a good result. That didn't actually happen, not so surprisingly.

The sprint was super interesting. There was some fast fields-running, but a lot of very technical thinking in the woods - yes, you could run on trails, but you really had to keep track of where you were. I made a bunch of mistakes, not to mention all the hesitations, but still came through in 6th, good enough for third place US and a medal! Ali was almost 3 minutes ahead of me, and she had made mistakes, too.

After all the heavy lifting that evening, I tried to pretend that I was feeling fresh for the middle, but somehow my brain didn't believe me. It was another super interesting course, that made great use of the little bits of nice forest. Again, it was very technical, with low visibility, but I really enjoyed the course. I was being pretty cautious in the beginning, trying not to lose time through mistakes, but balancing not losing time through being too hesitant. I lost some time on 5 and 6, maybe a minute total, but I was starting to really flow by the time I hit 7-9. After making another mistake on 11, Carol Ross, our favorite Canadian, caught up to me from four minutes back, and we started racing pretty hard head-to-head. That's my favorite kind of orienteering!

We finally parted ways on the way to 15 - I saw the smarter southern route, and picked up a minute over Carol just by doing that. I knew it was smart, and was trying to push the pace, hoping to drop her enough to beat her in the results, but then I went and totally goofed on 18, and ended up almost 10 minutes out of the lead. This time I was 9th overall, and fifth American, so no more medals for me.
Splits.

Dave Yee was taking more photos today, and caught some of me during my race. One of my gaiters fell down, which, aside from causing a lot of pain when running through brambles, is a serious fashion faux-pas. Gasp.

Coming in for the finish punch clearly requires a lot of concentration.

Photo courtesy of Clem McGrath.

The banquet Saturday night went over well, and Ali and I gave out awards. Sunday dawned way too early, and aside from freezing my toes off, the morning set-up went well, and I found myself on the third start line for the weekend. I knew there would be a lot of trail running today, given the nature of the Fells, so I was trying to be prepared to run fast. Unfortunately, it turns out my body just didn't have much to give in the face of running fast, and there were many moments where my brain really wanted my legs to be moving a little faster. I suppose that's the crux of sports. Want to go faster, but can't.

I still managed to make mistakes - nearly 9 minutes of mistakes - and that kind of disappoints me. Because if I had felt like I wanted to go faster, then I damn well should have made sure the orienteering was as perfect as it could be. I caught up to Tori Borish fairly early on, and I kept trying to drop her, which wasn't actually a good plan, because it meant that for two controls in a row, I was a complete goofmuppet. Eventually I found that pesky control #12, and I was PISSED. Ali had caught up to me (from eight minutes back or some such ridiculousness), but I outran her to both control 13 and 14. Either because I orienteer better when I'm really mad at myself, or because I orienteer better when I'm racing someone head-to-head, not sure. Unfortunately, a long trail run followed control 14, and I lost Ali pretty quickly.

Starting around 18 it became a slog; I couldn't drop Tori, and I just couldn't make myself go any faster. I totally blew #22, but managed to hold it together to come in 7th, 4th American, and just two minutes out of the medals. Hardly a good race, but given the circumstances, entirely acceptable. The last four nights, I've averaged 9.5hrs of sleep. It's been glorious.

The route from Sunday's long race. The straight-line distance was 10.x km, and I ended up running 13.7. I guess that's a long time to be running. I hadn't thought to bring any gels, so I put some candy corn in a little baggy and stuffed that down my sports bra - it turns out, candy corn melts. And is very difficult to chew, mid-race. Just fyi.

2011 Sprint/Middle/Long US Orienteering Championships

2011-10-24T21:03:00.024-04:00

Way back last fall, Ed and a couple other big thinkers decided that CSU wanted to host the sprint/middle/long individual US championships for orienteering. We had a new map being developed of Lynn Woods, and we finally had the full map (all the way around the reservoir) of Middlesex Fells, and we thought we could do an updated map of Franklin Park, to have three pretty exciting venues. We went about securing permits and coercing talented orienteers to set courses for us, and after a bit of a battle with the sanctioning committee, who basically just don't like our terrain, we were set to go.

Ed has a bit of a perfectionist streak in him. This meet was going to be perfect, or he would break himself trying. Giovanni, another CSU member, was the other meet director - basically, they both wanted to be meet directors for this thing, and we figured, heck, let 'em both do it! The problem, or maybe blessing, is that both Ed and Giovanni are very technologically-minded, and they had all sorts of new innovative things they wanted to try out at this meet. In the end, most of their ideas came to fruition, but there were a couple that we just didn't have time to do.

I was registrar, which meant that I got to deal with all the whiners, but this was a good lesson in patience, and in biting my tongue before snapping at people who were really driving me up the wall. "Of course you can have the 10:34am start time. I understand that 10:28am won't work for you. Let me see what I can do". The majority of people are very pleasant to work with, but it's those few brats who stick in your mind...

The competition was held over three days - Friday through Sunday, at three different venues: Franklin Park, Lynn Woods, and Middlesex Fells. CSU is a small club, and most of our members are in the M/F21+ class, the elites - most of us wanted to run in the US champs. This stretches a small number of volunteers over a huge task list, and everyone who did volunteer, did it to excess. We couldn't have made the thing go as smoothly as it did without the blood sacrifices of all our volunteers. Well, hopefully not too much blood, but certainly plenty of sweat and tears. Ok, maybe not even that many tears - just my own, on Sunday morning, pre-breakfast setting up the arena in the dark with the frost on the grass chilling my toes. Thankfully, Ken went out and acquired me some McGoodness, and it was hot and greasy and filling and delicious.

Friday morning was a potential disaster. Ed and I had been scurrying around since 6am, loading equipment, carrying equipment, driving places, and Giovanni and Katia had been scurrying around since 6am, acquiring our rental truck, our rental tent, and all the rental tables and chairs. Unfortunately, the rental place couldn't get the truck until something like 8am, and so the truck, loaded with tent and chairs and stuff, didn't arrive at the arena until close to 11am, with the first starts slated for 1pm. To make matters considerably worse, when Ed and I arrived at Franklin Park, the field in which we were planning to set up the tent was thoroughly soggy, and the groundskeeper waiting for us refused to let us drive any vehicles across the grass.

The tent had to go in its designated spot in the middle of the field for a bunch of reasons, so, we started carrying out all the equipment. It was ~200m walk, through soggy, muddy, grass, and we had about twelve people carrying however many thousands of pounds across this field. Thankfully we had two dollies, but we were cutting it pretty close with getting people registered and the arena set up before race start. In the end, the day went fabulously, and pretty much everyone had a really great time - except one guy, but he's an inveterate complainer, so we had no choice but to mostly ignore him.

Of course, at the end of the day, we still had to carry all that equipment back to the truck, and thankfully a handful of non-CSU runners stuck around to help us out. We would never have made it to the evening packet pick-up without their help. Actually, Ed almost didn't make it to the evening packet pick-up - his truck wouldn't start after we'd loaded everything up. We shifted all the registration gear into someone else's car, put me in the car, and I headed up to the meet headquarters, leaving Ed alone in the dark with a finicky truck to figure it out on his own. He got things working and arrived shortly after me, but by 9:30pm, when we finally got a chance to escape and have some dinner, we were both pretty wiped.

The racing was fast and furious, and visiting Canadians definitely gave the American runners some competition. Above, Carol Ross and Hannah Burgess sprint in to the finish - Dave Yee photo.
Brendan Shields, course setter, enjoying all the praise people had for his courses. Dave Yee photo.
Morning scene: piles of boxes in a field.

Ali Crocker in the finish chute - Ali made it three for three wins this weekend - champ! Dave Yee photo.

Results

Greg Balter and Peter Gagarin manned the microphone all weekend - and they did an excellent job, especially with the elite runners' announcing. Dave Yee photo.

Ed doing what he does, and fixing problems. Dave Yee photo.

Saturday was another early morning, but thankfully we didn't have to carry the equipment very far - just unload the truck and set up. It made things go much more smoothly, and there were far fewer snags through the day. The US Junior's team set up a concession stand as a fundraiser, and that was highly possible, as was the US Senior Team's meet-and-greet - people were invited to come over and talk to the team members about their routes and orienteering in general, and people seemed to really like that. I didn't get much of a chance to partake, as I was manning the registration table, but everyone seemed really happy with the whole day, meet workers included! Saturday's race was a World Ranking Event, and that definitely attracted some foreign blood - we had Canadians, Americans, Swedes, Germans, Ukranians, Czech, and Irish racing in the elite race.
Meet and greet the US team, and talk about orienteering - a typical orienteering huddle. Dave Yee photo.

Results

Tent set-up. Good times.

I feel like this photo catches the American orienteering scene really well - four runners, all on different courses and in different classes, approaching the spectator control on the middle distance race. Dave Yee photo.
Then Neil blasted past the slower runners. Dave Yee photo.

Bernie helping the juniors at the concession stand. Dave Yee photo.
Gary Richter showed up with his Icebug trailer - it was nice to have some vendors around, added to the buzz around the arena.

Kseniya showing the anxiety that you feel during an orienteering race - so much pressure to not mess up! Where do I go next? What is my attackpoint? I need to be running faster! Ahhh! Dave Yee photo.
Middle distance women's WRE course.

Saturday night was the banquet, and awards - the top three US contenders got medals, but the top three overall got prizes, and the prizes were sweet - a puzzle made up of the map from that day! People really liked the puzzles. The banquet went over well, and the food was tasty. We also all sang Larry Berman happy birthday, which I think he really appreciated.

Sunday morning dawned clear and frigid, and Ed and Giovanni made the decision that we didn't need to erect the tent. This decision was extremely well-received by the volunteers, and we quickly set up the arena and eventually the sun came up and melted the frost. By that point I had digested my McMuffin, and found another layer of clothing to wear (over jacket and down vest):
The Walker boys taking care of electronic stuff. Greg was trying out the new fashion of sideways headlamps. Apparently it's less ideal for actually seeing things in the dark.
Eric and Ali, champions for the day, handing out awards to all the other classes.

The race went very smoothly; apparently we were old hands by now, and we managed to get most people their awards before they left, so that was good. By the time we packed up and left, we were feeling pretty good about the entire weekend. I think I'm glad that we put on that meet, but I'm not sure I can handle doing it again for another couple years.

And Jess showed up Sunday afternoon, after rocking out in her xc running race earlier in the day! We went on a control pick-up hike, and I know I had a good time catching up.

Ontario Orienteering Festival

2011-10-13T11:51:00.026-04:00

The mountain bike race I was slated to do last weekend got postponed to this past weekend, and I had already made plans for a road trip to Canada, so I managed to weasel my way out of the bike race, after all. Ali, Becky, Rob (Becky's boyfriend) and I piled into my car, and we headed north, with our passports this time, for a long weekend of Canadian orienteering. I also got the chance to see Ottawa a bit, pretty much for the first time, as Nevin and Will took us around on a tour.

The racing was fast and furious, with a really competitive women's field. Ali managed the overall win, also winning the middle and the sprint, and I ended up 3rd overall, although both Becky and Katarina Smith would have been ahead of me if they had also done the sprint. The event was very well organized, and the weather cooperated with brilliant foliage and pleasant temperatures - better for spectating than racing, as it really felt like summer out there.

We were staying with the Teutsch family, as we did last summer for the Canadian O' Champs, and as ever it was a really wonderful blast of organized chaos. Three kids, a dog, a cat, a bird, three bunnies, a couple fish, and seven houseguests... Anne didn't ever look ruffled, it was unbelievable! The Teutsch's were great hosts, and since Anne and Eric were basically in charge of the meet, they also ran a really great meet.

We were on the same maps as last summer, and that was a good thing, as I had some vengeance I wanted to wreak upon that terrain! Last year hadn't gone so well for me, and I was ready to bring it this time 'round. The weekend started off with a middle distance, at the Hidden Meadows XC ski place. Map below. This went pretty well for me - I was never stupendously fast, but I was going along pretty accurately, and relatively smoothly, too. However, I couldn't last the entire race, and I ran off the map on the way to the last control. Luckily that only cost me three minutes, give or take 30s, but it was still frustrating to mar an otherwise good race with a silly mistake! Ah well, it's all a learning process I suppose.
Results.

Note my route on the way to 17 where it falls off the map... oops.
Chasing down Katarina Smith into the finish. Stefan Bergstrom photo.
Stefan Bergstrom photo.
Finishing the middle distance. Photo courtesy of Andrew Cornett.

We didn't get much of a break before it was time for the sprint race, at Beaver Brook development center. The course was an interesting mix of very fast open suburban-type areas, and middle-distance-esque complicated forest. I found it difficult to change gears between top speed and something more sustainable for thinking, but managed to make it through probably less than a minute total of errors. This was good enough for third, 54 seconds behind Ali, who won by 1 second. But the heat was definitely getting to my stomach, and I spent a good while after the race curled up in a little ball wishing I were more hydrated.

Results.

Starting out the sprint. Punch the start and flip the map, then go go go! Photo courtesy of Andrew Cornett.

Sometimes, Ali's bag explodes at races.

Sunday it was time to attack the beavers. The terrain at the Eco Wellness Center is like a series of linear lakes and beaver ponds, all criss-crossed with beaver dams and very thin passageways, with lots of bare rock between the lakes. It is basically a barrens terrain, and very cool to run on! I started two minutes in front of Becky, so I sort of figured I'd see her out there, but I didn't expect her to catch me as soon as she did; right around control #3. I discovered that I could keep up, and actually out-run her at times, so for a while we were having a great head-to-head race, until I made a massive blunder on my way to 5, and took forever to correct from that. You can see the route below - I basically missed the control, because I can't count to two, and thought that I was crossing the first lake when I was actually crossing the second. I then proceeded to be a doofus for 10 minutes while my heartrate lowered, until I could finally get myself out of my own mess.

After that I was on my own, and things were going pretty well, except for the massive blister developing under my left toes. It caused an onset of wimpiness syndrome, and I definitely slowed down in the second half of the course. Overall, though, if we ignore control 5, it was a very good race! Results.

The blister.

Fall foliage! The leaves were out in full force, it was beautiful. Harder to find orange controls, though...

After the race, we headed into Ottawa for a look around. The light was beautiful, sideways afternoon light on a golden fall day, so I took a bunch of photos.

Becky and me on our wander.
Right.
Parliament.
Looking north, toward the Gattineau hills.
Maple trees everywhere! I liked this city, it had trees and grass and stuff in it.
The market!

Looking up over locks.
Looking down over locks.
Becky and Rob.

The last day was a two-person relay, so Ali and I teamed up as "Team Giggles". I was pretty tired by this point, and didn't race as well as I would have liked, but it was a nice end to the weekend. We won the women's division, but there weren't too many women's teams.

Alex Bergstrom grabs his map, first off the line. He and Alex Teutsch were racing for "Team Alex", and so I felt a connection to them, even though they beat us.

Ali grabs her map, just ahead of Molly Kemp.

Searching for drowned hobos

2011-09-28T14:38:00.013-04:00

I guess that title is only funny if you know that the temperature loggers that I use are the HOBO brand. Anyway, I've been spending a good bit of time recently going around and drowning hobos. First stop was the West watershed, in VT, and that was interesting - the entire state was basically trashed. I had some major issues getting around, just because of road closures, but in the end I made it to most of my stream sites. What I found there was pretty shocking - mostly related to the stream picking up and moving its channel to the other side of the valley or something.

Look ma, no road! The first stream I hit was Bellows stream, near Marlboro VT, and that stream had decided that it wasn't happy with its current location anymore, and took out the road that used to parallel it. That bank of stones - that used to be trees. My temp logger was cabled to the roots of one of those trees. Not anymore! Despite the devastation to both the VT economy and my project's data availability, this was really cool to see. Nature is awesome!

I found my logger at this site, but I'm not sure I can extract it without bigger tools than what I've got. That loop of cable, next to a loop of wire, are both theoretically connected to my temp logger. This tree used to have flowing water over it. Oops.
New boulder. Not sure where THAT came from, but it must have made some noise.

One of my loggers is way up on the Winhall river, only really accessible via the Appalachian Trail. I called up my trusty running buddy Ken, and we headed out on a really nice run, over Stratton Mountain, past Stratton Pond, check on the logger, and back on a side trail. Overall a very nice loop, but that takes a solid 4 hours out of your day to cover that much distance and elevation!
The view from Stratton firetower was great, as always!I followed up that hike with some quality time helping Ed make apple cider, before it was time to continue on to Maine, and see how the Sandy River watershed had fared. It was a pleasant surprise to find all my Maine loggers!

Oh hai Rumford! Long time no see, smell you again in January.

Having a 4-wheel drive vehicle made for much quicker work getting to some of the places I had to go; a lot of the logging roads were pretty washed out, but the truck could handle them. No more 20-mile runs for me! Here's looking at the backside of the Saddleback to Sugarloaf ridge, from the upper side of the Hardy River, as the sun was setting.

I finished up all the driving around by Tuesday afternoon, and since I was right there, took a detour to Mt. Blue state park, just to check it out. I parked the truck on a little overlook, and had a really wonderful session of core strength and some yoga, overlooking the misty western mountains of maine. It was exactly what I needed to unwind before the long drive home, and I really did succeed in finding some inner peace, watching the sun rays stab through the ever-changing clouds. Very glad that I stopped for that, as it made the long slog home a lot more bearable.

windblown, dirty, tired, hungry, happy. Ready for some civilization and some conversation other than my own.

When I eventually made it back home to Newton, I discovered that Ian had set up a legitimate night orienteering race out in Nobscott. Ed and I charged our headlamps and went to check it out, and we had a really great time. Ali crushed me, but she also crushed everyone else, so that's ok. I was still second, and beat all the boys. It was amazing how popular the night-o actually was, we definitely hadn't expected so many people! Above, Keith and Ben are pointing at each other. I forgot why, but the photo made me chuckle.

Next up: a 12-hr MTB race. If you have any idea how little I've been riding my bike, you know this is going to be an absolute pain-fest. At least I'm on a team!

Weekend Warrior

2011-09-11T21:37:00.007-04:00

I used to make fun of weekend warriors, but it appears that's the road I'm heading down. Not enough time during the week to do all the fun stuff I want to do, so I packed it all in during the weekend. Of course, it helps that it was the Pawtuckaway camping weekend, which usually has five thousand things going on all at once, so you don't even get a minute to sit still. There wasn't a mountain bike O' this year, which was actually a good thing, because I really didn't need yet another excuse to go breaking myself. As it was, the weekend was really good fun with some great socializing, as well as some nice orienteering. I managed to actually follow my training objectives, an impressive feat, and I had a great time during the Wicked Hahd Night-O.
Ian and I preparing for the canoe-O. We did alright, but it was clear that we'd never paddled together before. Importantly, though, we beat Ali and Brendan.
Hanging out in the pavilion waiting for it to get dark enough to do the night-o.
Red course from Saturday.

Night-O map.

The night-o was really fun. It was a mass start, and sort of a small crowd this year. I have a new headlamp that I haven't actually tried out orienteering before; it's a Magicshine, and it's very bright. Almost like cheating, to have it be so bright! I certainly appreciated the extra illumination, because Pawtuckaway can be really scary at night. JJ started us, and I soon found myself with Ali and Carol, as well as a bunch of the old-but-accurate crowd. In some ways, night-o is almost easier than in the daylight, because you can navigate off other people's lights as well as your own, and the flags are very reflective, and hung very high. Carol, Ali, Jim, Ernst, and I were in a loose pack for most of the first 9 controls, including through the boulderfields of death on the way from 3-4. We could occasionally see Ethan and Andrew Childs dashing away from controls - they're both juniors, and both really fast, but not necessarily that accurate. Luckily, they're fast enough to make up for it.

Leaving control 9, Ali decided it was time to get serious, and that was the last I saw of her. I hung on to Carol to 10, but then my give-a-damn gave out, and I sort of bumbled for a while to 11, alone. We'd dropped the old-but-accurates, but we'd also dropped me. Sigh. Someday, I hope I'll be fast enough to keep up with the speedy ladies. I tried to motivate myself a bit more heading to 12, and it sort of worked, except that I had no freakin' clue where I was. I figured that since I was being good about compass, I would just keep going until I hit the perpendicular string of water features, but I wasn't exactly confident that I wasn't going to be eaten alive by rabid wolves. Running alone in the dark is scary!

At 12, I saw Jim, and realized that I'd lost however much time to him on my last two wobbly legs, so it was time to get serious again. Easier said than done, but I managed to run away from him by 13, and then it was just a struggle to the finish. I ended up 5th, behind the Childs boys, Ali, and Carol, and this was also the first Wicked Hard Night-O (WHNO) that I'd ever completed, so I felt pretty good about life. To make things even better, there were some s'mores left over for us WHNO runners to snack on!

Sunday, I was definitely feeling the efforts in the forest from Saturday, and it took a decent warmup before I felt like I could run. I ran a shorter course, but did it twice, trying to improve upon the first time. I did, but barely, since I just wasn't moving all that fast. All in all, that made for two first-place finishes over the weekend - the red course Saturday, and the brown course Sunday. Not that it really matters in a local meet, but it's still nice!

West Virginia

2011-09-09T12:05:00.015-04:00

Part of my job involves electroshocking fish, so for the last week, I was down in West Virginia working on collecting data for a study that is trying to show that culverts that fail passage according to a survey, also fail passage based on the genetics of fish on either side of the pipe. Interesting stuff, but it involves lots of electroshocking. I headed down there with three others - Matt, Maili, and Jeff. Our trip was cut on both ends due to rain, unfortunately. Irene delayed our departure by a couple days because Jeff was stuck in VT, and tropical storm Lee rained us out early on the other end, since the capture probability goes way down in heavy rain. The good news is I got to come home early! The bad news is we have to go back there next fall.
Thanks Irene - I had to drive down that road!

yeah... not ideal. This one failed passage.

Catching fish. FS rules say you gotta wear orange. So wear orange we did.

Measuring fish. This should be an advertisement for waders, or something.

Identifying fish. Mostly we were seeing brook trout, sculpin, darters, and dace. And one massive brown trout.

WV was very pretty, but often very misty, especially in the mornings. I'd sort of been hoping to see some mountaintop removal sites or something, but I guess we were in the wrong part of the state for that. Just logging. Not even any huge chicken farms!

We stayed at the Monongahela Ranger Station, and there were horses next door. They seemed somewhat neglected, with knotted manes and flies and no shelter for when it rained.
Big snake!

We managed to get a flat tire, naturally on the day we were planning to go in to town. This wouldn't be a big deal, except apparently someone removed the jack from the truck, and we were 10 miles down a dirt road into a national forest in a torrential rainstorm. Some driving, very slowly, and a lot of hiking, ensued.
Sometimes, the shocking is easy. Sometimes, less so.

Back in the US of A

2011-08-29T10:59:00.005-04:00

I made it home without any hangups, only to discover that a week of limited internet, even when you claim it's for vacation, leaves you pretty backed up. I managed to get my life under control by the weekend, and even managed to have some good fun, hanging out with the western mass renegade O' club. (We don't have an official name, but this seems about right to me. We should look into some OUSA sanctioning). We figured that with Hurricane Irene heading up the coast, we should head into the woods for one last orienteering session, before all the trees got blown down and it became impossible to run fast. So Saturday morning found Peter, Phil, Ali and I on top of Mt. Tom, ready to tackle an old red course from an A meet in 2008.

Peter went out first to hang some streamers, and a couple minutes later, I went chasing after him. I hadn't been planning to run hard, but advice I'd overheard was in my head - don't run faster than you can orienteer. Conversely, run as fast as you can orienteer. I quickly found myself pushing, trying to go fast enough to keep the navigation on the edge. It was really fun; Mt. Tom is open and fast, where it isn't too rocky, and compared to the crap we were running through in France, it was pure heaven. Better footing than any of the French trails, even.

Anyway, it was a really fun way to get outside, but I soon found myself tiring on the uphills, and losing a lot of time there. Come on, body, I thought you were in shape?!? I managed to catch Peter, a major life goal of mine, but Ali put a ton of time on me in the last, hilly, section of the course, and Peter dropped out because he felt crappy. Good to train with faster people, but sometimes a little disheartening, too. I finished the course, and ran up to my friends screaming "I LIKE orienteering! It's fun!" I guess I'd been missing some of that in France, where it was all slow and technical with rough footing.

Then along came a hurricane, and although the Berkshires were getting hammered, Amherst seemed to do ok. A monday morning rollerski along the Connecticut River showed some sweet flooding, though - aren't floodplains beautiful when they're working properly? Makes me happy. Of course, Hartford used to be a floodplain, and now it's filled with impervious surfaces... bet there're some wet basements down there.

I don't talk about work much on here, because this isn't a work blog, this is a fun-other-random-crap-I-do-with-my-life blog, but there is definitely a knot of anxiety in my stomach that every temperature logger I have in both the Westfield and the West River watershed has been ripped off it's cabling, or the tree to which it was cabled is now gone. Unfortunately, that investigation will have to wait until after I return from West Virginia, where I get to go for the next two weeks to play in rivers shocking fish. I should wait and see how many loggers are actually gone before I make dire predictions about how I lost 8 months worth of data, but let's just say I'm a little worried.

Not much hope when the mainstem looks like this. Photo credit Jeff Brown.

WOC Relay

2011-08-23T09:40:00.010-04:00

There was a rest day after the Long Distance finals, thankfully for Ali, who had also made the Middle final, and her legs were apparently a little on the tired side. The rest of us ran more spectator races, and I swear, this terrain isn't getting any easier. And I haven't gotten any smarter. We did make good use of the rest day, and acquired some outfits for the banquet.
Ross and Sergei combining the men's and women's teams banquet outfits.

My route from one of the more disastrous days out on the terrain. Gotta love that massive error to #1... and lots of other small errors as well.
More example of some poor orienteering - I had major issues (like, 40 minutes of major issues) on this control. This whole area just didn't make sense to me, the map didn't seem to reflect reality one bit. Not so good for building confidence.

Ross has a feed bag.

Saturday morning rolled around, and I was definitely nervous, because we'd decided to put me as the anchor for the relay. This was so that Sam and Ali could both run with fast people, and get the boost from that, instead of putting me out there and losing the pack. I was also not feeling so great, physically - my achilles tendon had been getting worse and worse all week, and since it's impossible to get ice in this stupid country, both kneecaps were starting to hurt pretty bad, clearly I haven't kicked the runner's knee I'd been dealing with earlier in the summer and it was coming back. I took some ibuprofen for the kneecaps, but I think I may have taken it without enough food, or something, or maybe it had nothing to do with the ibuprofen, but my stomach was not happy as we got to the arena. Probably nerves. In the end, I think I probably didn't have enough lunch; given that the relay was so late in the day, timing your food was trickier than a usual morning race. Anyway, long story short, I didn't feel awesome.

The warmup helped, and Sam went out on an awesome first leg, tagging off to Ali in 12th. Unfortunately, things didn't go awesomely for Ali, and she blew about 15 minutes on one control. The rest were good, but it didn't help my nerves to be waiting longer than expected. Of course, in a way, this was good, because there was no longer pressure to hold on to teams that were way faster than me. When Ali came through, I was ready to fight - we were maybe 40 seconds behind Poland, and I thought maybe I could catch their third runner. I just couldn't find the flow, though. I was finding controls, which is ultimately the goal, but I felt very choppy, very stop and go. This was somewhat effective in getting me through the course, but not as quickly as I'd like.
Anxiously waiting.

Heading up out of the stadium to get to where the map exchange was.

Things went alright to about #10, and then I came out of the woods and into the fields, and through the water stop/spectator arena, and that was when I noticed how woozy I felt. I also noticed that it was increasingly difficult to run fast, and I felt like I was working way harder than I should be for the speed I was going. Ugh. Shortly thereafter, my natural stupidity was greatly amplified, and I basically lost 9 minutes to Ireland (who caught and passed me) in the last loop. You can read details on my training log, but I really went from dumb to dumber. This was probably related to the heat, and some tiredness. By the end, I felt really awful, because there is nothing worse than having a bad race when it's a relay, and your team is waiting on you. It's depressing to suck when you're at the World Champs.

So I left WOC with a slightly sour feeling, but overall, I am really glad that I went. It was absolutely eye-opening and humbling to be out there competing with (ok, more just like trailing behind, but still) the best in the world. I need to decide what I want out of this sport before I commit to much else, but that was a really, really cool experience.

Superfan spectating

2011-08-18T06:31:00.023-04:00

Since we have four women on the team, and three can run in each race, I wasn't running the sprint - that was Hannah, Sam, and Ali's job. It was a long day of spectating, as they ran the qualification in the morning, and then the final was in the afternoon, in the town a couple klicks south of here - Chambéry. The qualifier was pretty exciting, mostly because I knew more people, but both Sam and Ali qualified for the finals! The men didn't have a great day, but we were all psyched to play superfans down in Chambéry.

The scene down there was truly impressive. Most of the fans were gathered in the large central square, which was also the start and the finish. There were two spectator controls, a grandstand, and a massive screen showing shots from like four different cameras. The square was PACKED, and apparently all the little alleys were crowded, as well, with runners sometimes having to duck and weave between spectators and innocent bystanders. This race was a BIG DEAL, and it was really cool to see it from the spectating side, so that if I ever make the final on the racing side, I'd know what to expect. I'm now deaf from all the screaming and air horns and vuvzelas, and I've lost my voice from screaming my own cheers at our runners. It was pretty intense. I left that arena feeling super jazzed up.

Emily Kemp, one of our Canadian friends, running into the finish of the qualifier for the sprint.
Pretty fountain with le Dent du Chat in the background.
Finding a shady spot to hang out and scream at runners was easier said than done.
Spectators lining the course in Chambéry for the sprint final. This does make me want to run the sprint and make a final someday...

The central square of Chambéry was completely packed. For a little while, Ed let me sit on his shoulders, and that was cool because I could see everything, but then he got tired. boo.
Ali starting out from the top of the ramp.
Sam on the big screen.

The day after the sprint was the Long Distance finals. Ali was our only runner who had qualified for the long, so after doing some spectator races in the morning, we gathered in a sweet arena to watch the best orienteers in the world duke it out on a fairly epically brutal course. Ali didn't have an awesome race, but it was still really exciting to watch her on the big screen and follow the GPS tracking. On the men's side, Thierry Gueorgiou from France crushed his competition, and won the race with a big margin. This was cool, because he's won the middle distance race like eight times, but he'd never won a long distance race at WOC, and people tend to hold the long with the highest regard. So, to win in his home country, in front of a home crowd, that was pretty cool to watch. Sandra's husband, Marc Lauenstein, ended up in the top 10, too, so it was pretty cool to cheer him along too.

Boris and Patrick found some god-awful shorts that were on sale for two euros, and tried to convince the rest of the US and Canadian teams to buy them so we'd match. For some reason, nobody took them up on their offer.

Carol Ross, Greg's girlfriend, up on the big screen. Too bad she decided to face the wrong direction while taking a drink. Also, too bad they decided to put a tv camera at the water stop. Really guys? People drinking gatorade and pouring water on their heads is the most exciting place you could put a camera?
Ali on the big screen, heading away from the start.

Eddie attempting to get the post into the ground for
the Orienteering USA flag that we'd brought.
Looking down on the tent city of all the vendors and stuff in the arena. The finish is next to the jumbotron, and the grassy slopes made for a really nice natural stadium.
Carol coming down to the finish. If she looks tired, it's because she is...
Ed with his vuvuzela. That stupid thing is so annoying...
This is what happens when you give a bunch of orienteers a map. They huddle. In this case, Ali was showing us her routes.
Marc coming through the spectator/drink stop. Those top guys run so darn smoothly. I guess it helps when you've won the world mountain running champs...
The crowd went absolutely WILD when Thierry came through in the lead. You can sort of see him running across the bridge, carrying a French flag - he was pretty pumped, you could tell that.

WOC Middle Distance Quali

2011-08-16T15:11:00.000-04:00

The Middle distance qualification was was the second one I was slated to run, and after seeing the model area terrain, I was worried it would be so technical I wouldn't know where to start. It wasn't actually that bad, which was kind of disappointing, since I know I don't really have the speed to run with these girls, but I was hoping I'd have the technical oomph. It went really well, though, and that left me in a great mood.

I decided to focus on the "safe" part of my mantra today - I wanted really solid attackpoints, after yesterday's little 10-minute detour. Spiked the first control, and then got very lucky on the 2nd one. I wasn't quite where I expected to be, but it turns out I was where I should be, and there happened to be a control with my number on it, so I just punched and moved on.

I took the trail to 3, all the way to the little trail, but this lost me a lot of elevation, and probably a minute, maybe more. Spiked the control, but I'm not fast going uphill. Pretty good to 4, and then a long leg to 5 - I actually lost the least amount of time to Ali on my long trail legs, which is sort of backwards compared to what you'd expect given our perceived strengths and weaknesses… Anyway, took the middle little trail, and that worked out.

Comparing splits with the girls, I managed to lose about 20 seconds to the camera control; I think I just have an aversion to climbing hills fast. But #7 was good, and then I took the trail out to the road to get to 8, so that went pretty well. A couple moments of doubt as I pounded down the trail, but I just kept reminding me to trust me, and although I probably lost time because I had to climb up 7 contours at the end, I think the simpler route was faster for me. But then I lost another 20 seconds going to 9; hesitating and trying to go straight, instead of blasting back north to the trail and in to 9, where I'd seen it on my way up. Silly. And then I lost nearly 30 seconds to Hannah on the bashing-out-to-the-road control, I should have just bashed straight down instead of trying to cut it shorter.
Splits

And some more photos...
Greg and his posse of Canadians (+ Ali) before one of our training days.
Sam chilling on our nice balcony with a yogurt drink.
Little girl with a huge sandwich!
Mark with a tiny espresso (Sandra's hubby and one of the world's best orienteers and mountain runners).
Ali getting all set for a training run.
Ed brought a vuvuzela to the races, and here Sergei is practicing making noise on it. We would usually send Clem to the edge of the forest to summon in our runners... sometimes, that worked! We did get yelled at by a photographer who couldn't hear his shutter clicking with all the vuvzela-ing, so had to take our act somewhere else. Enthusiastic cheering!
Hannah manages to demurely sit and read her book, while we carry on general shenanigans around her. No wonder she is good at orienteering! Focused!
Driving back down to Aix, Beatrice and I found Eddie standing on a guardrail taking photos of the view. Eddie is a real superfan, and also takes some really nice photos. it's been great having as many superfans here as we do - Peter and Gail, Eddie, Clem, Sandy, Barb and Dave and Izzy, Greg, Boris, Cristina, Ed, Wyatt's whole family, and probably more that I'm missing now. So much support!
Yes, our laundry hangs over our balcony... isn't that what balconies are for?
The crowd at the opening ceremony. Orienteering is actually a big deal here. As evidenced by the 4000 spectators running in the O' Festival, I suppose.
Ross leaping away from his last control on the long qualifier.

WOC Long Distance Quali

2011-08-16T14:45:00.002-04:00

I think everyone assumed I'd be nervous for my first WOC race, and pretty much everyone I saw yesterday and this morning tried to offer me advice. I figured it was easiest to just ignore them all and do my own thing - I know how to play this game; other people may be better at it, but I know what to do. So I wasn't that nervous starting out. It's nice having low to no expectations. I just wanted to beat at least one person. "Simplify, be safe, be steady".

I spiked the first control, so that put me in a good mood. The 2nd started well, but then I suffered a minor brain fart, and did a 180, thinking I must have gone too far. That probably lasted 15 seconds or so before it occurred to me that I was running in exactly the wrong direction, so I turned around and found my control. Goofmuppet! One more quick leg, and then the first of two long legs. I took another safe route, gaining 9 extra contours, but spiking the control. For the next long leg, to 5, I'm not sure my route was ideal, but it was functional. I channeled my inner French cow (you know - they have one long leg and one short leg, to better stand on hills) as I contoured across a steep grassy slope, and then nearly made a mistake in the circle when I couldn't find my large depression, and found a large hill instead - luckily realized what was going on pretty quickly!

5 was the water stop, in a small depression, manned by two french people. I took a cup of sports drink, and the guy said "Allez! Allez! Vite, vite!" But I stood there looking at my map, and took another glass. And then another, at which point, the woman sort of sighed. "Courage!" they called after me. Whatever, I like my sugar drinks.

Then I spent 17:35 going about 400m. I couldn't find a simple, safe route, so chose to just go straight and pick stuff off. That never works well for me, and it didn't magically work this time, either, although I got close. But I had a poor attackpoint - mistook a dot knoll for a hill on a nose, and so when I attacked my control from two contours too low, it wasn't there. Relocating takes a long time, and I actually found the woman manning the control before I found the control. Very frustrated by that; I know I'm slower than everyone else here, but I'd like to not also be stupider. I could have at least relocated a little faster!

Three more controls in the knobbly stuff, that went pretty well (some hesitations, but no mistakes), and then the finish. After catching my breath and all that, I asked Ed if I was last. "No, you're not last! Oh, wait. Yes, you are last". I was kind of bummed, but then some more stragglers came in, and I finished 20th of 28 in my heat. Not last! I'm pissed about that huge mistake, but what's done is done.

The top 15 from each heat go on to the finals, and Ali finished 11th (I think) in her heat, enough to move on to the finals, on Wednesday. Samantha had a rough day, making a 19 minute mistake, and ended up just a minute or two out of qualification. The men have a tougher field, so none of them moved on. We think we're good, but then everyone else is so much better! This is also just such difficult terrain, that there were many people who made huge mistakes, and there was a huuuuuge spread between the first and last runner.

This map shows the winner's route; there are three separate courses for the three qualification heats, and I was in heat "B". This is the winner's route from course B.

I'm glad to have my first WOC race out of the way. I do wish I hadn't blown that one control, but I knew I wasn't fast enough to move on even if I'd had a clean race - qualifying for the finals wasn't one of my goals this year. Those girls are so speedy! Anyway, first race over, and with the middle distance quali the following day, the focus immediately moved to the next race.

Splits

World Orienteering Championships

2011-08-16T06:56:00.016-04:00

Last Tuesday, I flew over to France, for the World Orienteering Championships (WOC). I'm joining Samantha, Ali, and Hannah on the women's team, and Ross, Jordan, Ken, Sergei, and Wyatt are on the men's team. We spent the next three days getting used to the maps, testing out the terrain. The forest is pretty gross, honestly, good thing we're in France where there is delicious cheese and bread and wine and fruit to make up for it. The whole area is this limestone karst stuff, with scrubby little trees and low-lying dead trees everywhere. The karst is awesome, from a spectator/geologist point of view, but it makes it really difficult to run fast. They have these rocky pits out there, some of which are so deep I couldn't see the bottom. So cool! Luckily, some of the courses went over steep cow pastures, which make for faster running, but contain cows. Some of the cows have horns.

Below is a pretty random assortment of photos from the last few days. I've been taking a lot of photos, but the internet has been sketchy enough that I haven't put them anyway. I'll write about the long and middle qualifier races next... but pictures are more interesting =).

Model map from the long distance test area. The yellow is all the steep cow pastures.
It's this sort of terrain...

Ed arrived in style. He actually biked from Geneva down to almost Aix-les-Bains, because then his bike rack broke. He'd been carrying about 50lb of gear, lots of it extra stuff he isn't planning to tour with later, and that was just too much for his rack. So, Boris, Greg, and Patrick went to rescue him. Unfortunately the only way the bike would fit was when it was crammed into the car in an unusual way. With a vuvzela strapped to the top tube!

At the finish chute on day 1, I noticed that Francois Gonon had a fan club. I expressed interest in having a fan club of my own, so Boris wrote up a fan club sign for "Axel Josp". Close enough...

Looking down on Aix-les-Bains from the plateau where we've been racing.

Me finishing the middle distance qualifier (photo credit Greg Walker).

Explaining routes to my #1 fan post race. (photo credit Greg).

The crew of Americans at the finish of the long qualifier (photo credit Greg).
Hanging out in the shade waiting for the men. (photo credit Greg).

Cows! You can never tell when there will be a traffic jam on the road.

Looking down the hill from le centre ville d'Aix, across the lake at the misty hills.

Hannah, somewhat dazed, after her sprint race. The sprint
was cool to spectate (I wasn't running it - just running the long distance and middle distance qualifiers, but I didn't make it to the finals, so that's it, although I may also run the relay on Saturday - Hannah and I will duke it out in a spectator race tomorrow to decide).
Looking towards our plateau past our hotel. Pretty place!

Canal Cities Challenge

2011-08-08T20:36:00.005-04:00

The Buffalo Orienteering Club hosted the last events of the Canal Cities Orienteering Festival, a weekend A-meet consisting of sprint, middle, and long distance races. The first event was the middle distance, at Sprague Brook Park, and I was a little anxious - I knew it was a pretty thin field, in depth, but with both Angelica Riley and Galyna Petrenka (a Ukranian-born Canadian, I think) racing, I had my work cut out for me. I had calmed my nerves before I started, but still managed to do some silly stuff on the way to the first two controls. Things smoothed out a little after that, but not by much - too much stop and go, and I was thinking too much about running fast and not enough about orienteering well. Luckily, I only lost major time on the 12th control, and Angelica and Galyna both made bigger mistakes, so I ended up in front! I've never won an A-meet day before, so I was pretty psyched.

Middle distance results, splits (you have to click on the class - I'm in F21).

After a brief break, we ran the sprint race. It was over by the camping area of the park, and almost all across open grass. A tough task on a humid day. I had decided that I wanted to run a little more smoothly than in the morning, and headed out with the goal of cruising through the first few controls, but always staying in contact. Unfortunately, I didn't really have much oomph working for me, and the cruise-y pace I was trying to hold actually took a lot of work. But, I was spiking my controls, and moving really smoothly, so I was feeling pretty good about myself. Starting around #8, I began to run into some serious oxygen debt - coincidentally, this was also the point where I actually had to go uphill - by 11, I was listening to some pretty heavy breathing, and not all that surprised to discover it was me.

As I approached 12, I unfolded my map a little more, and discovered, much to my surprise, that we had 17 controls on the course, not 14. There was a whole extra lap around the little pond! I focused on this lap, making sure that I knew how I'd be approaching the controls and how I'd be leaving them, and looking around to make sure I could see the features in this open land. As I did this, I ran a beautifully straight line from 13 to 15, completely missing 14 - completely didn't see it on my map. The last few minutes of the race were exquisitely painful, from the anaerobic point of view, but I punched the finish feeling good about myself, if completely wiped from the hard effort in the hot sun. It wasn't until I downloaded the information from my e-punch that I discovered I'd skipped a control. Dammit! It wasn't really worth getting upset about it, but I was disappointed with myself - shouldn't have gone into quite so much oxygen debt. In a woulda-shoulda-coulda world, I probably would have finished 5-10 seconds in front of Angelica, for the win. Instead, I was disqualified. Well, one more day to redeem myself and try to win the weekend overall.

Ed dashing across the field in the sprint. He has acquired a vuvuzela from Ross, and plans to bring it to WOC; I practiced it on him whenever I saw him in the sprint, and I think it made him run faster. I still would have beaten him, in the woulda-shoulda-coulda world...

The long distance day dawned even more humid than the day before, and I could feel the efforts from the day before sitting heavy in my legs. I did a short warmup, just to make sure I didn't break myself, and then decided that my focus for the day would be on running consistently, none of this stop-and-go sprinty stuff. I didn't feel sharp, either mentally or physically, and this became clear when I blew three minutes on the first control. I just wasn't really paying attention. Eventually I saw Peter Gagarin heading towards where it should be, and I went and found it too, but that was immensely frustrating. Things went pretty well for a while after that; I was doing a good job running smoothly and not slowing down, but by #10 I was really starting to feel the heat.

My route (below) shows the progression of tiredness - anything uphill is getting slower and slower, and eventually, I made a mistake. Heading to 14, I started dropping contours, even though I knew I shouldn't, but it was just easier to go downhill. After nearly running off the map, I realized I was doing it wrong, and went back to the control, but that was a serious mental lapse, about 4 minutes lost there. Another couple good legs after that, but then my brain shut off on the way to 17, and I didn't pause to verify my location when I crossed the trail. This cost me another 4 minutes, easily, as I wandered deliriously through the forest for a while. From there it was just a slog back to the finish, and I sure wasn't moving fast. Turns out I was slow enough for 4th place.

Overall, I'm conflicted about this race. There was some good orienteering in there, where I was being really sharp and on top of my shit, but then there were those three major mistakes, that basically lost me the race. You can't be competitive with 11 minutes of mistakes! Hopefully, this tiredness will pass with some rest, and I'll be sharp for WOC! I ended up 3rd overall on the weekend, which was good enough to win me a pretty painted pitcher. Never won a prize at an A-meet before, either - cool!

Results from the long distance, and splits.

I'm currently in the Logan airport waiting for my plane to Lyon - on my way to France, for the World Orienteering Championships! I'm a little concerned about both my fitness and this consistent tiredness, but hopefully an easy week of training before this weekend's race will do me good. In any event, I can't wait to meet up with the team and get into the maps here!

U.S. Orienteering Convention

2011-08-05T08:30:00.009-04:00

This past week, Orienteering USA has held a convention in Rochester, NY. Ed and I are here, mostly because it's convenient to stay at home, but also because of the high-level orienteering on the bookending weekends. Unfortunately the courses got messed up last weekend, here's hoping that next weekend goes better for the organizers. Anyway, we've been in various talks and conferences all week, some really interesting stuff going on out there, a lot regarding mapping and new mapping technologies, but also some age-old questions, like fundraising. Ed and I teamed up and gave talks on using GIS for orienteering mapping, and on ski-o mapping, and they seemed to be well-received, if a bit on the techy side. One guy we know said "what you guys were saying was way over my head, but you were just so enthusiastic about it!" Good to hear.

The afternoons have been filled with orienteering training, mostly put on for the juniors, who are doing a training camp all week, but also for us non-juniors who want to train. Monday we were at Mendon Ponds, Tuesday at Durand Eastman, Wednesday we took off, Thursday was at Webster, and Friday is the Trail-o champs and a canoe-o, neither of which we're doing. Fun!

Lindsay and Judy killing time before the picnic on Monday.
A horrible shot of us post-sprint.

Tuesday we were at Durand Eastman, and there was a "super string-o". String-o is a technique used to teach very little kids about orienteering, well in this case the string was a full 250m, with 30 controls! The idea was to just run the course as fast as possible, basically as punching practice, but it was pretty hard work, too. Here, Andrew Childs (US Junior team member) hits a corner at full speed. It was an intense sort of race!
Ed on the super string-o
My super-string-o attempt. 12 seconds off of Andrew (who won), but still 7th, so not too bad!

Ed running a sprint, so fast even the trees are blurry. Oh, wait, the trees weren't also moving?

2011 U.S. Classic Orienteering Championships

2011-08-01T13:34:00.006-04:00

There are way too many U.S. Championships for summer orienteering, but the two big ones are the Classic champs, that consists of two days of racing and you add the times together to get an overall winner, and the Individual Sprint/Middle/Long championships, where each race produces a separate champion. This past weekend was the classic champs, and the courses were pretty long and gnarly, in the marshy/deerfly sense. I was a little nervous about this, since it's orienteering, and I haven't really run in the forest since twisting my ankle, but I have a new fancy ankle brace, and I was able to avoid re-spraining it, which is really the goal.

The first day starts weren't until almost noon, so it was pretty hot and humid. The deerflies were also out in force, which wasn't too bad while you were moving, but they started feeding if you slowed down to read the map too closely. This was probably good for me, because it kept me moving, but when I made a small mistake near 5, they moved in for the kill. Overall, the course went pretty well for me, but deep ferns meant that I kept my running to a pretty cautious pace, so as to not re-twist my ankle, and so I never really felt like I was pushing hard enough. Below is the map, with my route. I ended up 2nd for the day, just ahead of the usual rivals of Angelica and Anna. Ali had destroyed us, and finished way out front - probably not going to catch her on the second day!

The second day's course had fewer ferns, so I could run a bit harder, but then I couldn't find control 6. At this point, I like to think that I know what I'm doing out there, but I got to the point where the control should have been, and there was no control. I figured I must have gotten off the perfect path somewhere, so went to a different point to re-attack the control. I ended up at the same place. Frustrated now, I headed out to an even more obvious point to re-attack, and as I approached, was overtaken by Andrew Childs, a very fast junior runner who just returned from the Junior World Orienteering Championships. When he also couldn't find the control, after leading us to that same spot, we determined that it just wasn't there, and headed off to 7. Which also wasn't there. One missing control, and you're like, well, ok maybe they put it in the wrong spot. But two in a row, and you're starting to doubt everything.

It turns out that an over-zealous control picker-upper from the day before had removed those two controls, since they were used on both Saturday's and Sunday's courses. Somehow, vetting the course in the morning had slipped through the cracks, and so because the course was missing two controls, everybody who was running the red course had their course thrown out, voided. A big bummer, because the reason to go to these meets is to get ranking points, to contest the US championships, and in general race on a course that has all the controls in the right places. There were some really upset racers, but what can ya do.

I kept running after the second missing control, but my give-a-damn was pretty damaged by then, and I had trouble motivating myself to push hard. Then I made a mistake on the penultimate control, and just couldn't find the darn thing in the circle. Blah.

So, they used just day 1 for the championships, and I ended up 2nd! This is the first A-meet where I've ever finished inside the top 5, and it happened to be the US champs, so I'm pretty psyched. (Angelica, 3rd place, me, 2nd place, Ali, 1st)

Ed ran an open class, and got 2nd, so got a medal too.

Boom

2011-07-18T11:53:00.004-04:00

Thing have been going alright in my prep for WOC, recently. Not great, because ski coaching does not equal time in the woods, but not too badly. Boris came up to town the other day, and we got to run in the woods, where he noted that I frequently divert from my planned line because vegetation pushes me around. So, it was determined that I must be more forceful about bashing through thick vegetation, and to do this, I was going to practice running in a straight line from one point to the next, regardless of what was in my way. With a few exceptions for things like cliffs, deep lakes, etc. This seemed like a fine exercise to me, I mean, what is the point of running through the woods if you aren't going to bash through vegetation and swim through marshes? I finally got around to it on Saturday, when my brother was visiting, so he came along, intrigued by this bashing practice I was planning.

We headed to Hammond Pond, and the bashing was going pretty well, I was starting to really get into it, when I hopped over a log, landed with my foot twisted on a side-hill, and felt the crunching that immediately precipitates a sprained ankle. This was my "good" ankle, the one that hasn't been FUBARed by multiple twists and sprains and torn ligaments like the other, and it's remarkable how much it hurts to sprain an ankle for the first time. Compounding the pain are all the negative thoughts that immediately flood your brain when you injure yourself in a traumatic way, as opposed to those ever-present overuse injuries. The realization that you've totaled your ankle four weeks before the World Championships, and you still have a good bit of work to do to be ready for those World Championships, is a hard one. I think that's most of what drives the emotion after an ankle sprain. The straight-up ANGER at your body for letting you down when you really aren't in the mood to be let down, the frustration at events you can't control. It all rages through my head for a few seconds as I think that the world is coming to an end.

But I stood up, and after a couple limping steps, I could put some weight on it. Not full weight, but there was no sharp pain, just a throbbing ache that wouldn't leave. After about five minutes, I could walk, not normally, but enough to get back towards the car, that Christophe had gone to retrieve. Dammit. Dammit dammit dammit DAMMIT! (I may have used stronger words at the time). Time to RIICE: Rest, Ice, Ibuprofen, Compress, and Elevate. That second I is an important one!

Things seem to be coming around, now. Still a bunch of swelling, but I have most of my mobility back, and the pain is mostly gone. I can walk normally, and will probably be taping it up and attempting to run pretty soon... I've never been good at resting.

We'll call these girls the enablers... not that orienteering is an addiction or anything.

Luckily, last weekend involved most of my mom's family being in town for a funeral/reunion, so my chances to go abuse myself even more were scarce. Three generations of women in the photo below, so great that my grandmother could make it up here!

CSU Ski camp

2011-07-12T15:59:00.011-04:00

The CSU Ski camp just wrapped up, in Winchendon MA. This is the third year we've been there, and we're still super psyched to have this perfect location for camp. There's a pool on campus, dorm rooms, good rollerskiing, hills, and a great view.

The dining services apparently have a new manager now, with some different tastes than what nordies tend to eat during training camps, but we've learned our lesson there, and we'll be calling ahead to request some "special" meals of pasta before next year. Who knew that pasta was a special meal.

After two weeks of ski coaching, I'm feeling a little on the tired side. Mostly from rollerskiing; I haven't rolled this much since last fall, but the good news is that my elbow hasn't fallen apart yet. Other bits of my body seem to be cracking off, but that's just par for the course. Who really needs achilles tendons, anyway?

My favorite day of camp is the long hike along the Wapack trail. Here's a classic Alex-selfie, with the heads cut off of Hannah and Zoe.

One of the reasons I love this hike is for the blueberries. It's a mandatory stop along the ridge to stuff our faces with them. So good.

We had a lot of obligatory fun at camp, including tie-dying, minigolf, ice cream, ultimate frisbee, and orienteering. With five junior counselors to whom we could delegate tasks, it was actually almost relaxing for the so called "grown up" staff. That's in quotes because I count as one of them, and god knows I'm not a grownup yet. Anyway, Hannah organized the tie dying, and got headbands for everyone. I learned an important lesson about rinsing out your headband before wearing it on a long hike... check out the blue forehead!

The orienteering was a 30-minute score course, and the skiers were paired off. Different controls were worth different amounts of points, and there was only one team that got all the controls in the time limit. Two more got all the controls, but were over the limit. More importantly, everyone seemed to enjoy themselves.

Handing out the maps.

After the orienteering, I had set up a 20-station circuit, that we ran through twice. That's a bit on the large size for a circuit, but, with 40 groups of 2, you needed that many stations. Rob couldn't handle the supermans, and demonstrates his best gopher face, which we've since determined is the face he makes any time he's really concentrating. Jamie snapped this photo just before I totally lost it convulsing with laughter.

Overall, it was a really fun camp. Great team spirit, and a great work ethic by all the kids. I'm ready to not do any more 6:45am morning runs, though... or any more rollerskiing, for that matter.

This is usually how I feel by the end of ski camps... it's hard work, no matter how much you delegate!

(Any photo with me in it is courtesy of Jamie Doucett)

Oh hey New England

2011-07-05T14:00:00.000-04:00

I clearly don't feel that I know New England well enough, so I've been doing my part to travel to every single bit of it. At least, that's what it feels like. What happened to that plan to do less traveling?

Two weeks ago, we had the park-o run-off on Thursday; basically a chase sprint based on the results from during the season, where runners with lower points started first, and the faster runners tried to catch them. It was a really fun way to run a race, and it came down to sprint finish between Ari and Dean, through the rain across a muddy field, and Ari tripped right at the finish, sliding across the line on his belly, through the mud. Maybe it was planned, either way, it was a spectacular finish to the Park-o season. The picnic afterward was just icing on the cake.

Saturday I headed out to Baldwin Hill with our new Lithuanian recruit, Minda, and Jordan from West Point. We met Ali and played in the woods for an hour or two, and then went to Ross and Sam's goodbye/engagement party. They're headed for Sweden soon, that'll be sad.

Sunday I headed up north to Craftsbury, VT, with Rob, the head CSU coach. We had eight athletes at the Regional Elite Group camp, and we were on coaching duty, along with a bunch of other coaches from the northeast. Bryan Fish was leading the camp; he's the new USST development coach. It was a nice camp, if a bit rustic. Not sure I can deal with another week of phone-less internet-less seclusion... This is the only photo I have of the camp. Nice little accommodations, if a bit on the rustic side.

I made it back to Boston by Friday night, only to turn around and head back to VT at the crack o' dawn on Saturday. First stop was to put out some more temperature loggers, one of which required a 21km jog along the Appalachian trail, toward Stratton Mt. I managed to avoid any major climb, but my body was letting me know, in a very firm manner, that I needed a day off. My brain was in full agreement, and I was pretty grumpy by the time I got back to the car.That smile looks a little forced, eh? Nothing worse than running to a turn-around and realizing you still have to come back.

But, by that point, I was in VT, and Ed was there, so life was instantly a whole lot better. I managed to spend all of Sunday doing NOTHING work-related. Slept in 'til 10, took two naps, lit a mattress on fire (deliberately), watched a movie, drank some beers. Life is alright.

Hillbilly campfire.

The 4th of July happens at the Landgrove picnic. The fireworks were awesome, as always.

Now, it's frantically back to work for a day and a half, and then off to CSU's ski camp, in Winchendon. At least that one is close to civilization... but ski camps hold a lot less appeal when you don't really feel like rollerskiing. Bummer.

New Car

2011-06-17T20:10:00.003-04:00

Life has taken a turn for the crazy the last few weeks. After coming back from Maine, I was in VT with Ed, having a nice little weekend away from it all, when we got rear-ended. By a Stratton snowboarder, good thing she wasn't a nordie, I would have been upset. We were having a relaxing Sunday, and decided to drive over the hill to Manchester to go to the bookstore, and spend the rest of the afternoon reading books on the porch. But driving along, someone is tailgating, so Ed pulls to the side, to let them go around, because clearly they want to go faster. Instead, she drives into us. WTF. We sort things out, file a police report, my car is driveable, so off we go.

Of course, I'd been planning to spend the beginning part of the following week down in Connecticut, with my friend Becky, training on the good orienteering maps down there. Ed offered that I take his truck down, and he would limp back to Boston in my car. Really, I should have just not gone to CT, but what the hell, I'd already decided to take the time off from work, feeling that I deserved it after my work trip to Maine. I made it to CT, but I really don't enjoy driving Ed's truck, so that was unpleasant. The training was great, though, and I felt all ready for team trials by the time I came back on Thursday, which was the day I was setting the park-O, that had all of 15 runners. Woo. That was a stressful day, but that's a different story. Anyway, all this meant that I waited a while before starting the whole deal of talking to my insurance.
Gratuitous map sharing! Line-o at Osbournedale.

That weekend was team trials, so I put the car out of my head, and went and raced. Things went well. I'm going to France. I came back to Boston, and tried to catch up on life and work, somewhat unsuccessfully. By the end of the week, I'd finally talked to both insurance companies, gotten my car appraised, gotten it into the shop, and gotten myself into a rental. Woo, normal life may now resume. That only took one sentence, but it took HOURS. Why is insurance so difficult to deal with? I headed back to Amherst for work on Monday, in the rental car, and got a call from the shop saying that all is well, parts have been ordered, and my car should be fixed by Friday. Yippee!!

So then Wednesday, I get another call, this time from my insurance claims person. Apparently, there was supplemental damage, and they're declaring my car a total loss. Wow, way to mess with my emotions, Arbella. I try (unsuccessfully, still), to get a copy of the supplemental damage appraisal. I call the shop. I want to know what changed, and if my car can be fixed with pieces off another car, from a junkyard, for less than the cost of new stuff. Turns out that's totally doable. I want to do that. It's my car, it's basically driveable, it's a unibody frame, so totally fixable. At the same time, I start looking around for other cars. Trying to convince my insurance that what they want to offer me for my car isn't enough to by an equivalent car. They just say, hey, tough luck, you don't have a replacement policy. Sigh.

Fast forward a bit. I've been on the phone with some variation of a car insurer for a minimum of an hour every day for a week. The end result is that obtaining a salvage title is a complete and total pain in the ass, involving over six weeks of waiting time, and there is no way to get around that. I give up. Hopefully, somebody else will take this poor little salvaged honda and make it driveable again, but I don't have the time or patience. I never even got to tell it goodbye =(

So today I bought a car, from a girl. It's an '03 Civic. It's name is Chloe. Naturally actually buying the car was no small deal, it's somewhat of a hassle, but now it's mine. Deep sigh. Hopefully life will get less crazy now.

Team Trials Middle Distance

2011-05-31T13:32:00.007-04:00

I woke up rested, and within about 5 minutes of consciousness I realized I was nervous. Crap! I thought I could avoid being nervous! Alas, no. Luckily, it was a long jog to the start, so I got enough of a warmup to calm my nerves, and I had a plan and was in the zone when I started. It was still humid, but some thunder in the morning had made things a little less hot, so that was nice. This time, I had Ali 3 minutes behind me, and she's pretty speedy, so I just hoped to hold her off as long as possible.

The race started out on the wrong foot, though, when I bobbled #1, and then whacked my kneecap really hard against a log I was jumping over on my way to 2. That left me hyperventilating enough that I couldn't breathe for a bit, but eventually I got some air in my lungs, determined that nothing was broken, and let the adrenaline take care of the rest. Unfortunately, this extra minute that I spent lying on the ground meant that Ali had basically caught me as I was leaving #2, but I tend to race better when I'm trying to hold someone off, so 3-4-5-6 all went pretty well, with Ali just behind me at each control, both of us taking slightly different routes to each one. That area of the map was technical enough that she just couldn't run any faster, which is the only reason I could still see her for that long.

I started bobbling and hesitating more on 7-10, culminating with a bad route to 10, but I finished strongly, and because Sam had had a horrendous day, I took 2nd. I don't think I've ever done that before, so I was pretty pumped. I didn't know if that would be enough to get me onto the team - it would take the other girls making some big mistakes to help me out, but luckily, that's what happened! The points were really close. I snuck onto the team by 0.3 points, ahead of Pavlina, and just 3.4 points behind Hannah. The men were also really close on the bubble, as is always the case.

So I'm going to France! Weaseling 3 weeks of vacation out of my advisor was not fun, and nearly brought me to tears, but I am really excited to represent for CSU and USA at WOC this summer! I don't have any aspirations, but if I can pull out three (or however many I'm allowed to start) solid races, I will be pleased. I know that I have a lot of room for improvement in my orienteering, but as long as I'm not an embarrassment, it's all good. Now, about that wine and cheese they have over there...

Ian working on the breakfast of champions - Cheerios, in a humongous bowl.

Peter recognizing the folks most responsible for pulling off this meet - super skeleton crew that did a truly amazing job.
He also called up our ski-o relay team, so we could have a photo op and get recognized for general awesomeness. I love that when I stand next to Ali, I'm miniature.
Milling about waiting for awards.

A very inspired-looking women's WOC team.

Team Trials Long Distance

2011-05-30T12:21:00.000-04:00

After yesterday's flop, I was hoping for a better race today. It was the long distance, with a predicted high temperature of 88F, and what felt like 100% humidity, so I was hoping that my general mental toughness would triumph over wimpier souls. Before the race, Wyatt Riley pointed out to me that because I had an A-meet ranking, I was definitely still in the game, despite it being not a great ranking score. I decided that it didn't matter what my various scores and rankings were, I was going to go orienteering and focus on what I needed to in order to get around the course as fast as possible. I was starting 3 minutes behind Angelica, 3 in front of Cristina, 6 in front of Hannah, and 9 in front of Sam. Definitely hoping that I would see people out there, although ideally, I wouldn't see Cristina or Hannah, as they are fellow bubble runners and I'd like to beat them.

Things started out alright, and I discovered that the map was very technical, lots of knobbly stuff, but also some nice big features to catch you if you made mistakes, so none of my mistakes were all that huge. That said, I managed to bobble on 3, 4, and 5, losing about 4 minutes to Hannah just in those first 5 controls. Then a long leg to 7, and that went relatively well, although I did some goofy stuff in the middle of it, and Sam caught me somewhere along the way. I couldn't run as fast as Sam, but had her in sight for the next couple controls, which definitely makes it easier to find them, and I passed Angelica just before control 8. I was pretty clean for the next few controls, but the heat was starting to get to me, and by #12 I was walking all the uphills and starting to struggle. I managed to hold it together, though, and continued to be aggressive, pushing hard. Pain is only temporary, after all, and I hear chicks dig scars.

Blurry photo from the spectator control in the Long distance.

In the end I finished in just under 90 minutes (10.6km of running, 8.8km straight-line), a minute clear of Hannah, but 15 minutes behind Sam and Ali. It was good enough for third, which was cool, but I wish I'd just been a little better on those first tricky controls. I guess that's why we keep doing the sport - no such thing as a perfect run. I got a decent score from this race, and suddenly it's apparent that I'm still in - barely - but, still within reach. The clump of Pavlina, Hannah, Cristina, Angelica and I were pretty close, but to move past them, not only would I need to run really well tomorrow, they'd all have to run pretty poorly. I was about to get all stressed about it, but then remembered that there's no point to stressing about what I can't control. I know how to orienteer, I know how to run a middle in technical terrain - I just have to go out and do whatever it is I do to find controls tomorrow. No biggie. And if I don't make the team, it's totally legit - I just wasn't fast enough. I can live with that.

So with that in my mind, I had a really great afternoon playing boggle outside, hanging out with a lot of my favorite people, and in general, having fun. Because that's also something I can control =)

About 25 people were staying in a huge cabin near the race site; it was a fine situation except for how stuffy it was inside, and the occasional snorer. I slept maybe two hours the first night, but at least that meant I slept like a log the second night!

Due to the stuffiness, we moved mattresses outside in order to play boggle. Also, the ice cream truck stopped by the campground, and that really made my day!

US Orienteering Team Trials: Sprint

2011-05-29T10:52:00.000-04:00

We finally have hot weather - summer has arrived, with all the humidity, bugs, and thunderstorms you'd expect in the NE. Just in time for team trials! The way it works in US Orienteering is that to make it onto the team representing the US at the World Orienteering Championships (WOC), you need to be the top five runners based on three of four possible scores - the first score is your scaled ranking from A-meets around the country in the last 6 months, and the other three scores are you points from the sprint, middle, and long distance race at Team Trials. So, Team Trials is sort of a big deal if you want to make the WOC team. You are allowed to petition if you're already ranked in the top 5 in the US, but I don't fall into that crowd (yet).

Earlier this spring, Sandra Zurcher and Erin Neilson announced that they weren't going to try out for the team this year, for various reasons. Last year, we had one of the strongest women's teams we ever had, with Sam, Ali, and Sandra all qualifying for A-finals in various races, and Pavlina only a few seconds out from qualifying for the A final in the middle distance. I don't belong with those runners - they're legit elite orienteers, and I'm a scrub who plays ski-o. But, I've been getting faster, and when Sandra and Erin announced they weren't going to go this year, I realized I had a shot at the team. A very legitimate shot - I'm among six "bubble" runners who are all pretty close, but a ways behind Sam and Ali. Unfortunately, given that I've done the bare minimum of A-meets to have a ranking, my A-meet rank isn't very good. In fact, I'm ranking last among all the ranked women who were contesting Team Trials. I needed three solid races to make the team. So, I buckled down and... didn't really do anything special. Because in my head, I knew I had the least international experience of all the bubble runners, and life is stressful these days, so I didn't want to build my expectations.

Adding to the stress, I got rear-ended last weekend, and I'm still dealing with tying up those loose ends. So I didn't have a car for the weekend, but Ian bailed me out, and our car-ful of Ian, Greg, Caroline, and me headed down to Purchase, NY, for the first race of the weekend - the sprint! We arrived with plenty of time to spare, and I did a great warmup, although I probably lost too much water just warming up, because it was so hot and sunny and humid. I felt good, though - relaxed, speedy, light and snappy and smart.

But a minute before the call-up, I felt the fluttery heart thing start, so I sat down. It didn't go away, so I told them I couldn't start. Here's the other thing about Team Trials - like a WRE race, you can't reschedule your start. If you miss your start, you're SOL. And if you aren't ranked in the top 5 in the country, you aren't allowed to petition them to include your time. This may be harsh, but it also keeps things completely objective, which is good in a sport that can allow for a lot of subjectivity if you don't follow the rules. Even knowing that, I was sort of hoping that maybe I'd be allowed to petition anyway - this was clearly a medical situation, over which I had no control. And I couldn't run in the state I was in. The fluttery-heart-feeling is my term for this cardiac arrhythmia thing that I get maybe a few times a year, since age 16 or so - I have seen a cardiologist, and he didn't seem worried that I'd die, so I've just been carrying on with my current lifestyle. This was probably the first time it happened at a really undesirable time.

After 16 minutes of sitting in the grass in the shade, my HR dropped from 238 to 85, and I felt perfectly normal. Well, like 98% normal, maybe a little weak. So, I started the race, since they would at least let me start it - I would deal with thinking about the whole Team Trials thing afterwards. For now, focus on the orienteering. This is what you do: go.

Given that orienteering is a brainy sport, and I'd just spent the last 16 minutes thinking about breathing rather than my plan for the race, I was not mentally ready when I started out. It took a while to get into the map, and I was very stop-and-go, not being aggressive or running hard enough. Things were pretty clean for the first 5 controls, but not very fast or smooth. I then proceeded to do silly things on my way to 6, visiting 7 first (mental note: 6 comes before 7), and getting confused by running past the overhang and the finish with all the people standing around and screaming. I finally found 6, after maybe 45-50 seconds of confusion, found 7, and then came to a complete stop on the way to 8. Stuff had suddenly stopped making sense. Luckily it only took 5 seconds or so for buildings to make sense again, and I found the control. Then things got good - I was into it, focused and flowing and speedy. Too little too late, unfortunately, because even if my time were legit, it was only good enough for 12th, more than 2.5 minutes behind Sam, who won. At least the last third of the race was good, though.

Unfortunately, rules are rules, and there was no way to petition my time back into existence. I wasn't angry about this - if you set yourself rules as an organization, you have to follow them - but I was definitely disappointed. Some things I can't control. Like a heart arrhythmia or ESC rules. I was trying to be all zen about this, but by the time I got back to the car I was biting back tears. I hadn't realized how badly I wanted to make the team until I was out of the running. I was having a real life-ain't-fair moment, bawling my eyes out in a patch of poison ivy in the forest and cursing my body for not being made to spec. My usual rule to myself is that I'm allowed 15 minutes of self-pity after a bad race, and then I have to rejoin society, but this took a solid hour.

After that, time to move on; at least I wasn't completely out, since I did have an A-meet score. It was just a sucky score. There is nothing I can do about events outside of my control, so I attempted to start controlling the things I could for the next race, but man is that ever easier said than done, and I definitely had a cloud of "meh" hanging over my head most of the afternoon. I guess at least I didn't mispunch, like last year. Maybe next year I can have a Team Trials sprint that actually counts.

Speedy! But I think I need a longer shirt.

Selfishness

2011-05-25T08:08:00.011-04:00

I was up in Maine last week, setting out some temperature loggers for my thesis in the Sandy River Watershed. It was beautiful, rugged, and definitely still mud season. It was sort of nice to be so totally isolated from civilization, independent and in tune with the solitude, but by the end, I was chattering to the lady serving me coffee, just needing to talk to someone. I was camping, using Ed's bivvy sack, just pulled over on the side of an empty logging road, and then up with the sun.

One of the nights, I camped over near the Bigelow Range, near Sugarloaf mountain. I decided to run the loop over the peaks in the morning, and it was beautiful beyond words. But as I got higher and higher on the mountain, there was more and more snow, and the rocks were more slippery, and there were more downed trees. When I finally reached the col between Avery and West peak, and turned south on the AT, I realized that it would be pretty dumb to continue - the snow was rotten, so you'd pop through to the knee every couple steps, and what wasn't snowy was slippery from the fog and clouds. It occurred to me that while I'd given our field tech my locations for while I was working, nobody knew where I was just then, and if anything happened, I was completely on my own. I realized that doing stuff like this, not thinking anything of a 3hr run in the mountains, not telling anyone about my plans or locations, was just incredibly selfish. It isn't fair to others to go off doing dangerous things when there is a chance that it is up to someone else to bail me out, or search for the body. So I turned around, and made it down without mishap, but feeling a twinge of guilt about my outing. It was worth it though. Every once in a while, I need some misty mountains in my life to recharge.

Luxurious campsite.

My favorite type of trail.

The beaver pond you have to cross had really high water. Wet shoes!

Cool little cemetery I found up near Weld.

Also, it rained a lot. I love putting out loggers in the rain. Clearly.

The Billygoat

2011-05-16T08:20:00.012-04:00

The Billygoat is probably my favorite orienteering race around, mostly because it is so low-key and silly. At least, it's supposed to be like that, it always seems to turn into a super hard, super long, super hilly, super contended race. This was the sixth Billygoat I've run in, and I think last year is still the best I've ever run - I ended up 21st last year, so I got my initials on one of the control codes. Not so good this year, I ended up 32nd, so unless we have tons of controls, I won't get a code of my own again. The U.S. team was doing a fundraiser race on Saturday - a team sprint, that ended up being a whole bunch of fun. I teamed up with Becky, and while neither of us had horrible races, I don't think either of us ran quite as fast or as clean as we could have. Luckily, there were no other all-women's teams, so we won, by default.

Ed came and helped with results, which apparently are a pain to do with the existing orienteering software. So he's planning to write his own.

Katia and Giovanni tag off and head into another leg of the race.

Becky finishing a leg of the race.

My nemesis from last week! Peter finishing the race.

Uphill finishes SUCK. We got one on Sunday, too.

It was Ross's birthday on Saturday, so Sam made two different kinds of cupcakes, about fifty of them, all told. Peanut butter chocolate (with a reeses cup inside) and coconut. Ross gets excited when he's the center of attention.

Attempting to light a candle, in a windy field.

Peter and Gail guarding the cupcakes.

My calves had been in a lot of pain during Saturday's race, but instead of taking the time to massage them out and try to stretch, I went out for pizza and beer with all our orienteering friends, and wasted half the night playing boggle. Billygoat morning came too soon, and we drove over to Huntington state park in a serious-looking rainstorm. Luckily, the rain stopped by the time we started, but it was wicked humid. Ed had decided not to race to try and fix his ankle, so I left him my camera, and he took some photos of the march to the start.

HI ED!!!!

Ready, GO!

I started relatively fast, trying to hang with some of the fast kids. Pretty soon, though, just about as my heartrate inched towards my threshold, my calves made themselves known, in a burning sort of fashion. Shortly after my trail run to #3, I knew I was in trouble. My shin had gone numb, too, but I could still sort of use my quads, so I kept up with Becky and Hannah a little longer, stumbling and tripping with every step, since I couldn't tell what my feet were doing. But on a hill up to #5, I was done. I wasn't going to finish the race at this speed. Depressed, angry, and frustrated, I started walking, willing my calves to relax.
We chose #2 to skip - not a bad skip, but it was early in the race, so later on, we knew our pack was going to be able to skip a control and we'd have to hit them all.

After walking to #7, I tried running again to 8, and promptly made a parallel error involving marshes and reentrants. So I walked a little longer, and finally by #9, I could run again without my calves blowing up. Woo. I started jogging towards 10, and a group of old-but-accurates caught up with me. I decided that I didn't feel like running with them, so tried to run away, but the problem with orienteering is that it's really hard to open a gap, since your competitors can see where you're running, and they'll be able to run faster because they don't need to navigate as much as you are, if you're in front. So, the group stayed pretty together, and then Becky reappeared, from behind me. Turns out, she'd just turned her ankle and had a pretty negative spell, and was thinking of dropping out of the race. Since we are pretty similar in speed, I convinced her to keep running, if only so that we could both have company for the rest of the race.

So, we started running together, and chatting to each other, and life got a lot better. By #27, I was feeling spunky again, and so was Becky, so the pace went up, and my calves seemed to be cooperating. We bobbled a bit around 29-30, but we were ahead of our group. But, then they skipped #31, and we were behind them, with tired legs. We could see Peter and Angelica and Kseniya ahead of us on the trail to 33, but being tired, neither Becky nor I saw the fast, southern option to 33, and we lost about a minute and a half to our competitors by taking the little windy trail around to the north. Boooo. The last couple controls were fine, navigationally, but I was exhausted. When we finally hit the finish, it was up a hill, an insultingly steep hill, and I had doubts that I would make it up without collapsing. The photo shows Becky telling me there is no way in hell she is going to let me walk up the hill, so I made it up, jogging, but definitely should have taken in more calories around 1hr in.

"Becks, I think I'm going to have to walk this uphill". "No way am I letting you do that!"

Overall, we ended up 7th and 8th woman (Becky let me win the "sprint" for the finish), so not great, but, it was really fun to run with a partner, even if both of us weren't really in it with a fighting spirit for the last two thirds of the race... But now, time to take care of these calves. Foam roller torture time.

New 5k PR

2011-05-11T12:19:00.000-04:00

Every Tuesday in the non-snowy months, the Sugarloaf Mountain Athletic Club runs a 5k race, at a park in Northampton. I ran this once before, and posted a PR by a good bit, hitting 21:02. I wasn't expecting to do that again, and given my pretty unfocused training the last few months, combined with a lot less sleep than I'd like this past week, I wasn't expecting much speed. But I strapped on the light shoes, did a barely-enough warmup, and set myself a goal: finish in front of Peter Gagarin. He ran 22:xx two weeks ago, and I figured breaking 22 today would be good, so I thought it would be close. The challenge was issued about a month ago, see who was faster at running, and although my times from last year put me in front, you have to be worried, because Peter doesn't take a bet he doesn't think he'll win, and he's fixed the injury that was holding him back last year.

So I lined up, they said "go", and I took off - this course starts with a downhill, and I can do downhills. After the downhill I was passed by a steady stream of people as I settled into my pace, it felt easy, in the way the first interval feels easy if you're actually going the pace you want at the track, but you know it's going to start hurting pretty soon. We go up the first hill, and I tried to run within my abilities, just nice and light and relaxed, and by now there were fewer people passing me. I could see that I was the fifth girl, behind Ali, Kelsey Allen, her friend Kristine, and a teenager with an ipod, but I knew the race wasn't really about beating them - they'd either be faster or I would. I was in it for the time, and to beat Peter. Stay focused, kiddo.

I rolled through the first mile in 6:36 - my plan had been to go for 7min miles, because that would put me at something below 22min, but this didn't feel that hard, yet, so I didn't slow down. We did the loop through the field and headed down that first hill again, and I used it to narrow the gap between myself and ipod-girl and Kris. Ali and Kelsey were long gone, but the other two didn't seem to be pulling away very fast, encouraging. Every time I turned a corner, I was checking behind me for Peter, but he was wearing a gray teeshirt in a field of people wearing white and gray teeshirts, so I couldn't really tell if he was closing.

As we cruised along the river, I could feel the work load settling into my legs. This pace was ok, but I knew there was a steep hill coming up just after 2 miles, and I could tell that I was right on the brink of my lactate threshold - wouldn't take much to put me over and into a world of hurt. I hit the 2mi mark at 13:13, still right on 6:36 pace, but I was definitely starting to feel it. Another check for Peter and I thought I saw him back there, just had to survive this hill and the last false flat mile... The shirtless guy I'd been pacing for the last mile dropped me up the hill, but I closed the gap to Kris, focusing on a light stride, relaxed shoulders, just flow. We got to the top and I was solidly in the hurt box, legs feeling heavy with lactic acid burning, but if there's anything I ever learned from racing a bike, it's that you don't rest after uphills - you attack. So I surged, Kris matched it, pulled ahead, and dragged me up to ipod-girl. ipod-girl was looking pretty wasted, but I couldn't help it, I rested a second or two behind her, and Kris got a gap.

The last mile of this course is just stupidly painful. I had passed ipod-girl, and was in full-on fat-kid-with-asthma-breathing mode, with my own phlegm threatening to choke me any second. My legs were burning, and there was none of this relaxed pacing stuff going on anymore. I could see my rabbit, and I was doing my darnedest to chase her down, as we got to the crest of the little bump at 2.7ish, I checked my watch, 19min - less than 3 minutes left, you can suffer through just about anything for 3 minutes! Suck it up and run, bitch!

I made contact with Kris just as we hit the 3mi mark (20:24 - that third mile is tough), and started questioning whether I had the fight in me today to take her in a sprint. I was exploring dark corners of my pain cave I haven't been to in years, and I really wanted to lie down and breathe. But we hit the pavement, and I found some fight, went for it - kicking at the end of a race is somewhat transcendental for me, it takes a massive amount of energy to overcome the first barrier of deciding I'm going to do it, but then, once I do, I haven't been beaten in a full kick, yet. It's this realization that all you have to do is go faster than the other person, and that's purely mental. Booyah. But holy moly was that a painful last 100m, I thought I might actually die if I didn't start breathing soon.

In the end, I finished in 20:59, a new PR, and compared to last August, when I was just 3 seconds slower, a much harder effort (avg HR was 183 this time, and 179 last August). But I ended up as the 3rd woman, and 16th overall, so that's pretty cool, though less exciting than beating Peter (who did set an age-class record, so he was happy even though he lost the bet). Hopefully I don't have to do another one of these for at least a week or two, when the memory of the pain fades. Racing is tough. But it's quite encouraging to see this speed at the beginning of the summer; clearly, I'm fitter than I thought. Woo! Now to just stay un-broken...

Map and HR graph.

Orienteering headcam

2011-05-07T07:32:00.003-04:00

Ed was swayed by the awesomeness that people have been producing overlaying maps with google earth and headcam footage, and bought a headcam. I tried it out last Thursday night at the park-o at Cat Rock, and discovered that while it's a bit annoying to have on my head, there are a lot of good training opportunities to be had from it. For example, I discovered that I bash through branches head-first, mostly, and that I breathe really heavily. Of course, the problem with running with a headcam is that you know people are "watching", so you are trying to run really, really fast. And this leads to more heavy breathing. I attempted to narrate my way through the video, but it's hard to talk when you're going at race pace, so mostly it's just heavy breathing, and some wheezing near the end, for good measure. Luckily all that heavy breathing was good for something - I was second on the day, just over a minute behind Ross, which will probably never happen again in history. Granted, I think I was working harder than everyone else out there...
Results, Ed was directing the meet, so he didn't run.

Click here for the map-video-google earth integrated awesomeness. It's pretty darn cool.

West Point A meet

2011-05-02T09:27:00.020-04:00

This last weekend was an A meet down at West Point, and we had great weather, great courses, and a really fun time. Ed and I drove to Poughkeepsie Friday night to stay at Ali's parents' house, and along the way found THE worst Chinese restaurant I've ever been to. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised when the name of the place is "Tasty China restaurant". Well, we didn't get sick...

Saturday was sunny and pleasant, and we had two races on the agenda: A middle distance and a sprint. The terrain around the campground (nice central location, and most people were camped there) was pretty crappy, I thought - lots of dead trees down, lots of knee-high woody shrubs, and lots of rocks underfoot. But the maps were alright, and the course was nice. I had a really crappy run, just couldn't get my body to cooperate with what my head was telling me to do, and while I did have some decent legs out there, mostly I was just not thinking very hard, and paying for it by hemorrhaging minutes to the winners. Sigh. More whining and more details on my training log.

Soon after finishing, it was time for the sprint, which really was just a shorter middle distance - not all that high-speed except for the end. I made a horrible mistake on #7, basically messing up the scale of the map and way overrunning the feature, but managing to make things make sense in my head anyway. That put a damper on the rest of the course, because when you lose 5 minutes in a 20min race, you're out of it. Kind of disappointing, but the day was so nice, and it was so much fun to hang out with everyone, that I was in a good mood by the time we left, anyway. To top it off, dinner at Ali's place used 11 avocados, for 9 people, so life was pretty good, all in all.

We had a very large crowd of CSU runners at this meet, so tried to get a photo of everyone. Unfortunately, we couldn't round up a couple - this photo is missing Peter, Ken Sr, Ken Jr, Brendan, Pia, Mark, Tor and Lukas, Bill, Dean, and probably a few more. Still cool to have so many from the club all there!

Ken is a crazy old man, so he brought his rollerskis, so naturally Nikolay went out skiing too, as well as a couple others who would fit into Ali's boots. Mixing sports! Ahhh!

Much lounging about on the pavement, as per usual.
Clem took it to a whole new level, but in his defense, the pavement was wonderfully warm. Of course, pavement lounging can quickly be interrupted when a cadet comes over and tells you that a Hummer is coming through so we'd better move. Right, we're at West Point. Actually, you could hear the firing range from all the points on the course, kind of a reminder not to get TOO lost...

Some photos from the sprint, courtesy of Ed. I don't look very fast compared to Ross or Ali, but I guess I wasn't that motivated after my 5min mistake.

Rosstopher.

The Ali-gator.

The Kens.

Ed finishing the middle race in the morning, with his fancy new headcam. That he won't let anyone watch because he doesn't want anyone to see all his mistakes.

Speedy Sam finishing the middle.

Giovanni made himself a chocolate sandwich - two pieces of bread and some chocolate in the middle. Why haven't I thought of that yet?

Sunday was the long distance race, and it certainly did feel pretty long and hilly. Luckily the terrain was a lot nicer - more open, with many fewer rocks. I had a much better race, very solid navigationally, if not exceptional, and only made one questionable route choice. On paper it looked good, in reality, the terrain over there was just slower. Details.

I ended up 5th for the weekend, which isn't too bad, but that's the trouble with expectations - they keep rising, while your performance has ups and downs and just won't keep pace with those expectations. Ah well, I have some time to train between now and the next big race, at the end of May.

Running in the woods

2011-04-25T09:17:00.017-04:00

I've been doing a lot of running in the woods lately, and it's been wicked fun. This, combined with being out in the field a couple days, combined with the end of the semester, has kept me sort of busy. But it's fun. I just need to come up for air occasionally.

Two weekends ago, I headed to Pawtuckaway for a day, in the company of Giacomo and Alexei, and confirmed my belief that Alexei may be a robot - he wasn't slowing down, even four hours and 35km later. I was pretty trashed, and Giacomo's legs were cramping to the point where he was falling over and whimpering, luckily we stuffed him with some Mcdonald's and a couple hours later he was able to walk again. It was a beautiful day to be in the woods, and we did a re-run of the long distance course from the World Cup at Pawtuckaway in 1992.

The map was at 1:15,000 scale, which made it a bit hard to read, because Pawtuckaway has so many damn features, but once you got moving it wasn't so bad. I did make a 22 minute mistake, which was humbling - nothing like a trip to Pawtuckaway to put your ego back in it's place, I knew the orienteering last weekend had felt too easy! This map is a bit tricky to read, because it was printed for putting in ONA, with the routes of the winners on it, and both the men's and women's courses printed. I made it through #8 on the women's course before I realized I had to go back, if I were to meet Giacomo and Alexei in time for the next group training.

We ran this one together, trading off who was leading. It went really well, and I was feeling all smug, so I headed out on the next course expecting similar results. Unfortunately, I was more tired and dehydrated and hungry than I thought, and after about the third control, I was just walking. Not fun.

After a day of doing absolutely NOTHING (sometimes, you need those), I was recovered enough to jog down to Comm ave to watch the marathon. Our friend Chris was running, and we managed to find him in the throngs of people, but not to take any photos. Instead, I took a photo of the fast people: They were really speedy. It was impressive. Also impressive was the guy running 26 miles in a full gorilla suit, with the head thing. No way can you return that suit after that...

After some frantic fieldwork, attempting to get to all my sites in the Westfield in one week, I was feeling a bit worn down, but ready for the next adventure. And really, when this is work, how can you complain?

So, last weekend, a bunch of CSUers headed to Western Connecticut and Harriman, for a training camp and a local meet. The local meet was Saturday, in the pouring rain, but it actually wasn't as bad as I feared - just wet, not too cold. Although things had the potential to get cold when all my dry clothes were in Ali's car, and she and Ross took her car to get the far-off controls while I was running a second course. I came back to no car, and was about to collapse in a little heap of cold tired wet Alex, when Sam poked her head out of her car and invited me in. Phew. Disaster averted!
Route and course from the long race. I was slower than I wanted to be, but didn't make many mistakes, just one goof and one really bad route choice.
The second course - meant to be done against someone to make it fast and exciting, but everyone else had already started, since we had gotten there a little late.

We spent the night at Ali's parents' house in Poughkeepsie, which was great, and then headed down to Harriman Sunday morning. It was sunny and warm, which was pretty wonderful after the deluge on Saturday.

Ross and Sam's reactions to Sunday's sunshine:

First exercise was a control pick, and then we headed straight into three intervals, of about 5-7min. We ran these interval start, so that you were always chasing or being chased, and that made things really fun. I jumped over a snake at one point, and made a very girly noise. I was surprised!

As tends to be usual at our training camps, we picnicked in a parking lot, just loving the sunshine, and trying to guzzle enough water that we could finish the day's training. The second exercise was a corridor training, where you're supposed to use your compass to go straight. It's a lot harder than it looks.

After that, we headed out one more time on a route choice exercise - run in pairs, and meet at each control to discuss which way you're going, and see which one is faster. This was really fun, but I was really tired at this point. Too much fun for my own good!

You know it's a good day when legs and shoes look like this at the end...

Winter's last gasp

2011-04-11T21:01:00.008-04:00

Sunday was the last day Magic Mountain was open, and Ed was dead-set on skiing it. Twist my arm, why don'tcha. Ed pointed out that as long as you manage your expectations, anything is awesome, and that meant I had a really good time. There were some runs that weren't going to make it through the day, but we managed to not have to take off our skis at any point. This is normally not a goal, but then again, there is normally snow all the way down the runs...

This was one of the better runs, in terms of coverage. I went with the under-the-tree line, didn't lose my hat so it's all good.

Looking up...
Looking down.

Since springtime in Vermont means the sap is flowing, Ed has been up there helping his cousin Rob boil water pretty much constantly the last week. Rob re-built the sugar house, and now there is a bench for sitting, and a bigger evaporator. And many fewer drips off of the roof.

Louisa and her puppy.

A good weekend! Now back to chipping away at the list of impending doom...

CSU training weekend

2011-04-06T09:58:00.009-04:00

One thing that some of the national orienteering team members are trying to do is to hold more training camps, especially those of the weekend variety in easily-accessible areas. The Western Connecticut folks held a training weekend while I was at Ski WOC, and this last weekend, CSU hosted a weekend, basically by compiling some of the already-existing options. Saturday everyone met up at Breakheart to run the "semi-permanent" course that I'd set for the month of April, and then gathered at Brendan's house to have lunch, and then run some sprints at Tufts on Brendan's new ISSOM sprint map there. Sunday, Ed and Ian were hosting a local meet at Rocky Woods, in Dover, so we all headed down there. The weather was awesome, so we had good turnouts.
My route from Saturday's training at Breakheart - it felt so good to run in the woods! I guess I missed orienteering.

I missed Brendan's sprint in the afternoon because I had to go to the CSU junior end-of-season party, which was awesome. Those kids are great, and I got all sorts of warm fuzzies inside watching the seniors get their "athlete" certificates from Rob. *sniff*. The skiers had decided that they wanted to have an energy bar competition at the party, and a whole bunch of them came up with different recipes for energy bars, which we judged (the distinguished panel of judges was Jamie, Rob, myself, and Amie) based on taste, nutrition, and packageability/presentation. Although there were some that weren't bad, I can't believe I skipped dessert to eat energy bars. Even with just a bite from each one, that's a lot, and some of them were pretty bad. oof.

Sunday was CSU's local meet at Rocky Woods, and Ian and Ed did a great job with it, attracting 85 people. I ran the red course, which was 8.3km, pretty long for the first real orienteering race of the year, but Ian designed a fun course, and I didn't realize I'd been out there for so long. Things were pretty clean on the navigation front, just a couple bobbles, but I felt really in control of where I was going. Such a nice feeling! I ended up finishing pretty well - I managed to beat Ali, since she decided to spend an extra 9 minutes on #12, but Peter still got me. I think he's my nemesis this season, luckily he's old, so sometimes I can outrun him, but not on Sunday. Results for the red course with splits - I was the second woman, but Sam beat me by 19 minutes, so that actually wasn't that impressive.

Ed and Ian running the show.

Ian decided to run the white course (easiest one) while picking up its controls, and he did it in 11 minutes - the previous first place person had taken 39 minutes.

It was a sleepy, sunny, sort of day. Brendan and Ross took full advantage of the sunshine before heading out to pick up controls.

I also finally got some new orienteering shoes. My old shoes were starting to completely disintegrate, after 680 miles (yea training logs and OCD logging...) in the woods. I was impressed they lasted so long, and I had thought maybe I could get another season out of them, but I decided this weekend that enough is enough. And the new ones are shiny!

Ski WOC Relay

2011-03-30T07:15:00.000-04:00

Speaking of the snow that had been coming down all week... It had been dumping snow and blowing it all over the place for most of the week - walking down the path to breakfast, the snow was definitely above my knees!

The relay was the last race of the week. Ali was scrambling, after her fantastic race the day before, I was going out second, to try to hold whatever place she brought us in, and Cristina was anchoring. Cristina basically only came to Sweden to complete the relay team for us, and not being a natural-born skier (she bought skis 3 weeks ago...), she was a bit nervous. I can't blame her! The guys' team was Scott, Greg, and Adrian.

Ali started for us (clearly, not nervous here), and she skied well, although she described her race as shaky - she came in 6th, just behind Finland, Czech Republic, and Switzerland, and ahead of Sweden. Russia and Norway were off the front already.
Relay map. You may have to click on it to see the whole thing. Again, this just shows one of a couple possible forked routes, but it gives a good idea of the general routes people were taking. My #7 was between the two loops of trail, two contours higher than the one shown here.

I took off just behind the Swiss girl, and let her block the wind across the windy field, and then we had different forkings. I caught the Czech girl just before coming back into the stadium, and actually climbed faster than her up the big hill from yesterday, so that was nice. The Swiss girl was just in front of me going up the hill, having had shorter forkings on the south side of the bridge, and having her dangling out there just uphill from me was motivating. I made contact as we double poled across the top of the map, and then I dropped her on the downhill, using this crazy trick called "good orienteering", while skiing like a ninja. I ended up putting 47 seconds on her by the tag zone, and came to the tag in 5th (Sweden had passed me on the climb).

Our time keeper had been negligent, and they weren't announcing any teams other than the top three at the pre-warning (lame), so Cristina wasn't actually ready for me when I came through. I came sliding around the corner, bellowing "CRISTINA!!!!!!" as I hadn't seen anyone in the tag zone - luckily, she was nearly ready, but that isn't exactly a relaxed way to start your leg of the relay...

Punching at one of the controls with the touch-free EMIT system, which is an AWESOME way to have ski-o controls set up.

Cristina bringing it home, for 8th place! Switzerland and Czech Republic caught up to her quickly, but given that our major goal was just to beat the British team, this was actually expected. Lithuania caught up at some point while she was out there, too, but she held off many of the other teams, most notably Belarus, Hungary, and Japan, who I don't think we've ever beaten before. We were incredibly stoked about our finish, that was a really great way to end the week. The guys did quite well, too, finishing 15th. There are a lot more mens teams out there, but all three of them skied a very solid race.

The US women's relay team!
I don't know what is going on in this photo, but I think it's pretty funny.

I was happy to have finally skied a clean race, and a race that I feel good about. It feels so good to pick up places in a relay.

After the relay, we had a couple hours to pack up before the banquet, so I headed out for one last classic ski - for some reason, I'm happier when I close out the ski season with a classic ski, especially when it's on extra blue. This really made me happy, and the sun was out, and I had some views - it just cemented the feeling of finishing the week on a high note.
Ali playing with fire - she totally deserves being called an astrologist when she does stuff like that with her hands over the candles...

The organizers wanted each team to sign something and leave it as a souvenir (I think they were thinking poster, or something along those lines...), so, we autographed Adrian's broken ski, which had both the tip and the tail snapped off.

The banquet was good fun, but the 8-hour bus ride back to Stockholm with our closest drunken Russian ski orienteering friends at 1am was a little less enjoyable. At least Greg found some chocolate-covered muffins when we got to the airport.

Another Ski WOC is in the books. It was hard to feel like I wasn't fit enough for it, but at least that is something that can be improved. At least I did feel like I was prepared for the orienteering bit, this year. I am excited for the World Cups next season - we have some really good energy going on the team right now, and I think it's time to take full advantage of that. Despite having had some disappointing races, I left this Ski WOC feeling like good stuff is underway, and excited for the future.

Long Distance race at Ski WOC

2011-03-29T18:04:00.011-04:00

Long distance ski-o races are usually a good thing for me, because they are more physical, require more skiing, less navigating. Unfortunately, my skiing hasn't actually been going that well since February, with each race feeling worse than the last. I was hoping that some rest before WOC would fix things, but for some reason, hoping never gets you too far in a ski race setting...

The Long is a mass start race, with this one having one map change, and various forkings on each map, to ensure that you can't just follow a better navigator. The fun part about this race was that the weather was being pretty nasty all week - after blizzarding all day during the Middle race, it didn't let up, with some pretty serious winds. This meant that all the trails were basically missing when the groomers went to find them in the morning, and they had to completely re-make the small trails. I don't know how many kilometers of trails they had to groom, but I was quite impressed with how smoothly they handled creating a new map and new courses the night before a World Championships race. Kudos.

We had slightly better weather (well, less snow, just as much wind) in the morning. I had a good start from the gun, and at the bridge over the road (about 800m into the race), I was something like 10th, it felt nice and easy, and I avoided all the bottlenecking there. Unfortunately, the entire map is situated on the side of a mountain, so the course had 480m of climb over 19km of skiing (The Lake Placid marathon had 400m of climb per 25km loop, to put things in perspective), and climbing on skate skis has been especially sucky for me this winter. Much of the climbing could be done on wide skate trails, although in retrospect, I might have done better if we had all had to double pole up the narrow trails - right now I think I am relatively better at uphill double poling than uphill skating. Regardless, there was a lot of climb, and on the first 160m climb to the top of the hill, a lot of people passed me; just couldn't go any faster. Ali passed me relatively early, and she was just moving much faster, I could only hang with her for a minute. She ended up having a spectacular race, finishing in 8th place - best ever finish by an American, at any orienteering event! I was thrilled, but of course that leaves me feeling jealous, too - how could I not be? But it's not a bad sort of jealousy, I think, because I am still super excited by how well she did - I just wish I had done so well, too.

This is the first map (might have to click on it to see the whole thing) - this just shows one of the possible forks, but basically everyone goes more or less to these areas. Check out that first leg - just power up that big wide trail for a loooong time.

One of the things that is unique to ski-o compared to skiing is the length of some of the climbs. In skiing, the longest climbs you'll ever see are in the 4-5 minute range. This takes a very different type of power application than a 15 minute climb, like the climb to #1 on this map. I can suffer for 4 minutes, but much longer than that and it becomes even more blatantly clear that I do not have world-class fitness. IOF does not impose FIS's sissy rules about climb lengths and altitude limits. Sometimes, I wish it did...

The second map. Again, up the long slog of death!

So, I waddled up the hill, wheezing and hauling some heavy-feeling legs one step at a time. Not a great feeling, but, the downhill legs were wicked fun, so they almost made up for the long climb. I whooshed past a bunch of girls who'd gotten me on the uphill, and because racing is sort of magic like that, I forgot how much the climb had hurt, so I was almost mentally ready for it again when I exchanged maps and went uphill again. Unfortunately, I did make a minute+ mistake on my #6, which meant I lost the pack of girls I'd been skiing with, and added extra climb to the overall. That pack ended up finishing four minutes up on me, and although I didn't feel like I'd gotten that much slower on the second lap, it is definitely faster when you have others around pushing you. I did catch a Hungarian and a Czech skier near the top of the hill the second time, which felt good, and I used my best kamikaze-downhill-ski-o-through-narrow-trail-mazes technique to drop them on the downhill, which would have worked better if I hadn't crashed quite so hard near the end...

I was zooming down a wide trail, and had my head in my map, and the trail was turning, but I was not turning. Caught my right ski in the fluff, and that yanked my head up pretty quick. I managed to extract the right ski, while keeping the left on the packed trail, but at this point I was basically doing an arabesque on skis. In attempting to bring my right ski back to the trail (easier said than done - there were little trees and stuff sticking up through the fluff), my hamstring decided it was NOT enjoying this non-ski-like movement, and cramped up painfully. So I had to abort operation put-ski-on-trail, and that led to a spectacular crash as my ski caught those little trees on the side of the trail. Luckily, the snow only wedged itself under the mapholder on parts of the map where I'd already been, and no equipment broke.

After that, it was just three controls on the other side of the bridge, but I was pretty flustered after my crash, and I knew the Hungarian girl was just behind me. I could feel the effort of the race in my arms and legs, maybe I should have had another feed, but let's just say I didn't feel any more spry 1.5hrs into the race than I had at the beginning. She made contact with me at #10, and then I missed the quick little left turn onto the big trail, had to take a shortcut, and by then I was 50m back. I tried to catch her, thinking that if I entered the finish with her I could take her in a sprint, but I just couldn't get her - I made up 6 of the 10 seconds, but still finished 4s behind her, in 25th.
Trailing behind - just couldn't get her.Damn. The tiredness hits, always, as you cross the line, and realize you can stop skiing now.

25th is good, and I got good points from the race, but it was disappointing to race at the World Championships feeling like my legs were made of lead. It was still my best-feeling individual race of the week, but none of the three races left me feeling satisfied. I suppose that's why we keep ski racing. Luckily, with Ali finishing so well, the entire team was pumped up, and we went into the relay day with really high spirits.

Some photos from the race organizers:
The start - Both Ali and I were in the 3rd row (Ali on the left, I'm just in front of the girl in the blue headband), but I moved up quickly, to avoid mayhem at the 90 degree right turn and at the bridge across the road, which was really only wide enough for one skier at a time, unless you're at the back of the guys' field, where they apparently tried to fit two abreast, and that didn't work at all. Below, Adrian and Greg are just chilling, reading their maps, waiting for the chaos in front of them to clear out.
Coming around the corner, I'm the little one on the left behind all the tall people.

I coulda swore I was taller than that...

Ali getting interviewed after her awesome race!

Sprint and Middle distance at Ski WOC

2011-03-23T15:28:00.005-04:00

The weather couldn't have been any different between the sprint race, on Tuesday, and the Middle distance, on Wednesday. Tuesday was warm, maybe a little windy, but sunny and bright, except for a quick snow squall, lasting all of 10 minutes, right during the women's red group (good thing they started behind me) - this shuffled the results a bit, but not too much. Ali had a great race, ending up in 18th, the best finish ever by an American woman.
The view down the lake Tuesday morning.

I had a very frazzled race, with a decent placing (24th), but I was pretty unhappy about how the race went. Apparently, Swedish coffee is like 10x stronger than the weak American stuff I'm used to, either that or I had more nerves than I knew what to do with. Either way, I was so nervous before the sprint I thought I might puke. Normally, nervousness disappears once you start skiing, but that never happened. I was physically shaking for most of the race, and fell once because of it, and caught my tips in the snow on the narrow trails a lot as well, unable to calmly pull them out. If you want to read more whining, you can read the race report on my training log, here.

Adrian after the middle race - only a small blizzard...

By Wednesday morning, despite a pretty horrendous night of sleep, I had my nerves back under control. The race went off under some sweet blizzard conditions, howling wind, dumping snow, all that good stuff. It wasn't really much of a problem, since everybody is at the same disadvantage since nobody can see anything, except that all the small trails got blown in, so you couldn't see where they went. Since ski-o navigation mostly relies on trails to create route choices, this is problematic. I had a lot of trouble with navigation, and made a lot of mistakes. Like, a LOT of mistakes. Pretty much every control. I haven't looked at the splits yet, but I wouldn't be surprised at more than six minutes of mistakes. Sigh. I ended up 30th of 53, which isn't a bad placing, but I was not happy with the race.

Again, you can see the control-by-control whining on my training log. That may have been my worst ever international event, but the fact that I was actually able to control my body and SKI (even if it was in the wrong direction), meant I felt better about the race.

So I certainly don't feel good about the first two races, and when there are only three individual races, that leaves a lot of pressure on the last one. I'll be trying to control the nerves, and hopefully I'll remember that ski-o is wicked fun. Racing aside, the team is pretty great this year - spirits are high, and everyone gets along. This is more important than you'd think. Race mornings start with Ali dancing around the room in her long underwear to "Spice up your life".

Check out the wind blowing snow off the mountain. This same wind brought in the blizzard, hopefully by tomorrow it decides to clear out... the organizers are certainly having a headache about all this snow and wind!

Tomorrow is the team relay - one man and one woman, each country gets one team. Naturally, I had hoped to be the one skiing, but my performances so far have certainly not provided any reasons to put me on the team, and hopefully Ali will ride high on the success of her last two races. She's pairing with Greg, who was the top American for the men both days. I am super duper psyched to cheer for them, and I think it'll be an exciting event to watch.

Headcam

2011-03-21T16:29:00.003-04:00

I borrowed Cristina's headcam to ski the model event. I did the skiing, she did the editing. If you have three minutes to spare, check it out, at the team blog, or below. The video was so awesome (I may be a little conceited) that it deserves its own post.

SkiWOC 2011 - Model from Cristina Luis on Vimeo.

Tänndalen

2011-03-21T16:02:00.011-04:00

Sunday afternoon, we packed up and left for Tänndalen, courtesy of a mini-bus driven by Erik, with some Austrians and a whole bunch of skis. Things went pretty smoothly, except for the point where Cristina and I mooned two separate cars while peeing basically in the shoulder of the road (the snow banks were too deep to climb into). We got to the event center by 4pm, found our rooms, and then some dinner and some other Americans.

Sunday and Monday have been super sunny and nice out, and we've acquainted ourselves with the general layout of Hotel Tänndalen (I just like typing Tänndalen. Umlauts are so cool).
There is a good dynamic in the girls' team, and the guys seem to be behaving as well. We're in two separate suites - the girls have a cozy one (that we actually like better, because there is a nice area for stretching, and a clothes-drying machine thing), and the guys have a slightly larger one with leather couches.

Nikolay, Greg, and Ali, relaxing in the swank (soon to be stank) room.

The Swedish Ski-O Tour company has a Ski-WOC car. So cool. Makes me feel PRO.

Very Swedish-looking place, with thatched roofs.

This is the view through Cristina's night vision goggles. It just looks cool, though blurry.

This is our waxing area. The table is quite wobbly, so Ali is performing the extremely important job of stabilizing the benches.

I like the Spanish team's suits, so I took a picture of one.

One of the Italian women skiing past a control. We're using the touch-free EMIT timing (like we did in December), which is awesome because you can just ski past a control, whack at it with your hand, and keep going. Today was the model event, (map), so we got to practice all sorts of things, like flying past controls, narrowly avoiding trees, and face-planting into snowbanks.
Walking to the opening ceremonies. I feel like there are a lot of photos of me in a red jacket and a hot pink hat.

And if you can't get enough of the media... here's a link to the US Orienteering Team blog, that has a sweet video of our pre-model-event ruminations. I think it's mostly giggles.

Tomorrow is the first race - the sprint! I'm nervous, but I feel good about this. Just go fast and don't mess up, simple.

Last day in Mora

2011-03-20T05:44:00.010-04:00

We had one day left in Mora, and because it hadn't snowed too much on Friday, decided to go back to the place with all the narrow trails we'd been at on Thursday. The snow actually made things really nice, since it was just an inch of fluff, and that made the trails much softer. Some sprint training, with a Swedish friend of ours (Leif), then a relaxed lunch and a nap, and then it was time to go pick up Ali. This turned into more of a fiasco than it should have been...

We were supposed to pick up Ali from the train station at 5:29pm, and so we left the apartment at 5:10 to go get her. We got to the end of the curvy road, and I'm just following, because Greg and Cristina have both been outside before to do things other than skiing (Cristina needed a diet coke last night), plus, they've both looked at a map. But they turned right at the end of the curvy road, and I thought we were supposed to go left. Meh, they know what we're doing. After much walking, we got to a train station, which was decidedly NOT the train station where we'd been dropped off.

At this point, the train was just about arriving, but no Ali. We headed back to the first train station, where we should have gone first, if I had just spoken up louder. Greg insisted that we take the scenic route, which took us by the lake, and while it was indeed scenic, Ali was actually walking towards town, along the road we would have found her on had we not taken the scenic road. Argh.

So, since we were at this point 20 minutes after the train, I headed back to the school, to see if she'd somehow found her way there (we didn't have an address and hadn't told her how to get there...), and the other two waited at the station. She wasn't there, and I got out my computer to see if we had any news - maybe (hopefully?) she missed the train? Anyway, Greg and Cristina got back then, because the next train wasn't until 7:30. But then I got a chat from Ali saying she was in the Best Western, so we went over to pick her up, where she was, very much in need of a hug and a friendly face. I felt pretty horrible - there's nothing quite so bad as arriving somewhere when you don't have any way to contact or get to where you're supposed to be staying, and previously-made plans aren't working.

To top things off, we haven't fixed our stove yet, but luckily Cristina talked to more strangers, and we used another random girl's kitchen ("Cristina! There's people! Will you go talk to them...?"), and when I ran downstairs to grab a spatula, Ali was sitting on the couch, covered in nutella, and giggling, so clearly, she's doing ok.

We were supposed to bring sheets, and Greg didn't get this memo, so he stole a couple blankets from Delta. They almost fit him.

Let loose in a Swedish grocery store, the first thing I do is find the "health food" aisle. mmmm crazy eyes.

Greg, on the other hand, found a sausage of lingonberry jam. This is significant, because according to this thread on attackpoint, Greg had already eaten all the lingonberries in Sweden on day zero (context in the link).

I went for a quick run on Sunday before we left, and brought my camera. It was so pretty out!

Now, we're off to Tänndalen with some Swedes!

Photos from day 2

2011-03-18T12:09:00.008-04:00

Out on the river trail to the Mora trails. It was snowing today, and a bit warmer - right around zero. Glad I wasn't classic waxing...

Quickroute from the first sprint that we did yesterday. You can see where I blew it on the way to #6 - took that right turn, thinking I was taking the right fork. At least I caught it, but not that quickly...
Quickroute from the second sprint. This one was longer, and had two butterflies on it. Again, I made a mistake near the end - my concentration needs some work. I missed my turn to 11, realized it, took the next turn, and then could see the control, so tried to take a downhill shortcut. Unfortunately, I hit something solid under the snow, got onto one foot, thought I could ride it out, and failed, landing with a poof in a pile of snow. Then, I couldn't extricate myself from that pile of snow, so spent a while floundering around trying to stand back up. Of course, when I got to the finish, Erik was waiting for everyone, and said something along the lines of "you met some snow, eh?" That was embarrassing. Sigh.

And from the afternoon's training - follow the highlighted line. I sort of had some issues around the marsh, and by the time I figured out where I was, I backtracked to get back on the line.

Cristina was really excited about cheese slices after the first ski.

Mora Ski Gymnasium

2011-03-17T14:14:00.015-04:00

I left for Sweden on Tuesday, met up with Greg at the JFK airport, and we finished the trip across the Atlantic puddle and got to Mora by Wednesday sort of mid day. Erik Svensson and the Mora Ski Gymnasium have been kind enough to put us up for a couple days, and invited us to join them for all the trainings that they're doing. It's a really sweet setup, and makes a lot of logistics actually much easier than if I were trying to plan things myself. We're staying in a dorm in the basement of one of the ski dorms, and it's way more than I expected. Cristina got here Thursday afternoon, and there may even be sightings of an Ali by Saturday!

At least the main room is quite big - enough room for two couches, a table, and two bunkbeds. Living in style!Looking the other way.

The apartment comes with a very large kitchen. Better than a lot of places I've seen, actually!

mmmm sunshine.

Greg catches a quality nap on the train.

The first thing we did was hit up a grocery store for the essentials, like nutella.
Greg doesn't really have standards when it comes to food. I find nutella-cheese-baloney-jam sandwiches weird. Cheese-wrapped fried meatballs, on the other hand, are purely delicious.

We did a little skiing, too. Turns out, they groom a snowmobile path from the Mora dorms to the Vassaloppet trails, so Wednesday afternoon we went exploring on those. That was fun, but joining the ski-o kids Thursday was more fun. Basically, they get driven to a map, that has some custom ski trails on it, and they were doing two sprints, so we joined them. I can safely say that I was the second (of two) girls on that course. The entire thing was windy narrow trails - spectacular. Good rolling terrain, enough uphills to make you try hard and enough downhills to keep you on your toes. We went back in the afternoon to do a line-o, and that was also hard. My actual reading of the map isn't so bad right now, but I was unable to keep focus. Hopefully more sleep, less jetlag, and more coffee will fix that before WOC!

Cristina came prepared - with night vision goggles. I didn't get it either.

The snowmobile groomer, with one of the coaches ("trainers") waiting for the kids to start the workout.

The woods are beautiful. Supposedly it will snow a lot tomorrow, but today was sunny, if not all that warm. Swedish junior skier whooshing through the woods.

I'll leave you with this one - amazing the things you can find in a Swedish grocery store. We had to import the Greg-in-tights, and the scimitar came with the apartment, but you can get huge chunks of sausage (it tasted like hotdogs).

Here goes

2011-03-14T23:29:00.002-04:00

I leave tomorrow for Sweden, for the World Championships in Ski Orienteering. After Rangeley and Ski to the Clouds, I'm less than certain about my fitness, but there isn't much I can do now that would be effective except rest. Never been good at that. As with every big competition, I feel woefully under-prepared and under-practiced in the skills I feel are necessary, but again, not much I can do now.

I get to Sweden by Wednesday morning, and head to Mora, where Erik Svensson is helping us get some access to maps and terrain, and it will be walking that fine line between resting enough and practicing map-reading enough... Sunday we head north, to Tänndalen. Monday is an easy day, just skiing around on model maps, and then a week from tomorrow, Ski WOC begins! I'm pretty pumped.

Ski to the Clouds

2011-03-07T10:02:00.004-05:00

I was wrecked after Rangeley - physically and mentally. Totally shattered. I had pre-registered for Ski to the Clouds, but given my state of immobility Saturday night (you want me to get UP off this floor? Whatever for?), and the state of the weather on Sunday (mmmm, 45 degree rain!), I was sort of wishing I hadn't. I was staying at Colin's parents' house again, which was nice, because it meant not driving all the way back to Boston that night, so we did the important things - pasta, beer, massage, and play with the cat, and I started to think there might be hope for tomorrow.

This cat is dumb - she likes to drink out of the faucet in the shower, and it drips on her head. She doesn't seem to notice.

I decided to make the call about racing in the morning - I'd go for a jog and see how my legs felt. I honestly didn't think there would be any point to racing up Mt. Washington if my legs felt like they did during the marathon. I don't drop out of races, but I do decline to start some of them, if I have a good reason. The rain was fine, weather don't scare me.

I woke up before my alarm, headed out for the test jog, and decided that the race was a go - my kneecaps hurt like hell, but that receded to a dull ache after about 10 minutes, and my legs seemed to have recovered from the effort the day before. And, I have a great pair of slush skate skis, that never get to get used. Ok, let's hit the road!
Never pick up hitchhikers.

The reason we were carpooling is actually kind of sad - Cary took an SUV to the mouth while riding his bike last week, and while he's "ok", relatively speaking, he needs some major dental surgery, and apparently thought that racing a 50k wasn't the best of ideas. So the original plans fell through. Anyway, Colin was being a good carpool-mate and claimed that he didn't mind stopping by Mt. Washington on the way back to Boston, although I couldn't convince him that an uphill ski race in the cold rain was a good idea. What gives?

Nice spring day.
Mt. Washington is right there, see her?

"America's toughest 10km". Yup. 4km flat stuff, and then 6km up the Mt. Washington auto road. I knew I wasn't going to feel super fresh, but I was mentally prepared, and I was also prepared for when my left calf completely blows up. I just hoped I could postpone the inevitable to partway up the climb. This calf thing has been getting worse over the last 4-5 years, basically I'm convinced it's compartment syndrome, but haven't gotten it tested or done anything about it, I'll admit I'm still in the denial stage. Anyway, the gist is that my left calf tends to blow up when I skate up hills hard, but I keep hoping it'll behave.

My skis were rockets, and I found myself with some fast guys, cruising through the flat bit. Unfortunately, the race is ultimately decided on the climb, and the calf thing makes that a bit challenging. This time I made it about 20 strides into the hill before I felt it begin to go, and within half a km I was in agony. It feels like my whole lower calf is exploding, not sharp pain, just like there is some giant squeezing my leg. I had made sure to tie my boots super loosely; this wasn't a boot issue. But goddammit, I don't drop out of races. It turned out both V1 right and left hurt equally as much, but things were a little better if I kept my left ski on the firm-packed middle bit of the trail. I couldn't push off of that leg, but I could still stand on it, which is only like stage two of complete bodily disfunction during skate races. Only 45 minutes of climbing left!

Pretty quickly into the climb, the Bates girl who ended up winning caught me. I decided to see what it was like to ski behind her - Obviously I had to try harder, but I lasted for about five minutes before my calf started to move towards stage three, the can't-stand-on-that-ski anymore stage, so I backed off. Just before the 2mi sign, Ellery Leeds and Katie Miller caught me, and I skied with them for a bit, aided by a flat part that I could double pole, to rest my calf. Then things went steep, and I went back to being unable to push off my leg. Shortly thereafter, Jane and Meghan McClelland caught me, and I could ski with them for a little longer, but not enough. The pure limiting factor was my calf - I was watching my HR drop. Not supposed to do that on a hillclimb.

Photo credits great glen trails. See that canted right knee? That explains why my kneecaps hurt so much right now. Broken.

Anyway, it took me 3km to remember to remind myself that I love hills, and I alternated between "I love hills" and "good at hills!" in my head for probably 20 minutes. "This is fun!" was a bit too much, my brain is dumb, but not that dumb. The climb seemed pretty interminable, but I wasn't going to stop, and I'd reached some sort of equilibrium with the pain in my calf - it certainly hurt, but I could keep skiing, albeit not that fast.

The finish was a welcome sight. And skiing up the hill with a rain jacket (and dry hat in the pocket) tied around my waist was one of the few smart things I did today. The descent was actually really fun, since you could carve through the slush.

My finish placing wasn't where I'd hoped, but calf issues aside, I am much happier with this race than yesterday's - probably has to do with forcing a cheery attitude on myself. Today had the potential to be truly miserable - and it wasn't. I guess my new standard for ski racing is "as long as it isn't miserable, we're all good".

I plan to rest in the ten days between now and my departure for Sweden, but I'm just so bad at resting. Resting is a much bigger challenge to me than something like skiing halfway up Mt. Washington. Here goes...

Rangeley Lakes Loppet

2011-03-06T21:38:00.004-05:00

(photo credit Jamie Doucett)

I've been under this impression, the last couple years, that Rangeley is a flat, fast, marathon, and that I like the course. None of this is true, but I'll probably forget that none of it is true and do the race again next year. Rangeley actually has some 10+ minute climbs (like the stupid climb from ~13 - 15k), and the downhills are all gradual enough that you have to work them. Not my sort of course at all, although to its credit, there is a lot of transitional, windy, V2 stuff too. I guess you have to have a lot of terrain over a 25k loop.

Last Wednesday, Ali and I were doing some double pole intervals, in the three-minute range. We did the last one skating, and I noted that my legs were pretty tired. I chalked it up to the fact that this was the last interval, didn't think too much more about it, did some one-minute puke-pace intervals with the CSU juniors on thursday just because why not?, and then spent most of Friday running around stressed about stuff. So I guess it shouldn't have been much of a surprise that my legs felt heavy on Saturday, but I was really hoping that it was a superficial thing, and I wouldn't feel tired while racing. Not sure it actually works that way...

I deliberated over which skis to use for far too long before this race. The forecast was for high thirties, with snow showers giving way to rain showers. The snow was powdery-looking, but wet. My slightly-drier-ground skis tested faster before the race, and it looked cloudy enough that the sun wouldn't come out to change things, so I went with those. Burned in some fluoros, skied around for five minutes and called it a warmup, and went to the start.

This course starts with like 3km of downhill, which means that things stay bunched, and I didn't think that Sabra Davison was going to keep going that fast. But she kept skiing that pace, and I knew I couldn't. Pop. Shortly thereafter, Megan Killigrew and Stephi Crocker caught up then, and I skied with them for the next 20k. Early on, I noticed that my skis were running faster than theirs, and I felt pretty smug about this, anticipating downhill attacks and huge glide. But around 15k I started to notice that I really had to work the downhills to stay with them. Uphills were mostly fine, but it was painfully apparent on the downhills that I was getting dropped, and it was only a matter of time before I wouldn't be able to do another sprint at the end of a downhill to close the gap. My legs weren't burning ever, just sort of heavy, tired, hard to keep the turnover up.

That inevitable moment happened just after we came through the lap - I stood up to take a drink, and they were just gone. I tried to tell myself to just keep skiing, because 50km is a long time and anything can happen, but unfortunately, 50km is a long time. I had about 4km of being miserable, but then the sun came out, and the snow started to glaze, and because I had fluoros on, my skis sped up. I assume everyone else's skis sped up, too, but at least it was easier to ski. Another Dartmouth girl, pulling Katrina Howe, caught up then, and I skied with them for a couple more km, until near the top of a hill, Kat just skied away from us. Shortly thereafter, the other girl skied away from me, and my legs just had nothing to give. Not cramping, not bonking, just tired. Blah.

The stupid climb at 13k was stupidly painful, and my legs were not happy. Just everything was tired, my left calf was toasted, and that made it impossible to hold a good body position, so my quads and glutes were working harder than they had to, basically I was done. Too bad the race wasn't done. Thankfully, two V1-only masters caught up to me, so I skied with them through the rest of the stupid climb and the curvy long climb after the stupid climb. The last 3km loop was as insultingly long as ever, but I finally finished, and I took my 10minutes of misery/agony/whininess/disappointment before re-joining humanity.

I might have held on longer with better skis, but ultimately, I was just tired. Sigh. Rangeley defeats me, again.

Reality. Sluggish. (photo credit Jamie Doucett).

VT Vacation

2011-02-28T09:39:00.006-05:00

I'm noticing a trend - I need to take a vacation after a week of ski camp. This is problematic, because ski camps generally take up my vacation time.
Jamie is pictured here, standing in the doorway to my broom closet bedroom. I was mostly sleeping on the couch, but using the closet to spread out my stinky ski clothes, and find some privacy for phonecalls and stuff. After sleeping in a broom closet, of course you need a vacation!

Anyway, Ed has decided that he is going to tap the maple trees on Bullitt land up in VT, and have his cousin Rob do all the evaporation, so he is in the midst of carrying out some grand scheme to set out the lines and get everything ready before the sap starts running. Rob used to do that area, but I guess it was too much work, regardless, they have these grand plans to eventually have 1000 taps. Ridiculous. I get roped into Ed's grand schemes, which is fine, mostly, unless its snowing heavily and very windy. I don't really enjoy snowshoeing around the woods in a snowstorm, and after half a day of that, I bailed on Ed and went inside to drink hot cocoa and read my book. I was feeling wimpy.

Doesn't this just look cold and snowy?

And because Ed's truck was involved, we got it stuck. Naturally.

Ed expects to spend a lot more time up there running lines to maple trees, he has the mainline set up, and all the little secondary lines are going to run into that. The mainline will empty into a tank. Rob will drive by and empty the tank into his tank of sap in his truck, and then he will turn it into deliciousness at the sugar shack. I'll help with that part, all you have to do is watch water boil!

After a few nights of 12hrs or more of sleep, I'm feeling pretty good, and ready to take on the world again. Starting to get really excited about the ski-o world champs, all pumped to train really quality workouts for it, but its doing this freezing rain thing in Amherst, which makes me a lot less excited to train hard. Booo.

February ski camp

2011-02-24T20:31:00.004-05:00

After the races last weekend, most of CSU headed over the mountains to Jackson, for the February ski camp. I had a couple days off from school, thanks to Presidents' day and my awesome class schedule, so I joined them for the first part of the week. It sure is windy on that golf course, but once you got in the woods, the skiing was absolutely beautiful. Three days of skiing and coaching and more skiing, life is pretty good. Of course, because I couldn't commit to the camp until the last minute, I was using a broom closet as a bedroom, but hey, you take privacy where you can get it in a ski house.

The best workout was definitely the one where we skied to the top of the alpine mountain (on xc trails), and then skied down. Super fun. This is me at the top of the alpine mountain, about to put on five thousand layers of clothing and ski down. I guess its good that Bretton Woods is such a wimpy little hill.
Some hardcore intervals by the JO crew.

Thursday morning, I left at the crack o' dawn, to get to school in time for some classes, and the plan was to head straight to VT to hang out with Ed for the weekend that evening. Naturally, I locked myself out of my office (with the car keys in the office), and it took a while to get straightened out. But it's all good, I have keys, and I'm on my way to VT.