Blue Hills Traverse and Thanksgiving Camp

This year's Blue Hills Traverse went to new parts of the Blue Hills, starting on Ponkapoag and transitioning to BH West. It was a nice course, with legit features (though 17 was annoying), friendly running with not too much green or pointy stuff or steep hills.

My plan for the race was to start reasonably fast, cruising on some of my marathon fitness when on trails and roads. I knew I hadn't been in the woods much, but was hoping the residual strength would carry me through, as long as I didn't do anything too stupid. That was all going swimming well for the first five minutes, and I was near some faster guys and feeling relatively comfortable. Five minutes isn't very long. Leaving #1, I was still debating a left/right route choice as I cruised down the hill, tripped over something crossing the trail, and rolled my ankle pretty bad. Youch. Had to stand there for a while, trying not to say bad words, to let the pain fade and determine if I could run. Eventually I decided I may as well start walking down the trail, and soon I could run again, if gingerly. The rest of the race, off-trail and and wobbly rocks were bad news.

By #2, I'd caught to the tail end of a group containing Aaron, Bo, Neil, and importantly, Rachel. I don't care about the boys, but I really want to beat any women, and Rachel has some serious orienteering chops. She also has two young children, which can put a dent in your training volume and quality, so I thought that given the mass start nature of the course, I could probably out-kick her. But you never know, and now that my ankle was iffy, my confidence was shaken.

We were basically together the rest of that side of I-93, with occasional placement changes as we all took different micro-routes. I had fallen a bit off the end as we emerged from the woods and onto the overpass to cross the highway, and used the stretch of pavement to catch back up and move to the front of the group. Gotta play to your strengths, so I also used that time to scout some other paved or trail running routes for later in the course.

After the butterfly loop, I chose the right-hand road route to 15, dropping Rachel, and was behind Jimmy and Ernst climbing the hill toward the trail to 16, where they solidly dropped me, despite lots of huffing and puffing on my part. I wasn't alone for long, as Aaron caught up around there, and helped me blow less time on 17 than I would have done alone, wandering on the hillside trying to find a little boulder.

We went left to 18, but the trail was rocky, and my ankle was bad, and then I got confused by the cliffs in the circle, going to the unmapped one first. D'oh. From there, Aaron went up to the road, and I went straight, and stopped early, not quite making sense of things. By the time I actually got to 19 I could see Rachel approaching. Dang! She caught me at 20, and we ran together for a bit before hitting a road, where I knew I had one more shot. I was clearly faster on roads, so I just had to make the break stick this time. Took trails up toward 21, and I was thinking about running fast, more than my navigation, which is never a good plan. My brain, deprived of both oxygen and common sense, thought I was on a different trail than I was, and I ended up running all the way to the junction south of the control before realizing it, and had to hook way back to get the control. Luckily didn't waste time on it once I realized my mistake, but I knew Rachel wouldn't be far behind.

I had to be cautious running through the woods toward 22, and as I crossed the trail and started climbing, I saw Rachel pop out of the woods just south of me. I had maybe a 10-second lead, and I wanted to push that to 20-30 seconds so that I was out of sight. Ok, this really is your last shot now. I pushed HARD up the climb to 22, catching and dropping Aaron and Jimmy, then blasted away before anyone could latch on, following the index contour (it's the big obvious one on the ground) toward 23, gasping and stumbling and yelping the whole way. Basically running scared. I chanced a glance behind me at 23, didn't see Rachel, but didn't let up down the hill. The effort paid off, and I ended up with a nice 1.5min lead, and the winner's gingerbread man! To be fair, I don't think Rachel was going quite as all-out as I was, but a win is a win, and it was a lot of fun to have to fight so hard to defend my title at this race.

A blue-lipped smile

Thanksgiving Camp
After a nice Thanksgiving celebration at Ed's aunt and uncle's place (only 27 folks at dinner, a small gathering this year for them), I left Ed at home and headed up to Craftsbury for our three-day mini camp with the juniors. Craftsbury had gotten a couple sweet dumps of snow over the last week, so we had some really excellent early-season conditions. Race skis all weekend! We got in some excellent distance skiing, and then topped it off with either a time trial or some hard uphill skate intervals on the new 5k south course. Good times.

Forced family fun includes Thanksgiving walks at 15 degrees F

It wasn't all just blissful skiing, though. One afternoon, we had nearly the entire group together, doing a speed workout as we made our way around the 5k course. This is a thing we do all the time, all teams do it, it's great practice to race down the hills with your buddies and learn how to ski aggressively.

I don't think anyone was doing anything wrong; the boys were sort of jostling coming down a hill,  and probably somebody miscalculated or misjudged or misstepped or something, but really I think it was just bad luck. One of my boys hit a tree at full speed, and things got real pretty quick. He was out cold, and it really freaked out all of his teammates. Luckily, CSU has a lot of doctors, level-headed kids, and wilderness response experience, and we were all there. So, Maile took most of the kids off on a race to get the medics on site, the doctors stabilized him, checking vitals and clearing the scene, someone else blocked the trail with some skis, and we got some jackets on him. Within about 20min the snowmobiles had arrived and gotten him to an ambulance, with at least one CSU doctor in tow.

While he's going to be fine, and is making a speedy comeback already, it was a really scary situation. Things could have been really different. The kids were understandably really freaked out, but I was really impressed with how well they acted in the moment. Thanks to the juniors reacting maturely, having half our coaching staff be medical professionals, and having the accident at one of the most on-top-of-it ski areas meant that this sort of situation couldn't have gone better. But I hope it never happens again on my watch.

Now we're solidly into the shoulder season, hunting for snow and stoically weathering the cold rain. T-12 days to the first race!

Boston Sprint Camp and a skier adventure weekend

Ed and I pulled off the fourth year of Boston Sprint Camps two weekends ago. This is a fun event, usually very personal and interactive thanks to the small number of runners. Like the past few years, we had a little over 30 people, and the weather and vibes were great. We used three new orienteering maps - Cutler Park, Millennium Park, and Jamaica Pond - always fun to run on new places! Cutler was a double edged sword. It's a long walk, about a mile, to get down to the good terrain. But then, given the unproductive glacial geology going on down there, the forest is superb. People really enjoyed the course we did down there, despite the walk.

Sprint Camp started unofficially with the Thursday night park race at Moakley Park, in Boston. This was our final park race of the season, and most of CSU hung out afterward to have a potluck. Brendan from Inov-8 stopped by with a demo fleet of shoes, much to the enjoyment of the runners. We had a couple out-of-towners joining us for the Thursday race, and that was a nice ending of the season.


Inov-8 demos at our last park run at Moakley!


Sara Mae setting up the potluck


Race day shopping. Should have gotten fewer bananas and more m&ms.

Sprint Camp started officially on Friday with a day in Cambridge, doing a bunch of training exercises at Danehy Park before moving to Fresh Pond for the evening race. I only put one control in the middle of a patch of poison ivy... oops. Next time, I'll leave that one out. Lunch from Anna's Tacqueria, always delicious.

Saturday was out in the Newtons, starting with a "peg relay" in Nahanton Park. Mass start, but some controls have pieces of surveyor's tape looped on. If you get there and there is still a tape, you take it and run a "bonus loop," which serves the purpose of constantly consolidating the pack, making for lots of head-to-head racing. So much fun!


Izzy in to the first peg control


Keegan leading the whole race, taking a streamer to go run some bonus controls


Izzy leading Bridget, Kristin, and Marie


Tori leading a pack in to the first "peg" control


How to exit a trail: no hesitations!

From there we headed down to Millennium Park, for some more training exercises and then an e-punched park race. Ed made me take out any legs that went straight up the hill, and that was a good move. We ate lunch from BrickFire pizza there, and everyone was pretty hungry by then.

The final race was down at Cutler, on the new map in the gorgeous woods. Despite the mosquitoes, I think everyone really enjoyed that race. We quickly hauled in controls, and then went home to prep for Sunday's bracket race.



Route choice - Tomas took the trail, Pam cut through the woods.

On Sunday, the Bermans stopped by to help us organize things. We were based in one location, but runners did six races in total, and each one had a different start and finish. We all marched out to the southernmost area together, and they ran the qualification race there. From the results of that, I slotted all the runners into eight heats of four, and they ran the first of five elimination heats. There's a big complicated bracket to explain it all, and we fell down by not having this thing printed out ahead of time. Next year. I think we actually managed to stick to the bracket and not screw anything up, which was a minor miracle considering I was basically sitting there with a pencil and a clipboard trying to interpret the basic results from the mini screen we were using in the field. Phew.


Huddling in the shade before the start of the qualification


Heat #2 under way!


One of the master heats starting out


Junior heat starting off. Read the map, THEN run


Ed manning download, in the field

Five heats later, everyone ran the final sprint, now in heats most closely matched, and it looked like a ton of fun. Everyone loves head-to-head racing, and boy did I wish I could jump in. I'll have to go back to the Seattle Adventure Running Tournament!

Lunch from the Noodle Barn, award pies, and then it was over. Quite the whirlwind, but thank god for such great hanging-around weather.

Adventure Weekend
Last weekend was the first CSU adventure weekend. We center this one around the Greylock mountain race, which I've raced the last few years. Unfortunately this year, I'm still recovering from my injury this spring, and didn't want to jump into the race, knowing that I have a hard time holding back when I'm wearing a bib. So the usual thing of "beat Alex's time and I'll buy your ice cream" had to get shifted to beating last year's time, which was a pretty soft one to beat.


One of THOSE days. Great pavement, perfect day to ski


I love these old roads up in the Berkshires. Maple trees lining the view of fields and forests, hills for days. 


The boys cruising past my favorite field of wildflowers


Sending it off a cliff in Adams


The crew up on Pine Cobble. Seven athletes, two grownups. Make that nine athletes, seven of them in highschool. 


Tunnel of green, line of runners.


Calm morning on what ended up being a hot day. Kind of glad I wasn't racing.


Love this

Despite lots of fun on Saturday, including a very hilly rollerski and a bonus hike up Pine Cobble, five skiers braved the start line, ready for the longest race of their lives so far. They all made it around, some with smiles, some with blisters, all agreeing that it was the best sort of Type II fun they've ever had, with at least one kid admitting to having a lot of Type I fun, too. Two boys earned free ice cream, and everyone felt very proud of themselves. Good stuff!



Looking forward to a weekend at home, now...

Eastern Highschool Championships

The last official race of the season was the Eastern Highschool Champs, up in Rumford ME. CSU sent pretty much every kid to this race on the Massachusetts team, and I was head coach, which meant I could make all the other coaches do the work while I ate brownies and watched the races.



Race venue was Black Mountain of Maine, in Rumford. I love this race course, it's hard but fair, with some good climbing and lots of skiing, not just a highway. I don't love the smell of the town of Rumford, but that paper mill employs a lot of people, so can't complain too much. Usually the wind is blowing the right way to take the smell away from the ski area.

Love how many women we have on our coaching staff. I think we may even outnumber the men on this team, not a normal thing in the ski coaching world. Brian Burt photo.

Caught in the act of actually doing some work. Brian Burt photo.

First race of the weekend was Friday's 5k skate. Turns out the Massachusetts boys all brought their A-games this year, and absolutely carried the team. The CSU boys were a large part of that, led by senior Oliver in 5th, then James in 6th, Ayden in 16th (huge race for him!), Jackson in 18th, and Jacob in 21st. That was just the first page! Laura led the girls in 6th, with Shea 11th, Madeline 13th, Amelia 21st and Rebecca 25th. Super strong showing for first-page results, though unfortunately Mass also had a reasonable showing on the last-page results, too, for the girls.

Saturday morning started with a mass start classic race. Hardwax in March! It's always great when EHS isn't a total klister-fest. We had more great results from my CSU kids, and mass starts are so exciting to watch. Laura moved up into 4th, skiing the whole race with the lead pack, followed by Shea in 9th, Madeline 15th, Rebecca 16th, and Amelia 26th. The boys absolutely sent it again, led by James in 2nd, Jacob in 6th, Oliver 18th, Henry 22nd, Jackson 24th, and Linden 27th.

Start of the girls' mass start. Winter conditions.

Boys' mass start, OSnow in a good start

Saturday afternoon was the sprints, wave starts with one skier from each state in each wave. That's a super fun format for spectating, again, and I really enjoyed watching the races. Mass had a great day in the sprints, and we ended up 2nd among all the teams after the three individual races. On the boys' side, CSU put 10 in the top 33! That's pretty good for a single club that trains on a golf course in eastern MA. Huge results Alex, Kevin, Dwight, Connor, and Thor, stepping way up.

The final race of the weekend is the mixed-gender/mixed-technique relay. This is my favorite race of the weekend, because the kids tend to absolutely send it. Nothing makes you work hard like doing it for a teammate! We had a couple really good relay teams, and it was a super exciting race to watch. We took the silver medal, which was the first year in the last eight or something that we haven't won the relay, but that was a tall order this year with Ben Ogden on the VT team. He put something like a 40-second gap on the field, which is almost impossible to make up. But in making that move, it strung out the pack, and Jacob was able to hang on for a little while, buying some time for the rest of his team.

Our second relay also had a great ski, with some really gutsy moves along the way. They ended up in 7th, and our third relay was 11th, just 0.1 seconds out of 10th. NH ended up beating us on the day, but not by enough to move ahead, so Mass held on to the silver medal position! I'm super proud of this team and my CSU kids, the guts and determination and attitudes they brought made a huge difference in both the results and the professionalism on the team.

My boy Jackson absolutely crushing the last leg of his relay. Brian Burt photo. 

Start of the relay, Laura and Kate in good position

My kids skied great. This senior class was the one who had been on the fateful bus trip from Fort Kent four years ago, and it was great fun to have them close out their Highschool careers at this event. I was super psyched to see the great attitudes everyone brought. Lots of positive energy, fast skiing, and some heavy snotcicles.

The relay podium, Mass in second place! 

 Thanks to all my coaches who did the actual work! Hilary Greene, Robert Bradlee, Maddy Wendt, peter Rayton, Frank Feist, Gunther Kern, Dorothee Kern, Susannah Wheelwright, Hiram Greene, Graham Taylor. And a huge thanks to NENSA, Amber Dodge Freeman, and Chisholm Ski Club for hosting this great event!

Final Eastern Cups

The last three Eastern Cups have gone by in a blur. We were at Rikert the weekend before Masters, and then Craftsbury the weekend after. I only did the skate race at Rikert, knowing I'd be needed for waxing at the classic sprint. Plus, conveniently, I don't really enjoy classic sprinting the way I enjoy skate sprinting. Fun to watch lots of my skiers qualify for the heats and move through them with aplomb. 

Rikert

Sunday's individual start 10k was one of those races that's just sort of meh. I didn't have good energy, and made up a lot of my time on the downhills, which were icy and sketchy enough to scare other people. Really enjoyable and ripping fast skis. 

Ed on the wax team, at both Rikert and Craftsbury ECs.

I started third bib. I wanted the first lap to feel in control, so consciously backed off on some of the hills. I could definitely feel the accumulated fatigue from last week at work and yesterday's classic sprint insanity, and my quads didn't really like the idea of going up hill. The downhills were insanely awesome, I was carrying so much speed through the bottom of the hills it was just not fair. I had a pretty empty course through loop 1, my 15-s girl visible and slowly getting closer. I caught her on the long climb, and stayed behind for a bit before finally going around at the top, to give myself clear snow before the downhills. That worked and I opened a bit of a gap, passing my 30s girl too.

Second lap I sort of wished the race were over already. I let myself push harder on the uphills, and my legs protested harder. I came through just after a Mansfield gal was starting, and that was a nice motivation to catch her. Some traffic this lap, but I was still finding space on the downhills to do my thing with confidence. I was on a such a high, just knowing that everywhere I went, I was leading the race. Go me! But that didn't erase the fatigue.

Third lap I was totally done. Tried to keep moving but I was dropping seconds right and left. Skidded a little of the icy corner at the top of loop 1, but still came out of the hill with a ton of speed. Had to do a lot more V1 up the long hill on loop 2, just unable to keep the speed up in V2, arms and shoulders and quads and hips just totally trashed. I managed to put in a pathetic little surge over the top of the final hill and keep my space, avoiding taking out the girl who was on her butt on the next icy corner, and did what I could into the finish.

13th overall, which was a big improvement over my seed spot of 22, and met my goal of a top 15. Sweet!

Craftsbury
The third weekend of Eastern Cups was supposed to be at the Trapp Family Lodge, but they didn't really have enough snow for that. So, the backup site was Craftsbury. 5k classic on Saturday, and 10k mass start.

I started 15s behind Lily K of Harvard, and my goal was just to enjoy the day and ski well, no shuffling. I felt pretty fresh in my warmup, which was also a welcome surprise - last week was crazy, and I was expecting a lot more accumulated fatigue. Skis were great, and I had closed a lot of ground to Lily over the first flattish km, and actually closed the gap on the first B climb after the sleeper hill. Sweet. Forced myself to stride the steep bit even though that took a lot of arm wax, and that was what got me ahead of her.

Skis were ripping down the long descent, and I recovered nicely. Up the A climb I kept it light and swingy, letting Lily pull ahead of me and pace me up the hill. Still not really digging deep, and I recovered well again on the long descent before Screamin' Mimi. Heading up, Lily attacked from the bottom, and I let her drift ahead again. I admit, I did a little shuffling through the striding zone. Then we turned the corner and I obeyed my directive I'd given the kids in the course tour, and really punched it over the top. Slid past Lily and my 30-second girl, and gave it some good hard double poling to gain momentum.

Some recovery down the gentle S-turns, and then remembered to properly stride past the cabins. That was really the only part that felt like real work; I probably left a good 15-30 seconds on course just through a lack of give-a-damns, but that was fine. That was fun, and skiing it at 10k pace instead of 5k pace greatly upped the fun factor.

Huh. The tracks aren't going that way... Guess I wanted the other side of the trail? 

Going forwards again. 

Sweet boards.

Fatigue caught up for Sunday's race. I did a few too many course tours, but that's my favorite part of race day, so I can't blame me. I love mass starts, so no way was I sitting this out, but two hours of warmup was a little on the long side.

I had a good start spot, in the third row, but as we went off I realized just how much of a hole I was in. It felt like the girls were all going so fast, and I was having to work so hard to keep up even on the flats and downhills. When we finally got to the first little hill, it was a relief to do some V1, and I realized I was at the back of a pack of around 20, already with a gap behind me. I stayed relaxed up the first real climb, just taking my time and keeping the tempo low, and that was enough to keep me in contact.

Down the long hill the first time I was behind Lillian from SMS. She skied it well, and I wasn't closing any distance. Damn. Things started to splinter a little heading up the A climb, and I was with Laura and Lillian and a couple girls peeling back from the main pack. I knew this was the decisive moment, and if I wanted a reasonable result, I'd have to pick up the pace and go with them. But I just couldn't do it, calves were exploding and quads were heavy and arms weren't working too well either, just feeling sore and heavy. Well, ok. I guess it really is the sort of day where even staying in a tuck feels like too much effort.

I stayed behind Lillian and Laura up Screamin' Mimi, did the slight push over the top, and then drafted them across the stadium. Chilled out up Chip Hill, even though there were some girls in sight. Up the first B climb I finally started to feel a little better, and noticed that the long strides were working for me. There were some GMVS girls straggling ahead of me, and I decided I wanted to catch them. I was with Lillian again down the hill, but then along the bottom of the course I started doing more V2, and that was both more efficient and faster than the GMVS kids.

I passed Lillian finally on the steepest point of the A climb, and started to hunt for real. There was a Ford Sayre girl closing on me, too, but I was mostly concerned with what was in front. I think what was happening was that my skis actually felt fastest on the uphills, which is why I was feeling good there, because the snow was chopped up into more of the granular stuff. Anyway, I reached the corner of Screamin' Mimi at the same time as the Ford Sayre girl, and didn't fight her for the position; I have no skin in this game. But we'd just closed on the GMVS girls, and I wanted to get by them, and now there wasn't space. Grr.

Into the next uphill I tried to get by, but the FS girl was flailing all over and totally blocked me out again. Now I was getting frustrated. Don't make me get aggressive, you won't like me when I'm aggressive. Tried for another pass just after the downhill, but she blocked again, I don't think intentionally, and one of the GMVS girls started a kick, and I was stuck behind the other two. Finally the FS girl completed her pass, and I took the long line around the corner to get past GMVS, but geezum that was annoying. I suppose this is why most people don't like mass starts. Anyway, cruised into the finish a few seconds back of the GMVS girl, for a reasonable race.

Could have done with a little more oomph and possibly a few more give-a-damns, but it was worth doing and I enjoyed myself.

Silver Fox Trot
The final weekend of Eastern Cups is always the Silver Fox Trot and the Cheri Walsh Memorial. The Silver Fox Trot coincided with the Dartmouth Carnival, which made for a really deep field, pretty awesome. It was another of those two-hour warmup sort of days, and I will admit I wasn't feeling super fresh on the start line. My calves were an issue today, really tight and started to explode on the final few km.

The race itself was pretty unremarkable. The snow conditions were glazing and icing, really difficult balance conditions that aggravated my strained calf, and I felt like I wasn't skiing particularly smoothly. I caught up to the UNH girl who'd started 30s before me by about the midway point, but struggled to generate much speed on the gradual stuff that comes in the final hills, lower legs in a lot of pain and not cooperating. I skied the S-turns well, but it was too little too late. Overall it was a fine points race, if I cared about those anymore, but the result was nothing to write home about.

I didn't race the Cheri Walsh; I love that course and I love classic skiing on that course, but with the predicted shitstorm of weather, I felt better working to get the right wax for our skiers. I'd say we nailed it, so that was effort well spent.

Pretty PRO way to watch your teammates race. This is from the Massachusetts State Qualifier race, where the snow was rapidly disappearing. We put nearly every CSU kid onto either the U16 championships team or the Eastern Highschool Team. 

 

So, the trick to winning the race, is that you have to get to the finish line before anybody else does it.

Coach mode.

This trail pass checker is asleep on the job. Also, ski race coaching days are hard.

When it's cold enough to double puff, you also need a puffy skirt. But boy is it nice to have an indoor waxing space!

Now we're into Championship season - U16 Champs, Junior Nationals, and Eastern HS Champs. First up, I'm the course setter for the Ski Orienteering World Masters Champs, at Craftsbury, so need to make sure that goes off smoothly. Woo!