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...

Mt. Greylock Trail Race

The other weekend was my first Grand Tree race of the year – the Greylock Trail race! This is a great course, testing all aspects of trail racing. Sustained uphills, technical downhills, fun singletrack, and some grinding false flats. Not to say I like any of this aside from the technical downhills, but I do think it’s good to push myself on terrain that isn’t naturally my favorite. And having the two past years of data to compare myself always satisfies my inner nerd.

I headed out with a small group of junior skiers, like last year, for a combined Massachusetts Team training weekend. Perry and the Berkshire Nordic crew led us on a really nice little ski in Savoy (oh, I’ll miss that trail race this year! Huge bummer that it’s done), on very nice pavement with wide shoulders. We don’t have that in eastern MA, and it made me miss NY state rollerskiing adventures. We followed this up with some cliff jumping, yoga, pizza, and s’mores, so all in all it was a pretty idyllic day.

Sunday dawned pretty hot, and I was cursing myself for not bringing my handheld waterbottle carrier. I debated running with a waist belt, or just carrying the bottle outright, but decided that it probably wouldn’t be THAT bad to just drink at the aid stations. Oops. Only one other of my juniors was doing the long race, and one dad, the rest signed up for the 5k. Ed did the long race, of course!

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We started out up the mountain, and I took it easy, falling into a comfortable pace. Too comfortable, really. I felt good, which is not actually a good sign on a 3-mile climb! My calves were behaving, and as we hit the AT in the sun I found that I had some more gears, so started to pick off some runners ahead of me. I could hear Debbie behind me, so I knew I was doing ok if she hadn’t passed me on the climb. I was starting to notice the heat, though, already getting dry mouth, so I told myself I had to get on top of this hydration issue as soon as I hit that aid station.

I drank 3 cups of water and 2 cups of Gatorade. You can imagine how long this took. I was there nearly a minute! Debbie passed me with a couple ladies in tow, and as I started out after them I realized the magnitude of my mistake. Not only did I not have any water for between the aid stations, I had to do all my descending on a very sloshy belly. You doofus!

Luckily the sloshing didn’t turn into a dreaded stomach cramp, and I caught back up to Debbie (who was definitely not pleased to be passed on a downhill! Sorry babe, I do that part pretty well) and a bunch more ladies on the descent. Apparently I just missed seeing a moose – I heard noise behind me but had assumed it was a runner, and was totally in race-mode, don’t look back!

A girl in pink caught back up at the second aid station, as I spent another minute drinking, and I let her go a bit, just trying to enjoy that next bit of singletrack at my own pace. I was consciously keeping myself in a very happy spot, just loving these trails and dancing my feet across the roots. I caught up easily along Jones’ Nose, but decided to hang out behind her for a bit, and try to recover. The heat was getting to me, and I could feel the fatigue creep.

At the third water stop, pink-girl didn’t stop, and I only drank 3 cups of water, thus only losing maybe 30 seconds, then shoved ice into any orifice I could find and set off to chase down pink-girl. I luckily caught her while still on the downhill, and we climbed together for a bit on the relentless loose-rock doubletrack. Eventually my slow jog started to outdistance hers, and I found myself picking off bonking men again. We finally started the downhill, and I could tell I was tired – both ankles were doing those danger-rolls – not quite a rolled ankle, but near misses. I backed off a little, not willing to risk injury, and just feeling kind of fragile. Couple times I had to remind myself out loud to have strong feet. Unfortunately I couldn’t hold off the ankle-roll demons forever, and went over on my right ankle just where it gets steep with ~1.5mi to go. So close to the end I knew I could walk this off, but I was not happy about that turn of events.

It was only a minute or two that I was walking and then gingerly running, but that was a much slower finish than I've had before. I was in no-man’s land, and thankfully didn't get passed by anyone in the last mile of the race. The relaxed finish put me just a minute ahead of last year (which had been super slow in the rain and wet), but 4 minutes behind the year before. I think I can attribute most of that to the water stops and then the ankle roll slow-down, so I’m actually feeling pretty good about this one. I was second, four minutes behind a little J2 skier from western MA who I coached last year at EHS, who goes up hills like it's her job. She probably got to the top of that thing in under 30 minutes…

Next up is the Rocky Mountain Orienteering Festival! Time to see if I remember how to race at altitude!