WOC 2016: The forest races

The forest races at the World Champs were the two I was really excited about. The Long Distance final in my mind is the true test - the winner of this race is indeed the best orienteer in the world. There is no race I respect more, and no race I would rather excel in. In a lot of ways, the Long tends to play to my strengths - I often make good route choices, I run well over long distances, and I'm tough as nails. Also, my favorite part of this sport is running through the woods, and the Long Distance offers plenty of that. So, I was psyched to run.

The second forest race I'd be running was the relay - the star of the World Championships show! The WOC relay highlights those teams with depth as well as individual talent, and to me there is no higher honor than to be chosen for your country's relay team. Our team of Sam, myself, and Hannah weren't sure who we'd be gunning for, but our main goal was to try and move up from our start position, that reflects last year's result (20th).

Long Distance Final
One of the main differences between the forested terrain in Sweden and the terrain at home is the amount of squish. At home, the ground off-trail is soft in that it has a thin layer of slowly-decaying deciduous leaves on it, and sometimes has some groundcover growing in the dirt. But really, it's pretty firm underfoot. In Sweden, especially along the west coast where it rains a LOT, everything is covered in moss, of varying thicknesses. You've got moss under blueberry bushes, moss under pine forests, moss over the rocks, moss in all the swamps. Every step, your foot sinks, taking all the potential energy that you have from the two-feet-in-the-air part of your running stride and eliminating it into a mossy pile of squish. So attempts at moving quickly almost look like slow motion, with many Scandinavian orienteers adopting a running style with a much lower cadence and longer stride. That takes strength, gained primarily through the hours you put in training through this stuff. You ever run or walk through a bog? That's essentially what we're doing here.

Final control in the long

In training, I was handling the squish relatively well. It's definitely hard work, heavy on the legs, but doable. I thought I knew what to expect when I entered the forest with a number pinned on. I wasn't expecting to win the race, but I believed in myself that with a clean run, I had the fitness and the fortitude to place relatively well.

Right off the bat, the course setter threw a long (~4km) route choice at us. I expected some long legs, and I knew that it was worth it to look wide for faster routes. I also knew, given this terrain, that straighter is not necessarily faster, so if I could connect up little fragments of trails, that would be to my advantage.

Click for larger map.

With only a 1-minute leg to the first control, I needed more time to make a decision. I stood at that first control for probably 45 seconds, clock ticking in my head, trying to figure out the best route to the second. Even spending almost a minute standing there without moving is preferable to choosing wrong and paying for your wrong choice with extra distance and energy expenditure. Ultimately, I chose wrongly, settling on a route that went wide in the wrong places and hugged the line in the wrong places, sending me through logged areas and too many marshes, and finishing with an insecure attackpoint. Even worse than choosing wrongly, I executed my route terribly, losing over 5 minutes on mistakes and hesitations and micro-routes. Before I'd even reached the second control, my legs were toasted. The Australian from 10 minutes behind me caught up as I was splashing my way through a swamp, half swimming, and I tried to match her pace once I'd extricated myself, but nothing happened when I asked my legs for more oomph.

These are the route choices selected by World of O. My route did not follow any of those logical ways. I sort of started with the blue route, then swapped to green, then headed towards red, then made my own damn path through the maximum amount of logged rough open before meeting back up with red and blue.

This is the part of the race I'm pretty upset about. Not about the race, but rather about my reaction when faced with the consequences of a bad decision. This was outside of the realm of my pre-race visualization. I simply hadn't considered that I might not have good legs on the day of the race. Or that I just wouldn't be strong enough to handle the terrain. All the signs had been so good in my lead-up, that when my oomph-bucket ran empty, I was sort of paralyzed. And I gave up. 

I don't mean that I stopped moving - the thought of dropping out briefly flitted across my consciousness, but that's even more shameful - but I let my focus drift, and I wallowed in my misery. I didn't feel like I was racing, I didn't feel like I belonged at that level, and I just didn't want to be out there suffering anymore. It wasn't a long wallow, but it was enough to lose my focus, causing nearly three minutes lost on my way to the third control, and another three minutes on the way to the 4th. My give-a-damn was well busted, and I hadn't brought any duct tape to fix it. 

It's physically painful for me to write about this. I've always prided myself on being so tough, able to handle anything that's thrown at me, that admitting to giving up like this is almost as bad as the feeling while it was happening. I managed to kick myself out of the funk by the 4th control, and ran cleanly to the next few controls, but I was so slow. Even when I took the road route choice to 6, I felt like I was barely managing a jog. I saw some other runners from 6-9, but then made another 2-minute mistake attacking 9. I was mad at myself, which was a good sign, some of the fight was coming back. But then we hit the arena passage, and I stumbled my way past all the people, and I just wanted to curl up in a corner and hide. 

Crawling up a hill out of the arena, I was telling myself that if I was going to be this slow, I HAD to hit all the controls perfectly. I was going through the motions that should spike controls, but I failed to execute properly, and dropped another 5 minutes on my way to #15. When I finally stumbled across the finish line, the most prominent feeling was that of shame. For being so slow. For losing so much unnecessary time in mistakes (17 minutes!). For being the best option the US had had available to put forward on that day, and feeling like I was a really terrible option. For letting down all my supporters and sponsors who believed in me and were waiting to see what I could do. For giving up, and not fighting tooth and nail for every second, despite the challenges. 

As a friend said to me, the beauty of sport is also in the broken dreams. 

The Relay

After a bit of a wallow, I managed to get my shit together and start focusing on the relay. The Long had been a really tough race, even if I'd been feeling good, and I had spent a really long time out there suffering. A short jog on hard surfaces Friday felt fine, but I knew I wasn't at 100% as I warmed up for the relay. To make matters worse, my stomach was mildly upset, possibly from the strange food timing since the race started at 4pm. But whatever happened physically, my plan was to ***ing NAIL the navigation. There are things you can control, and there are things you can't, and I intended to fight for every second, regardless of how my body responded to the effort. Beyond proving to myself that I was capable of doing this, the relay is a team event, and I did not want to let down my teammates.

Sam went out fast, and had a totally solid first leg, coming back in 15th position with a small pack of Estonia, Poland, and Spain. I had been hearing the announcer talking about how the men were losing gobs of time in the low-visibility areas, so my plan was to mostly run my own race, and stay very much in control so as to not make any mistakes. I left the arena with Estonia, and we converged with Spain, Poland, and Austria out in the forest. The first part of the course was really fun, technical and difficult, and though I made a small mistake on the 3rd control (in the green), I was pleased with my navigation. Then we had to go uphill to the 6th control, and I felt like I was moving backwards, I was going so slowly. I had to walk most of the hill. My legs just did not work. It wasn't even a matter of oomph, they just didn't function. 

I chose to go around to the left to get to 7, and then I made an error in execution, losing some 45 seconds. That lost me the back of the pack I'd been trailing, and I struggled physically in the final loop after the arena passage. Ukraine passed me climbing the hill to #10, and Bulgaria got me climbing the hill to #12. I just had nothing to give, even though in my head I was screaming to claw back every second. It was so depressing to be unable to move, but I tried to focus on the action items, finding each control as efficiently as possible. 

Click for full-sized map

I tagged to Hannah in 21st position, and she had a solid run, but with a big mistake on the first control. New Zealand and Canada both snuck by, but she made a pass on Bulgaria, taking us home in 22nd position. Though this is two spots worse than last year, our position last year was inflated by both Russia and Poland disqualifying. It was still not the result we'd hoped for, but it was all we were capable of on the day.

Sam, me, Hannah

The World Championships always has the potential to be a real roller-coaster of emotions. This one certainly was, for me. I am coming away from this competition disappointed, but with my head up, bruised and battered but not completely broken. Failure is the greatest teacher, and success does not build character.

The next competitions are in three weeks - the US Championships followed by the North American Championships. I will be there, head held high, ready to fight. 

Because dammit, I love this sport and where it's taken me.

WOC Long Final

I've been visualizing the long distance race at WOC for the last 12 months. Practicing for it, preparing for it. This was the race I was most excited about. I knew I'd have the usual sorts of disadvantages of living in the States and working a full time job with typical US vacation, but you start every process with a look at where you are right then, and you go from there. Where I was, and where I am right now, is an athlete with a whole lot of commitments to a lot of things that are not athletics. I like it that way. When I set my goals for this race, before I'd even been selected to run it, I was aiming to land in the top 40 in the world, and I had a decent idea of how to do this. Through the spring and summer, training went well, all the markers were being hit. My terrain running was faster than ever. My legs had more spring than ever. My map reading skills were fitting me comfortably, confidently. My emotional state was calm, collected, excited and positive. Prior to last week, I would have told you, I'm ready. Bring it on.

I picked up a cold on Sunday last week. The sort of thing that only really matters when you're at a competition where your result depends on being able to run hard. There wasn't much I could do except rest it out, see if my body could kick this thing before the start of the Long Final, but things weren't looking good. As an athlete who can be drug tested at any time, there's a limited arsenal of over-the-counter drugs at my disposal, and because the limits for things like decongestants are given in µg/mL of urine, the pharmacist had no idea what dosage would be safe. So I just bought more cough drops and toughed it out. My lungs got continually worse until about Wednesday night, and I figured if things weren't looking up tomorrow I'd put in an alternate runner, but that's a tough decision when you've got the last 12 months of training focused on a single race. I woke up Thursday with better energy and less rattling in my lungs, so I figured I was on the upswing. Decision made. I'm starting this race, and by golly, I'll be finishing it.

The Long was held at an area called Glen Affric, and it's known as one of the few areas of Scotland still in native vegetation. This means lots of knobbly pine trees with deep grass and moss underfoot, though there were still some remnant pine plantations. The center of the map boasted a rugged open moorland, heather and moss and crags, which is fantastically beautiful, and fantastically physical to move through. Every training that we've done in the forest here has been taxing, but there is a method, some sort of barely-controlled stumble-tumble-gallumph, that works relatively well to move through the thick heather, at least on the downhills. I haven't yet discovered any method that works for me on the uphills, besides grabbing the heather with my hands to help pull me up. To get to the start, the organizers sent the athletes on minibuses from "quarantine" (in this case, a community center, with no connection to the outside world, so early runners can't send back any information about the course or terrain) to the start. The minibuses had a pretty ambitious trek, crossing a super narrow bridge (like, fold the mirrors in narrow), lumpy roads, and finally a narrow muddy mountain track, for several miles, twisting along the edge of a cliff overlooking an utterly gorgeous lake, with snow still hanging on to the edges of the mountains beyond. Rugged, remote, beautiful, and raw. How can this place not inspire you?

Oh, I forgot to tell you about the midges.

Take a look at that long leg (see it closer here ) - how would you get to 5? How about the legs to 8 and 12? 

I still had quite a bit of rattling in my lungs when I breathed too deeply. My plan for the race was mostly survival - I knew I needed the navigation to be perfect, since I couldn't move too fast, and I was ready to be braindead at really slow speeds, thanks to said lack of lung capacity. My plan also involved remembering how much I love to orienteer. Because it really sucks to be at a World Championship race and know before you even start that you aren't going to be able to perform how you know you're capable, so it's easy to get down in a negative spiral.

I started out well, but at a glacial pace. Watching my GPS track after the fact still makes me cringe. I wobbled my nav too much on my way to #2, and Mojica, the Slovenian who'd started 3 minutes behind me, caught up there. I couldn't keep up, so I continued to trudge along, slogging through my own race. As I pulled myself hand over hand up a steep slope of heather on the long leg, my thoughts tried to pull me down. I couldn't breathe, I was already walking, and I couldn't go any slower. I had to stop twice, hands on knees, just trying to pull in the oxygen, until I could move forward again, maybe 15-20 seconds lost. This sucked. 

As I neared the 5th control, a whole pack of runners caught up. I tried not to let that depress me, and instead upped the pace to keep up, having finally exited the heather and entered forest, and hey, I can run in a forest! Sudden infusion of energy, and I pulled to the front of the pack, confident and smooth and almost happy. I lost them taking a different choice to the 8th control, but being in the forest again was good for me, and I focused on the relentless forward progress. 

By the 13th control, I'd burned through what little energy reserves I had. Despite taking my final energy gel, my muscles were completely finished, and I started to stumble a lot more than I normally do. The final loop in the field killed me. I would trip, fall, and get up. Trip, fall, and get up. Trip, fall, and get up. Relentless forward progress, slow as it may be. Maybe I don't know any other way than to pick myself up and keep running after a fall. Maybe I was thinking about my teammates, and how if I could finish in the top 60, I would earn us points towards keeping our two start spots next year. Maybe I was thinking about my little GPS dot, on a computer screen at home, with my friends and family watching it stumble along. Maybe I was thinking about my team, down in the arena, watching my struggle. I was embarrassed to be in this state, embarrassed and ashamed to have thought that I would be a match for this race, but I was determined to get to that finish line. I don't think I know any other way. 

Spoiler alert - finished the race! Got to sign autographs for adorable little British children.

The "is it over yet?" face.

It's hard for me not to feel disappointed after this race. I tried to prepare myself, knowing that the sickness would tax me of my strength, and I think I can be proud that I managed to fight the whole way. I ran a very "clean" race, with no real navigational mistakes, but it is immensely frustrating to know how much better I could have done, maybe just one more day of recovery. I still ended up in 55th place, which earned a few meager points for the USA, and who is to say that the alternate would have run any better? The best place by any of them in the Middle distance two days earlier was 59th place. But that doesn't make the frustration any less. The World Championships arena is a very difficult place to have a bad race.

If you're feeling down about something, go do something else that makes you happy with people you love. Works every time.

Lovely running once you get above the heather. 

One more castle - this one's a repeat, Inverness castle, but it looks a lot better from this side, so I threw it in.

World champs relay!

It's been three years since I ran a WOC relay. This is the highest honor I can think of, because this is the one race where the sport really becomes reliant on teams. Of course you're thinking of your teammates while running an individual race, but it takes good races from all three team members to have a good relay result, and that is what shows the depth and strength of a country's team. I was quite proud to have been selected to race for my country, but definitely a little nervous - we decided that I should run second, between Sam leading off and Ali anchoring, with the hope that Sam would have a strong opening like she has done in the big Scandinavian relays this spring, and that Ali would have good luck hunting, as she likes to do, and I wouldn't goof it up too badly in the middle. No problem.

The way an orienteering relay works is that all the teams start together, and all the runners not on the first leg are held in "quarantine", so that they cannot wander around the stadium and gather information about the race as it is going on, or watch the big screen to see snippets of GPS tracking and videos from the forest. The courses have some spreading mechanisms built in, so that you can't just have a big line of folks following each other from one control to the next; most common is to fork the legs, such that you have several common controls, and between those common controls there are three variations, similar in distance and climb, and each runner from each team will do one of those variations. But, you don't know which forking the other teams are on, so often runners go in three different directions from each common control. This works passably well, keeping the race together enough to have some really exciting head-to-head action, while spreading the runners enough that it's not just a cross country race.

So the gun went off, and Sam left the stadium in the meat of the pack, observed from quarantine. I continued with my warmup, planning to be back at the point where I could see the stadium in time to watch the leaders (and hopefully Sam) run through at the rough halfway point. I got back in time, and watched the leaders go through, and the chase pack, and the chasing chase pack, and some stragglers. But no Sam. Just before I started to freak out that she may have broken her leg, Sam came blasting down the hill and through the arena. Phew! Apparently she made a terrible mistake on the third control, and just could not find the thing, losing the entire pack, and nearly five minutes. Luckily, she had a truly fantastic second half of her race, flying back towards the front of the race like the seasoned pro that she is.

I was super psyched to see Sam as soon as I did for the change-over. You could tell she was running on fire, having closed the gap to the second chase pack and tagging me off in 18th place. Her energy transferred to me, and I left the arena with a smile on my face and fire in my gut. My plan for the race was to stay out of the red zone for the first two thirds; the key thing in relays is to find all the controls safely, not to get too flustered by the other runners. Up the hill to the first loop and I quickly felt the altitude, 5000 feet is enough to take your breath away before you notice, so I had to pull back a little to stay in the safety zone. 

 By the top of the hill I had caught Portugal, and Estonia had caught me. I thought maybe I could use Estonia to increase my speed and confidence, but she took off in the wrong direction and I had to verbally remind myself to trust myself. I spiked the control, and she appeared again as I was leaving it, so clearly doing my own thing had paid off. I filed that information into the front part of my brain - run your own race!

More climbing up to the third control, and now New Zealand had caught up to me, too. I could see Estonia, Poland, and Spain taking a lower route, and I knew they'd all started before me, so I was making up time. Small mistake in the circle, but then I found a little flow, really enjoying the orienteering in that area! I had some really good controls, on my own but occasionally seeing a flash of a bright uniform through the trees. I made another mistake at #6, for maybe 30 seconds, but then came in for the arena passage just behind Estonia and before Spain, in 15th place. Big climb coming up leaving the arena, and I knew I had to hang on to the focus now. Spain got ahead of me on the climb, felt like I was sucking in air from the other side of the Atlantic I was breathing so hard up that thing, and Estonia dropped me as well. Don't think about them, run your own race! The cheering up that arena passage was deafening, really cool to run through there.

I struggled a bit on the vague hillside above the arena, bobbling my controls and ultimately using some other girls to find my #9. I suspect there was a direct relationship between my wheezing and my inability to spike controls, but there was an open field run to a road coming up, so I kept the gas on and tried to keep up with France, managing to read ahead a little for the final loop. I could see Spain and Poland taking the lower route, and I was hoping that my higher route, involving some hard footing on the road, would end up faster; I gambled right. Spain and Poland arrived at the control at the same time as I did, and the three of us trailed France up the hill. Clearly Spain was a better climber, but I was able to hang on to Poland, and trusted myself to find my next forked control on my own. From there it was mostly downhill, and I double checked my route and then let gravity take over, finally feeling fast for the first time the whole race! Minor route change along the way when a herd of cows blocked my trail, but nothing I couldn't handle, and I punched the final control just behind Austria, who had caught up from behind, but ahead of Poland and Russia, which was pretty cool.

I tagged to Ali in 17th, right in the middle of that pack, and hoped she would be able to hunt down Spain and Germany, our main rivals in the country competition for start spots next year. I was proud of my run; more bobbles than I would have liked and definitely not enough oxygen, but I did my job, got all the controls, and kept us within striking distance. Ali started out strong, pulling us into 16th by the third radio control, and catching both Spain and Germany. Keeping up with the world champions who were anchoring Russia and Austria proved difficult, but there were others to catch, like New Zealand and Canada. Unfortunately, on the penultimate control she made a mistake, and couldn't immediately relocate, and Germany and Australia snuck by. Still finishing strong, our final place was 17th, which is a totally acceptable, totally average result. We had had higher expectations, but orienteering is hard, and mistakes happen. I think it says really good things about the strength of our women's team right now that an average result is on par with our best results from the past. In the end, the relay was a win on three fronts: We beat Canada, we didn't mispunch, and we earned enough country points to retain our two start spots for next year's forest races!

Don't trip don't trip don't trip don't trip...

Leading Poland and Russia in to the finish.  Very pleased that they stayed behind me.

Spectating sprint races

I was not selected to run the sprint race at the World Championships this year, and that gave me an excellent opportunity to spectate and cheer for my teammates! The individual sprint was held in Venice, with a qualification round on the island of Burano, and the final on the actual Venice island.  There are three heats, and the top 15 from each heat advance to the final.  For the Americans, Samantha was the only runner to advance, but we were all there to watch her run in the final, and she ran quite well, finishing 32nd. In the world! that's pretty awesome.  

Hannah and I had been staying in the mountains up north, so we made the day trip to spectate, and to unofficially run in the spectator race that was being put on for all the runners taking part in the Italy 5 Days event.  It was really fun to run around through Venice, dodging the tourists and trying to keep straight which bridges you were crossing.  Quite an experience, and not like anything I'd done before.  I was very glad we made the trip, even though it made for a very long day, which is not advisable when you are trying to manage your energy levels prior to an important race! Luckily, with a few days to recover, energy levels are good and the trip was totally worth it.

The grand canal. This place is as cool as anyone has said it is.  I recommend visiting before the whole things sinks under the ocean.

More awesome canals.

And colorful boats! Notice how the buildings really aren't that straight... 

I found a control!

Sam running in the World Championships sprint final!

Hannah and Gail spectating.  Shade was a hot commodity (hardee har har) in the bright sun and warm temperatures.

The day after the sprint, Hannah, Tori and I raced in the spectator race at Turcio to see how we would fare on the rocky ground under the tall pine forests.  This was to solidify the relay team for the women, though not the only factor.  Right now it looks like I will be the third runner, with Sam and Ali, but we will wait to see how I recover from the Long Distance final on Wednesday.  Any good day has at least one gelato stop, so we tried our third gelateria of Asiago, the one with the giant ice cream cone trash can, and so far this one is the best - better cones, and the flavors feel brighter.

Important scientific testing going on.

Monday was the sprint relay, in Trento. This is the first year that the World Championships has held a mixed gender sprint relay, and it was an interesting and fun format.  The order was woman-man-man-woman, and our team was Sam, Ross, Ethan, and Ali.  The rest of us headed down the hills to spectate, and it was a good format for spectating, but unfortunately a thunderstorm rolled through right at the end, and we all got thoroughly soaked.  Not before trying out a gelato in Trento, though, and I think the shop we found there might have the best mango I've ever tasted.  Must find a reason to return!  Anyway, back to the racing, Sam led off with a world class leg, 10th place at the hand-off. Ross ran admirably, not quite as speedy as say Norway or Sweden, who both had to pass us.  After a solid run he passed off to Ethan, in his first World Champs, and unfortunately Ethan got a little flustered and started going to the wrong control right off the bat, losing us a minute or two.  In a 15min race, that's it, but he kept fighting, which was admirable. Unfortunately, he skipped a control, and that disqualified the team.  Ali didn't know this, so he tagged off to Ali and she ran fantastically, passing oodles of teams and bringing us up to 24th, which was an excellent result. Except that we were disqualified.  It's always a bummer to DQ, but definitely worse in a sprint.  Huge bummer, but it happens.  I'm sure everyone in the forest relays will be extra vigilant about checking control codes!

Beautiful city center in Trento.

Women's start. They seeded the teams alphabetically, since this was the first year of the sprint relay, so USA was in the back row.  Sam made up a lot of ground!

Ross coming through!  This is the end of my photos, because then it really started to rain for real, so I put away my phone.

Today I did some light openers in the terrain at the model event for the long distance, and tomorrow is my race.  I am excited, a little nervous, hopefully rested enough, and confident in my abilities.  Here goes!