Craftsbury World Cup

Probably two years ago, Adrian and Ken got excited about hosting a World Cup for ski orienteering in the US. They got the IOF excited (which doesn't take much, considering that orienteering with a global distribution is one of the goals of IOF, so they're always ready to jump if North America wants to host something big), and somehow got us committed to the thing before exactly having all the key players placed. I'm a sucker, so I got roped into course setting with barely a fight. With hindsight, should I have pushed back more, and had them find a different course setter? I'm not being boastful when I say that I think we needed me in the roles I was filling to pull off this event to the level we did, so I'll stand behind my decision to be course setter. But this last week was not easy, especially for a gal who likes her sleep.

But, I got to talk on the radio! Here's a link to the piece by VPR: 

http://digital.vpr.net/post/do-you-skio-ski-orienteering-world-cup-comes-craftsbury#stream/0

That sounds a little negative. This event was pretty awesome. We just needed four times as many competent volunteers with very specific and hard-to-acquire skillsets working on the event.

I won't bore you with the details leading up to the event. But consider it like planning a wedding, where nobody gets married. And if you screw up, the entire party will be upset at you. Particularly for the World Cup athletes, this is their livelihood. No pressure. 

Early on, Andy Hall had volunteered himself to help with course setting, and that was a lifesaver. We went a few times up to the venue to scout trails, and way too many hours on setting and redoing and redoing and redoing courses, and then redoing again on the night before the event when we finally understood how the map would look. 

Andy and Ollie, clearly in charge because they both have radios and coffee. Ollie was a little skeptical about this whole ski orienteering ordeal, but I think he came around by the time I saw him sharing beers with the Swiss "pirate" wax tech. 

The fun thing about ski orienteering is that the map will change on a daily basis, depending on the grooming. Our Senior Event Advisor, Antti Myllärinen, was a whiz with the snowmobile, and managed to get things groomed that we didn't think were possible. That was pretty great. COC staff currently refer to him as the "badass Finnish groomer," and rumor has it they're going to name a dog after him. 

Antti, our badass Finnish groomer. And everything else.

Our junior IOF Event Advisor, Staffan Tunis. This guy also won the World Cup back in 2012, so it was great to have him around to pick his brain.

Super thanks to Bill and the rest of the Outdoors Center staff for all their help this week. I think they were fairly entertained by the craziness of this sport, and enjoyed learning about something totally different than the usual slew of ski races they're so familiar with. John Lazenby photo.

So the order of events is that you have to redo the map, reset all the courses, place all the controls, and not screw any of that up in about 12 hours before every race. There's no way that's not crazy. Good thing ski-o is so much fun, or nobody would do it. The local kids (and grownups!) were all pretty excited with the narrow trails, too, and people were getting a real kick skiing around them. That made me happy. We had really good turnout for the Tuesday night open race.

Adrian, our fearless leader, in the opening ceremony parade. John Lazenby photo.

The Races

First race of the week was the sprint race for the World Cup, and Middle distance #1 for the masters. Conditions were thin, frozen corn snow that softened into slush for the masters, with a generous scattering of branches, dirt, rocks, and pine needles. It took a good skier to stay on your feet, and Tove Alexandersson, the women's champion, said that she felt like a pinball, bouncing off of trees the whole time. Lots of broken equipment, but that's part of the game in this sport. 

Not such great snow conditions. 

Next up was the middle distance for the World Cup, and the second middle distance for the masters. These were good courses, but the snow continued to be thin. I started to hear some complaints from the older skiers about how they didn't appreciate the thin snow conditions, but they were also complaining when I didn't send them into the small trails, so really, there's no way to win. The wide trails were still in excellent condition, because Craftsbury has one of the best grooming crews out there. Anyway, the World Cup racers all seemed to enjoy the middle distance courses, and that left a warm fuzzy inside for Andy and me. 

Men's middle distance map. Pretty great courses, and the athletes 

seemed to really enjoy them too. Humility has never been my strong suit.

Men's champions on the middle distance: Erik Rost, Linus Rapp, and Jorgen Madslien. Lazenby photo.

Estonian racing through the forest. Lazenby photo.

It happens. Lazenby photo.

Tove Alexandersson skiing aggressively, a style she's known for. Lazenby photo.

Beautiful weather for the sprint distance. Lazenby photo.

Snowfall!

We got some snow finally on the "rest" day, Thursday. It was actually a reasonable dump, 8 inches or so, and that was good news except that it meant now we had to regroom and remap the entire area. Cool, no problem. We got behind on Thursday, and every step seemed to put us more behind, enough that we had barely finished printing all the maps by 5am when it was time to start getting the controls into the terrain. I still think it's a small miracle that our little team managed to get everything into the terrain and with the accuracy that we did - unfortunately, we did have one control mislabeled, and that caused some problems. There was no formal protest, but it leaves a really bad taste in your mouth to know that you've screwed up, and that it ruined somebody else's day. The mistake was in not having somebody who had actually slept review what we were doing. Live and learn, and hopefully never find ourselves in that position again. We also had a crucial gap in our information train, and some of the masters went out without knowing that they had a map exchange to do, which ruined more peoples' days.

On a related note, I don't remember my last all-nighter, but the experience has certainly not gotten any more pleasant with age. Kudos to Andy and Staffan for suffering through it with me.

Anyway, the final race was a sprint relay, mixed gender. This was good fun to watch, with the athletes going head to head for most of the race. The Swedish team of Erik Rost and Tove Alexandersson won the race, even though Tove broke her ski near the end of her last loop. I hopped into the open relay with Ari, just for kicks, and it was fun to race on my own courses. At this point I knew the trails so well that it's not like the navigation was a challenge, but it was a lot of fun anyway. 

Then on to the banquet (with a quick stop by Hill Farmstead). Some of the details for that had been left to the last minute, but we made it work, and the athletes all got their awards. 

Overall, a great week. It may be a lot of work, but it is rewarding to see something of this magnitude come together. Hopefully once I've caught up on sleep I can distill some of our lessons learned into something we can apply to our National Events.

Overall world cup winner Andrei Lamov

Flying ponytails! Salla Koskela, women's long distance winner.

Team USA - Ari and Jimmy! Next time we'll get them some team uniforms.

Race office before the chaos.

Boris was our announcer, and absolutely crushed it. And, he got to announce from the inside of John's sweet remodeled bus.

Not all manmade features are on the map. Probably better throw some snow on this one...

Very serious course setting team.

Office team, getting ready for the chaos

John and his bus

 The crush within the office when maps are announced as ready to return

Long distance medals

Jimmy on the start line. Photo by Greg Walker.

Pain faces. Greg Walker photos

Ed's timing hut. Greg Walker photo

Lamov coming to the finish. Greg Walker photo

Finnishing. Ha. Greg Walker photo.

Mass start - Greg Walker photo

Women's start. Greg Walker photo

Craftsbury breakfasts are my favorite part about going there. This week didn't disappoint. Somehow I didn't gain 5lb. Must have something to do with the 18 hours of skiing and 18 hours of sleeping that happened while there.

A huge thank you to everyone who made this week possible. It was a successful week in a great venue.

Planning for a World Cup

Y'all. Nobody said that hosting a World Cup for Ski Orienteering was going to be easy. But I clearly did not give it nearly enough respect. Supposedly I'm just setting courses, but we all know how that goes, and now I'm doing a whole lot of other jobs. So if you haven't heard from me in weeks, don't take it personally.

Next week is the big deal. Final round of World Cup for the season, and the World Masters Championships. It's gonna be awesome.

Adrian, event director and on-site coordinator

Andy, fellow course setter and excellent snow shoveler. We put in a pretty big work weekend last weekend, and Adrian's been doing that nonstop.

Spring skiing at its finest last weekend, beautiful crust skiing

North American Ski Orienteering Championships

This blog has been pretty quiet lately, as all the ski races kept getting canceled due to lack of snow. We had a long break between the final Eastern Cup and any other important races; I'd signed up for Rangeley Loppet, but even Rangeley lost too much snow to hold the race. Jess and I headed up for some skiing anyway, and it was 90% superb, 8% pretty bad, and 2% rocks. So I guess it's good they canceled the race, but that's always a bummer.

So after many weeks of not-racing, it was time to head north to Aroostook county for the ski orienteering champs. Not only had I not done any ski-o yet this year (see the above paragraph about lack of snow), I was feeling slow and out of shape. It'll come back to me, right?

Ed was one of the three organizers, technical director, so he'd been up there most of the week before, setting everything up and skiing a lot. He and Greg and Ken did a spectacular job, cutting new narrow trails, setting great courses, and getting us going with touch-free punching, which is a big improvement over having to stop and punch each control. So I knew that regardless of how I skied, the event was going to be awesome. We managed to get about 40 people up to the event, which, for a niche sport of two niche sports, in a remote location, is pretty darn good.

Sprint race

Friday's race was an afternoon sprint. It was warm, and even Presque Isle had gotten rain on the Wednesday of that week, so the stadium was largely a puddle. Luckily, the snow had been transformed enough that it was still fast, despite being slushy. I broke out a pair of skis from 1998 that are just totally designed for slush, and that was a good call. We had one-minute start intervals, and somehow I managed to leave myself barely enough time to get into all the necessary paraphernalia before starting. I managed not to get too flustered, but this being my first ski-o of the year and all, I never felt like I could really push the pace. Decisions were just coming up way too fast! Luckily I managed to avoid overskiing any junctions, and I made the right decisions, and I even managed to be fast enough to win the race, barely a minute ahead of my US Junior Teammate Melanie Serguiev (who, I should mention, just got back from a week of racing at the Junior Ski-O World Champs in Austria!). I was pumped - it's always good to start a race weekend with a clean race and a top step of the podium!

Results

Long distance race
It froze up hard overnight, thankfully, and conditions were a mix of frozen granular on the big trails and ice on the narrow trails. This was good, because I never felt like I could really push the pace, stuck moving at marathon pace, so at least the fast conditions kept me moving well. Below is the first map - we had two map exchanges, for three total maps, and this spread the competitors nicely. The organizers made this individual start again, so I had no idea of how I was doing, and I think I got a little too comfortable out there. US Teammate Anna Voegele (from Tahoe, a land of snow) was winning the race at control #9, and more worryingly, took the lead back again at control #19. Luckily, I managed to pick up the pace for the final loop, and ended up in the lead, by a scant 5 minutes over a 70-minute race. That's tight, for ski orienteering!

There was some really nice route choice on this map, and the fast snow made things really fun. I took a couple short cuts that might have been ill-advised had I actually gone over the edge of the trail (it was damn close), but the crust was really good skiing today, thanks to the freeze-thaw cycles of the last few days. I had a ton of fun skiing that race.
Results

Skiing through the woods on the crust in the long distance race

Ed was so psyched with the timing hut! He could unload all his technology into an indoor space, with a 360 degree view.

Start gate

Middle distance mass start

The final race of the weekend was the middle distance race, run as a mass start. We had one map exchange, and the courses were "forked", meaning that although everybody goes to the same controls, they might not do it in the exact same order, to discourage following. My goal for the day was to really race, push the pace and end up tired. Naturally, this led to more mistakes than the previous two days, where I had navigated cleanly. I was flustered off the start, skiing by the wrong first control before getting it figured out, and then on the descent to the east side of the map I couldn't figure out how to get out of the stadium, losing even more time. Argh! 

Thankfully I got it sorted out after that, and started racing more aggressively. Maybe too aggressively - I was taking a narrow trail through the woods, and there was a small wooden bridge (for the mountain bike trail that this narrow-groomed trail was following), over a deep little gully. The bridge had lost most of its snow, but I tried to jump the part without the snow, and while I mostly made it, I miscalculated my momentum, and one ski hooked on the opposite bank while my body slammed into the icy snow above it, left hand first. 

That hurt. I couldn't move my left hand, and pain was stabbing through my fingers and wrist. I wriggled up onto the bank, and managed to get back onto my feet, wondering if I'd broken my hand. After what felt like 3 minutes, I discovered I could wiggle my fingers, so I sort of poled along the trail with my right hand until I could punch the control and decide what to do. By now, adrenaline had kicked in, and I could move my hand, so I tested poling on it, and while it didn't feel awesome, it was doable, and adrenaline took care of the rest. Let's race.

Now I had some time to make up, so I hammered up the hill with a lot of gusto. I caught back up to Anna, who had passed me during my little hand episode, and then had a series of really clean legs, coming into the map exchange with a clear lead. I cruised through the final map with no mistakes, but I had probably 5 minutes of mistakes on the first map, which is frustrating. It was still good enough to take the win again, making three for three! I call that a successful weekend. And the hand appears to only be sprained, recovering quickly in the next few days.

Elite class results

Skiing by a control in the middle distance. 

This shot is from Jess, when we went skiing at Rangeley the week before ski-o champs. The lakes were nicely frozen! 

And, we had time to do a little hiking - almost looked like winter up there! Not often that you can climb a 4000 footer in sneakers in early March, though. 

World ski orienteering championships

Warning - this is a long one. I meant to update more frequently while in Norway, but the internet was bad enough that I'm just posting the whole shebang all at once!

I'm skiing!! In Norway!!



I just got back from Norway, wrapping up a week of racing at the World Ski Orienteering Championships (Ski WOC). This is my fifth time racing at this event, which happens every other year, so I'm starting to feel like I maybe have a handle on what's going on. Coming from North America means coming from a serious disadvantage, since we don't have the track system or the numbers of races that they have in Europe.  The main difference between NA and Euro ski-o is the lack of little narrow-trail mazes at home. Even if we're racing at a ski area that is willing to groom some extra trails with us, the trees are too close together to put in a ton of trails. And it's a lot of work to put in all the extra little trails, which you aren't going to do for an event that only attracts 50-100 people.

These little narrow-trail mazes are challenging in two different ways. Physically, they give you very little wiggle room for your skiing, with tight corners and nowhere to bail if you aren't 100% perfect with your line. Uphills are difficult because the trails are narrow and we're on racing skate skis. Downhills are difficult because the trails are narrow and we're on racing skate skis. There's no room to mess up, no room to check your speed, and often pretty sketchy and rutted conditions, because they can only groom a narrow trail with a snowmobile. Lots of broken equipment in ski orienteering.

Navigationally, the narrow-trail mazes are a thing of terrifying wonder - you have a decision every few seconds, and if you lose contact with the map, you very quickly get lost.  They can make crazy mazes with narrow trails because wide trails give you more time to react to changes, and where's the fun in that? So the challenge becomes staying on your feet, while reading the map, while trying to ski fast. It's a bit overwhelming, and totally freaking awesome.  Needless to say, the more time you spend skiing in narrow-trail mazes, the more comfortable and confident you become. Needless to say, most of us Americans only get to experience these mazes when we go to Europe, which is rarely more often than once a winter.  Basically, I knew that as this was my first ski-o trip to Europe of the winter, I was setting myself up for failure.  Well, moderated expectations are the key to happiness, so moderate my expectations I did.
 

(What's happening here is that I'm checking my touch-free EMIT card to make sure it is flashing, proof that I punched the control. The touch-free system is great!)

Sprint Relay
The first race of the week was a mixed-gender sprint relay, and I was chosen to race for the women, tagging to Adrian Owens, the candidate for the men. We each skied three laps, tagging off in between.  I got to scramble, which is always fun. It seemed like a clean start, no tangles, and I very quickly headed off into the woods to navigate my way through the first maze. I made some goofs, this being my first time racing a "real" ski-o in two years, but I kept seeing the same women flitting in and out of the trees, so I knew I was holding my own.  Despite the mistakes, I tagged to Adrian in 10th place, with a good pack of skiers and a little over a minute out of the lead. Solid.  Unfortunately, he made a big mistake, visiting his control 7 before control 2, and there isn't room for an eight-minute error in a race with an eight-minute winning time.  We reeled in a few more teams, but definitely had had higher hopes than 15th of 19 teams.
Results. Click the map below to view the course.

Here's a quick photo of some of the gear required for this silly sport. The compass I wear around my arm, and don't really use unless I'm lost, and need to double check that a trail is going in the right direction, or if I'm making a long shortcut down a hill and want to make sure I'm going the right way.  The red thing is the touch-free EMIT tag - that is both the punching and the timing system.  You have to get it 50cm away from the controls, and if it registers, it will keep flashing, so that you know you got it.  This is a major improvement over needing to physically punch the control.  Finally, I like to have a watch, both so I know what time it is and don't miss my start, and to track heartrate and whatnot for post-race analysis.

Sprint Race

With the first race out of the way, it was time for the sprint, and I was excited to visit the same terrain again and this time try not to screw up as much. Of course, if your process goal is to not screw up, you think about not screwing up, and that causes you to screw up.  I struggled to get into the map, and blew something like five minutes between controls 2 and 3. In a race that should be finished in 14 minutes. No good. I was flustered and unsure of myself the rest of the race, never finding the flow I needed, and after watching a Finnish girl break both her skis in a ditch, I was even more flustered. This led to a finish in 30th place, and I was pretty upset.  The results were confirming what I feared, that I wasn't prepared to compete here, and that I didn't belong.  Well, tomorrow is another day and another race. Time to turn it around.
Results


The bright noontime sun. Weather conditions were fantastic for most of the week, with temperature hovering around zero degrees centigrade. Fast and fun!

Long Distance
I went into the long with the word "EXECUTE!" first and foremost in my brain. No more headless chicken skiing - I was going to make a plan for each control, and follow it, come hell or high water. The start was at the base of an alpine area, but it was a small alpine area, which was good, considering one route choice took me over the top. Things had been foggy overnight, but the sun came up and burned off the fog, leaving ice crystals all over the trees and a glorious view from the top. Definitely one of those "I LOVE SKIING!!" sorts of days.



Out of the start, I took things cautiously in the first maze, and then really started to find my groove. I was going a little slower than I should have on some of the wide trails, a fact I realized after the race, but given my plan to nail the navigation, I was ok with sacrificing some time on the skiing.  A very fast Finnish skier, Marjut Turunen (ranked 14th in the world), was starting 6 minutes behind me, so I was expecting to see her, but she didn't appear until I was well on my way home, around control 10 of 18. I hopped in behind her to catch a ride, and was pleased to find that her skiing speed was not any faster than mine - clearly, she does what she does with superior navigation, as demonstrated over the final technical maze sections, where I lost another minute to her. I managed to hold it together, though, making a very clean race and finishing in 18th.  It was a relief to have a result that felt like it matched the effort - no big mistakes, and a moderated effort - it left me definitely wanting more. Wanting a race that felt like a race, rather than a cautious interval.

Results - first time I've popped a top 20!


Click to view larger.


We used this church as a landmark driving up to Budor every day. Very pretty, and very Norwegian-looking.


Yep, this happens. I took a pretty big tumble approaching control 10 in the long distance, and I think that weakened the ski, so went I hit a bump skiing my cooldown, that was it. Better to break a ski in the cooldown than in a race, where it costs precious seconds.

We had a much-needed rest day after the long distance. Doing three races in a row takes some of the oomph out of you, and I was very happy to go for an easy cruise ski in Sjusjøen with some of the team. The sun had given way to very solid fog, but that was also cool, in it's own way. The humidity chilled me to the bone, but after a waffle and hot chocolate in the warming hut, I was good to go.


Skiing into nothingness.


One of the warming huts along the way. Thatched roofs and everything.


I found a control!


Cristina, aka Master Captain Awesome (a throwback to her air force days), was our team leader for the week. This was fantastic, as she took care of all the coach stuff and seriously reduced the stress load for the athletes.  Not only is she a great leader, she's fun to be around, so that definitely helped. And, she has some pretty great frosted tips after skiing in a cloud for an hour.


We also paid a visit to the Madshus factory on our way back to Hamar from Lillehammer.  I was a kid in a candy store. Super thanks to Madshus for giving us a tour on zero notice at the end of the day.


The giant ski carousel. We weren't allowed to take any close-up photos, but overviews were fine.

Middle Distance
The final individual race was the middle distance, clocking in at approximately 10km skiable distance for the women. This one was a mass start, with three separate loops and a map change between each loop. This is one way the organizers can separate the pack, by having this "forking" mechanism to keep people from just following each other.  It also keeps the race near the arena, for good spectating.

After my 18th in the long, I had allowed my expectations to rise a little.  I was really itching for that top 15 that I've been chasing all these years, but thankfully I knew enough to focus on the process goals. Today's goals were to ski fast on the big trails, but always have a good plan for the narrow mazes. I had a good start, but unfortunately contributed somewhat to a pile-up in the start - a Norwegian fell in front of me, and I tried to go around, but she was taking up a lot of space, so I skied over her. Oops. Happens.

Things were fast and furious, and I felt very good about how I was able to actually read the map and make sense of the junctions.  I did, however, make two pretty bad mistakes, both times skiing past a junction of big trails when I should have turned. D'oh! That was frustrating, and put me behind two Czech skiers that I'd been in front of before that, but not making mistakes is part of the game, so I can't complain. I finished the race in a sprint against a Lithuanian gal, (which I won), and finally felt like I'd actually stressed my physical capabilities. Yay for ski racing! That was a really fun course, props to the course setter for the middle.

Results




Click to view larger. The multiple placements for the different controls show the different forking options, for each map.

Relay

With the middle distance over, and two top-20s under my belt, I had high hopes for the first leg of the relay. The order was me, Anna, and Stina, and we had our eye on Lithuania, Bulgaria, and Estonia as the "reach" teams to beat. I was hoping that I could have a good first leg, putting enough distance between our team and theirs that we had a buffer. Unfortunately, that didn't quite pan out.

I started out by nearly missing the start of the race. Somehow, I counted backwards wrong, and thought I had 20 minutes when I really had 10. Luckily, I got myself into the start pen and all the various gear strapped onto me in time, but instead of the 15 seconds to look at the map before the gun, I had maybe 2. Well, no problem, I've got this, but that flustered start set the tone for the race, and I made multiple small mistakes and bobbles.  By the halfway point, Estonia had dropped me, and I was in a pack with Austria, Italy, Bulgaria, and Lithuania.  I managed to ski the final loop well, partly due to very fast skis, and managed to gain a small gap over the other girls. That was good enough to tag off in 8th place, but I really would have liked to have come in with the 5-6th place pack. If wishes were horses...

Anna went out, and skied a solid leg, losing a spot to Bulgaria and Lithuania, but unfortunately she also missed a control, one of those tricky three-in-a-row situations, and she just never saw the middle one. This sort of thing happens, but it's always a bummer. Stina didn't know that Anna had mispunched when she went out, and skied admirably, but unfortunately, it didn't matter. Going to all the controls matters, but at least we weren't the only ones - Norway and Finland both mispunched in the men's race, on the same control as Anna.

Results.





In the end, I call that a very successful World Championships. Obviously I would love to be contending for a medal, but without making some serious sacrifices in my life, that I'm not willing to make, that's just unrealistic. Don't get me wrong, I am totally satisfied with my results. Thank you to each and every one who has helped me to get where I am today. It may be an individual sport, but you don't succeed when you tackle it on your own.

The organizers created a very good event, and the sunshine and beautiful scenery helped to make me think that Norway is pretty much heaven when it comes to ski vacations. I can see myself coming back here, for more skiing and ski orienteering!