Pemi loop

This hike has been on my bucket list for a while, so when Ari mentioned that he wanted to run the Pemi loop this fall, I thought it might fit perfectly in with my marathon training. Kind of. At least if you look at it all squinty or something. I mean, hiking over 10,000ft of climb is totally good prep for rolling out 8-minute miles endlessly, right? Well, at the very least, this promised to fill my soul with mountain views and rocks and leaves and things, and I was all in.

Unfortunately my body didn't totally agree with this all-in attitude. My right foot hadn't quite recovered from Pisgah, and throwing another 50k at it, this time with hills, was not kind. But I started the day hoping for the best, because that's what I do.

We went debated the merits of clockwise vs counterclockwise in the car, and ultimately settled on clockwise, mostly because that was how Ari has always done it in the past, and it means you reach Galehead Hut after having already done the bulk of the climbing and rough trail. Gabriel and I were up for whatever, having never done this loop before and happy to rely on someone else's expertise.

We jogged off toward the Osseo trail with high spirits. Up the trail to Flume Ari and Gabriel quickly dropped me, and I discovered that my legs were definitely feeling the heavy training load from last week. I made the conscious decision to back off a little, because life is a lot more fun when you're not suffering, and gosh was it a beautiful day for putting one foot in front of the other! The boys didn't have to wait for *too* long at the top, and the ridge between Flume and Liberty was great. We jogged along happily, but once we hit Little Haystack, we started running into the crowds on the Franconia Ridge. I don't blame them, because that is the most amazing accessible trail that I can think of, but we passed maybe 100-150 people between Little Haystack and Lafayette, in both directions. The whole ridge was in a cloud, which took away any sense of distance, but it was nice to not get totally fried by the sun.

Looking east from Flume. One of those days!

South from Flume.

Hey we're going to go into that cloud! 

I had to do handstands on top of Lafayette, because tradition, and then we left the crowds behind as we traipsed off toward Garfield. I had been feeling pretty good along the ridge, but various injuries were starting to niggle as we descended from the ridge, and I knew I'd be in for a long day. Normally I can dance down the hills, but not this day. I tried to put the pain out of my mind, because with some overuse injuries you have the luxury of knowing that you're probably not doing longterm damage, and you can just push through. But, I was certainly feeling pretty battered by the time we'd gone up and down Garfield and the following lumpy bits of trail. Galehead was a welcome site!

One of my old skiers, Hannah, is working at Galehead this season, but unfortunately was out packing food for the hut last Saturday, so our paths didn't cross. But, she left me a plate full of bread and cookies, and a cardboard Pemi Loop Queen crown, which I tried to wear for the rest of the loop. Unfortunately, cardboard isn't a great material for durability when you're wearing it on your sweaty head, but I loved the thought of it!

Looking down into the Pemigewasset wilderness from Garfield

A bowl of soup at the hut, and then we headed off for our last real climb of the day, up South Twin. It's tough to get moving again after sitting down, but you don't really have a choice. Unfortunately by the top of this one, my plantar fascia foot was starting to really hurt, and the subsequent ridge, which should have been awesome running, was just sort of a painful slog, trying to match pace with the boys, and not being too successful at it. I'd never been up to Mt. Bond before, and it was gorgeous. Beautiful views of the Franconia ridge to one side and the Presidentials to the other, nothing steep or difficult to traverse, just lots of nice trail. Bondcliff was as cool as everyone has always said it is; I'd like to go do that again and have a picnic up there.

My Pemi Loop Queen crown on top of South Twin

Ari and Gabriel heading up Mt. Bond

The boys on top of Bondcliff

Thus some 22-something miles into the day, we finally started downhill, and my foot was pretty upset at being asked to bear weight. We still made it down reasonably quickly, but then those final five miles of flat old railroad by the river... those were rough. I couldn't put power through either foot, and resorted to sort of hillbounding with my poles, at a struggle shuffle 13-minute mile. Oof. Takes a long time to cover flat ground when you're going that slowly, but Ari was a good friend and hung back to tell me stories. Gabriel couldn't stand the idea of that final piece of trail taking so long, and ran ahead. I can't blame him, and wished I'd been able to manage a more respectable pace, but sometimes you just gotta run what you brung.

The eponymous river

So after a very long slog, we were back to the car, some 10.5 hours after starting. 30 miles and 10,000ft of climb is a big day, no matter who you are. What a crazy awesome day. Of course I wished I could have gone faster, because that's who I am, but for now I am very satisfied having just made it around. While that may qualify as a bucket list item, I'm not writing off doing it again, on fresher legs!

Hudson Highlander

The Hudson Highlander is a fantastic race. 26.2km of orienteering, in a beautiful park with fantastic terrain that still feels like wilderness, on a beautiful day. Harriman state park is rugged, raw, physical, and utterly gorgeous. I love it. I think Harriman was where I first really got bitten with the competitive orienteering bug, back in 2009 when I was invited to join a US Team camp, and Thierry Gueorgieu and some of his French Team buddies were along for the vacation. I watched them float through the forest, and I wanted to be able to do that, too.

A kilometer in the forest has about the same metabolic costs as a mile on the trail, so for a 26km orienteering race, you're pretty much facing a trail marathon. Cool, that sounds like fun on completely inadequate training, let's do it! The race is a mass start, which means it will become immediately apparent how much you have or haven't been training, and there are some special segments - a trail run, where you just follow streamers, and a King of the Mountain leg, which, surprisingly, goes to the top of a mountain. These primes get special prizes, and even though the women's field wasn't super deep this year, with one of my competitors setting the course and another walking the Lowlander with a broken wrist, I wanted to win those primes as much as I wanted the overall! And of course, I wouldn't mind taking some scalps from the men's side. Too competitive for my own good, they say...



I knew I didn't have any extra matches to burn, so the name of the game today was energy efficiency. No thrashing about trying to brute force it, because I'm just not strong enough for that right now. But this sort of distance with this low control density meant I got lots of the part I love best in orienteering - running through the woods!

King of the Mountain turned out to be the first leg. Oof! This meant I only had to go fast enough to stay ahead of the other women, so I tried to keep the effort under wraps, and managed to get to the top first, but well behind a bunch of the men I'd like to beat. My legs were already exploding, not a good sign. This led to a very slow execution to #2, with lots and lots of walking. By then, I'd fallen into a group with two guys I've run with before, and we were loosely together until I dropped them by taking a better route to 5.

At #5, I picked up two West Point cadets, who were standing around looking a little lost. The Highlander is in the backyard for these guys, so there's always a good turnout, but they're definitely stronger physically than navigationally, so tend to do a bunch of following. That's ok, I was planning to take it easy for the remainder of this first loop of orienteering, and then dump all my energy on the trail run, which looked to be awesome technical singletrack along the Appalachian Trail. I led the cadets smoothly through controls 6-7-8-9, and then it was time for the trail run!

I like to hunt when I race, and it was a good day of hunting, as I swallowed up runner after runner, stretching out on the runnable parts and tumbling down the steep and rocky descents. Unfortunately I could tell that my already-sore butt and hamstrings were going to pay for this turn of speed, possibly dearly. What matches I'd had, I burned on the run. Worth it.

I finished up the trail run in good spirits, now in 16th place overall, but fully aware of how much energy I'd just used. Two guys I'd run past caught up to me after we left the water stop, and I was doing much more walking than on the previous map. Maybe I should call it slogging. Rockhouse Mountain has a lot of very high blueberry bushes, mid-thigh on me, and this stuff is quite physical to move through. Occasionally I'd get lucky and find a game trail that went roughly in the right direction, but mostly it was just pushing through the blueberry, hoping that my foot wouldn't catch on anything and cause a full-on hamstring cramp.


On the way to 16 there were a few kilometers on a trail, and I discovered I could still run pretty good if I didn't have to pick up my feet, so I dropped Kevin and the cadet. Then it started to snow, which was pretty cool, and upped my spirits enough that I could add some oopmh to my step coming into the final map exchange, where I caught a college kid who should be faster than that, and crammed some cookies in my mouth, hoping to hold off the hamstring cramps for the last 5-6km loop.

Lots of trail running on this map, though even that was getting pretty difficult. I really enjoyed the little loop at the southern end of that map, lovely forest and I was still navigating very nicely. I managed to pass two more cadets on this loop without them seeing me, and I managed to up the pace to hold my place to the finish. Not my fastest Highlander ever, but it was a really enjoyable race, and I was psyched to end up 11th overall. Turns out you can mostly replace training with toughness, who knew?

Super duper thanks to HVO for setting up such a nice race. The course was great, and I appreciated all the work that goes into setting up a long adventure-style race like this.

Maps from legs 1-2 and leg 3. Haven't uploaded leg 4 yet.

Award for KOM leg was a photo from that control. Fitting prize, considering I didn't spend as much time admiring the view as I may have liked.