The Bogburn

The Bogburn is a great race - old school narrow trails winding through Bob's forest in the middle of nowhere Vermont, groomed with a snowmobile, and designed to make you smile when you successfully negotiate a downhill corner. This year, there'd been some rain two weeks ago, resulting in a pretty nasty ice crust, covered with a few inches of fluff, so there was only so much he could do with a snowmobile to break it up. This meant death cookies in the tracks, very fast conditions, and a shallow track, but it was still great skiing.  He took out the first downhill s-turn, because people would probably have died, good call, but a bit of a bummer, because those are some fun downhills.

Last week was a tough one for me, focus-wise. Coming back from vacation, I wasn't doing well with the transition back to working regular hours, training in the dark, and no more afternoon naps.  There was a restlessness building inside of me, a manic energy that needed an outlet. By the time Friday rolled around, I went to the indoor track workout with CSU, and I knew I couldn't hold back, despite having a race the next morning.  I ran too fast, not feeling the work, not feeling the pain, just giving my energy a way out, through my feet and through my breath.  This took the edge off, and I was feeling much calmer, and more than a little sore, the next morning when we landed up in North Pomfret, on a gorgeous sunny day.  What is this bright thing in the sky?

I was there early, because I carpooled with folks who had kids in the BKL race, so I strapped on my skis, and started skiing.  Because the conditions were so fast, the course took on a transition-y feel I've never noticed before - rather than long grinding striding hills there was some double poling, some skating around corners, and you had to keep thinking to stay on your feet. In other words - fun!  I kept skiing loop after loop, until it was time for the women's race. Fueled by poptarts and with extra blue under my feet, I was in a good spot. My mantra was to hang on to that feeling of loving to ski, and I think that was a good choice.

Out of the start, we had some s-turns in the field, not with any speed, and somehow I managed to catch an edge, three seconds out of the start, and crash into a snowbank. Naturally, this popped out my stupid clip poles, and so I'm crawling up a hill to get my pole (this sounds familiar), in front of everyone else who is waiting to start their race. Great. Good start, ski coach. Show 'em how it's done!

Things got a little better after that. I was more cautious than usual on the downhills, sliding some corners I normally might have stepped, but it paid off, and I stayed on the course, unlike some other people.  It felt like I didn't really get going until the long-ish striding climb in the middle of the course, and my pace never picked up much beyond 20k pace, but I was having fun.  I passed my 30-second girl, but then I skied alone for the rest of the course.  I really enjoyed zipping down those hills, and despite the death cookies, the course was soft enough that you could really get an edge into the snow to push off around corners.  By the time I hit the field with the view, I knew it was nearly over, and tried to shift gears a bit to something higher.  Just running up the herringbone hills, I wish I had splits to know how much time I made up in those final climbs - I felt good!  Tried to keep the gas on over the top, and then it was finished. I wasn't quite ready to be done that quickly, felt like I hadn't really done any work until the final hills, but I think that was just because the conditions were so fast.  Race over, I got on some warmups and just kept skiing, a little with Jess, a little on my own, until the oomph canister was good and empty.

Jamie took photos. Thanks Jamie!

Chilly morning.

The post-race discussions =)

I spent Saturday night in Andy's little cabin in the woods, totally off the grid, and totally awesome.  Then on to Craftsbury in the morning for some Euro-style ski orienteering!


Love this view of the Whites from rte 2 heading into Danville.

This is what I mean when I say ice crust.

Annual pilgrimage to Quebec

Like any good pilgrim, I left home with a destination in mind. This destination is a cold place, but the skiing is great.  I was lucky enough to build a two-week trip around this annual pilgrimage to skiing Mecca , starting with the Eastern Cup in Middlebury, then rolling westward to land in Rochester, and spend some time working in a different office and visiting the parental units. They have just about given up on Christmas; no tree in sight meant we drew one with crayons and plastered it to the wall, to at least give some pretense that we are honoring the pagan God and his twisted westernized version of a Christian holiday.  As always, the visit was too short, and the mindless drive across frozen brown flatlands of southern Quebec was too long, inducing some not-unexpected seasonal depression and feelings of desolation. But finally, with no automotive mishaps (not a given, with my sometimes-less-trusty-than-I'd-like Civic), I arrived at my destination - a mostly-deserted parking lot by the Alpine area of Mont Sainte Anne.  At last! Skiing up trail 11, following the river under a crescent moon and listening to the water and the swoosh of my skis, I could feel the tension draining away, the motion clearing my head and opening my lungs.  This place may be far away, but it's worth it.  

Skiing in the dark has some sort of magic in it.  Time slows down, time doesn't matter, all that matters is the motion, and it got me thinking about the people who were so influential in causing me to love this sport. I love my family, but we were not, are not, and never will be a nordic family, as much as my parents sometimes try to pretend like they enjoy themselves when I force them to strap on skinny skis.  My thoughts started to spiral way back, to the origins of my need to run and my need to move, but ultimately this obsession with skiing started some time in my sophomore year of highschool.  I'd been convinced, coerced, pressured into trying this sport by the girls on my cross country team, and I didn't have much respect for it. Real skiers ski down hills. Quickly I learned respect, and that real skiers ski up hills. No stranger to hard work, I knew I wanted to be good at this silly sport. My coaches were fantastic, though they weren't necessarily the ones who taught me to ski well. They taught me more important things, like how to be a good person, and those are the lessons I try to pass on to my own skiers. Anyone can teach technique. Though I do happen to be much better at teaching technique than teaching the important stuff. As the years went on, skiing became more and more fundamental in the fabric of my being. Is this good? bad? inconsequential? It made me who I am as a person, introduced me to the people I consider my best friends, and opened doors to other sports and other circles. It gave me permanently sore shoulders and imbalances and overuse injuries that still plague me, and closed other doors to potential opportunities.  I guess most importantly, skiing gives me a medium through which I can deal with the world and work out my problems. And I want to pass that ability on to my juniors that I coach. Who knows if I'm ever successful. Most of them will probably just learn to V1 better, but maybe there are a couple to whom I've actually made a difference.  

This is what river ice looks like when it goes from freely flowing to nearly solid in 36 hours.  The other cool thing was being able to see the ice clouds forming above the river, humidity being squeezed out of the air at -12 degrees Fahrenheit. 

Home means random projects that have been saved up until extra hands show up.

Home means games, of all varieties.

Skiing with J2s, taking stupid selfies, skiing ourselves silly.

Quebec City has an ice luge thing in the center of the city. You pay $6 for the privilege of carrying a sled to the top of the slide, and then riding down and hoping you'll stop when you hit the giant snow pile at the bottom. Needless to say, this is a stupidly fun entertainment.  

I wasn't going to go in to the city, opting for an afternoon ski instead, but Kathy rightly pointed out that skiing hadn't yet cured my nasty-sounding chest cold, so maybe I should try something else. As usual, Kathy was right, and I had a good time.  Quebec is a cool city, but very hilly.  The reason we had the afternoon off was that we'd done a time trial in the morning, and, showing some restraint for the first time in possibly ever, I opted to sit it out, going for an easy ski instead.  I picked up a cold while in Rochester, that had gross new developments every morning I was in Canada, culminating with a monster living in my chest and trying to claw its way out.  Every time I'd laugh, my chest hurt. If you know me, you'll know how much my chest was hurting.  I was also hurting really badly from having a bad crash day - the sort where you can't stay on your feet, but you keep trying to conquer your demons and go faster and lower down each hill, thus falling faster and harder each time you do.  This left me feeling pretty battered for the next day or two.  

It got reeeeaaaaaal cold for our last few days up there.  But that's normal, so we were all prepared.  

Camp came to an end with the usual frigid morningski and frantic packing of the condos.  Kathy and I had a really great condo of kids, all very helpful and fun to be around, which makes the trip so much more enjoyable.  We were all set to take off and head south until my car wouldn't start, so that delayed things a bit, but eventually I was on the road, barreling south to the tunes of a good Quebecois folk music station, with a strong tambourine and accordion theme to each song.  Made it to Vermont with the last vestiges of daylight in the sky, took a nap, and then was ready to ring in the new year with Ed and the usual VT crew over at his cousin's house.  A cold night, where you can't stray away from the bonfire for long, but a fun night, filled with laughter (less chest pain than two days ago) and good people.  New Year's day involved climbing a small mountain I'd never been up before - Holt Mt. We weren't actually planning to climb a mountain, but that's one of the possible dangers of wandering into the woods with me.  "ooh, look - a mountain! Let's go up to the top!".  Thankfully the snow had a good hard crust, making it an acceptable activity for someone who is both ill and hungover.  Found the jar with other people's names in it, and we were, unsurprisingly, the first 2015 visitors.  Start each year doing something you love, right?

Now to kick the cold, do some ski-o, and, very excitingly, next Tuesday is the first master-blaster race at Weston!  I don't know that these last two weeks have been very relaxing, physically, but mentally I'm feeling pretty ready to conquer the world. I think that's the point of the annual pilgrimage. Time to go for a ski!

Rikert Eastern Cups

The first race of the season, and my first race as a master, took place last weekend up in Middlebury, VT at the Rikert Touring Center.  CSU, as always, arrived en masse, complete with our awesome wax team and 40+ pair of skis to wax. We got this. I'm not exactly feeling very fit when it comes to ski racing right now; fit enough to run up some hills but no staying power, and definitely no upper body power - you mean skiing on weekends only isn't enough to make you fast? I don't understand. The good news is that each skiing effort feels just a little bit better, so I'm slowly starting to race myself into shape. Ski-o in Norway in two months may not be pretty, but at least it hopefully won't be too pathetic.

The first race was a classic 5k, 10k for the men.  Classic skiing takes more strength than I care to admit, and even though I'd been feeling awesome classic skiing in great conditions at Prospect last weekend, there is apparently a difference between touring through the woods and racing up hills. I struggled to find my stride, and it felt like every double pole was ripping my lats off my body, so that wasn't quite the idyllic striding and gliding I'd envisioned. I tried to keep thinking about skiing pretty, and enjoying the day, and that got me through with a good attitude, but it was disappointing to feel like I sucked so much at a motion I love so much.  Well, let's try skating tomorrow, I've done more of that in the recent past.  The good news was that my elbow tendonitis, the reason behind my lack of ski training, didn't hurt at all, so I figured there's hope, and I should probably do more classic races, and then they'll get easier.

The skate race was a mass start, which is always fun. Thanks to my results from last year, I had a good seed, starting #23, in the third row, so the plan was to just chill, stay relaxed and not freak out about the streams of people going by. I'm good at mass starts, and picked up about 10 places right out of the stadium when the group mentality randomly shifted into snowplow mode, but then things spread out a bit as the big guns up front started battling. I was in a mix of decent college skiers, and doing my best to just chill. My legs felt ok today, but definitely not snappy.

We got to the start of the first real downhill, about 2.5 minutes into the race, and on the first corner, a 180 left-hander with totally fine snow, a girl to my left decided to not make the corner, and headed at me screaming. I step turned around her, but apparently she caused a good 15 person pile-up behind me. Nice one. I never had trouble with traffic after that, though apparently a lot of my juniors (and, more importantly, my coachly rivals, Kathy and Maddy) got caught behind the mess. I skied most of the second and third fingers of the course with Hannah Miller from Bowdoin, going sort of threshold pace up the hills. I can do that, but any harder and my muscles start to shut down. It was fast enough for the pack I was with, and my skis were quite fast, allowing me to tuck past people who were skating in a few places. My upper body was mostly cooperating, as I tried out this V2 stuff, and found it actually much more restful than a flailing V1.

The downhill on the second finger was pretty treacherous, glare ice and not much berm before you fell off the edge of the trail, but I've got good edges on my Madshus and trusted myself, so always made it through fine, generally dropping more timid skiers. Positioning stayed roughly the same into the second loop, hovering around 20th, though the SMS junior from my pack was pulling away, so I moved in front of Hannah to chase a little. Mackenzie was definitely in visual contact for me, and I was shifting into hunting mode, but I could hear from the cheering that there was a group closing from behind. Up the second finger (the only A climb of the course), I was starting to become aware that there is this room inside of me one could term the pain cave, but I hadn't really opened the door yet. It also occurred to me that a real skier would be used to this sort of effort, because they do intervals.  Interesting thought.

By the top I could tell that the top coat of fluoros was wearing off, too much Tokyo drifting around the corners probably, but it was still fast enough conditions that I didn't need much fitness to hang on to my group. The chasing group of a Bates girl and two Canadians caught me up the hill on the third finger, and I hopped in behind, thinking maybe I could get them back just before the downhill. Unfortunately I then did exactly what I'd warned my juniors not to do, and tried to get too aggressive on a downhill, took the inside line and totally slid out on a patch of glare ice, landing face first somehow and popping my pole out of its quick-release thing, which led to me crawling back up the icy hill trying to not get run over by the next pack. D'oh! Pretty pissed about that one.

I made contact with that next pack of three by the bottom of the hill, but didn't have the strength (or, honestly, the desire to investigate that pain cave) to keep up on the loop around the stadium and the pursuant flats to the finish. I'm bummed that I fell on my face, for no good reason, but hey, that's racing, and at least I didn't break any equipment. It felt good to toy with the idea of going hard, and maybe at the next race I'll begin to be able to tap into a real effort. We call this "racing into shape", and it does work, if you can put up with the several following days of tiredness. But again, elbow feels just fine, so this is pretty exciting.

Results

CSU coaches have a thing about bacon. So, Amie got us some bacon tote bags, which is pretty damn awesome.

Unloading Rob's car, full of wax for 40 pair of really fast skis.

These sorts of mornings are the reason I love ski racing, ski coaching, and hell, just skiing.

Early season skiing

Blue Hills Traverse

I won the Blue Hills Traverse last Sunday.  I won it last year, too, but this year was considerably more fun. Probably some combination of warmer weather, better course setting, and I was more rested coming into the race, but either way, it was a great day to be running through the woods! Not only was I the first woman, I was also third overall, which kind of just speaks to the lack of depth in the field, but, you gotta show up to win =).  

This year, Jeff Sager, the course setter, designed to "butterfly loops", which is a technique to spread out runners so that there is less blatant following.  Everyone runs the same distance, but does certain loops at different times, from a common control.  It was a neat way to spread the race, and I still saw a ton of people out there, without feeling like I was leading a train of followers from one control to the next.  

We started out on the eastern side of the park, ready to traverse our way over to the west and Judy's hot chicken soup.  It was a bit of a long trail run to begin, and some of the boys took off ahead of me.  I wasn't feeling super up to chasing them down this early, so just let them go, and settled into a loose pack with Giovanni, Katia, Ernst, and Will.  We were together until 2, which was where the first butterfly loops started, and it seemed that everybody went off in a different direction than me, so I figured I'd be on my own loop.  Off the trail towards 3, but then Will appeared as I punched, so evidently I wasn't totally alone. We took different routes to 4, and I got there a little ahead of him, but I was slow and sucking wind on the climb back up to 2, and he got ahead again. There were many more people in the vicinity of 2 when I got there this time, so I just focused on my own race, not wanting to get confused.

Ari appeared as I headed towards control 6, as Will disappeared in my rearview mirror, clearly faster on the trails than in terrain.  Ari was faster than me on the uphills, but I would close the gap on the downhills and when we went through the woods on anything *not* up, so we were together for most of that loop.  I was really enjoying the forest in that area, nice and open and not too rocky underfoot, it was really fun to run through!

Then back up to the common control, and it was uphill, so Ari dropped me.  I saw one of two stragglers just coming in, but nobody that I recognized from earlier in the race, so just put my head down and tried to coax some speed into my legs as I trundled off to 10, and the second map.  Approaching 10, I saw Ari again, evidently he'd made a bit of a mistake, and we were together down to the road for a long waddle towards the western part of the map.  When I got to the water stop, Jeff and Hillary were manning it, and they told me that I was in 4th. This was exciting, and I started to get visions of grandeur and of podiuming in the overall race; all I had to do was beat Ari!  Who was now well out of sight after the road run.

The western portion of this park has a much more up-to-date map, which is nice because you can rely on it a little better.  I kept seeing Ari as we'd take different routes to controls and arrive at the same time; his default seemed to be "climb ALL the hills!" while I tried to go as straight as possible while avoiding hills.  I didn't have much pop in my legs, but it felt good to carry on with a fast aerobic pace, and I was happy at that speed.  Unfortunately, leaving the common control for the butterfly on this map, I made a stupid rookie mistake, and Ernst and Giovanni and some guy I didn't know caught up.  Shoot! There goes 4th, 5th, and 6th places!  I pushed hard through the rest of that loop, closing down the distance to Ernst, who'd created a bit of a gap, but we never saw the other guy.  I ran down the hill with Ernst and Giovanni, and then up the other side was a bit of a climb on a trail, and it was definitely a mental game trying to keep myself running.  Would have been so much easier to just walk!  Just keep running, just keep running, just keep running...

Eventually we reached the top of the hill, and I was still with these guys. We hit some thicker underbrush, and I had to walk, but I wasn't losing too much time.  We'd just run into Tim and Katia, who were on their first butterfly loop, and the group of Tim, Katia, Giovanni, and Ernst were all drifting uphill from the little cairn, which was a nice solid point feature showing me exactly where I was. The map didn't look like I had to go uphill from there to spike 19, so I let them drift, pushing on along the contour, and though I bounced off the trail before punching the control, I had created a gap.  Quick! Escape before visual contact can be made!

I careened down the hill to 20, totally spiking the control, and I knew that now, with no more major climbs in my near future, I had this game in the bag, if I could just hold it together for the navigation.  At 21, I saw Ari again, and I suspected that this was still his first butterfly loop, but I wasn't entirely positive. He took off when we hit the road and the climb back to the common control, but I didn't have the legs to keep up. Well... there goes a place if I was wrong about the loop order.  I tried to keep the gas on through to the finish, but my oomph-o-meter was definitely keeping me from pushing to true race pace, so I suspect it looked like I was just sort of cruising in to the finish. But! This was good enough for third place!  Ethan and Ian had taken first and second miles ahead of me, but I had managed to outsmart or outrun everyone else!  I was pretty pumped about this fact, and I won a giant gingerbread man.  Score! Results.

Third place: me. First place: Ethan Childs. Second place: Ian Smith.

Ed finished strong for 12th place, and felt pretty good about his race. Yay!

Some other photos from past fun things that didn't make it to the blog - 

We had a reporter show up to the Troll Cup for the NYT; we'll see what he comes up with for a story on the local orienteering scene!

I rollerskied up a mountain with my juniors (Mt. Kearsarge, in NH).  It was a pretty chilly day, but we saw some great performances.  I can attest that if you don't rollerski all fall, and your first hard workout is a 35 minute continuous uphill race, you will be SORE the next few days.  

View from mt. Kearsarge. Love November in the NE... 

NEOC Troll cup

Last week was the New England Orienteering Club's resurrection of the Troll Cup, a meet with a name steeped in some sort of mostly-forgotten history unless you're among the right crowd.  We did a two-day chasing start race, meaning that the start times on the second day were dependent upon the results of the first day, and the first person across the line on Sunday was the overall winner.  I didn't race; sometimes you have to give back a little to your sports, so I was one of the course vetters, meaning I'd been out in the woods all summer and fall making sure that the courses were reasonable and fun.  Sometimes, in thick and gnarled terrain like this, the fun can be a reach, but the forest was thinner in November than in August, so people seemed to be enjoying themselves for the most part.  Ed was in charge of his usual awesome Ed-tech, bringing the race out of the forest and into the arena, and infusing as much coolness as the sport is willing to allow.  We were lucky with the weather - it was chilly, but dry and sunny, which was great for the runners.  The organizers, well, we bundled up in a lot of layers.

I was happy to see the event go off well, and we had a new meet director apprenticing with the experienced meet director, so I'm hoping that she gained all the confidence and experience necessary to host one of these on her own in the future - the idea was to make the meet something sustainable and relatively easy to host, and I think we succeeded in that.  Yay for the troll cup!

CSU teammates Gail and Izzy conquering the finish chute of doom, below:

I found Becky, prancing down the trail. I may have told her to prance, to which she responded, do I have to? 

The high-stakes competitions over, it's time for some fun low-key events as we kick off winter.  This weekend there's a rollerski race up Kearsarge mountain, provided we don't get snowed out, and next weekend is the Blue Hills Traverse!  I never have fun at this race, but I keep coming back... stupid me.  Maybe this year it'll go better.

And when your morning bike commute looks like this, you know winter is nearly here!