Rocky Woods Orienteering

In case anyone is wondering, the skiing at Waterville Valley is still superb. I went up there with some CSUers, and it was midwinter conditions. Beautiful skiing!

Sunday dawned bright and beautiful also, so I headed out to Dedham for an orienteering meet, put on by NEOC, the New England Orienteering Club. I ran here last year, and I remember hating the area. I still don't like it, but I had a slightly better run. It was pretty chilly when I got there, and we had to copy our own maps. The map-copying area was in the shade, and I was shaking so badly that I had some major issues getting my control circles round. I should have taken more care, because some of my circles were a little off, causing a couple headaches...



So I started off by bungling #1. I went into the woods too early, almost directly across from where the trail hit the road, and once in the woods, I remembered that I had meant to run the road. Then, instead of continuing on with what I had already started to do, I stopped completely and stood there like a ninny until I remembered what the heck I was supposed to be doing. I was a ninny multiple times on this course. #2 I did the same thing, went into the woods early, where the road crosses a hill, but this time I had planned that. Of course, I then went in the wrong direction so had to loop around and hit 2 from the back side.

In my shivering frenzy to get my map copied so I could go run, I had neglected to mark the changes to the map that the course setter had noticed. One change was that the trail to #3 was not actually there. That didn't throw me off too much, because I could just run the ridge, but I had managed to draw my circle too far to the east, so I was searching up the wrong reentrant for the control, which was actually on the west side. doh! 4 and 5 were clean, if slow, since I hiked/scrambled up the hill. Then going to 6, I ended up in the right spot, but on the wrong side of the little hill, and convinced myself I was in the wrong spot, running all the way north to the road and the pond before I realized I had been in the right spot and went back and got the control.

I ran out to the trail and went around the marsh to get to #7, and again, my control circle was closer to the marsh than the actual control. So I ran around for a while checking every reentrant (the control clue) in the area until I found it. At this point I was definitely cursing my sloppy copying. There was a group of people leaving 7 as I got there, and I tried to get around them on my way to 8, but ended up going too high up the hill, losing more time. From 8 to 9, I sprinted madly through the woods, only loosely in touch with my map and following a rough compass bearing. I slowed down as I hit the trail before heading towards the marsh, and almost overran the control by caught myself just in time. I was almost foiled by some boy scouts on my way to 10, but things were starting to come together for me now, and I got 10 with no hesitation. 11 was a longer leg, but again I followed a rough compass bearing and spiked the control.

At this point I saw two Austrian dudes who I'd last seen around control 3 when I was blundering around cursing life, and my competitive juiced stirred a bit. I hammered through the woods as they went around, and I spiked 12 and got enough away from the control that they couldn't use me to find it by the time they crested the hill. I blundered going into 13, though, by taking the trail to the south of the control and running up the reentrant on the east side of the little hill, thinking I was on the west side. The Austrian dudes caught back up, but the little trail to 14 didn't appear to exist, and they were stopped there looking at their map as I went around on the big trails to 14. I didn't see them again, but I don't know who won... regardless, I was motivated now, and I spiked the rest of the controls in to the finish. I think I've learned my lesson, though-- wear a puffy jacket when copying the map!!

So how did I do? Ski season re-cap.

The training "year" isn't fully over yet, as it goes until the end of April. However, nobody cares about a rest/fun month, and the important part is over, so I'll recap the season in numbers and bullets. If you don't want to hear me talking about me, don't bother reading this.


Highlights:
-Sugarloaf marathon win
-World cup ski-o
-Nationals trip
-Waxing/coaching at EHS
-Getting to hang out with Jess, Dobie, Blazar and other cool folks most weekends



Low points:
-Totaling my car
-Craftsbury marathon
-Rangeley marathon
-Most of the Eastern Cups
-Missing a start



The goals:
Early Season:
West Yellowstone:
-Enter both supertours (Y)
-10% back in the distance race (N; 15%)
-Reach goal: make the heats in the sprint(N)
Nationals:
-Top 100 (Y; 66th in skate race and 65th in sprint)
-Reach goal: top 50 (N)
-Have a race with points <200 (Y; skate race 197.98)
-Top 50 (reach: 30) college girls (Y; 27th in skate race). OK, I know I'm not in college anymore, but I just like seeing how I compare, alright?
Mid- to late-season:
Do at least three marathons (Y)
-Top 3 at Craftsbury (N)
-Top 3 at Rangeley (N)
Eastern Cups:
-1 race 5% back from leaders (N; Presque Isle 5k 7.8%, Rumford 10k 7.75%, Prospect 10k 8.95%, Holderness 7.5k 6.6%)
-1 top 10 (reach: top 5) (Y; 7th in Presque Isle sprint)
Winter training:
-Stay healthy (Y)
-Focused intervals (N; basically I didn't do any intervals due to frustration with Weston and it showed, duh)
-Continue one OD per two weeks (Y)
-Continue general strength every week (N)
-Continue ski-o drills (Sort of; early season was good, late season I got lazy)
Ski-O:
-Top 15 at world cup (N)
-One map-specific drill per week (N)
-Win any US event I enter (Y)

So overall, how did I do? Looking at my goals, I did pretty poorly. I had four races where I felt good, and the rest I either felt tired or very tired, and I was more or less unable to push myself to my limit. I had an indication of this during 'cross season, and I should have been intelligent then and rested more, to be able to come after intensity workouts with a hunger that I never really felt all season. Instead, well, instead you can read my blog. It's mostly whining about not doing as well as I would have liked in ski races. Partly this is because I am an athlete; I can't help but feel that I can do better than I am, but partly this comes from higher expectations than my fitness could support. Was I out of shape? Hardly. My lack of focused intensity, however, did not allow me to tap the fitness that I know was there, and this is entirely my own fault. Weston may not be ideal for training, but I let it get me down too much. If you're interested in training numbers, here is my training log at attackpoint with the totals.

What went right? I would say that this is the season where I learned to pace myself in a race. This was a big step forward, but I still need a lot of work. At the Rumford 10k, I paced myself so well that I had a 2 minute negative split on 15 minute laps. The Craftsbury Opener was my first good race. Nationals 5k skate was my second good race. The Rumford race I just mentioned sort of goes down as a third, although I think if I had perhaps paced myself less agressively it would have gone much better. The Holderness 7.5k mass start was my fourth decent race, in terms of how I felt, but placement-wise, it was aweful, and I was frustrated by other skiers the whole time. So really, only my early season was any good. To figure out why, we move to the next question.

What went wrong? In a word: August. This post was about when I realized how much I was tearing myself apart with all that travel. The travel manifested in me getting sick, then sicker, then injured thrice over before I finally got smarter and took two rest weeks. Even those rest weeks did not fully recover my wrecked body, though, and the result of continually pushing was a horrid cross season. West Yellowstone was where I managed to turn it around, but only a little, as I recognized that I could pull one good race off of a lot of rest, but any races soon thereafter were pure painfests with nothing to show. The taper to nothing that I did before nationals worked, but only for the first race, as expected. Things might have looked up after that, but traveling to Europe wore me out more than I thought it would, and a little mental burnout ensued. I continued racing, though, dragged myself through two impossibly hard marathons and then got lucky when everyone else was more burned out than I was to show up to the last races of the year, giving me the win at Sugarloaf and third at ski to the clouds.

So what needs changing? First and foremost, I am going on a "travel diet", from May through October: I am only allowed to leave a 50 mile radius from my house (a few exceptions, like Otis or Windblown) every other weekend. This will hopefully prevent back-to-back epic adventures, and save me money to boot. Next, I need more intensity, especially during the winter. Training at Weston is not my favorite thing to do, but as I discovered this year, fitness is useless without the speed to use it. But I knew that. The next thing to do is listen to what I already know and listen to what my body is telling me. If I ever get this recovery thing down, look out everyone!

So what's next? I've transitioned to an active recovery period, as much for my mental state as for my body. A couple orienteering meets are coming up, ideally I'll run really fast and not get lost, then things will be splendid. Hardcore training starts again in May, don't expect anything epic until after that. A couple mountain bike races this summer, probably the gap ride, possibly the presi traverse again, and maybe even a road race! That will take a lot of peer pressure though.


time to wax some skis...

It doesn't get much better than this

It started with a sunset run on Friday, possibly one of my favorite activities other than sunrise runs (that means you don't have to finish in the dark). I love Hale reservation-- its not that big, but once you're in it it feels huge, like you're actually out of the city. Except that you can see it still. But that is cool in its own right.



Saturday was the "Formula One" race at Gunstock. They have loads of snow, so they'll probably just keep hosting races until it all runs out. I think Igor came up with this one just to get his kids having fun on snow. Mass start. 800m skate loop. Switch to classic skis. 800m classic loop. Five loops of each technique. First there was a "qualifying" round, to determine the order in the mass start, which was only two lanes wide and after about 10 feet did a 180 into the slalom course. WOOO!

I qualified fourth, ahead of all the highschool boys (goal: beat all highschool boys). That put me pretty far up in the mass start, and I skittered around the first corner terrified I'd get run over by the overzealous and uncontrolled highschool skiers. There was no jump first lap, that came on the second lap. By the bottom of the hill I was in 7th or 8th, but luckily I can transition fast and I know how to classic ski, so by the end of the classic lap I was back in 5th, more or less holding even with a highschooler I'd seen racing at EHS last weekend. Each lap, Igor would change the jumps after the slalom somehow-- second skate lap, there were three jumps spaced pretty closely. Third skate lap, the jumps were wider. Fourth lap, Igor was standing after the three jumps holding more bamboo that I ducked under (Maybe I was supposed to jump it?). Fifth lap he was holding the bamboo even lower (jump it, you idiot), so I barely squeaked underneath it. I think he was changing around the jumps depending on who was coming down the hill. Luckily the classic laps were just normal, giving me a chance to catch back up to the highschooler who probably didn't know how to use klister based on how much he was slipping, and recover a little. I ended up in fifth, ahead of all the highschoolers. This felt like a cross race! To make it even better, we got chocolate as prizes.


The BKL skiers on the slalom course.


Practicing jumping over the foam things before Igor replaced that with three bamboo jumps.


I need to be on that top step because without it Linnea would be taller... at least I didn't start eating my chocolate while on the podium, like Colin did.

Sunday Callie came down and we went mountain biking. Restoring the balance in Alex's world.


Callie explaining something...

A good day.

Body-slamming trees

Its generally not a great idea. Slamming one's body into trees, that is. During this activity, I happened to be wearing my GPS. Here are some interesting stats:
Speed I was going when I entered the corner and realized I was going too fast: 26mph
Speed I was going when I hit the trees: 20mph
Max speed during the course of the race: 35mph

When I first got a road bike, I was in fifth grade. I was amazed at how fast you could go, and I got a spedometer for my birthday so I could clock my top speeds. Knickerbocker hill was the biggie around where I lived, and until I got older and stupider I had to work hard to break 35mph down that hill (there is a stopsign at the bottom... details). Its fast. Yeah, I had no point except to say I'm glad I walked away from that crash. One more race tomorrow, then that might be it for snowtime.

Colin stole (well, I guess I gave it to him) my google earth picture from my garmin and nicely annotated it, so I stole it back and added the location of my corner:

Product Review: Peltonen Skis

"Are those new Peltonens?!?" was the question I heard at least four times while waxing at Eastern Highschools. Yes! They are!

Alpina is bringing in Peltonen skis to the U.S. now, I'm not sure if Alpina is the only distributor, but the U.S. hasn't seen new peltonens in many, many years. The only world cup skier I could find currently on Peltonens is Ville Nousiainen, a Finnish skier, and he is pretty fast. Of course, Sam Morse also skis on Peltonens, and he is also pretty fast.

Peltonen claims to be the world's first XC skis with nanotechnology, using Hybtonite. I don't know what Hybtonite is, but it has a nice feel on my tongue when I say it. Anyway, they have extra light tips and tails, and three profiles-- wet, universal, and warm. I assume each of these comes with a factory grind, but people tend to not stick with those nowadays. They also have an optional NIS plate, which might be becoming a standard thing out there, I'm not sure.

Alright, on to the actual testing part. Skate skis: These skis were very nice. I compared them to my Atomic RS11s and some old Fischer RCS skis that I still race on. In terms of weight, they felt comparable to the Atomics, which are lighter than the Fischers (granted, I was just holding them in my hands). On snow, the factory cold grind was running pretty even with the Q1.3 grind on my Atomics from Zach Caldwell. The conditions were pretty sugary, and the flex was just about perfect for those conditions, resulting in my rocket skis during the Sugarloaf Marathon. I felt comfortable enough on these skis after 15 minutes of skiing that I chose to race on them, and I am very glad that I did! The downhill cornering and tracking was very good--I felt like I had a lot of control on all the hairy corners and switchbacks, and the skis felt light underfoot, allowing for some quick movements. On the flats and uphills, they were fast and stable, but not too stable. They felt pretty lively, unlike my Fischers, which are probably too soft, or any of the Rossignol skis I've tried, which feel like blocks of wood strapped to my boot. Overall, I'd say that they feel most like Atomic skis.

Classic skis: I have to be honest, I was using a powder ski in klister conditions... the review isn't going to be stellar. These skis felt very similar to Madshus classic skis, with a nice pocket despite being pretty soft skis. I had good control on the downhills, with the skis responding similarly to skate skis on the corners. They were a little draggy, but we all know that is what happens when you klister up a soft ski. The factory cold grind was definitely not agressive enough for the slush I was skiing through, so saying that they were slow is hardly fair.

Overall, I would give the skate skis an A+ (the + comes from the fact that they were so much faster than everyone around me at sugarloaf on the downhills...), and the classic skis get an A-, with the - due to the dragginess, which is because I was using a powder ski on a klister day. dummy. Very light, responsive skis, that were fun to ski on. Hopefully these skis will be available to the public pretty soon. I think they will have very competitive prices, since that seems to be one of the goals of this little Finnish company. I think I will be skiing all on Peltonen by next year!

Sugarloaf Marathon

Thats me, winning the sugarloaf marathon =) (Kris Dobie photo)

Saturday was one of those awesome days when you get up at 4:30 in the morning and go to meet your ride north and he's still asleep... luckily, Blazar rallied quickly and then drove really, really, fast up to Stowe for Eastern Highschools. I was wax bitch again for the classic sprint and mixed gender, mixed technique relay, and as with J2s, I learned a ton about klister waxing, and got even better at applying klister without a bench. Our Rhode rossa-multigrade mix worked awesome, and Olga (one of my CSUers) won the sprint and Nadja (another CSUer) was 9th. A western Mass kid was 6th, and Chris Stock (CSU) was 12th in the sprint. The afternoon relay was fun to watch, as it was girl-boy-girl-boy; classic-classic-skate-skate. We had good wax again, and our first team ended up winning. A fantastic day for Massachusetts! They followed it up on Sunday with Olga winning the classic race for the girls and Chris winning for the boys. I should mention Isaac Hoenig was 4th in the guys' race and Jimmy Burnham was 11th! These kids know how to ski, and its exciting watching them put it all together.


Jamie getting the good stuff going...

The Massachusetts EHS team waving their state flag (appropriately attached to a ski) after winning the relay!

After the relay, Blazar and I booked it over to Sugarloaf. In Blazar's words, he "drove like a rockstar", and I only put my foot through the floor a couple times. Needless to say, we made awesome time, and I got to bed relatively early hoping to feel rested for the marathon. I've been pretty tired all week, so I didn't have high hopes of feeling good, but apparently you don't need to feel that good to do well. I'll admit the start list was pretty thin when it came to girls, but given the way I felt I preferred it that way. Robyn Anderson and Lauren Jacobs were the two I thought I might have trouble with, so when the gun went off, I got right behind Robyn. She was going really slowly, though, so I decided to go a little faster.

The course started with a long, gradual uphill (the garmin data is coming, hold your horses) for about 4k, then some rolling ups and downs and then some screaming downhills, with some tight corners and high speeds. Then there was some more loopety-looping on trail 10, and the lap finished with some flat stuff going into the stadium, at 16km. Three laps of that and then you could finish. Pretty hilly, but fast conditions. My first time up the hill I took it pretty easy, just barely into L2, since I hadn't gotten around to warming up and bad things happen when I don't warm up and then go too hard. No girls passed me, so I was comfortable going my slow speed. At the top I looked back and didn't see Robyn, just Lauren was behind me, so I decided that I didn't really need to go any faster than I had been. On the rollers after 4k I came to realize that my skis were ROCKETS, I was dropping my pack like nobody's business. I was skiing slow enough that they could catch back on, though, so it was pretty easy skiing the first lap. I had borrowed these skis from Dorcas, since Alpina is now bringing in Peltonens and she wanted me to try them out. Gotta say, I like them a lot.

Near the end of that lap, Lauren took the lead for a bit, and she was definitely going faster than I had been going. I didn't like this, so after a while I took the lead back and we slowed back down to granny speed. I made sure I was eating and drinking a lot, because I didn't want to do something stupid and get beat in a race I was basically controlling, and the Colby kids (who ran the race) were really helpful at the feeds.

Going up the big hill the second lap, Lauren took the lead again and sped up. This was faster than I wanted to go, but still within my comfort zone, so I just stayed on her heels and found a rhythm to settle into. She admitted at the top that we had just been going a little faster than she had wanted, but I'm guessing she was seeing if she could drop me. At this point we started chatting a little more, and then the downhills started and my rocket skis carried me away. After the long downhill of death (straight down the fall line for ~200 feet, then a 180 at the bottom), where my GPS says I hit 35 mph, I wrecked pretty hard on a relatively fast corner. It was one of those "look where you want to go, not at where you're going" situations, I was staring at this tree hoping I didn't hit it, and the rut I was following shot me into the woods and slammed me into the tree. I lay there in a heap of limbs and ski equipment for a second, doing the mental check to see if any body parts were broken. Nothing was sending jabs of pain sharp enough to cut through the adrenaline, so I moved on to the "check your equipment" step. It all looked intact. Now I just had to extricate myself from this awkward position of being stuck in the snow amid the trees. At this point Lauren went by, saw me there, and came to a stop. "Oh my god! are you ok?!?" I guess I looked more tangled up than I thought. Yup, I'm fine, nothing broken, carry on...

By the bottom of the hill I'd caught back up, and I skied cautiously behind her for most of the rest of that lap, finally taking the lead again when the tingly feeling in my left leg went away. Crossing the bog headed out on our last lap, Laurent mentioned that she'd be taking the downhills pretty easy this lap, since "our" legs were tired, and I thought that was a very good idea. We kept it smooth up the long hill, and then I pulled away quickly at the top as my rockets picked up speed. I was sliding more of the corners than I normally would have, but I had made it this far and I didn't want to wreck again. The plow made its appearance in more than one place; the downhills were scraped pretty clean of snow at this point.

By the time I got to the bottom, I was still feeling relatively fresh, and I let Lauren take the lead through trail 10 to see how she was doing. She put in one or two semi-surges, but I could tell she was tired, and I figured the easiest thing would be to wait for a sprint, since I didn't feel like working any harder than necessary. This was also the riskiest strategy, since even though I felt pretty fresh, I still would have just skied 48km, and that can lead to me doing stupid things, but I didn't feel like breaking away now and working hard for 2k. We crossed the bridge and I let my skis take me past Lauren on the downhill. The last hill of the course she tried to pass me, so I put some power into two or three V1s to get over the top of the hill, then cruised along in a fast V2alt to the finish hill and into the finish, about 5 second ahead of her. The Colby team was going nuts, it was awesome to ski into what felt like a home-town crowd at the front of a race.


The Colby ski team!!


Starting lap 3 (Kris Dobie photo)

All in all, this was a fun race to do, even though I was butt tired going into it. I lucked out in having a thin girls' field and fast skis, but I was proud of how I used my head and didn't do anything stupid like stop eating at 32km. Unfortunately my left hand is pretty badly sprained from my little run-in with the tree, but I'm lucky to have escaped so unscathed. In my experience the tree usually comes away with less damage than the skier...

One race left...

My desire to race is close to nil, which is pretty perfect timing, given that I have one race left (possibly two) and its the end of the season. I won't be heading out to Fairbanks for Spring Series, if any of you were wondering, mostly because I don't have that kind of dough floating around, even after my winnings in the race to the clouds.

This weekend is the Eastern Highschool Champs, where I'm coaching on Saturday; with any luck the waxing will be extra blue and everyone will be happy. My desire to wade through gallons of klister is also pretty low... but if it needs to be done it needs to be done. Sunday is the Sugarloaf Marathon, hosted by the Colby ski team as a fundraiser. If you're interested in doing another marathon, this should be a good one, come support my alma mater ski team!

Provided I survive another fifty kilometers of skating (have I mentioned my knee makes funny, painful, creaking noises when I skate and that my calf wants to blow up when I skate fast?), they are promising another Tuesday night race next Tuesday. The snowpack has mostly dwindled to a puddle of goose-poop-slime-slush, but who can really say no to skittering around a golf course on skis?

Here is the fun stuff, though: Saturday the 22nd, Gunstock is tempting us with a Formula One Spring Fling. Here is some more information. Basically, its a 500m skate qualifier, then a mass start pursuit-type sprint race. Your position in the mass start is based off your qualifier, and you do ten 500m laps, switching equipment every lap. I CAN'T WAIT! This basically takes the parts of a pursuit that I'm best at (transitions and sprinting and mass start shenanigans) and makes that the whole race.