An introspective sort of morning

I looked in the mirror this morning and my face looked old. Tired, lined, dry and pale. I'm too young to feel like this. By the numbers I'm getting plenty of sleep, by the feel, not nearly enough, the alarm is waking me in the mornings instead of the usual method of waking up first and turning it off so Ed can sleep longer. Hard to get out of bed when its cold and the windows aren't properly closed... It was cold this morning, 34 when I left for work, the realization that I was wearing the same layers as I would in late November was sobering. I still feel like summer was just yesterday. I can't figure out why I'm not bouncing in my chair giggling about impending snow - West Yellowstone has snow on the ground already, but I don't feel ready for ski season yet. Maybe its that I don't feel financially stable enough to afford the tickets to the places I want to go race, maybe I'm just too busy chasing other pursuits. Maybe I just haven't done enough intensity yet. This week seems loaded with intensity but light in volume, its a change. Is it too late? Oh the doubts. I'll have to trust the coach.

Orienteering - I am really finding myself caring more and more about that silly sport. I've done it forever, at a recreational level, and then got roped into ski-o and realized I wanted to be good at it - that I had a chance to be much better than genetics will allow in straight skiing. So started doing summer orienteering more seriously, fell in with the CSU crowd (makes them sound like a bunch of serious drug users, whoops), bought an SI card, bought orienteering shoes, wrote some goals for orienteering, and then last weekend I came to the realization that I'd sold my soul - looking at those open woods, my feet started twitching - I just wanted to go run through the woods, in contact with my map, totally in touch with what the paper says about the terrain. I guess its like when you learn to read, you had no idea that being literate would be THIS COOL. Suddenly, I want to be really good at it. I want to be the best. Can I balance these new goals with the older goals set for the ski season? It seems doable. But I also think that working full time, coaching, training full time, sleeping 8-9 hours a night, and racing in three sports is doable, so I don't know if I should listen to what I say. Who says you have to sacrifice?

38 days to West Yellowstone. Suddenly my desire to do rollerski intervals tonight went way, way up.

Harriman camp

Its been three weeks since I sprained my ankle, and the damn thing was still swollen before the camp. Needless to say it didn't improve with 14 hours of orienteering, but I suppose the one saving grace was that the Harriman maps are just so technical that I couldn't move very fast for much of it. But it was still stupid - nay, STUPID - to go to the camp, from an ankle-recovery standpoint. The third day I re-twisted it - not badly, but it certainly didn't help matters. I'm actually surprised that I made it that long before rolling it a second time, especially just using tape rather than an ankle brace - tape stretches as it gets wet.

Anyway, the camp was fun, super informative, and super motivational. Thierry Gueorgiou and Francois Gagnon were there - Thierry is a multiple-world champion in the middle distance and Francois has been up there too - along with two other French orienteers who aren't half bad. The real eye-opening moment was watching Thierry move through the woods - absolutely unbelievable. I might be able to run like that if my legs were 5 feet long too... but I doubt it.

Here is the map from the Team Trials in 2003 - we re-ran it to see where we would stand. I would not have made the men's team back then (duh), but I didn't finish last. The red squiggly line is my drawn route, you can see that it doesn't exactly go straight to each control... but I was pleased with my few clean routes on that map. There is just so much detail, it pays to be good at simplifying. I'm horrible at simplifying, I do ski-o maps, which are simplified for you, you just follow the green lines... here there are rocks, and patches of mountain laurel, and ginormous blueberry bushes, and more rocks, and cliffs, and the maps are accurate enough that pretty much every feature out there is marked on the map. It took a lot of time (oh, 12 hours on the map or so) before I could really relate the features I was seeing with the map. Most maps I run on are much simpler, and there are just fewer features in the woods to begin with. Anyway, running here made for a unique, interesting, challenge.

We went bowling the first night, and I'm pleased to say I finally broke 100. I also beat Thierry, so now I can say I beat a World Champion. Or something like that.

Thierry had been doing all the driving, and Friday morning the French guys showed up a little late to training. Apparently they're just fast at everything, since he'd just gotten a speeding ticket for 64 in a 45. The next day, they arrived with plastic policeman caps and aviators... except for Thierry. I think he was bitter that he had been the one to get the ticket.

This was the corridor exercise that we did Thursday afternoon - the idea is that you follow a very straight line and pay close attention to the features that you're crossing, because you can't relocate off of other bits of the map. I am apparently atrocious at using my compass correctly.

Walking to the start of the Highlander - Sunday was a race, 26km straight-line distance, and while I wanted to do it, I did the one smart thing I'd done all weekend and did not race. Brendan was also gimpy, so we walked to the start to take pictures, and then did a map hike - basically you walk a course, stopping wherever you need to, to really figure out the terrain. That was super valuable for me, and things were making a lot more sense afterwards.

Ali Crocker, an ex-skier-turned-orienteer-becoming-ski-orienteer - she is going to give me a run for my money in ski-o this winter if she follows through with it. If you're from the skiing world you might recognize her name. Damn good skier.

Jean-Baptiste (French champion) and Thierry (world champion) at the start.

Will Hawkins at the start of the race - he ended up second, not too far behind Thierry (although definitely not close enough to challenge him).

Thierry prepared to crush some souls.

The woods were so beautiful - open, easy running (except for the rocks), just makes my feet itch to go running there.

World champion doing his warmup... everyone else just stood there at the start.


Lori ran with Presto, her whippet, and he didn't look that tired until she stopped moving and he just lay down in the sun and didn't want to move.

So, it was a very valuable camp in terms of technical training, but it may very well have destroyed my ankle... we'll see how the recovery goes. At least cross won't hurt it too much more, but sometimes I just can't stay off my feet...

US Team training camp

Yup, thats right, I'm at the US Team training camp right now.

Bet you all were thinking I was in Lake Placid! Wrong team, I'm in upstate NY with the US orienteering team. As much as I would love to train with the USST, well we all know that isn't going to happen. The US O Team is holding a camp at Harriman state park, where the World Orienteering Championships were held back in 1993. That means that the maps are world class, and this place happens to be where they'll be holding the team trials next spring. I got invited somehow, I'm a little fuzzy on the details, it either has to do with being on the US Ski-orienteering team, or just Ross really pushing for some other CSU runners to come along. Anyway, the coolest part of this camp is that a couple French orienteers, one of whom is super famous in the map running world, are here too, so we'll get to see how the best of the best do it.

Its a packed weekend coming up, but I'm pretty psyched. For most people, it'll culminate in the Hudson Highlander, but I'm not sure my ankle needs 4-5 hours of racing just yet... we'll see how I'm doing after 12 hours or so over three days in the woods.

More O-ing

If you want to be good, you have to practice... I've been doing more orienteering recently, despite the ankle setback. Hopefully it'll actually strengthen my ankle to run more, we'll see how that hypothesis plays out. Anyway, I'm operating under the "if it doesn't hurt just keep going" scenario, and so far so good.

Last Friday was a US orienteering team fundraiser sprint, in Peterborough NH at Shieling Forest. Both Ed and I went up, Ed to work results of the e-punching and me to just sort of help out where needed. I decided that with enough tape, anything is possible, and went out to run the course. Although my speed wasn't great, since I was being pretty hesitant, I ended up second. My plan was to run a perfectly clean race, and I failed completely at that, but it was clean for the second two thirds of it.



I've been having issues recently getting off to a fast start in sprints, the first control (and all the stuff getting there) is just coming at me too fast. This was no exception, and I felt overwhelmed the whole way there. But then I decided that I was good to try to run a little faster, and totally overshot two, ending up in the wrong reentrant since I had gotten off my compass line. This cost me over a minute, and so I tried to make up time to 3, which was a mistake since I ended up overrunning it and costing myself another 15 seconds. I didn't learn from my mistake, and overran 4 as well. This was getting frustrating. I yelled "Focus!" and that seemed to do the trick, because I was clean to 5. At this point I could hear a guy catching up to me, and I went into stealth ninja mode. Can't let someone catch up!

Unfortunately, he caught me as I was leaving 6, he probably heard the beep as I punched the control, and he passed me on the way to 7. I then tried to catch back up and pass him between 8 and 11, somehow navigating well while focusing on my competitor but just unable to run fast enough to get him. 12 I was a little too far to my left, and attacked from the trail, which worked well, and then I saw him leaving 13 as I got there. I was sort of slow going to 15, unfortunately, and that was the last I saw of this guy, but I was pleased that I ran as well as I did while trying to pass him back. I think other people in the woods tend to help me focus better.

Since my ankle held up so well in the woods, I figured I'd try running on the streets. CSU was holding a street-o (actually I was hosting it for CSU, we rotate who sets the course each week), and I'd designed some intervals. Unfortunately, you can't really do control-picking on a street-o, and the full course was 10 miles, which was a wee bit too long for a Tuesday night. Luckily, you could choose to do some of the intervals. I ran controls 4-9 and 12-16 as intervals, each one was about 1.5 miles, which was far more running than my legs wanted to handle. They sure don't do speed too well right now, because I am SORE today. At least my legs went fast, they are just paying for it two days later. The map was basically impossible to read, but because its a street-o, you have plenty of time to figure out where you're going as you run. I guess I have an advantage since I know these streets really well, but I ran perfectly clean!

And then we gathered at my house for some delicious chili and Ross's apple crisp. The only point of running is the eating afterwards, right?

Gloucester, day 2

While I thoroughly enjoyed playing in the mud Saturday, I'm not going to say I wasn't pleased with the warmer, drier, conditions of Sunday. The mud had firmed up enough to be tacky, rather than peanut-butter-y, although there were definitely some sections of pure glop. The course had also changed - they sent us through the off-cambre backwards, and through a sand pit, and although I was sort of hoping they'd send us down the run-up, I can see how that would be dangerous from the race director's point of view. I snuck in most of a lap before the masters' race, and really liked how much of the course was rideable. I also really liked how there was no pavement uphill of death.

But I had a resolution. Saturday I'd let my head control me. No more. Everywhere that I wanted to whine, I planned to attack. All those straight power sections - I was going to attack. Any pavement - I was going to attack. Doesn't matter if I am riding alone or with people or my attack is pointless, I just wanted to be on, the whole time, none of this "I can't ride with her" business. Its amazing how having a race plan like this makes you feel empowered, and holy cow was I nervous on the start line. Good spot though, just behind Cathy.

The little tykes took off, some of those juniors are just so tiny. I think they should probably start them behind the women, if I were an eight-year-old I don't think I'd like getting passed by 3/4 of the women's field, but it might be empowering to pass some of the stragglers. Anyway, we went soon after, I was near the front but not quite there entering the hole shot, but its such a nice wide hole shot that nothing stopped me from continuing to pedal and thus coming to the front of the race. Why do people stop pedaling when they hit the grass?

I was neck and neck with Karin on those first grassy turns, but she (justifiably) cut me off on one of the last ones, I had forgotten that the course turned and was trying to get past her. Soon after that she was gone. We came into that little off-cambre bit by the baseball diamond, and I'd pre-ridden this, I knew it was rideable and Karin and I had spread it out enough that I wasn't in traffic. The spectators were loving that I rode it, I don't know if it was faster but it sure felt better. On the pavement, Allyson came by and opened a small gap (how do they do that so quickly??), and I hadn't pre-ridden that little bumpy bit after the pavement, so the turns took me by surprise. Stupid on my part. Anyway, I was trying to close the gap coming into the sand, and I carried way too much speed into the sand pit. Made it around the first turn, turned too much, overcorrected, overcorrected again, course tape, boom I'm down, doh. I got up and started running as Natalia caught up to me, she was shouting at me to move but its not like its singletrack through the sand, you want to get around me you go around me, I'm not ceding this nice packed line...

Anyway, she came around as I remounted, and I caught her wheel going past the pits. This was fun, I could get to liking this whole power-through-the-power-bits-instead-of-whining attitude. Anyway, just on the other side of the pits, Natalia hit a wooden post straight-on, and did a perfect cartwheel over her bars. Ouch... I hit the gas to put some time between us. Allyson was gone after my fumble in the sand, I pedaled harder, but coming across the backstretch by the water there was a girl catching up. She'd made contact by the time we were through the other side of the peanut butter mud, but I followed my race plan and stomped on it up the paved hill, so she didn't pass me. I opened up a gap again on the turns and then by riding the off-cambre, thought she might be gone but I saw her behind me as I rounded that pavement corner after the barriers. Pavement! Attack! Into the bumpy bits and I rode those turns much better this time, and managed to reign in some of my speed coming into the sand, just enough so I could control myself.

She was near but not in contact, and I was starting to think I could hold on to this third place - thanks to the length of the laps, I was on the bell lap already, and there were plenty of fun places left to make up time even if she did latch on. Then going by the pits, trying to ride a slightly drier line, I whacked into a wooden post, and did a slightly-less-spectacular cartwheel than Natalia's. The girl in red went by as I was picking myself and my bike out of the mud, and gosh did it feel like it took forever to get moving again. By the time I was rolling she was gone, and I didn't have the speed to ride the little up-down thingy. I was still super winded from landing on my back, but by the time I remounted I could breathe again. Of course, I couldn't see the girl in red, and I could see a girl in green closing, so it was back to race mode.

The girl in green came close by the backstretch, but I used my race plan to attack the uphill again and lost her for good in the corners, even though I had to run the off-cambre due to getting caught behind a junior coming in to it. Even if there were a race at stake, I would feel horrible passing one of the little juniors aggressively - totally different if its a 15-yo boy, but the little guys don't need to get elbowed around just yet. Anyway, no sign of fifth place as I came through the barriers, and I finished in fourth. Bummer about whacking the post, but not running into things is definitely part of cx racing...

I have to admit, that was an awesomely fun race. I never thought I'd say that about the Gloucester courses, but the rain and mud Saturday combined with the funness of Sunday's course just made for an awesome weekend. I hope they don't go back to the grass crit mode, because this was how it should be! My only complaint was that there wasn't a heater in the beer tent Saturday...

Gran Prix of Gloucester, day 1

This last weekend was a ton of fun. Not only was it the biggest cx race of the year on the east coast, but the courses were great! I never thought I would ever say that about Gloucester, the famed grass crit, and maybe its just because of all the mud, but I was smiling way too much, given the amount of mud in my teeth after the race. Saturday 2 inches of rain were forecast, and that may have been correct - it poured all morning, which made staying warm interesting. I did a good warmup, but by the time we went I was pretty chilly, and didn't want to sprint as hard as I should have off the line. Luckily, everyone slows down going into the hole shot, and I was far enough up that I could just keep pedaling and pass pretty much everyone. I think by the second corner I was in 2nd. This was nice. It was actually feeling kind of slow and relaxed through those corners, which was kind of pleasant.

Karin Holmes was ahead of me, and I know I can't ride with her - the last head to head match we had was at Quad cycles, where she rode with Anna Milkowski, which is something I don't think I'll ever do. In retrospect, I should have tried harder, but my head told me to just ride my own race. Anyway, Karin just kept pulling away, and soon thereafter, Allyson Snooks from MRC caught up. She also pulled away, but not quite as quickly, so when Natalia Gardiol caught up, I hung with her for a while. Another girl who I didn't know came up later on, and passed Allyson I think. I just couldn't hang with her, but I'm wondering how much of this was in my head - I was really sucking on the uphill pavement bit, and I think I should just taken some of my own advice and pedaled harder. Anyway, on the run-up I managed to lose Natalia, although some time after that (on that pavement section) Clara Kelly, the little powerhouse who hasn't quite figured out bike handling yet, came zooming by. Just like in the Quad cycles race I couldn't hold her wheel, and she was gone.

Anyway, I held off Natalia to the end, for fifth place, and thoroughly enjoyed the mud and the muck and the rain. More races like that, please!

Photo taken without permission from Dana Prey

After changing into dry clothes, which seemed to take forever, since I was hiding in my car shivering so badly my teeth were actually chattering, we ventured towards the food, because Ed wanted to buy me sausage and beer and who am I to refuse an offer like that? Anyway, I had just taken the tape off my ankle, and two steps out of the car I stepped on a rock and rolled it again. I tried not to cry, but that hurt, bad. So Ed taped up my ankle again, and then the sausage and beer made it feel better. And soon it felt good enough to sprint around screaming at people to pedal harder for the rest of the afternoon. Perfect recovery for sunday!

More photos

My dad just got around to sending me some photos from the sprint two weekends ago. Why not put them on a blog, then.

The before. Smiling. I didn't smile afterwards for a while.

Out of the start. I look confused because I am. They give you your map, and you have to run 100m or something like that before you get to the official start, the way is flagged so you have time to look at your map while you're running. Naturally, this is a confusing exercise.



After. Tira promising me she'll take care of my sprained ankle for me.