The thinking athlete

I was watching the video of Jess' race last weekend, and it struck me how differently the top 10 or so girls ran from everyone else. Their technique was effortless, smooth, efficient - you get back to where Jess is running (and she is DAMN fast, so don't think I'm mocking her), and the girls are choppier, looking a little looser. Part of that might have to do with the slower people working harder, but watch that video and see how the black girl in front just floats over the ground. Beautiful to watch. After seeing that video, I asked Jess what her team does for running form drills - not much, apparently. I know a lot of running coaches think that running is such a natural motion that if you try to change how someone runs, it'll totally mess with them.

I don't know how I feel about this - I sort of feel like every motion can be improved with conscious effort. This could just be stemming from my gymnastics days ("Straight legs, Aleksandra! What do you think this is, the beginner class?" thanks, Youlia, for teaching me how not to coach), when you had to always be conscious of what your body was doing, since you're judged on appearance, but even doing endurance sports, running, biking, skiing especially - I am always conscious of what I am doing, attempting to move deliberately. Some might call it over-analytical. When I ski, I spend about 95% of that time thinking about my technique. Even on a bike, I find myself thinking about pedaling smooth circles, dropping my shoulders. How much do you cyclists out there think about technique? I'm not talking mountain biking so much, but the road stuff - do you just pedal? Do you runners just run? Or do you think about it?

I know Jess would disagree (being the poster girl for just doing stuff as it happens), but I think to be the best at your sport, you always have to have a subconscious feeling for what your body is doing. Or does that take away the fun? I feel like I have more fun when I feel that I am doing something perfectly, but that could just be the type A speaking. Or maybe that is why I like to coach.

Did cavemen think about how they ran?

Orienteering... at night

Sort of like mountain biking at night, orienteering in the dark is supposed to really increase your technical proficiency... the only problem is, its terrifying. Who is going to know where to look for your body when you run into a tree and knock yourself out and then the rabid coyotes of eastern Mass drag you off to their lair to eat you? Even chipmunks look menacing when you're running alone at night. Luckily around Boston, most of the parks where we orienteer have lots of trails, and are bounded by roads, so its hard to get really lost, and the trails give you a very nice feeling of safety. But in Pawtuckaway, where they host the wicked haahd night-o, well thats a different story. I was too scared to try it this year, maybe after enough urban night-o's I'll be confident enough to brave the bears and moose and attack badgers of Pawtuckaway.

CSU (the orienteering section) has been alternating street orienteering training with night orienteering recently. Last week, we were running on a map of MIT, I wasn't running hard or fast but I kept running into Lori, who was running hard and fast, and she was utterly confused until she figured out that I was cutting through buildings. Apparently, when she said "you can't go through the buildings", she meant, that's against the rules, not that it was impossible - because I definitely found many shortcuts...

Last night we were at Cat Rock Park, in Weston, and for the first time ever, I enjoyed myself thoroughly at a night-o! I was a little nervous about coyotes (why do things that don't scare you in the daytime make you shiver at night?), although some people might debate about whether or not there are coyotes in this area (there are), but it was cloudy, so the city lights were reflecting off the clouds and actually giving a fair bit of light to see by. This meant that in the open areas, you could actually move pretty quickly, and in a straight line to boot! My light isn't very bright, so most of my orienteering at night is pretty slow - like 12 minute miles slow - because I just can't see far enough to be able to simplify the map. I need to figure out a way to rig my mtb light to my head without a helmet.

Anyway, I caught up to Mark at number 2, and then threw away many minutes overshooting 4, caught back up to him on the way to 5 and we were together to 10. We overtook Ed on the way to 7 (which I also messed up, I kept trying to lose Mark, but its impossible to lose people at night because you can see their lights. It did occur to me to turn off my light so that he couldn't see me, but luckily I ruled that out as stupid early on). I kept trying to drop Ed, but it just didn't work. We lost Mark on the way to 12, taking a different (faster) route, and then I almost dropped Ed in a couple places, but each time he'd see me and sprint to catch up, and with a recovering ankle, there was no way I was going to run faster than my safe little trot, in the dark, off trail...

Anyway, we finished, everybody came out of the woods, nobody had gotten attacked by rabid deer (gotta look out for those aggressive suburban deer), nobody had broken a leg, poked out an eye, twisted an ankle, all these things that I am always SURE will happen when I run at night. I think I just moved one step closer to being comfortable with the scary darkness...

Travel diet weekend

That means I stay home. My mom and my dog came to visit - Tira, she gave us such a scare back in August, we really thought she'd be dead in a couple days. And then she totally turned around, and now she is like a puppy again. She got attacked by a nasty dog Friday night, a big German Shepherd whose owner couldn't control it, and I guess its lucky that dog wasn't going for her throat, he took a big chunk out of her butt. She's ok, but was gimping around all weekend. Poor little old beagle, having to spend the weekend in my third-floor apartment - she'd give you the signs that she had to go out, we'd open the apartment door, she'd look at the stairs and change her mind. So slow up and down those stairs, even with the painkillers from the Vet she wasn't happy.
Here she is at the Rochester A-meet, assisting me with my duties as finish volunteer.

Luckily by Sunday she was more energetic and her wounds were scabbing over, so we went on a walk through a gorgeous forest on a gorgeous day.

But I have little respect for owners who can't control their dogs - if you know your dog has a history of attacking other dogs, keep it on a leash. Especially in public places, hell if Tira was a kid I bet the average mother would be suing.







It was a nice change from Saturday's rain, where we'd been helping out with CSU's Skyline Scramble, a trail race in the Fells. It was a pretty small turnout, and I'm afraid that some of the runners won't be coming back after they got lost - that is probably our fault, we floured the course but it rained overnight (the flour WAS still there), and the instructions were to follow the white blazes, which are sometimes hard to see. A couple people made a wrong turn, next year we'll definitely have to put out some streamers near intersections. You can't exactly run tape around an 8.1 mile loop, but at least the intersections will be better marked.

The bike cave, travel diet weekends tend to mean its time to fix the bike(s), luckily I had Ed playing too. I think we need more light in our place...

Inspirational

Morgan Smyth, of the USST, came to Boston to give a talk to the CSU juniors last Sunday. It was pretty cool that she'd take time out of her life to come share some stories with the juniors, and I could tell it made an impact on a lot of them. She came up through the ranks just the way they are doing, there is no magic formula or huge leap, its just hard work, a little talent, a little luck, and more hard work.

One of the things I was glad to hear Morgan say was that she attributes a lot of her success to making the right decisions - she admitted she'd made plenty of wrong decisions, too, but it all comes down to the fact that you have a choice, and its up to you to make the right one. She's had some setbacks, knee surgery in 2007, compartment surgery last summer, but it was great to hear her tell the juniors that you can bounce back from anything, usually stronger than before, if you make the right decisions - recover well, rest well, train well. Its not always a walk in the park, but its not supposed to be easy.

As a coach, it was music to my ears to hear her say she worked on technique every day. None of the kids would believe me if I said it, but now hopefully they'll be inspired to do the work, to come to practice with the focus necessary to reach their potential (which is a stupid phrase, but its true). You've gotta focus on your goals, and on how you'll get to those goals, and its a long road and there aren't any shortcuts, but you'll get there if you keep working.

Huge thanks to Morgan for sharing her time and her thoughts with us. We are all going to be cheering for her to get on that Olympic team. It was really great for the kids to see how "real" the good skiers are - there is no difference between my swaggering J2 boys and Andy Newell other than age and a lot of hours on skis... and they have to see that for themselves. I think they call that believing in yourself.

But me, I can stay old and cynical.

Here is what Morgan had to say about her visit with the best junior club in the whole world.

MRC Cyclocross

Alex has a really bad day and tries to avoid the grumps.

The Belgian Beer Festival Saturday night was awesome, but it meant that I might have felt better racing bikes on a different Sunday. The plan was to hit up the NEOC Club Championships orienteering event as a warmup for the bike race, the orienteering was in the Wrentham state forest, literally 1.1 miles south of the race site for the cyclocross. I wanted to run the red course (the course I'd be ranked on for the championships), and then run some of the easier courses fast to work on navigating at full speed. This would leave just enough time to get to the race site, register, get dressed, and race my bike.

Then Colin proceeded to crash my car in the process of driving it to my house, but it still drove, so, we went to Wrentham. I was kind of worked up.

It was pouring rain and 37 degrees, but I figured I'd warm up by running. I neglected to take into account how horrible the map was - it did not line up with reality, which makes running fast basically impossible, because you're questioning everything and wondering why its all just so wrong. Even the trails were wrong. Given a slightly later start than I'd planned, I had to run one of the shorter advanced courses, and never got time to run one of the easy courses fast like I'd planned. I hate it when I fail at training.

I got to the cyclocross race with 17 minutes before my race, badly hypothermic - I couldn't really sign my name on the waiver, it was more of a wiggle from a pen held in a fist. I managed to get myself dressed and on the start line, but my teeth were chattering pretty loudly. I hadn't seen the course, but it didn't really matter, since the mud kept things pretty slow. The pack spread out slowly, and I moved back quickly, my body was just completely rejecting this bike riding thing. After a lap my core temperature had come back up to normal, and I felt like I could race my bike, so I started picking back places. I'm good at the mud, and I love riding in slop, so once I'd figured out how to pedal my bike, it wasn't too hard to move up a little. One girl from the 3/4 race (which started at the same time as the 1/2/3 race) had gotten in front of me, and that threw off my counting to figure out where in the race I was.

After enough sloppy turns, I caught up to Michelle, who looked at me and said "Its YOU again!" I think that means she wasn't too happy to see me. We moved up to what I thought was 5th and 6th but was actually 6th and 7th, and I got a gap on the last lap by taking the inside line by the tree up at the top of the course, and opening it on those fun little downhill corners. It was a fun race, thanks to the mud, but I definitely wasn't working as hard as I was yesterday - there was no choking on my own phlegm going on in the cold rain. I do have a gripe - if you're going to hold a race in the dirt, which can turn into mud if it rains, it would be really nice if you could have a hose there.

I may love racing in the muck, but I sure don't love cleaning the bike afterwards. Or the clothes. Or my car. Which has some problems beyond being muddy right now.

But I thought I did a good job with not getting into too bad a mood on Sunday, despite having someone else get in an accident in my car, failing to accomplish my training goals for the day for orienteering, getting super hypothermic and attempting to race a bike while mildly hungover, and staying cold for many hours afterwards thanks to the CSU meeting... I suppose it could have been worse.

Mansfield Hollow CX

I did this race in 2007, when I was really pushing the limits of being overtrained, and I ended up dropping out. I just remember being so, so, tired. I could barely make it up the run-up, not to mention think about pedal my bike. That's not a good sort of tired. Anyway, this year, I'm not overtrained, and I've been having a lot of fun riding my bike, and this race was no exception.


I started in the second row, I hadn't done a super thorough warmup so I figured I didn't need to blast out of there. The start was stupid sketchy, people changing lanes, veering all over, rubbing elbows, so I slowed down. Through the first little uphill barrier, around the field, onto the off-cambre and I screwed that up, had to awkwardly dismount, and pretty much took out 3/4 of the women's field. Eight got away, and a bunch more passed me as I was trying to figure out how to get my bike down from that hillside. Whoops. My initial reaction was to feel pretty guilty about causing people to have to dismount, and then I realized, its a cross race, its the first lap, its something mildly tricky in traffic - you can't get too mad at someone bobbling it. The guilt dissipated.

I set to chasing, and moved up to 7th by the end of the lap, caught 6th just before the technical part of the course (which was SO MUCH FUN), caught up to 5th by the run-up, passed her on the power section, and set my sights on 3rd and 4th. I caught Michelle going into the third lap, and caught up to Natalia after the run-up by the guy in the chicken suit. I was leading into the field back onto the off-cambre, and I carried too much speed and got bounced off balance and fumbled again, another awkward dismount and I was really annoyed about that, and Natalia and Michelle rode past me. I knew I could catch them, I had legs of gold that day, and I'd already discovered that I was significantly faster on the fun part of the course. I knew at that point I wasn't catching 1st and 2nd, there wasn't THAT much room for error. While it would have been nice to use these legs of gold to contest first place, racing is racing and bobbling is part of it, best to just learn to ride a bike.

We had two laps to go, I got past Michelle by dive-bombing a corner, and caught up to Natalia just after the sand, where I was making up ~10s on her each lap. I'm good at sand. Instead of instantly attacking, I sat on her wheel to recover up the run-up and through the woods back to the power section. When she didn't speed up there, I knew I had her, so went around and tried to sort of attack - difficult when you're already going close to full-out. I wish I'd had a HRM on, I was basically wheezing the whole way.

I was in 3rd going into the last lap and knew I just had to ride cleanly to cement this place, and I heard Natalia go down going over the telephone pole thing, now it was just Michelle I was holding off, so I railed the corners and the sand and got myself a pretty nice little gap, held on to 3rd but was >1min down on 2nd, who was <30s down on first. The prize money paid the entry and some gas, and the race had free food and a man in a chicken suit. I'll be back next year for sure.

A shitshow of a weekend

On paper, it looked fine. To me, of course, reasonable has a different meaning than it does to most people, but still. Friday night, dinner with some friends. Saturday, cyclocross at Mansfield. Saturday night, Belgian beer festival. Sunday morning, NEOC club championships (orienteering). Sunday noon, MRC cyclocross, same town as the orienteering. Sunday afternoon, CSU meeting to hear Morgan Smyth talk.

OK, maybe that is a little busy.

Anyway, Ed decided that he wanted to make indian food for dinner Friday. We only have three burners right now, since one of them committed sepuku. Ed wanted to make seven dishes. Plus rice. Reality check? Whatever, it worked, it tasted good, we have enough indian leftovers for many, many, meals. But you don't get that much food produced without a sous chef, I was on my feet for a long while.

I had wanted to go to Portland for the Casco bay cyclocross race, but Portland is pretty far away to drive alone. I try to avoid driving alone, since its bad for the environment and I feel super guilty about being an environmentalist and driving and flying all over the place, so I at least make lots of efforts to carpool. Nobody was biting on a drive to Portland, so I figured Mansfield Hollow was the next best bet - it was far, but not as far as Portland, I love the course, there was free food, and Colin agreed to carpool. Naturally, I didn't take into account the fact that his race wouldn't end until 3pm, and the beer fest started at 6. This sounds doable until you realize that Mansfield Center is 90 minutes from Boston, its 45 minutes on the T from my house to the beer fest, I had to drop Colin off first, and traffic on I-90 was stopped at one point on the way home.

Poor Colin had no idea what he was getting into when he agreed to carpool.

Late arrangements were made, I would leave my car at Colin's house overnight, he would drive it to my house in the morning since he was going to MRC too, even though he'd have to be there 6 hours early. Thanks, you're a trooper.

I get a call Sunday morning. "Alex, its Colin. I have good news and I have bad news. The good news is I'll be on time, the bad news is I crashed your car". Um, what? I gather some idiot in a 15-passenger van tried to go the wrong way around a rotary, and a little blue honda was in the way as this was happening. Colin followed the van out of the rotary, to a gas station, got out of the car and the van gunned it. At least he got the plate number, we're working things out and insurance will cover the damage, but boy does that suck. And the car works. The current theory is that it was a college student driving a van for Head of the Charles, who was still drunk from the night before and realized that if the cops came they'd have a DUI. So they ran off. I hope we get them.

So anyway, we turn around 10 minutes from my house because I've forgotten my compass and my sportident for the orienteering. Proceed to get to the meet 25 minutes later than planned, I ran brown, and got really pissed that the map didn't line up with the terrain and the waist-high blueberries were marked as runnable forest. I also got sopping wet. Colin had been hanging out at the race heckling, luckily the race site was 3 minutes from the orienteering site. He came back and got me, I ran over to registration, got a number, managed to get dressed and on my bike in time for a cyclocross race.

End Colin's involvement in my weekend. I bet he breathed a huge sigh of relief as I drove off.

Drove up to Lincoln, avoiding the Patriot's game traffic, got to get inspired by Morgan, and at this point (after a dinner of leftover indian food) I'm almost at a manageable level of stress. Ahhh.

Why is tomorrow Monday? I need a weekend to recover from the weekend...