Canton Cup

I'm not sure this race deserves its own post. I showed up around 1:45, after running for three hours, with not enough food or water having been digested, or ingested. I was also dressed as a pirate, and realized quickly that it was way too warm to race in my pirate costume (with my faithful parrot - I mean, duck - pinned to my shoulder). I took pictures of the kids race, some of those kids were cute little buggers, and there were some great diggers, but the kids' race was at 2, and my race was at 2:30, so by the time I finished with taking pictures and got kitted up in a more temperature-appropriate outfit, I had three minutes to race start. Yay for no warmups!

I realized, on the start line, that I really didn't want to race my bike. I also realized, I hadn't pinned my number. But the official was very nice, and told me that since everyone else had their number, they'd be able to figure out who I was. Damn, that excuse won't work. Off we went, and my body quickly realized that I hadn't warmed up and my legs were tired. Unlike MRC (the other race where I also skipped the warmup), there weren't any sloppy corners to make up ground, Canton was dry and fast. I made two sketchy passes, got myself up to 6th, and then slowly dropped back to 8th place. Then a girl in front of me rolled her tubular, and I was back to 7th. Wheee! Two places out of the money!

And then my legs stopped working, and people were riding away from me. I didn't have any fight, nothing was happening to close the gap. I remembered Cathy before the race - "remember, its supposed to be fun". This wasn't fun. I had two options - I could drop out, or I could slow down until it was fun again. I decided that since the official had already let me race, I may as well finish. Unfortunately, at a slower speed, it wasn't that much more fun, it was just slower. I tried to think positive - "that girl who rolled her tire is going to be so psyched when she catches up!" And then I finished my four laps and I was done. And grumpy, and tired, and my body hurt, and I wanted to curl up in a little ball and go to sleep, not hang around until the end of the guys' race and do course take down. Grumble. I'm not going to do that again, no more racing unless I actually want to race. No more cross races on no warmup, either...

That might be it for CX for the year for me... West Yellowstone is around the corner, and that means SKI SEASON!!!

Hale Reservation Local Meet

Saturday was one of those days when I got home around 6pm and instantly fell asleep for an hour. It was also one of those days when I actually came to the conclusion that something was stupid as I was doing it. This is a rare occurrence in Alex-land. What I wanted to do Saturday was run at a local orienteering meet, but IBC co-sponsors the Canton Cup, so I had to go down there to help out. I had agreed to take pictures of the kids race and then help take down the course, since my race was at the end of the day, but since the kids' race wasn't until 2pm, I had all morning to orienteer! I bet most people would have been smart enough to choose one or the other, but I'm not most people, I think three races in a weekend is a good idea.

The black line drawn in pen (if you can differentiate it from trails) is my route.

Anyway, one of my goals for orienteering is to get faster at the super easy courses - the ones that the little kids run. Mostly this is so that I can get used to making snap decisions while on the fly, and hopefully I'll then carry this speed to the advanced courses. So the first order of business was to run a yellow course (the second-easiest). I went out and did a fairly thorough warmup - if I'm going to run hard, I'm treating it like an interval - laced up the ankle brace and headed to the line. The course was very easy navigationally - all the routes were on trails, with the controls just off the trails in the woods.

I quickly discovered that while it is faster to run on trails, rocky New England trails have much worse footing than squishy open woods, especially when you're going all out. I was spending a large portion of my energy watching my footing, and this meant that each time I did look at the map it had to be more "quality". But I could really hammer on the trails, and I made it through most of the course with no mistakes, until my penultimate control - the lactic acid must have finally been overwhelming me, because I made a stupid mistake and wasted four minutes (in a 20-min race, this is HUGE) wandering around a hilltop. After four minutes of that, I was recovered enough to realize what I'd done and fly through the rest of the course, but it is still somewhat embarrassing to make a big mistake on such an easy course.

Anyway, intensity for the morning over, I exchanged my yellow course map for the blue (the longest advanced course). I had noticed that my right knee was feeling a little weird as I finished the yellow, but I chalked that up to running hard, which I haven't done in a long time. I figured I was running the blue at an overdistance pace, so my knee wouldn't hurt. The first couple controls on blue were just beautiful - I should probably do more warmups that are hard and with a map, I felt totally in contact with the map and my surroundings. The woods at Hale Reservation are kind of shitty - lots of high bushes and blueberries in an otherwise open forest - it makes it hard to carry much speed through them, if you value your skin. Even with spandex or nylon pants, I leave these races in the woods southwest of Boston covered in red welts. Its too bad that the mapping does not reflect the actual density of the woods, because it really slows me down to push through the thick stuff.

In my vast intelligence, I hadn't eaten anything after the yellow course, so I started making mistakes after about an hour. That funny twinging feeling in my knee had morphed into a dull pain by control 11, and by 14 I was limping pretty badly. It didn't help that there were some long trail legs, when I had nothing to think about other than my knee hurting. I made a bunch of mistakes, but cleaned up my act by the end, and finished in about 2:15. Between the warmup, the yellow course, and the blue, I was at close to 3 hours of running. Whee! Time for a bike race!

Anyway, the knee thing seems to have cleared up by now, it was stiff Sunday but fine this morning, I'm hoping it was just related to my biomechanics when I am wearing the ankle brace. We'll see if it comes back...

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.