Thanksgiving

We aren't really doing things traditionally... having leftovers for dinner instead of turkey, for example. But, the turkey isn't what thanksgiving is about. As far as I can tell anyway, its about the pies. No, not even pies - its about appreciating what you've got. There is a lot to be thankful for, as corny as that sounds, and its even cornier to list stuff in a blog, but still, sometimes you do have to just sit and count your blessings.

I'm sitting in a warm hotel room, with an upside down pineapple cake in the oven of our adjacent kitchenette, spending time with Jess, four blocks from 40km of perfectly groomed ski trails, in NOVEMBER! I have six pair of fast skis just waiting for the right conditions, brand new boots that fit like a charm, and snazzy-looking poles, all thanks to Alpina. Looking broader, I have a job, that I feel is meaningful and that allows me time off to go on these crazy adventures, I have coworkers who support me, and I have the time and energy to devote to ski coaching, with talented coaches and some great juniors. I have a boyfriend who most of the time believes in what I'm doing with my spare time, unless of course its those 5am rollerskis in the rain (when even I'm questioning what it is I'm doing), parents who love me, and great friends. Before I get too gushy, let me just say thanks. Life is good, and I'm happy.

craaaaaaaazy lady alert...

Now back to the important stuff - skiing! The first race was yesterday, a qualifier-only sprint race. It was on a trail called volunteer, which had some really fun ups and downs (well, the downhills are generally more fun than the uphills in my book) - and it was point to point. An interesting format. The general consensus at altitude is to start slow in the races, and I did that part REALLY WELL. Of course, then the consensus says you have to speed up, and I didn't do that so well. If we look at the bright side, no post-race hack!

The pre-race waxing bustle. I had great skis, Janice of NENSA was waxing for me, thanks Janice!

A little back story... we got here late saturday night, and I felt fine skiing Sunday, but after a harder workout Monday morning, I felt like utter crap all afternoon. My stomach was all twisted in knots and I really couldn't move. No appetite, and forcing down some lunch had put my stomach into that uncomfortable spot. Tuesday rolled around and I still didn't have any appetite - I made it through a bowl of oatmeal in the morning and about half a bottle of gatorade later on, but I was bonking by the end of the morning's ski - light headed, dreaming of lying down, short of breath, freezing cold, the full-on bonk. I was a little scared, my stomach still hurt if I tried to take any food (which explains the bonk), so called my dad to see what he thought, naturally he said don't rule out swine flu, which had Jess super pumped, let me tell ya... I was able to choke down a couple bites of banana before the afternoon ski, and made it through about an hour before I started to get really cold. Jess dragged me along, being super nice and waiting as I'd hang over my poles at the tops of hills and poking me to make sure I wasn't dead from time to time, and aside from the slightly painful pins and needles and the constant shivering, I survived. But boy was I feeling crappy. Still no food, because that would make my stomach hurt. I was thinking I probably shouldn't race if I was feeling like this, because I was discovering that not-eating leads to being very cold and feeling very tired. Never could have guessed that one...

Luckily, Wednesday morning rolled around and I was - if not quite hungry - at least not feeling miserable. Breakfast went down fine, so I figured I'd race. I didn't feel particularly weak during the race, but I was definitely tired - I expect that the whole starvation diet thing of the last two days wasn't doing much for helping my muscles recover. I've never had a reaction to altitude like this before, it was a little scary, but I'll blame Monday's hard workout. Hopefully after a couple days of regular eating, I'll feel good in the races this weekend. I already felt peppy skiing this morning. Wooooo skiing! Even feeling like there was a monster trying to get comfortable in my stomach the past couple days, the skiing has been great!




The subject matter in these photos is getting a little... dare I say, old? Jess, me, or snow, in any combination.

Wordless.

West Yellowstone

Due to the nature of Thanksgiving travel, things got messy at the airport - no charge for the skis (woot!), but after we boarded the plane to get to Denver, they announced that they'd found a leak in the hydraulic pump, so were replacing it. One hour later, the engine starts up, and I'm feeling hopeful. Not a long delay, a good chance of still making the connection to get to Bozeman, but then the engine shuts off. The captain comes back on the intercom and informs us that there is now a fuel leak in the engine, game over 'til that gets fixed. Statistically, planes may be safer than cars, but there is no such thing as a fender bender in a plane - accidents are serious.


Luckily, there was a flight to Bozeman out of Salt Lake, via Chicago, so with about ten minutes to spare, they put me on a new flight. Naturally the skis didn't make it. Six hours later than I'd planned, I got to Bozeman, where Jess was patiently waiting for me, and we negotiated our way up the slippery canyon to finally find our beds by 1am. Ooof.

Thanks to an east coast circadian rhythm, we were up early, a little tired but ready to go skiing! We quickly sorted out how to maneuver these long, wheel-less rollerskis, and soon were humming along, albeit at a rather glacial pace to try to stay in zone 1. This altitude stuff is no joke! The snow here is awesome, no rocks or dirt that I could see, and it was the perfect weather for skiing - some sun, cold snow, but not too cold and no wind. I'd forgotten how much I love skiing, there is such a sensuousness to it that you just don't get on rollerskis - whatever it is that people define as snow feel, I've still got it, and there is really just nothing to rival the feeling of gliding.

Huge thanks to Jess for lending me all the ski clothing... jeans just weren't going to cut it!

My camera fell into the snow lens-first (I swear, it did it on its own), so most of my pictures today have an old-school sort of feel to them... I kind of like it.

Sick!

From Jessica Jerome's blog on Fasterskier.

Thanks Alpina!

Shiny!

Although I haven't used the classic boots yet, the skate ones are bees knees. Do people still use that expression? The outer looks similar to last year, but there is more padding on the inside and inside the cuff and the heel fits a lot closer - these are some good changes. Even the classic boot feels like it'll be comfortable for 3+ hours! (I may not have skied in the classic boots, but I've certainly pranced around the house in them. What, thats not normal?)

I'm leaving for West Yellowstone in two days, so it was with some relief that I finished my last rollerski workout this morning (hopefully I won't have to pick them back up on Dec. 1... ). Skied to work, just because there wasn't time for anything else, and my favorite comment was "I have never seen anybody doing THAT before". The nice thing is they've repaved most of the storrow-side bike path, although I did almost get squashed crossing whichever bridge it is that doesn't have a crosswalk. Something should be done about that.

A lot of my energy in the past couple weeks has been going into planning the US Ski Orienteering Champs this winter. There was one weekend with no ski races planned on it, although by now there are some planned, over President's day weekend, and I was dead-set on holding the champs that weekend, in hopes of attracting some skiers. We had some pushback, but I think we're all in agreeance now that the event is actually on the schedule. So if you're a skier who doesn't have anything else going on that weekend, stop by Craftsbury to try it out. We have six loaner map holders, which makes things a whole lot faster and easier.

Time to figure out what skis need to come to West with me... and which ones Boulder Nordic already has... and how empty my wax box is... maybe I should have done all this before the day before I leave. Whoops. Check back in a few days for sweet pictures of snow porn!

Blue Hills Traverse

I did this race last year for the first time, it was mostly a trail run, but there was definitely some navigation involved, and I decided to give it a go this year as well - actually it had been on my calendar for a long time, as I felt I'd have a chance at actually doing well. Unlike most orienteering, this race lets you follow, and much of the running is on trails, so I don't lose out as much as I would to more experienced orienteers on a "real" course. The Blue Hills East map is much older than the West one, and really, it just sucks to orienteer on. Things aren't quite as accurate as I'd like, and the fact that none of the blue features (ponds, marshes, etc) were visible threw me for a loop a couple times.

The first leg was ~2km long, and I quickly decided that the road looked like the safer choice. Unfortunately, I was following Boris, who took a huge group of us (being favored for the win, people figured he'd be a good person to follow) almost 180 degrees away from #1, and although we got to the road eventually, we probably could have saved a few minutes by getting there more directly... I was hoping, once we hit the road, to really hit the afterburners and take off, but quite the opposite happened. My intense week the week before had caught up to me, apparently, and I was working REALLY HARD to keep that 8-min mile I was holding. I watched Marie, a fast Swedish chick studying in the US, run away from me, and there was nothing I could do about it. This was disappointing, but I figured, why let up, maybe fast people will make mistakes.

I caught up to Tim Parsons, one of the faster "old but accurate" guys, and we started narrowing the gap on his 15yo kid who was up ahead of us. Ben (Tim's son) didn't look like he was pushing all that hard, and I remembered finishing close to him last year. Leaving #1, I found myself in a pretty prestigious group - JJ Cote, Greg Balter, Tim Parsons, and Ben Parsons. This meant that we were moving pretty cleanly towards #2, although Balter was running away from us. We hit the last trail crossing, and slowed down as we entered the woods. Here was where I managed to make a 9-minute mistake - I thought we'd gone too far, because I hadn't realized that the scale of the map was a 1:15,000 instead of the 1:10,000s that I'm used to. I spent a long time circling that area, reattacking the control twice, and finally getting there around the same time as Vanessa Wood, a local runner whose boyfriend does a lot of orienteering but she doesn't do as much. At this point, I was kind of pissed, when you spend nine minutes wandering in circles, it feels like thirty minutes, and my prestigious group was gone. I should have just trusted them!

#3-4 were fast and accurate, but Vanessa wouldn't be shaken. I breathed a huge sigh of relief as we crossed the road and onto the newer map, although looking at my garmin tracks versus the red line which is how I drew my route, I don't know how accurate the Blue Hills West map is, either. What the heck was going on between 5 and 6? I was running on the trail. What was my garmin doing? The garmin route to 3 also looks a lot more wiggly than I remember running...




Vanessa and I continued to run together, although we were certainly not working together - it was a series of attacks, she would attack on the trails and I'd try to make up some ground in the woods. I know following is allowed in this race, but by #8 I was starting to get really annoyed that she was able to use my accurate navigating to spike each control - something she probably wouldn't have been able to do on her own. She finally dropped me running up the hill to 9, I just couldn't make my legs work anymore, and had to walk it. I thought I'd do something clever to 10, and it was actually a good plan, but I managed to fluff it up and go down the wrong trail, and then I let the vegetation push me too far to my left on the way to 11 - at this point I was sure Vanessa was GONE. But leaving 11, she was coming in to it, clearly my observations had been correct, left to her own devices she didn't do so well. Unfortunately it was a lot of uphills and trail running to 12, and she caught up.

Finally by 13 we had some actual orienteering, there was navigating to be done and while I wouldn't call the woods technical, being the better technical orienteer meant I could put some time on her, a couple seconds here, a couple there. Unfortunately, there was a long freakn trail run to 17, and she closed the gap really quickly. I don't think I've ever been in a situation before where I couldn't just run away from people. Yuck. I was ready to cede the race at this point - she was opening a gap, I was tired, my knee hurt, and I just wanted it to be over. Luckily for me, Vanessa misread her clue sheet and didn't see the control at the top of the cliff for 17, and I caught up to her while she was standing there and scrambled to the top ahead of her. I was worried she'd catch me as I was hiking up the ski slope - definitely couldn't run it - but I got to 18 just ahead of her, and then gallumphed down the slope to the finish with complete disregard for my ankles, while she slowed down a bit because shes not quite so dumb as me.

So that puts me as fifth girl, 25th overall. Not a great run, but I was pleased with my orienteering, and it was fun to battle with Vanessa the whole time. But boy does 10 miles of running not feel good when you're not used to it.

More testing

Friday was my first 3000m of the year - usually I try to do one in the spring, too, but I just never got around to it this year. One of my junior skiers also wanted to run a 3k, having missed the last one with the team, so we joined forces to battle the track in the dark. It was warm, but really windy - a headwind right down the home stretch, and Hannah, being ~6" taller than me, was definitely benefiting from the tailwind more in the backstretch. We did a solid warmup, and lined up. I was hoping to use a similar pattern in my splits as last year - starting fast, getting a little slower, and then finishing a little faster. Hopefully I'd be faster, but I wasn't holding my breath for that, given the ankle sprain and other various issues through the summer, any running I've been doing has either been slow (warmups) or in the woods, which also tends to be slow.

We started out, and I drafted Hannah going through the first 200m - that one was fast, 42 seconds. I thought i might have a chance of having a good 3k, but when I hit that back stretch with the tailwind, I knew it wasn't to be - I just couldn't pick up the pace for that part, despite having the tailwind. I knew I'd need to be moving there, because the wind in the homestretch was strong enough that it was adding ~2 seconds to each 200, which is significant - and I was only losing 1 second on the back stretch. So each lap was 1-2 seconds slower than I wanted it to be. The pacing structure was right, I just couldn't move fast enough. I ended up 10 seconds too slow, 12:10, but I was satisfied. The wind might not have been worth 10s, but it was certainly worth some seconds, so that was good enough. Hannah didn't break her record, either, finishing just two seconds shy of it - 11:59, a darn good effort, given the wind!

Saturday, it was pouring rain, and the November blues had hit hard - my desire to rollerski in the rain was quite low, to put it mildly. I had read about the Ski Erg competition on fasterskier, and some of the CSU masters had sent a link to it, so I figured, hey, the Community Rowing Center is close, I'll go do that. I don't think I set any new records, in fact some more of my juniors showed up and trounced me, but I did get a long-ish "warmup" on the thing, as an alternative to rollerskiing, staring out the window watching the rowers fight the torrential rain.

It looked pretty gross out there, so I went orienteering soon thereafter. Running in the woods in the rain just makes me feel hardcore, I guess.

We did some experimenting, to see what technique was fastest. It turns out, double poling on that machine isn't quite like a real double pole (it really is upper-body-only) and its not very fast, the fastest technique is to just hang on to the cords and jump up and down as fast as you can. I wish I'd gotten a photo of Jim doing that during his test...
Jumping up and down.

I can see the ski erg being good for strength, but not really as a substitute for testing on skis or for just going skiing. Technique is just too big a piece of the skiing pie to leave it out like that.


Presto, Lori's dog, was really excited when he realized we were going orienteering. And then he got out of the car and realized it was raining, and the look on his face was clearly saying "I did NOT sign up for this. Why is the weather ruining my run?" Upon getting back to the car, it was pretty funny watching him attempt to get dry RIGHT NOW. He wears a rain jacket because if you had 0% body fat, you'd get cold too.