January thaw

I love our Bill Koch League skiers - the little guys, zooming around at mach 4. But I am starting to get really annoyed with how they take over the ENTIRE ski track. Last I checked, Weston was open during their practices. Its one thing to have a small group to the side where you're instructing, but I almost took out a significant group of 8 year olds last night when they were spread out across the entire width of the river-side snow at the bottom of the curvy hill by the lodge. Way to stand in a blind spot, taking over the entire trail, on a super fast night. Now I know why our CSU skiers tend to take over the entire trail when they're skiing, too. Start 'em young...

BKL-interactions aside, I had a great interval session last night. The snow was super fast, if deep - only so much you can do with completely transformed sugar slush, but I'm trying to figure out how to ski relaxed in that crap. Kudos to Weston for blowing a ton of snow and having something to ski on after our thaw/torrential rains, though! I was doing 40 second intervals, with 20 seconds of rest, and boy did I feel fast during the ON bits. I realized, as I was zooming around, that I'm psyched to race again. It took almost two weeks, but I'm back in that mindset where work is just what you do in the five days between races. Hopefully I can carry this enthusiasm into a frigid, icy, four-lap, crashbury marathon. Here goes...

I also figured out a way (ok, I copied and pasted some html) to put a picture link to my training log at attackpoint.org. I think thats way cool, although most people just find it dorky. Its all about the colors!

Weston Ski Orienteering meet

Ed is doing all of the epunching for the US Ski-Orienteering Champs, so he wanted to have a dry run just to make sure that everything works. We turned it into an actual ski-o race, at Weston, and the only minor issue was that we didn't have a map yet. Ed took over mapping duties from me, because, in his words, I wasn't willing to sacrifice sleep for it. Well, no, duh. Anyway, we went and set up the controls after the highschool skiers were done with their race (Mass. state qualifier for EHS/J2 championships), and actually got some people to turn up, some of whom weren't just my friends who I'd begged to show up. Impressive. The advanced course had a map exchange, because its impossible to do a race at weston without going out to the flats at least twice, and things get too confusing if its all on one map. The two advanced maps are below.



The beginner course went well except for the fact that I forgot to put two controls out there that were supposed to be there. Luckily, we only got three beginners, and none of them got lost. Its a little hard to get lost at Weston.

I skied the course just to make sure everything was in order, and to set a benchmark time. Granted, I designed and set the course, but I still managed a 1-minute victory over the guy in second place. Go me, woo!

The beginner course. #3 and #5 sort of got forgotten, whoops.

So now I'd say we're all set for the champs, at least on the control side of things. Registration should be up later today... its gonna be a good one, don't miss it!

Ski like a girl!

A while back, I think around September or October, Anna Mcloon and I decided that we wanted to host an event at Weston that was run by women, for women. We were hoping to tap into the highschool-girl-potential and make them love skiing and become awesome racers, but as it turns out, we got all adults. Which is totally fine, and often much easier to teach, but next year, if we do this again, we'll probably hold two events - one for girls, and one for women. Anyway, we didn't really have any sort of plan for this, but I roped Sarah Holton and Linnea Koons into agreeing to be instructors. I managed to get our information up on Weston's website, and then we just sat around and did nothing for a few months.

As of Monday last week, we had less than 10 people signed up. Since we'd just lost an instructor (Linnea decided to do the Jackson 30k race on Saturday), we were down to three instructors, with 9 people, thats a pretty nice ratio. I sort of took it upon myself to do all the registration compilation stuff, and since last week was a wee bit busy, I just kept putting off compiling the registration stuff until Thursday night. And then I realized we had ~15 people signed up, which was still fine. And then Friday, we got 20 more registrations. I figured this out at 9pm, at which point, I was close to a panic - a lot of these women had never skied before, and its really hard to teach people how to ski when you have 10 people in a group. Some frantic phone calls and emails later and we'd convinced Erin Dubinski, an ex-CSU skier, to come down for the day, although she could only help in the afternoon. Phew!

We didn't have much of a lesson plan, but we had enough of one, and more importantly, Sarah has these ice-cream-making balls that you can ski around with - you put all the ingredients for ice cream into the ball, and ice and salt goes around the outside of where the ingredients go, and then you ski around (shake it) for 20 minutes and you get ice cream! Everyone there seemed to have a great time, and maybe even learn something. We had three lunchtime talks - Callie Gordon came and gave us a talk on nutrition for women, Anna did a waxing demo, and I gave a talk on sports psychology and what to wear while skiing. Then it was back outside. The sunny weather and warm temperatures helped, too, rain or snow would have been miserable.

Callie and me soaking up the sun during a short break from the outside technique bits.

The group of us, minus a couple people (10?) who'd had to leave already.

I'm getting the ice cream started - we hooked the bag's string around our ankles and skied around for 10 minutes to get it going. It was really obnoxious to ski with this thing around my foot, but we'd forgotten to bring any string to tie it around peoples' waists.

I was making people do crunches to learn how to properly do V2 alternate... they loved me for that one!

Anna giving her waxing talk.

The ice cream ball relay.

That was a super fun day. If a bit tiring. Big thanks to Sarah and Anna and Erin for helping out, and to all the women for participating!

The things keeping me busy this week

1. Coffee, in a somewhat constant stream.

2. Work - supposed to be working on one grant, and I managed to make a mistake a while back on a different grant that I'm now trying to fix by Friday morning and I'm having massive work-related-guilt about working on the wrong grant, and not getting done what needs to get done under the grant I'm supposed to be working on (most people would not be bothered by this. maybe I'm just too ethical, or something.)

3. Running two events this weekend - Ski like a girl! on Saturday, and a ski orienteering race on Sunday.

4. These events require a little prep work. Lets talk about the ski-o meet first - there is no map of Weston. A map is sort of a prerequisite for an orienteering meet. Since Weston is a small area and its all out in the open, you'd think it would be really easy to make the map. I guess to an experienced mapper who is comfortable using ocad (the orienteering mapping software), it would be easy, but to someone who has rarely if ever used ocad, I'm still on the steep, lower part of that learning curve. Simple tasks seem daunting. At least I am really good at downloading the data and putting it in the right formats... then once I get the basemap (basically just contours and an aerial photo), I get to go out and field check everything - trails, large individual trees, fences, you know, all those things you could possibly run into while skiing. Luckily for me, Ed likes doing stuff like this, and will probably save my ass when I can't finish the map in time.

5. Once I get the map done, I have to design some courses. For the most part, designing orienteering courses is fun and easy, but when its a ski-o meet on a golf course, it actually takes quite a bit of thought to make it interesting, so people don't feel that they're just skiing in circles.

6. I have to acquire all the various bits and pieces for e-punching for the event - luckily, Ed is running all of that, to iron out the kinks before the US champs on February 13-14, where he is doing all the e-punching. Poor Ed gets volunteered for so much crap 'cause of me...

7. Then there is the Ski like a girl! event. Luckily, I have Anna and Sarah helping me out, and they're both super competent and good instructors, but Anna and I both suffer from the problem of only ever coaching people who already know how to ski. So, we have to brush up on how to teach true beginners how to ski, come up with a lesson plan, and make this whole thing run smoothly. Anyone want to donate a whole bunch of hot chocolate? I feel that hot chocolate is a very necessary part of learning how to ski.

8. Lets make things a little more complicated, and teach the rest of the CSU orienteers how to ski right before the ski-o! This means I have approximately half an hour to set all the controls for the event, since there is a MA state qualifier ski race at Weston in the morning.

9. I have three athletes right now who after last weekend contacted me wanting to get together some time this weekend and talk about training plans. I don't know when that will happen, but training plans can't really wait, when JOs are on the horizon...

10. Grad school applications... I just finished those. But, it deserved a mention, since that was where most of the related stress came from.

I feel better now.

Rumford EC: Skate race

Chris Burnham photo. Proof that my ankles do bend, and I do know how to have a forward body position. yay! We can ignore the fact that it looks like I'm just running.

So, I was feeling pretty unsure about racing after I finished my cooldown on Saturday. I got back to the Reuter's house (staying with Colin's parents is definitely the highlight of the Rumford weekend - we had a four course dinner Saturday night!) and went for a jog, which just made me more depressed because my feet hurt from running around all day in ski boots. So then I stretched a lot, and took a contrast shower, and had an awesome dinner, and got my feet up for a while, and I decided that if this didn't recover me, it just wasn't gonna happen.

So, Sunday I drove over in time to see the J2s race, although I missed the boys' race because I was leading the J1 girls on a course tour. I think it was a pretty useful thing for them, we talked about how to tuck, and carrying momentum, and after one gradual, straight downhill, I asked, "was that faster? was it more fun?" and one of my girls turns to me and says "that was so scary!!" Ohhhh geez. Anyway, my girls looked pretty good on the downhills in the race, although the uphills for some of them were a different story. Its quite rewarding to watch people do what you tell them to do and have it make a difference. Go me!

My plan was to ski part of a warmup and then evaluate how I felt and whether or not I'd do the race. The cold felt like it was under control, but skiing up highschool hill the first time, I knew that there was no way I could make it up this thing twice, at race pace. Better to not push it today, it was superfan time. I missed the J2 boys, but I got to watch Corey go all superpower on highschool hill - she said she was totally tunnel-visioned by the top, I can believe it, that little chica was redefining what we mean by HAMMERING. She held off Heather Mooney by four seconds, those two girls are benefiting so much from having each other to race against. Impressive. The rest of my J2 girls did great, too, with Cate placing 8th in her first 5k and first EC, and Olivia in 11th in her first EC. Blake was just psyched to beat people, and really appreciative of my cheering on Highschool Hill.

The J1/OJ/open women were next, and I definitely felt some pangs of regret watching them whoosh by. If I felt good, I could totally be a contender in that race, but it would have been a miserable experience to race feeling the way I did on Sunday. Lauren rocked it to second place, representing for the washed-out seniors. Hannah, my first-year J1, clawed her way up to the lead group and snuck into fourth, with this huge grin on her face - there is nothing better than knowing you're having a good race while its happening. My other J1s, the ones who think the downhills were scary, skied mostly as a pack near the end of the race, but totally rocked those downhills.

At this point my voice was getting a little hoarse, I'd been screaming a bit much.
Catching my breath between screaming at innocent little CSUers... Chris Burnham photo.

I was having a great time, though, its really fun to cheer for people who are doing well in their races.
In the J1/JO/open men's race, Kris Freeman was impressive, basically skiing tempo and dropping the field, but the prize for hardest breather goes either to his brother Justin or to Ryan Kelly, the Colby assistant coach - those guys were working harder than anyone else in the field. It was impressive. My boys skied well, especially some of the guys who normally finish a lot nearer to the back of the field, and my voice was shot by the time their race was done. Maybe I should cheer less intensely, but I don't know how. It was super fun being a spectator for a day, though, especially at a race where I knew so many of the racers.

Monday, being a holiday, meant I could go somewhere and ski my brains out, so I just followed Colin and Linnea to Bretton Woods, where Colin was racing, and Linnea and I trudged through the snow sort of breaking the trail for the race. It was far enough removed from racing (if you ignore the fact that we were on race skis, on a race course, with a herd of racers bearing down on us) that I had a great time. I needed that. My brain needs a break from racing, and my body does too. Hopefully I can continue with this streak of mature decisions about racing, although I'm sorely missing those Tuesday night fights...

Rumford EC: Classic Sprint

For some strange reason, sitting on a plane for five hours with sniffling people after spending the night in the airport (i.e. not really sleeping) left me sniffling too. I thought I was all better by Friday morning, so planned on going up to the races and racing, but in hindsight that might not have been the smartest thing I could have done. I was suffering a little from some mental burnout, too - for a wannabe pro like me, nine races by mid January is a bit much, especially with all the other stuff going on in my life. I was definitely feeling the whole "washed up senior" thing.

Anyway, I figured I'd at least start the qualifier - after my warmup, I didn't feel like death, so I tried to put together a solid race. Unfortunately I'd waxed my skis a little too heavily - they kicked like mules going up the hills, but the long, gradual, slow downhill back to the stadium was much slower than it should have been. I ended up almost getting caught by Heather Mooney, who had started 15 seconds behind me, and it was all on that downhill - I had been gaining on both my 15 and 30s girls up to where the hill pointed downwards. I qualified 8th, but I didn't feel that that finish was representative of how it could have been.

For the quarterfinals, it had warmed up a bunch, so now we were on straight klister. I went with a pretty thin layer, erring on the side of more glide, less kick. I liked how it ran, but it turned out that in the race it was a bit too light. The first hill I spent my first three strides running in place, before I hopped out of the track. I was able to run back up to the pack, and right up the side, which got me into fourth. Going up the second hill, I ran around fourth place and into third, and then my skis glided well enough to get me up to second to advance to the semifinals, although I was definitely losing steam in the finish straight.

I could definitely feel that I'd been sick all week and had a stressful couple travel days at this point - my motivation was at an all-time low, and that quarterfinal had felt much harder than the qualifier. I jogged back to the CSU waxing area and gave my skis to Jamie, who was being my wax tech for the day (and let me just say how AWESOME it is having people dealing with your race wax!), and asked for a little more kick - I specified exactly how many dots of klister I wanted and where I wanted them, so it is entirely my fault that I had too much kick and not enough glide in the semis... whoops. Looking back, I really should have stuck with the light kick approach.

The semifinal started, and I instantly could tell that my skis were too slow - I was near the back in the first double pole bit. I didn't move up much on the first uphill, and the little chicane downhill after that I got dropped, hard. I was a couple ski lengths behind fourth place going up the second hill, but by the top of the hill I wasn't any closer and I just didn't have much energy to spare, so I decided to save it for the B final.

I didn't have time to change the skis, although I probably did if I'd been motivated about it - you'd think I'd have learned by now that having slow skis that kick was less useful than fast skis that were a little slippery. Really, this is even more my fault, because I hadn't brought my klister skis. I looked at the forecast, and it said Saturday would be a high of 26 with a chance of snow in the morning. Not 45 degrees and sunny. My klister skis would have let me have both kick and glide, since they're stiff (I mean, they're designed for klister, duh), but this genius left them at home.

Anyway, having finished last in the semifinal (I thought I was fifth, but I guess the Dartmouth girl must have snuck by at the line), I had last pick of the lanes, so I was in the far outside lane. Then I almost false-started, and caught myself on my poles, just as the gun went off. This meant that everyone else leapt forwards while I was still sort of pushing myself backwards, so saying that I had a bad start is sort of an understatement. By the bottom of the first hill I'd made contact again, though, by using my short-person-tuck technique, demonstrated below:


Going up the first hill, I hopped in the left-hand lane, which was on the outside, and made it just past the third place girl, when the girl in second, Rachel Hall (SMS), jumped out of her track and onto my ski tips. This is legit, I mean, its sprint racing and just about everything is legal in sprint racing, but there is a sort of unwritten rule that states "don't be a dick". That was a dick move. Since there were about four inches of overlap between our skis once she was in my lane, I was all over her skis for a bit. Maybe I should have hopped lanes again, but I decided to just ski behind her to the top of the hill, despite the fact that she was just blocking, not actually moving up.

We went down the hill and my patent-pending low tuck worked, I didn't get dropped, although I did enter the second hill in fourth, behind Lizzie Anderson (Ford Sayre). We got to the crest, where the herringboning starts, and I couldn't herringbone very effectively thanks to the sprained ankle, but I managed to pull even with her and when we turned the corner I turned on my jets. I should mention that while I did have some jets at my disposal, they had about three instances where they'd work today, and I'd just used up two of my available jumps in my quarterfinal and that first hill of the B final. My body wasn't all that happy with this whole racing thing, today.

So, I put in a surge, in the right-hand (outside) track, trying to pull even with Gage, who was leading. But whaddaya know, I got almost even with Rachel and she jumps on my skis again. I forget what exactly I said, but it was along the lines of "seriously? again?" With more energy I would have taken the next right-hand track, but with her on top of my skis, my acceleration had been killed, and I was feeling too old, fat, slow, and washed-up to respond to that attack. I tried, but she had a gap, and Lizzie moved into her hole behind Gage. By the top of the last hill, that group of three had about two ski lengths on me, enough that I wasn't going to get any drafting benefit on the downhill. I was in a low tuck, trying as hard as I could to pull my kick pocket off the snow, when Lauren Jacobs comes by, literally flying at twice my speed. I tried to catch up on the double pole section, but the funny thing is, if your skis are dragging in a tuck, they'll drag even more double poling, because your weight actually gets forwards. I was done, just moving through quicksand, a tempo more appropriate to a 30k than a 1.4k race, but it was all I had. I knew that the Dartmouth girl was closing, but there just wasn't much I could do about it. Thank god the race ended when it did, I threw my foot for all it was worth, and it was enough to hold her off, although another couple inches and she would have had me.

That was good enough for 11th on the day, and suddenly my cold from last week was back and I felt like utter crud. Tired, the kind with a capital T. I figured I'd go through all the right motions that night, and see if I could bounce back for the skate race, because that promised to be a super fun event. But I was pretty disappointed with the whole sprint thing - had I been healthy and somewhat rested, I think I could have been a contender. At least the CSU juniors did great, we had skiers in each age category make the heats! See Jamie's report on how the day went for CSU - here is a spoiler, they did great!

Home, sweet home

After a hellish 7-hour layover in the Seattle airport, where I huddled in a corner trying not to shiver too badly while I "slept", I made it back to Newton. That felt like a pretty long day, but the upside is that I got a lot of work done on the plane, and did my laundry as soon as I got home, so life suddenly feels a lot more organized. Amazing how having clean ski clothing can do that to you, its just too bad it gets smelly again so quickly. I decided to skip the Tuesday night race, for many reasons, but the most important one being that I don't need to push myself into sickness right now. Travel is stressful on my body, and I'm just now admitting that after knowing it for a long time - and just now accepting that its stressful, and doing something about it. But next Tuesday, all y'all masters better watch out...

I decided to join the CSU orienteers instead of the race, because they were doing a night course at Hammond Pond - my goal was an easy half hour of running to loosen up. I more or less put that plan into place, except for the parts where I was pushing the pace or leaping through the snow giggling, or the fact that I actually ran for 45 minutes. It turns out, I really like running in the snow. This might make me a traitor to my sport, but it is super fun to go gallumphing through the woods in untracked fluffy snow in the dark. My sweet new headlamp is super strong, and the snow helps reflect the light, so the orienteering actually gets much easier, and the snow covers up all those pesky rocks and blueberry bushes, so you can run a little faster. While running faster wasn't my goal, it happened anyway... whoops.

Anyway, that was a nice way to not think about ski racing for a night, to unwind a bit and let my legs stretch out, just to have fun. The fun factor was at least one order of magnitude higher than a Tuesday night master blastering. But next week... its on!