WCOC A-meet: Long distance

The second day of the WCOC meet was at Huntington state park, near Bethel CT. It was billed as a "classic" course, not quite a long, but definitely longer than a middle. The women were doing 8km, and I'd heard that this forest was also very open and fast, so I was psyched to try and run faster than I had on Saturday. Unfortunately, I ran too fast, and completely outran my brain, botching the first control by 17 minutes. Yes, minutes. By the time I finally found that stupid control, I knew I was out of contention. I had just taken 23 minutes for a 5-6 minute leg, you can't make up that sort of time. So I punched the control, stopped, and said "ok. Push the reset button now".
This is the little bugger that gave me all that trouble. Grrr.

The second race of the day (#2-17) went pretty well. I was pleased with my ability to put that first leg out of my brain, and I was moving really well at times. I had some excellent legs out there, as well as a couple bobbles, but near the end my left achilles started to get really tight and painful. This hasn't bothered me since 2007, so it was probably related to rolling my ankle or something, but I definitely slowed down as the pain increased. I have come to the realization that even though I have a relatively high pain tolerance, when I think that whatever is hurting is doing something bad to my body, with lasting effects, I won't tolerate the pain, or at least I get really wimpy about it. So I will tear my legs to shreds on brambles, and not notice it, but if I feel a twinge of pain in my ankle, I slow down. I guess that's self preservation for ya, didn't know I had it in me...



I rolled in to the finish eventually, sort of hobbling because of my sore achilles, definitely didn't win that finish split. I was so pissed about that first mistake that I went out to run the first leg again, although it turned out that running was painful, so I mostly walked. And took some silly action shots along the way. It was a beautiful sunny day, if a bit chilly and windy, and the forest was just so open and fun to run through that I couldn't stay angry for long. Sure, my overall score for the weekend was crap, but I was able to find the good in each run. The courses were very well designed, the maps were exquisite, and everything was run very smoothly and very professionally.



Results, which also have the overall weekend results, and splits, although that is for the entire red course, which also includes M40, M55, and M-20, so there are a lot of boys mixed in. I was 35th if you want to scroll all the way down there...
That is a big boulder.

Action!

WCOC A-meet: Middle distance

The Western Connecticut Orienteering Club (WCOC) put on a national level meet last weekend, which also happened to be a World Ranking Event (WRE). This attracted some of the really fast Canadians, as well as a bunch of fast Americans, many of whom are sticking around until next weekend, which is the US Team Trials at Harriman. I had heard that CT had really nice forests to run through, but I didn't really believe it until after this weekend. It was just beautiful out there, open deciduous forest with a smattering of mountain laurel just to make things interesting, rolling hills but nothing too steep, and not too many annoyingly pointy rocks on which to break my ankles. I don't think I've ever run so fast, or so hard, during an orienteering race.


Saturday was the middle distance event, at Ansonia Nature Center, near New Haven. Middle distance races tend to be the most technically challenging, so I was interested to see whether all this technical training I'd been doing this spring would make me faster.

The sky had been alternating between heavy thunderstorms and heavy rainstorms the whole drive down to New Haven, and naturally that didn't let up for the race. As the thunder rumbled ominously and the rain soaked me to the skin, I wondered briefly if I would make it through the race alive. A few years ago, I was informed just how scary lightening can be. I was anxiously counting the seconds between the lightening and the thunder, but by the time I was at the start I'd convinced myself I'd make it through alive. Its a credit to the course setter that the course was so interesting I didn't notice when the rain stopped, or even that I was running in a forest in a thunder storm. Totally engrossed in my navigation, which is how it should be.



I ran a fairly clean race, but I did not particularly feel happy about it. I never got up to full running speed, and I felt like I was relying a bit too heavily on my compass. If you trust your compass you can sort of just run fast in the right direction until you hit your attackpoint, but that is pretty risky in case you miss it, and I felt like I was just moving too fast for my brain to keep up. Nothing worse than running with a sense of panic building inside that you're just going to outrun yourself, but I kept moving and picking off features and didn't make any huge mistakes, although there were plenty of hesitations out there.

I ended up in 7th, ahead of some people I definitely did not expect to beat (including someone who went to the World Championships last year, although she had a bad race, and someone who will likely go this year, although she also had a bad race). Its impressive that Sam managed to take almost 10 minutes out of my time, a lot of that is due to straight up speed, but I like to think that if I felt more confident with myself I could knock a couple minutes off. That said, a cautious run was probably the best approach today, and it worked well enough. Results, scroll all the way to the bottom for the F21+ class (elite women). And splits, for the analysis.

That evening we all gathered at Kat and Boris' house, "we" being a large chunk of the serious orienteering population under 30 in North America, to play Kubb and have a barbecue.

Kubb involves throwing sticks at wooden bricks. Its Swedish, and I imagine it would be much more fun as a drinking game, but we all had to race tomorrow.

The champ herself!
Boris

Mike the grillmaster.

Park orienteering: Peter's Hill and Cat Rock

The only racing action I've seen recently is on Thursdays, at the fast and furious park orienteering races. Two weeks ago was at Peter's Hill, in the arboretum, and last week was at Cat Rock park, in Weston. Peter's Hill was pretty brutal, as we had to go up the hill three times, and I found that my legs didn't want to cooperate on either the ups or the downs. This was just after four days of orienteering at Harriman, so you'd think I'd be all coordinated, but I made mistake after mistake, and my slow running couldn't keep up with my mistakes. I'll blame being tired. I ended up 10th for the day, but 32% behind Ross. Dang.



Cat Rock park was last week, and like Peter's Hill, it featured a big climb, that we went up, but only once this time. Unlike Peter's Hill, it was a forest sprint, so there was some actual navigating involved, which was nice. I was feeling pretty sluggish again, and my calves were still sore from the track workout two days earlier, so I incorporated a slower pace into my race plan. This worked wonders for not making mistakes, but my newly discovered navigational skills weren't enough to boost my sluggish running pace. I'm noticing a pattern - you mean I have to run fast and orienteer cleanly to do well? I also managed to be a doofus leaving 13 and leaving 14, which cost me ~2 minutes.

This time, I was only 28% behind Sam, who won, and I was fifth, although Ross and Brendan and SGB weren't there. Still not a great result, but at least it is an improvement. This week is at Pine Hill, in the southern part of the Fells, so hopefully my not-so-fast running speed won't be too much of a hindrance, since the woods are a little thicker there. I just can't keep up with the boys when its flat out trail running or open parkland.

The garmin was a little off on this one - anywhere that the track is near a trail, I was probably actually running down the trail. And I didn't climb all those contours over by 15, I may be dumb but I ain't stoopid.

A catchup weekend

Everyone else was off at the West Point A-meet this weekend, but with three weekends of racing coming up, I realized it was time to stay home, pay homage to the travel diet, and catch up on some spring cleaning. The cleaning part was pretty bad, especially on Sunday when it was 90 degrees, laundromats weren't made for that sort of weather. But it was good to lounge about, as much as I'm able to lounge about, and get my feet back under me. And clean some bikes.
Yes, this is from ice weasels. Yes, that was in December.

Saturday was the first CSU practice of the year, followed by the newbie meeting and the training meeting. While Rob and Jamie talked to the parents, I took the noobs out on a run at Mt. Misery, across the street from Jim's house, where the meeting was being held. I should have known this would end badly when Jim said something along the lines of "Anne knows some loops in there, but I get lost every time". If Jim is getting lost, what hope does someone have who has never been there? I bravely led 13 noobs across the street, and we had a fun little jog, interspersed with some pushups, jumps, bounds, boofoos, and skips, and mostly everyone was able to keep up. It was a little scary when one of the girls had an asthma attack - she claims to not have asthma, but that might not be true after Saturday. I don't have an up to date red cross certification or anything like that, so when she started wheezing I was pretty scared. We sat down and slowly got things under control, but she was close to panic. It could have been really bad.

After that, I decided that she shouldn't run anymore, so sent most of the group back with Joe, one of the older noobs, in charge. Who puts a 14yo boy in charge of a group in an area that they've never been to? Luckily, they were all back by the time I and my two charges (the asthma girl and the girl who was having trouble keeping up) walked back. After getting lost. Whoops. I would not call this one of my more successful outings as a coach...

Family time

I went home to Rochester last weekend, to see Christophe, the parental units, Michaela, and Tira. Flying made it super easy, except for the minor delay on Monday morning when the plane was discovered to be missing its static wick, and the Rochester International Airport, not having any static wicks in house, had to fly one in from Philadelphia. Anyway, it was a great weekend, great to just hang out and be happy with my family and my dog.




It just so happened that the Rochester Orienteering Club was hosting a meet on Sunday, so I headed up to Webster park, dragging along my parents to make them finally try some orienteering. Christophe and Michaela got out of it because I didn't want to force my brother's girlfriend to run in the rain if she didn't want to - she must already think this family is weird enough. Luckily, Linda Kohn was there to teach beginners how to orienteer, because I tend to leave out the important bits when I'm teaching, sometimes. I went off on my red course and they went off on their yellow course, and we finished in about the same time.

I was hoping to have a clean run, I've been orienteering a bunch recently, so you'd think this would translate to fast, clean, orienteering, but apparently not. I started out with a 6-minute mistake, making a parallel error on a trail and getting totally turned around. It didn't get much better after that, but I certainly ran hard. The quickroute tells the story. The other really bad spot was #6, when I was just being stupid. My run was good enough to win the open women's race, but only good enough for 7th among the men running Red. All the same, it was a good course on a good map, and the P-units claimed to have fun too. I really just wanted to subject them to it, so that they could better relate to what the heck I'm talking about when they ask "so, how was your weekend?"

Results.

A normal person

I flew to Rochester today. It was so easy. Flights usually mean skis, or bikes, or some other over-sized and over-priced object that I'm attempting to sneak into the cargo hold, and lots of stress, and connections, and carrying all competition clothing I might need on board, and being overly protective of my waxing iron and almost losing it because its a "power tool", and hassles over bringing waterbottles onto a plane.

But Christophe was coming home from Egypt this weekend, he and Michaela would be arriving Friday night on a bus, so I felt that I should try to make it home, too. I wasn't too psyched to drive to Rochester. Its twelve hours of driving, round trip, for a weekend trip.

I breezed through security with a backpack containing a book, a toothbrush, and my running shoes, and an hour later, I was in Rochester. So unencumbered by the usual piles of sports equipment, so free. Is this how normal people feel?

Harriman training camp, day 3

Since Massachusetts got Monday off for Patriot's day (marathon Monday, in actuality), we had planned one last training exercise for the camp - a rerun of the long distance race from some US champs a couple years ago. This was also supposed to be quite hilly, so I figured I'd be doing well if I could keep my time to twice what the men's winner had done whenever they were running this race. Mikkel Platt had won in 71 minutes, so I was hoping for 2:10. Ha.

Map, with route.

We started in reverse order from the middle, and since Lori, SGB, and Ian (the three people I beat) had gone home, I went first. I started out alright, but then I started having compass problems. It turns out that my compass settles pretty slowly, and you don't notice it if your map has been up where you can see it and are looking at it a lot, but you do notice it if you're slogging up a hill slowly with your hands on your knees and your compass upside down. Weird. Maybe someday I'll invest in a better compass, but this one seems to work for the most part.

Um, this might get long, and boring if you're not into orienteering, because its basically a course analysis of why that run was such a disaster. Just warnin' ya.

I think the compass issues explain the fact that I was 15 degrees off on my way to 2, after a while I knew I was in the wrong spot but it took me forever to figure out where to go. Eventually I was able to deduce that the marsh down the hill from me was very much open, cattails etc, so I ran north, although I still had no idea what I would relocate from, but then I stopped, looked, and listened, and first I heard Brendan and then I saw him, so I went that way and found the control.

3 was hesitant, I was pretty shaken and wondering if I should cut the course short since I was already going on 30min, but then I saw Boris so followed his line to 4, which was lower than I would have gone but worked out well, I think, and forced me to start running again and pick up my pace.

I had compass issues again on the way to 5 - my plan was to go right over the top of the mountain (in retrospect, I'd like to go to the left of the hill), and my compass kept saying I should go more to my right, even though I could see the top of the hill. I ended up skirting the right side of it, and tried to go straight to the control but the compass said I should go more to might right, which I did, and then saw the marsh way to my left, and was like, "compass, WTF?" I'll admit, I was pretty frustrated, my compass was working fine for me the other three days of orienteering, why not now?

Luckily, 6 was mostly a slog along a road and up a huge ass hill, so I had some time to sort out my thoughts, which ended up being that I should finish the course if I hit #9 (halfway point) by 1:30:00. Looking at the route I took, I think I was scared of the hill - I was trying to avoid excess climb, which is stupid because I'll climb that much anyway, should have gone straighter over the saddle. 7 - 8 were fine, just slow, but I was starting to think I'd gotten my feet back under me, even if I wasn't moving fast.

Then I blew 9, I was sloppy and not paying attention to my compass crossing the marsh and saw the little hill after the marsh and made a parallel error, and luckily I saw the trail and corrected. I was there well before 1:30, so I carried on. I was pretty clean through 13, and even running again, this was good!

And then, on the way to 14, I was near the flag and saw a pink streamer on a tree next to a boulder to my right across a wide reentrant. I thought that seemed a bit too far to my right, but still, its a streamer, there aren't that many of those out here. So I ran to it, and carried on to 15, but something was niggling in my brain, saying, that hill to your right is way too big for you to be as high up on it as 14 is. And after a very long while I hit the trail that goes up the hill, right where the cliffs are, and I realized where I was, and that I had not actually visited the real 14, but I just didn't feel like going to the real one at this point. So, I decided to go to 15 instead. But then I got all confused when I came to the point where there is a hill across the saddle to my left, thinking it was the saddle where 15 was, but, I wasn't sure about that, because I hadn't actually been to 14. After some deliberation, I decided to do the prudent thing, and go to the top of the big hill to reattack. I got to the big boulder next to the little boulder, and then went to 15, and that was the end of that disaster of a leg. Phew.

To 16 I was mostly bouncing over the tops of the hills except where I felt like going under the cliffs, and although I wasn't running fast, I was running, and it felt good to actually spike a control. 17 was also fine, and I finished in 2:32. Only 20 minutes slower than I wanted to be. Yargh.

So, not a great way to end the weekend, but I think it shows that my running fitness is not where I need it to be, because when I get tired, I make mistakes, and merely mortal endeavors are making me tired. It's been hard for me to break out of the "orienteering is just a long slow run" mindset, and speeding up in the woods is not easy for me. I'll keep working on it, because while I've definitely seen some improvement over the last three years, my expectations have been rising as well. Damn those expectations!