NEOC local meets

There were two local meets last weekend, one at Estabrook woods in Concord, and one in Nobscott reservation in Sudbury. The Estabrook woods map is just about ready to be either retired or completely redone - even the contours are wrong. Lining up a GPS track afterward was quite difficult, since the trails don't even line up on the map. However, if you treated the map as a rogaine-quality map, i.e. bad, the event wasn't too bad. There was the section of stone wall that was completely submerged, damn beavers, but if you read the course notes you could avoid that part.

I started out with a fair bit of zip, but it was super hot and humid, and I just felt worn down after about 5 minutes of running. Of course, the slower I went, the more mosquitoes and deer flies could latch on to me, so that was obnoxious. It was frustrating to feel so tired and sluggish when the navigation was so easy - I just had to move faster to get to the points faster, but I couldn't. Even on the downhill bits, I was barely stumbling along. Ugh.



That was unpleasant, so I showed up to the meet Sunday hoping for a happier experience. Luckily Nobscott's map is in much better condition than the Estabrook map, so it made for much more interesting running. It is also considerably more hilly at Nobscott, which I wasn't too happy about, because my oomph didn't seem to have returned overnight. I was less whiny about the temperature Sunday, because it had rained overnight, which meant that the woods were still pretty wet, and that was doing a good job keeping my core temperature in a happier place. I still wasn't moving very fast, but there were some good bits where I was running well. And then I'd slow down again. No real mistakes, though, other than some weaving around on the way to 8, and getting off my line and almost getting lost on the way to 10 - luckily I caught that one. I'd crossed the big trail, thinking it was the little trail, and for whatever reason I didn't want to believe my compass when it said to go more to my right. Whoops.

Unfortunately, going that slow on a technically not-too-challenging course meant I got my butt whooped. Both days. Saturday's result put me in the top half, if barely, but Sunday I was way off the pace. Sunday had also been a very ankle-rolly day; I managed to roll my good ankle once, and the bad ankle twice, and the first time I did it it was sudden enough to make me fall down, into a patch of poison ivy. I wasn't too happy about that. I think I was just so tired and sluggish that I couldn't control my feet, hence the tripping and ankle abusing.



I think it might be time for a day off or two... but there is a track workout tonight! I'm sort of addicted to these track workouts, they fit with my OCD personality so well... its all so controlled, and I do love running fast sometimes.

Orienteering up a storm

Ha. Ha.

Except you won't even get the bad pun if you weren't outside in Boston at 6:09pm on Thursday night, when the sky exploded and all the water fell down at once. Forget raindrops, we're talking waterfalls. This was in the midst of the most intense thunder and lightning I've ever seen. I know that being outside in a thunderstorm is dangerous, and to be totally honest I was a little freaked out, but I didn't stop running. Its something about being competitive, you don't want to lose those precious seconds. And the sheets of rain and terrifying thunder made things way more interesting.

This was the last park-o of the season, so we followed it up with a grand meeting of CSU version 3.0 (the Bermans were version 1.0, Boris, Ken and Misha were version 2.0, and the current crop of runners is version 3.0) to plan some training for the summer over a feast of random Chinese food from the Taiwan Cafe. I don't recommend the stinky tofu. It smells like manure. And its supposed to smell that way.

Back to the race... I started about a minute behind Jessica Rykken, and as I slowly closed the gap, I ran by this couple sheltering under a tree (did I mention the torrential rain), and I overheard the guy saying "Look! There goes another one!" Ah, yes, we are indeed whackos...


I ran a clean race, as fast as I could, but unfortunately it was not fast enough to beat Brendan. Or Ian, or Ross, or SGB, or Boris, or Giovanni. Results. But I did scalp Ali and Ed =).

Memorial day vacation

I'm relatively incapable of just relaxing on vacation, so I headed to Vermont after the Wachusett race, to try out this "vacation" thing. I think I blew it by doing an 11mi run/hike with Ken Walker on Saturday, but it was a gorgeous day for a run, and he was just as sore as I was from too much running the day before, so we made for good gimpy partners.

We shuttled one car to the Danby road end of things and took the other car to Mad Tom Notch to start the run, and it was a beautiful, very runnable, dry and well-maintained stretch of the AT. The first hour felt good, loosening up my stiff legs and enjoying the scenery, the second hour was alright too. The third hour, well, my legs were about ready to be done with this whole running game.



View west from Baker Peak.

Wildlife! I think toads are cute.

Griffith lake.

More wildlife. Why does Ken look so smug?

Awesome sketchy bridge that was closed and being repaired. There was a sign at Mad Tom Notch warning us that the bridge was closed, please take the detour through Old Job, and trying to ford would be ill advised. Well, when you put it like that, how can we NOT try and ford? Luckily, water level is pretty low right now, we had no issues, and I even kept my feet dry.



Ed with the motorbike... I'm a little worried he thinks it would be a good idea to buy one of these.

In a strange reversal of roles, Ed went out rollerskiing on Monday, while I stayed home, finished my book, and took a nap.

Wachusett Mt running race

I did this race last year, and they were sponsored by Hostess, so I filled my pockets and my backpack with twinkies and hohos and devil dogs, and the pain of the race faded quickly into a disgusting greasy sugar high tinged with whatever it is they put in twinkies to survive the next nuclear winter. I was hoping they'd have Hohos again this year, but apparently enough to the runners eschewed those disgusting not-food substances that they found a different sponsor, so the post-race party was much less interesting to me.

I realized I might easily fall into the "I started too easy last year, I should start out harder this year" (and then you blow up) trap, so I decided to line up with Donna Smyth, since I beat her last year, but didn't catch her until the bottom of the first singletrack, therefore if I ran with her up the hill this year, I'd be that much further ahead after the downhill. I see no flaws in that plan.

They said to wait for the siren and then start, and someone blew a whistle so we all started running. That is not a siren. A couple seconds later, the siren goes off, false start for the entire race? I quickly noticed that Donna runs fast uphill, and that the stupid first uphill goes on for what feels like forever. I guess when you're running up something called "Mile Hill Road", its going to go uphill for a mile. By the top I was pretty well redlined, and facing the harsh reality that running offers no rest on the downhills. I passed a couple groups of runners, but that downhill singletrack just wasn't long enough, and not nearly restful enough, and when I hit the gradual uphill on a work road, I was just as pegged as I had been at the top of Mile Hill.

So then the streams of people started passing me back, it felt like the entire race passed me by before we started the second real uphill, in reality it was probably 10 people, but I was really looking forward to that second uphill, because it was steep enough that people were hiking it, therefore, I could stop running. The flaw in this thinking is that we're hiking it because its too steep to run, therefore, hiking is just as hard as running. I was wheezing, humping my way up the hill with my hands on my knees, but at least people weren't passing me quite as easily. I did lose the entire group of girls I'd passed on the first downhill, but just couldn't move any faster without blowing up - I was close to the edge, and didn't need a heart rate monitor to tell me I was hovering at the point of no return.

The worst part was when the portly, elderly man hiked by, explaining to me that if I stood up straight I'd be able to breathe easier. Arrr! I held on to him the rest of the climb, but he was pretty good on the downhills (gravity?), and I couldn't get him back. The last two miles are basically downhill, with one small uphill blip just to insult your wobbly noodle legs after all the downhill, and I did what I could to fall down the hill as fast as possible. This netted me exactly one place in the women's race, although I passed many men, and she caught back up to me on that insulting little uphill bit. I dug deep, and held her stride as we crested the hill, then gave it what I had left down the remaining hill and into the finish, terrified that she was right there. I held her off, and ended up 5th in my age class, 11th woman overall. And most importantly, 40 seconds faster than last year. Although the finish loop was shorter... I'm going to ignore that fact.

I must have been overstriding on the downhills, because my outer quadriceps were cramping pretty badly post race (at least the cramps held off until I finished), and stairs were quite painful for the next two days, but I can deal with soft tissue injuries. Downhill running races are hard. Without the promise of twinkies at the end, who knows if I'll do this race again next year...

This is the "oh god is it over yet?" face.

Bear Hill Park-o

Part of the responsibility of being a CSU member means putting on an event each spring, as part of the park-o series. My event was yesterday, at the northern end of the Fells, on the map we call Bear Hill. It went pretty well, and we had a decent turnout for a park pretty far from public transportation. I set two advanced courses, to make it worth the while of the competitors, as well as a beginner course. We had 19 finishers on the first advanced course, and 8 on the second course, as well as two people run the beginner course. Nobody got lost or horribly injured, although Ian did run into a wire fence at full speed because he didn't see it, and Eric couldn't find #10 for a long time because it had fallen off the tree I'd hung it on. I'm not sure what I could have done about the fence other than not put controls over there, but I could have tied the flags a little better to wherever I was hanging them from. Live and learn. At least the beginners had fun - Alexei's daughter and Vadim's daughter.

The beginner course - it was a bit on the long side, at 2km, but both girls were able to finish it. Victoria is just a wee one, but she was pumped to do the course, with Alexei shadowing her to fend off any bears or other wildlife.
Advanced #1.

Advanced #2.

Ross finishing - doesn't that finish stretch just scream "At one with nature" to you?

The usual post-race route-analysis huddle.

Jim finishing.

The founders themselves! Larry and Sara Mae Berman, always on hand with the cookies and water at the park-os. They also take care of the administrative stuff, which is super convenient, since the course setters generally get hung up with making sure all the flags are out, and tend to forget about things like registration, and getting people started on time, and providing cookies afterwards.

Tales from a land of crazy

Next year, I'll be back at school, working on a masters at UMass Amherst. This necessitates a place to live, since Ed is staying in Boston, so since I was out by the Connecticut river last weekend, I checked out a couple apartments. The stuff people try to rent out is pretty ridiculous. They're damn good at the spin on the Craigslist ads, I'll tell ya that much.

The first was a house owned by a crazy cat lady. The type of person who puts the crazy in crazy cat lady. She was down to four cats, since apparently there has been a fox in the neighborhood, and it has a taste for kitty cats, and Fluffy didn't come home one night. This lady was renting out a room, that I think used to be her daughter's room, and the room was fine, but it smelled like cat. She smelled like cat.

The next was a split level house, and the couple that owned it usually live in CT, except when they're here, with their two kids. The room they were renting was the size of my current bathroom, and about as clean. I last cleaned our bathroom three weeks ago. The other really weird bit was that the room was part of the upstairs suite of rooms - the bedrooms were on the upper bit of the split and the kitchen and living room on the lower bit, so it was a room next to the master bedroom and across the hall from the kids' rooms. I want a room, not a family. Thanks, next?

There was the strange guy in the apartment complex trying to rent out a room in an utterly filthy supposedly-two-bedroom place, dark and dank and stinking like cat piss (his cat was cute, in his defense). There was the house that looked like a frat house, had four roommates on the first floor, two families living upstairs, and two families living downstairs. A couple fairly normal apartment complexes. And then the one that took the cake.

In her ad, this woman sounded like a friendly hippie. I thought I could deal with that, so I responded to her ad, turns out she also has an 11yo kid, well that's fine too. She had mentioned in the ad that the house was often a little cluttered, since she didn't really have time as a single mother to keep things spotless. Sure, that makes sense. Well, I walked in, and the house takes the word packrat to a whole new level. Papers and toys and tools and more papers and boxes and cans and more toys and clothes and tupperwares and god knows what else just EVERYWHERE. There were basically paths through the clutter from one area of the house to the next, it would have been a very beautiful house if not for all the junk everywhere. Even the kitchen had stuff piled on every horizontal surface. She mentioned that she just didn't have much time to pick up, it looked like she hadn't picked stuff up in the last 11 years. Wow.

So she shows me around, the room is very nice, and there is a big basement with nothing in it, amazingly enough, for bike storage etc. She points to half of an island in the kitchen, which is sort of clear, and says that that is where previous tenants prep food and stuff. Oooh, a whopping 1x4' horizontal surface! So at this point we sit down to talk about stuff, she is renting this place pretty cheaply so I'm interested, but not sure I could deal with the clutter, and then she brings out two pages of handwritten questions for an interview, and I realize I probably can't deal with this level of crazy.

She is hoping for someone to basically take care of her kid when she can't, which I told her right up front I wasn't willing to do. That didn't dissuade her, the questions continued. No scented soap in the washer because it makes the whole house smell. The dishwasher is broken and she probably won't get around to fixing it. Please be careful not to scratch the pinewood floor in the bedroom. Careful of all wood surfaces (where? I can't see them for all the papers on top). No slamming of doors, and the walls upstairs are pretty thin, so be very quiet if you have to get up in the middle of the night, don't flush the toilet until morning, don't even turn on the bathroom light because there is an associated fan. Obsessive about snow removal, 2" or more and it must be shoveled out from around your car. Doesn't want Ed coming over until she's met him (I guess that makes sense? Maybe if I had a kid I wouldn't want random people coming over either, but if they're vouched for by someone I trust to live in my house...?). One of the best was that if I go to a party, please don't come home that night, since she doesn't want her kid exposed to any insobriety. The rules went on. And on. And on.

Eventually we ended the rules, shook hands, and I left, telling her I'd think it over. Because at that price, maybe I could deal with that level of crazy. Took a night to mull it over and realized that was too crazy even for me. Yikes. The kicker is that she is a volunteer firefighter - which is why she keeps the "fire lanes" clear in her house.

Billygoat 2010

The Billygoat is a race that happens once a year, and is definitely one of my favorite orienteering races of the year, mostly because of its inherent goofiness. You can follow people, in fact, its recommended at times, and you can skip one control, of your choosing. The Billygoat also is generally very hilly, and fairly long. Phil Bricker, the head goat (other races call them race directors. At the Billygoat, we call them head goats), decided that he wanted to have this Billygoat win the record for the hilliest Billygoat ever, so he planned a course with 680m of climb, over 11km. That is a lot of climb. The course involved a lot of stumbling and slogging, depending on whether you were going downhill or uphill. Combined with a hot, muggy day, it was a hard race.

The Billygoat was held at Mt. Tom before, in 2004, when Will Hawkins of CSU was head goat. That was my first Billygoat, and I came in well before the 3.5hr cutoff, earning my t-shirt. Looking at the results, it appears I just followed a reliable group of old-but-accurates, finishing 68th. It was an enjoyable introduction to Billygoats. The year after, however, (2005) was brutal: First hot day of the spring, too long, too hilly, a breakfast of 2 brownies and a redbull, a horrific bonk, and I finished in 3:34, just missing out on the t-shirt privileges. My only overtime Billygoat. This past Sunday was my fifth Billygoat (I missed the one in 2006, I must have been graduating or something on that weekend), and by far my best.

I drove out to Amherst on Saturday with Presto and SGB, who was in charge of Presto for the weekend since Lori was at the US Radio orienteering championships. And you thought Ski orienteering was obscure. Anyway, we trained on Saturday, spent a very nice evening at the Gagarins' house, and arrived at Mt. Tom rested and ready to go. Ed came Sunday morning, after working on rollerski stuff all Saturday, I think I know who had a more enjoyable Saturday. SGB wasn't racing, after hurting himself while finishing 4th in the Seven Sisters trail race, so he just took Presto on a very long walk and took my camera. I was hoping for a photo of the view from the ridge, but I guess he never went there.

Course, with my route overlaid. Green is 5min/km (8min/mi) and red is slow. I'd rather not say how slow, but lets call it walking pace.

Its a motley crew that lines up at the start. Since nobody knows which direction we'll be starting, there is no real start line, per se. Most people just plan to follow someone else to the first control, which can end up being a problem when the person you're following is planning to follow someone else who is following someone else... you see how this can go. There were some large packs of lost people on the way to the first two controls.

Everyone rushes to get their map, even though you can't look at it until they say go.

And then the start is pretty anti-climactic. Some people dash off (with many in tow), hoping someone else will take the lead and show them where to go. Some people dash off and know where they're going. Smart people will stand still until they have found #1 on the map and have a plan for getting there. Others will start walking in the general direction of the dashing-off-people while figuring out where to go, then give up and sprint after the people already running in (hopefully) the right direction.

My race went well. I blatantly followed Ernst Linder (he is quite experienced, and smart enough to navigate to the first control on his own rather than following someone else) to 1, dropped off the pace a bit to 2, still following, so that I could pick out which control to skip. I had sort of decided on 6, since it saved a bunch of climb, but it turned out that was also a water stop, and I was projectile sweating, so I chose 15 to skip instead - it also saved climb, and would give me a sweet trail run with a nice view. Once I decided that, I started navigating more on my own, sort of in the midst of a loose group. As the race wore on, there was some movement in the pack, and I was slowly working my way towards its front.

The hills were just as hard, steep, and rocky as promised. The first part of the course felt like a whole lot of uphill, and I was slogging along dripping sweat for most of it. Luckily the navigation wasn't too hard. I couldn't get enough liquid into my gullet at the three water stops, but I was acutely aware of the folks behind me needed just as much if not more water, so I tried to limit myself at the unmanned stops. It was hard.

The race was clean until I bungled a supposedly clever plan to #20, and lost about 5 minutes to the guy I'd been running with. A guy who had just done an 18hr adventure race the day before. If I'd just stuck with him, I'm pretty sure I could have taken him in the sprint. But, that's what you get for trying to be clever near the end of a 2hr race in hot weather. I eventually finished, and while it felt like a long slow slog, I think others were just as affected by the nasty hills and humidity, and I was the 3rd woman and 21st overall. This means that next year, if there are at least 21 controls, I will get my initials as one of the control codes! Quite exciting.

Ed came in not too much later in just under 3 hours, utterly drenched in sweat. He does even worse than me in hot weather, and my only consolation for how stiff and sore and tired I feel today is that he is in worse shape.


Do you think this thing is washable?

SGB caught me in the finish chute. I tried to run faster, but an 8min/mi was about all I could do. Those rocks and hills were brutal.



Proof that Ed is actually a gorilla. Or just so tired that when the hill finally flattened out he still couldn't stand up straight.

At the awards.

Ross' dad almost didn't make it - they do the awards right around 3.5 hrs, so that we can all cheer for the people who are cutting it close. Eric Smith was spotted at 3:27, so Ross ran over to pull him in to the finish, and he did it with 60 seconds to spare.

Presto after a long walk. I'll admit that my parking brake looked like a good pillow to me, too, after the run.

Should you want more of a technical report, you can find it in my attackpoint log. And some stories from the Billygoat in 2009, 2008, and 2007.