London

I was instructed to come visit London before I started this grad-school silliness, so I hopped over the Atlantic puddle last weekend to visit the England-based part of my family. Because no non-orienteering travel would be fun without incorporating some orienteering, SGB supplied me with a couple maps of local parks. Addicted? Perhaps. But when something like this is out the door, how can I resist?


The cool part was that I got to fly in the upstairs of a jumbo jet. Never done that before, it was quite exciting, in a this-is-exactly-like-the-downstairs-(but I'm upstairs!) sort of way.

It was great to see Roger, and Edward and the little monsters, and I was subjected to all sorts of culture. Ack! Thank god for some orienteering to maintain my dumb jock status. Roger took Billy for a walk while I explored the Wimbledon woods, it turns out that the woods in England have many more pointy things trying to scratch me than I expected, between the thick patches of briars, the stinging nettles, and the holly trees, but for the most part it was very nice running. Gotta get that endorphin kick!



Now back to reality... but not for too long, thankfully.

Corridor training

Now that the park-os are over, we CSU orienteers are left to our own devices to do some orienteering training each week. I signed up for this week, since I knew I'd be here, and decided to use my local park, Hammond Pond. I wanted to do some compass work, so I set a corridor course. The idea is that you follow the corridor of map shown using your compass to travel in a straight line, and you can check off features along the way to figure out an attackpoint.

I went out Wednesday morning to hang the streamers, following the corridor map (although, I did have a full map with me for if I couldn't find the right feature to hang the streamer on - nothing is worse than a misplaced control). Things went pretty well, except for 13, where I just wasn't really paying close enough attention. I was also sort of moving slowly, but sometimes its just hard to move fast in the morning.

The track is a little off, because I started out from the parking lot slightly to the north of the line to 3, and then picked up my backpack where I'd left it in the pit next to 11 (morning = get to work afterward, hence the backpack). And of course I went from 17 to 2 and then to 1 and then back to 17 to pick up my backpack, but I was trying to go straight for all of those.

A fun exercise! Definitely one I'd like to do again, and this time running for more of it. It was raining too hard when everyone else ran it in the evening, I decided that I didn't have to re-run this thing in the rain... went straight to Ross and Sam's house for dinner instead!

The track

I've been hitting up the track recently, more for something to do than for any specific workout - it helps that the CSU-running section does track workouts every Tuesday. Don't have to think, just show up and do what they do, and its fun to have people to run with. I don't really have an athletic purpose right now, other than a vague "get faster at running" overarching goal, so doing other people's workouts doesn't bother me like it would if I were actually training for skiing.

I didn't used to like track, I didn't like running in circles, I didn't like the monotony, the lack of hills, or mud, or rocks to jump over and branches to dive under. Mostly, I think I didn't like the pain. There is no hiding on a track. The race is between me and my watch, whether its a race to finish a lap fast enough or trying to pace myself intelligently. Although I didn't like that exposure to pure running back when I was a runner, I'm loving it now. Its running, pure and simple, with nothing in the way but my own feet.

There are friendly people around me, but I stop thinking of them as people and more as tools - this tool is moving too slowly, it is in my way, I'll go around. This tool is going the right speed, I'll use it so I don't start too fast. It becomes such a focused, mathematical, precise workout, there is something extremely satisfying about that. I can calculate exactly how fast I want to run each lap, each 200m, each straightaway, and then the game becomes hitting those paces. Because there is nothing to distract me, I focus on running, from split to split, rolling through the laps exactly as planned. The people get me to the track, but once there, I don't need them.

Each workout just serves to make me want to get faster. The desire is back.

(If that's not a masterpiece, I don't know what is...)

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.