The Adro Mile

Last week, one of my junior skiers emailed the team to tell us about the Adro mile, a scholarship fund race for Concord Carlisle highschool, in honor of Adrian Martinez, a talented young runner who died unexpectedly during a pickup soccer game. I decided to sign up for the race, because at the very least the money was going to a good cause, and hopefully I'd run fast, too. Ross and Ian from the orienteering section decided to come along; Ross had run with Adrian at Williams. I was originally signed up for the "Adro" mile, which is the elite race, but luckily the track coach/race promoter warned me that the other women signed up were sub-5min milers before I toed the line with them - I would have gotten slaughtered.
Yeah, I do not fit in with this crowd.

Steve, the track coach, broke up the open heat (coed, age 19-39, with only three women) into three heats - sub-5, sub-5:40, and everyone else, since it was pretty big. Given that my last (and only) mile was 6:04, and this was a full mile, rather than a 1600, 5:40 would be a stretch, but I was sort of hoping I could do it, given all the running on a track I've been doing, and figured I'd rather tailgun it and run my own race than have to worry about highschool boys who can't pace - the ones who can pace would definitely be faster than me.

Tim Parsons was there to run the masters' mile, and was kind enough to take some photos of me while I ran.

We took it out in 40s for the 209m, which is considerably faster than I meant to go. (the 9m extra are the extra bit you run in the beginning to make it 1609m instead of 1600). I had hoped to see 41, +2s for the 9m, so it wasn't all that smart to do 38+2, but its hard to not start fast when you're in a group. Alas, it was too quick, and although I hit the 400m mark in 84s, which is about where I'd hoped to be, I'd accumulated more lactic acid than my legs knew what to do with.

The second lap I slowed down too much, I thought the third lap was supposed to be the hard one, but I was having trouble running smoothly on this second one, and my upper body was starting to feel fatigued as well. I came through the 800 at 3min flat, which was a big slowdown, and so I tried to push hard through the third lap. My legs felt heavy, and my arms felt heavy too now, but there was no lung-burning agony like I'd expected. Either I'm not in shape, or I just had accumulated too much lactic acid in that first 400 so couldn't get up to speed, but there wasn't much I could do to speed up at this point. I was off the back now, just trying to keep running.

The last lap was painful, as expected, and the other half of my brain (the half not occupied with trying to figure out splits and remembering how to run) really wanted me to stop running. "This is decidedly uncomfortable! Can we stop this torture now? Its gone on long enough!" I had hit the point where it takes serious effort to go through the motions that should be so natural - one foot, then the other, with a hop in between, I mean, everyone can run, but my body seemed to have forgotten what to do - almost like my brain had to explain step by step how to do it. As I came into the finish straight, I could hear the guy on the announcer telling the crowd to cheer me on so I'd break 6min, and I did my best to kick - it was pretty pathetic, but it did the trick, and I crossed the line at 5:58. New PR!

Although not as fast as I'd hoped, I'm pleased with this run, and thinking that I might actually do some more running training and bring my track spikes out of retirement at some point to see how my calves handle them...

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.