COC Sprint

I spent all weekend with the Teutsch family (thanks guys! You were awesome!), which almost felt like meet headquarters - Anne was doing registration, Erik was in charge of results and e-punching, Jeff had set a bunch of the courses during the week, Alex was manning the radio control, and Laura, other than winning everything in her age category, was doing a bunch of the registration volunteering during the day. Committed family! Then throw in a couple extra vagrants, and life got interesting. Meghan Rance, from Vancouver, Ali Crocker, her boyfriend Dan, and I were all staying there, and Igor from the Ukraine had been there during the week. Craziness, if I ever have a house, I want to provide housing for just as many broke 20-somethings!

Anyway, Saturday was the COC sprint, which was also billed as a World Ranking Event (WRE), so attracted a couple big names. Unfortunately, we needed three women with good enough WRE points for the race to count, and we only had two, since Emily wasn't racing and I don't have jack for points. Ah well, at least the guys had a WRE race.

I made the mistake of eating entirely too much for breakfast, way too close to the race, so I was a little worried I'd have some GI problems, but that didn't slow me down too much. I felt like I couldn't find either fourth or fifth gear, almost like I was cruising through the course instead of attacking it, and that left me enough oomph to win the finish split (we all know that is the most important split, anyway). The whole race was very controlled, for me, both physically and mentally.

The only three things I'd change were my 30s mistake at 8 (I didn't see the flag tucked into the corner behind the shrubbery), a slightly different route to 13, and in retrospect, it would have been much better to run along the fence between the fence and the hedge to 14, instead of around the hedge like I did. Other than that, it was just a general lack of speediness that held me back. I did have snazzy new shoes, those helped with the mental approach!

Results


In the afternoon, Ali and I decided to go train on the Carleton sprint maps, from the chase sprint earlier in the week. We had some time to kill, so we ran both the prologue and the chase, as a "level 1 race" - you aren't allowed to go faster than your zone 1 speed. Ali gave me a minute head start, and on the prologue map, which was pretty straightforward, I beat her. But then on the chase sprint map, which was much trickier, I made a large mistake early on, and then two more ~30s mistakes, so she trounced me by a solid 1.5min on that one. But it was a super fun course, very technical and tricky, with some overpasses and tunnels and stuff. A good way to spend an afternoon!

Prologue map (my scanner's colors are all messed up, way too blue)

Chase sprint map.

Canadian Orienteering Championships (COCs) Middle Distance

A couple weeks ago, a few CSU members were batting around the idea of heading to Ottawa for the COCs. Things ended up getting convoluted quickly, and then Ian broke his leg, so I ended up driving north alone. I spent Thursday night chez Paul Stone in Burlington, and left at the ass crack of dawn to get to Ottawa early enough to run on the model event map, to get my head around the terrain. Of course things couldn't go smoothly - As I pulled off the highway into the city, my car started to overheat. Naturally, I started cursing out Ed, why else would my car be having problems? Anyway, I managed to get to Carleton University, the site of registration, without red-lining the heating gage, and left my car there for the day. The family registering behind me in line were going to all the right places and had a spot for me in their car, so they took me under their wing and got me all the places I had to be. Thanks so much, Wil and Katarina!

Anyway, I eventually made it to the race site, for a 2:15pm start. It was at some guy's horse farm, which meant that all the trails were super rutted/pot-holed from horse hooves, but the terrain was super interesting, all these little rocky hills and thicker marshes in between - you had to be completely on your game to not lose contact with the map, because if you got lost, there would be no chance of recovery. Below is the map.



I started off on the wrong foot, by not realizing that the start triangle was right where they started us - usually there is a short run to the triangle so you can figure out where you are and where you're going as you run. Anyway, I had managed to get myself lost already, so I decided that I couldn't have gone that far, I'd just keep running in the right direction. That worked, more or less, and I eventually found features that made sense and hit the control. Just a 2-minute mistake, the bright side is that could have been much worse. Anyway, my orienteering never really got any better, I was very bobbly out there, and my ankles felt really weak and wobbly too - every time I went to run on a trail, I couldn't read the map because I had to pay such close attention to where I was putting my feet.

I ended up winning the split to the spectator control, but other than that, there wasn't much worth bragging about this race. Results, the W21 class (elites) are near the end of the other female age categories. There weren't that many runners, because a lot of the Canadian team has just gotten back from the World Champs, and is taking a break - poor timing, but at least the lack of depth meant that I got 5th.

Comparing splits with Emily and Carol. Mostly to see how much time I was losing on each leg...

After a race that felt that hesitant and un-confident, I was looking forward to the sprint on Saturday to actually do some fast running.

A good thrashing

Ali Crocker is fast. I knew this, but I chose to run with her yesterday anyway. We'd planned to do 7 miles, but then she didn't recognize the loop anymore, and I kept suggesting going the wrong way, and we ended up with 11 miles. I'd had mostly brownies for lunch, which tasted delicious at the time, but combined with not nearly enough water, I was hurting pretty quickly from dehydration, not to mention a pace that was fairly unsustainable.

After one of our slightly wrong turns, we ran into some mountain bikers who had technology, and they were able to show us where we were (approximately) on their phone, and it was quite obvious that the quickest way back was to go back down the hill. But I don't like going backwards. So, we kept going, and as Ali so aptly put it, at least I was the one who kept making this run longer, since I was also the one who was dying.

At this point I was dehydrated enough that I was getting shivers and my stomach was getting upset, but as we finally approached civilization again, and we came out through a farm where I pillaged a house for its hose. That gave me the liquid I needed to get back to campus, but I was a hurtin' puppy.

Of course, by now everyone in the office had gone home, and my bag (with, most importantly, the key to my bike lock) is in the office, and I don't have keys to the office yet. Its locked. My bike is locked. With no real choice but to hoof it home, I know that would be a long 2.5 miles. Running is faster than walking, so I started stagger-waddle-plod-stumbling, and eventually got home, bribing myself to get to points along the way (if you can make it to the stoplight, you can walk for 3 minutes!). As I started to make dinner, I felt myself getting weaker and woozier by the minute, eventually I couldn't keep standing to chop things or even dump the pasta in the water. I sat down on the floor, but, so hungry, and dinner isn't making itself. Feeling quite faint, I remembered that I had gatorade powder, and after three glasses of that I felt a whole lot better, but I'm wondering if that was a brush with hyponatremia, given how much water I'd guzzled at the hose and then at school before running home, all the while on a empty stomach. Anyway, dinner has never tasted so good... its been a while since I've been thrashed that badly!

Exploring

One of the fun bits about moving someplace new is that you get to explore the new runs and bikes and hikes and maps. Also exciting is that this place has hills, if you want 'em. There was one ride, a couple weeks ago, where I thought I was going to die - steep fast downhill, that you don't know, straight into a stopsign with a state road. Fun!

There is a trail around here called the Robert Frost Trail, that happens to run basically past my front door, and I have 47 miles of that to explore. Yesterday was just a short bit heading southward (although I was going east, that is the southbound direction of the trail), and its beautiful. Mostly singletrack, stringing together different conservation areas and hills and stuff, and despite humidity so thick I was swimming, it was a good way to spend my day. Most of the trail seems to allow mt bikes, at least only one part directly prohibits them, so maybe I'll head out on the bike and see if I can get a little further than on foot.

There isn't much for maps around here, Peter Gagarin lent me some maps of Northfield Mt and part of the Quabbin reservoir, but the maps haven't been updated in a while. Last weekend on my way up to VT, I stopped by the Northfield Mt Hermon School, to see what the terrain had to offer, and for the most part, I was having a good time. I was focuing on keeping some momentum as I ran, trying to use that momentum to carry me through the rough bits, and that thought worked pretty well for me. Again it was super humid, but either I'm getting used to humidity or its just not as bad as I think, because I was able to have a good time.


The Sugarloaf Athletic Club holds a 5k every Tuesday, so I was thinking of heading out tonight, but 90 degrees doesn't sound like a good time to race, so I might wait until next week. So many fun things to do here! So little time!

This weekend is the Canadian Orienteering Championships, so hopefully I'll get on a map, or at least do some armchair orienteering practice, before then. My carpool buddy, Ian, just broke his leg, cracking a stress fracture that has been bothering him for a while in a freak rollerblading accident, so I'd better take out some books on tape, its a long drive to Ottawa alone. But I'm excited to race, its been a while since I've done any of that! (adventure racing does not count as racing, too slow).

De-busifying my life

In the past couple days, I've been in Newton, Amherst, Craftsbury, Stowe, Weston, Amherst, Newton, and Amherst. I'm starting to think that this tiredness in my legs might not just be from the adventure race. I sat down with a calendar this morning, and looked at the fall, and realized, I have every single weekend until December filled with some sort of event. I suppose this is what you get when you want to compete in several sports, but, this is not healthy. It is time to make my life less busy, and instead of feeling rushed trying to fit school!/thesis!/work!/coaching!/Ed!/training!/race directing!/cyclocross!/family!/orienteering!/running races!/mapping! into every day, it might be time to actually set some priorities, make some choices, and not get involved in EVERYTHING that comes my way. These aren't easy choices though. I know I should prioritize Ed and family over everything else, but all too often, those top priorities get squashed because there is just so much fun stuff going on that if I slow down for a minute, I'll miss something.

Logically, my focus should be on orienteering this fall, both because of my goals in the ski orienteering champs this spring and because that is what I am physically preparing for. The US classic championships are coming up in mid-October, and if I look at my training over the past couple months, its been almost all running and orienteering, as opposed to the last two years where it was rollerskiing and cycling. But, I don't think I can go through an entire autumn in the northeast without racing 'cross, even though I'm not prepared to race a bike of any sort. Again, tough decisions. Maybe racing bikes will help my running. I should really just re-enforce the travel diet, and actually stick to it, except for the part where I'll still be driving to Newton on weekends. This is just ridiculous, but I can't stop...

I need to just pick 4-6 cross races and accept that I will not be blazing fast. Then I should prioritize the weekends where I will STAY HOME, no matter how much fun stuff is going on in other states... damn it, world, could you please get less interesting for a little bit?

Bitter Pill AR photos

The GMARA Bitter Pill race organizers took 2000 photos, and since I am now a grad student (and therefore my time is worth basically nothing, if you go by the salary), I went through them and found some of our team, the Snot Rocketeers. All photos are from GMARA, taken with permission.

Gear check, the night before.

The "before" picture. Actually doesn't look all that different from the "after" photos...

Beautiful mist on the water that morning. Because I'm not usually up early enough to appreciate that...

Approaching the portage.

Coming in to the portage. Chris, one of the organizers, greeted us with a "why am I NOT surprised that you guys are the first ones out of the water?" Apparently Adrian and Jon have a reputation to live up to...



Awkward position on the second thwart not only bruised my seat bones, it cramped my hip flexors in a not-so-pleasant way. Better than kneeling though, comfort-wise.

Snot Rocketeers heading into the misty yonder.



Heading out on the trek, all full of energy after our three-hour paddle and 1000ft climb on the bike. Yea, orienteering!

In the TA.

At the TA going from trek to hike-a-bike, with the race organizer marking the extra time bonus control (thanks for that extra 1000ft climb, we needed that) on our maps.

This gives you a good idea of the grossness of the swim. Check out all the floating mats of vegetation...

At the finish. Adrian, naturally, has a blue plastic frog stuck into his nostril. We take ourselves very seriously around here.

What, someone pointed a camera at me? Better make a funny face...

Snot Rocketeers won the race. Here we're all presentable and stuff, since they let us take showers at the hotel.

In our regional adventure race champions jackets. Since its over my fleece jacket, it almost fits!

The Bitter Pill AR

We woke up to a chilly 45F outside, at 2:30 in the morning. By 3am we were in the car and headed to Stowe, where we had to be by 3:45 to load the buses that would take us to our undisclosed starting location. The buses headed south through Waterbury VT, and just after crossing I-89 and the Winooski river, they pulled into a parking lot. I made a mad dash for the paddles - as a short female, there aren't too many canoe paddles that are short enough for me, and the long ones would tire out my weak shoulders (did I mention I have elbow tendonitis and haven't rollerskied or done any arm strength all summer?), so I really wanted to find a paddle that fit me. I successfully found a paddle, and then there was the race briefing. Basically he went over the rules we'd already read, and Jon and Adrian were trying to guess which way we'd start out running.

At 5:00AM, we flipped the maps, and started running towards the river, along the paved road. Other teams were running through the grass, but we were hoping to keep our feet dry by taking the slightly longer route. After about 10 minutes of jogging we got to TA1, where the canoes were waiting, and although we were the second team on the water, we quickly pulled into the lead. I wasn't paddling yet, I had the maps open and was reading through what we'd expect today, trying to be as clear as possible what was coming up. Adrian is a phenomenal paddler, mostly because he is a natural at reading the river, so we were always in the right spot at the right time. Jon provided a lot of power, and I just tried not to be a deadweight in the middle of the boat, paddling weakly. It was a pretty long paddle, with a short portage in the middle around a dam, but we spiked all three controls along the river, and by TA2 we'd put 12 minutes on the next team.

We switched to bikes there, and at this point it was almost 8am, so things were warming up nicely. Throw a 1000ft climb into the mix and we were sweating pretty heavily, stripping layers and gulping water, although I left the legwarmers on, in anticipation of the promised fields of nettles during the trek. It was a short bike, just upriver on the flats for a bit and then we turned south, and climbed to the base of Camels Hump Mt, on Honey Hollow Rd. At the top of the ridge was TA3/4, where we'd be starting and finishing the trek. We moved really well through the woods, two experienced adventure racers and an orienteer, running down the hills and using a quick hike to get up them. There was another 2000ft of vertical achieved during this leg, but with Jon manning the altimeter watch (not only legal, but recommended), Adrian with the map, and myself with a compass bearing to back him up, we were the definition of a smooth-running navigational machine, because redundancy is awesome.

We spiked all the controls and made it back to the TA after 1:50, which is considerably faster than any of the other teams. But now our two strongest disciplines as a team were done, and we were on to the mandatory hike-a-bike. The race organizer had gotten permission to use part of the Catamount trail, but there are no bikes allowed on that trail, so we had to push them. It was pretty hard to be pushing my bike along some sweet singletrack that clearly the locals were riding, but rules are rules, and bending them would mean a disqualification. After about 4km of uphill slogging, we got to the saddle, near where we'd hit a junction and be able to ride our bikes, but first we headed off to pick up two time bonus checkpoints. Each was worth 30min, so if we could complete the little loop in under an hour, we'd come out ahead. Alas, we took 1:10, thanks to some elbows-and-knees scrambling up a cliff under those high-altitude-scrubby pines. We found the trail on the south side of the knob as we headed down, but that was a pretty intense climb. Then I made a navigational error on the way back to the bikes, and managed to convince Adrian that I was right, so we lost more time. I think we could have finished that loop in :45, but it just wasn't to be.

Finally back on the bikes, we knew we were almost done. A short bike leg, then the swim, then a downhill bike leg and we'd be done. We bombed down the south side of that ridge, and then faced another 1000ft climb to get another time bonus checkpoint - this one worth an hour. It took 20min to climb up to it, and I was starting to have doubts as to whether I could turn the pedals one more rotation when we finally crested the hill. Had there been one more climb like that I would have needed towing, but from here on out it was downhill. Coming down that beast was a bit terrifying, but all three of us made it down and to the swim TA intact.

I'll admit I dragged my feet a bit in the swim TA. We had to swim across a lake and back, and the lake was super mucky, with aquatic vegetation all the way up to the surface, and that slimy green stuff with bubbles in it floating around in matts. Gross! We had to swim with our packs, so we put them in garbage bags and pushed them in front of us as we swam. I was thoroughly grossed out by the slimy bubbly farts, and made it quite clear how grossed out I was, but I swam through it anyway. Adrian was the fastest swimmer, so he had the punchcard (they call them passports in this sport), and Jon and I just sort of paddled along trying to stay within 100ft of Adrian. It only took 9 minutes, but the swim felt like forever. I pulled on most of my dry-ish warm clothes afterwards, and we headed down the hill to the finish, in a comfortable 20min lead - we'd seen the second place team starting up the road to the time bonus control as we came down, which meant it wasn't likely they'd catch us.

We held our lead, coming in a couple minutes before the first all-male 3-person team, and about half an hour ahead of the second 3-person coed team. Results. It looks like we had pretty slow transitions, which makes sense given how relaxed they felt, but with a race that plays to our strengths, i.e. a long paddle and somewhat hard nav, we didn't have to worry about that. Had there been more biking, I think we would have been hurting. As a prize, we got a free entry to AR nationals, and a free entry to the Frigid Infliction, neither of which any of us want to attend. Would have been better to be second place, they at least got cool merchandise prizes. But it was a fun day, and the clean navigation, lack of hypothermia, and relaxed attitude of Adrian and Jon really made it a good way to spend a day outside. Given that we never had to really push to stay ahead of any teams, it was all fairly low intensity, which means I feel good right now, definitely more tired from having to get up at 2:30am than from the physical stuff. Its a nice feeling! I can see why they call it the bitter pill... 12 hours is just an entry drug to those longer races. Uh oh.