Monday night training

Ali and I headed over to Mt. Tom after work yesterday, to go do some orienteering training. We ran two courses; the first was a re-run of a red middle distance course from 2004, mostly downhill. Ali started a minute in front of me, and my goal was to move fluidly, and carry momentum through the woods, something I've been struggling with. I felt like I was mostly accomplishing that goal, and by #3 I could hear Ali crashing through the woods ahead of me. I got off my line a bit on #5, basically came out to the trail, not in very good contact. Looking at the garmin track, this is most likely because I was not actually at #4, but at a spur just above it. I can see how I made that parallel error, and I'm not going to worry about it too much since with flags in the woods I wouldn't have made that mistake.

Long leg to 6, I decided to go semi-straight, while Ali took the more handrail-y route, I think her way was better (as well as faster, but that is tough to judge when the person you're comparing yourself to is also a faster runner). I passed her (tying her shoe) on my way to 7, and thought maybe I could hold her off on the little control-pick 7-9, except I got all confused on my way to 10. Again, with controls in the forest I likely would have been fine, but its probably best not to rely on the luck of running into a flag when you get to more or less the right area.

I decided to take the river down to 11, and that was slow, and rocky, and the forest was really trashy. And then I came to the wrong reentrant, but caught myself. Another mistake on 12, although that really was a case of needing a flag, because the area was just so damn featureless.


After that one, we switched scales and ran the Billygoat Gruff Sprint, from last spring, but backwards, and as a chase start, with Ali chasing. I had trouble switching from the 1:10k scale to 1:5k, stuff was just coming up so fast! I still managed to beat Ali on the first two controls, but she caught me up on the way to 5, and I was feeling the heat and feeling achy in various places - couldn't hang with her. I also decided to take the marsh route to 4, rather than going around on the bridge, and that was NOT faster. Look out for the swamp monsters.

Sort of falling apart the last couple controls, and Ali ended up putting two minutes on me overall, although I got her on a couple more splits. Overall, a super fun way to spend the evening, and I felt more comfortable in the woods than I've felt since last spring. Hopefully this bodes well for the US champs coming up in October!

COC Long analysis

If you aren't an orienteering nerd, this post will be pointless and long and boring. I went through the long course and analyzed my route, mostly because it was some of the most unique terrain I've ever run on, but also hoping to learn something from my multiple mistakes. Consider that your warning, read on at your own risk.

Start - 1: When I flipped my map, I immediately saw the trail run to 1, and decided that would give me a nice chance to read ahead and feel speedy. Unfortunately, the trail was basically an overgrown snowmobile trail, so it was neither speedy nor good enough footing to really read ahead, and to complicate matters, I didn't really have a good attackpoint for leaving the trail. This was also the point where I discovered that the map was 1:10,000 scale (this information had not been in the course notes). Luckily I saw the finger of lake that came next to the trail, and attacked from there, and although I was hesitant I was clean. Alex = 7:04; winner = 5:02.


1-2: Its a little tough to tell on this bit of map, because my route from 9-10 goes through here too, but there is a lot of wandering about in the control circle. I was pretty speedy getting to the edge of the circle, but then for whatever reason I couldn't find the middle, and checked out a couple extra cliffs before I found the one I was looking for. That was frustrating. Alex = 4:10; winner = 2:10.


2-3: This one actually went pretty smoothly, I had discovered how awesome the open rocks (yellow parts of the map) were for running, and so I bopped from one hill to the next, but then walked the last bit in to the control just to be safe. Alex = 4:39; winner = 3:47.


3-4: This wasn't very pretty, I started out to the right of the line and then realized that was very thick, so wiggled back over to the right of the line, and then went slowly through the green to the control. Alex = 3:41; winner = 2:27.
4-5: Finally a clean leg. Busted north to the road, which meant I didn't need to pay much attention to the map, then tried to use the good footing on the road as time to read ahead, and got as far as #8 in planning routes. Hit my attackpoint and followed the open rocks to spike 5. Alex = 4:27; winner = 4:11.


5-6: Leaving 5, I had my nose buried in my map, and ran headlong into a branch. It knocked me backwards and hurt my right eye, which was then blurry for about ten minutes. I also couldn't keep my balance after this, so even though I was mostly clean and in contact from 5-6, I was walking a lot, and fell off the stupid beaver dam a couple times because my balance was just shot. I debated dropping out but by the time I found 6, my vision had cleared, now my eye was just watering a lot, so I figured I was good to keep going. Dropping out is for wusses. Alex = 12:18; winner = 7:35.


6-7: First major mistake, and actually I was a little panicked from it. Started out nice and clean, actually running again, following the hilltops. I skirted around the lake/marsh thing and then headed north next to the attackpoint marsh, but for whatever reason, I got really confused, and thought I was somewhere else, didn't check my compass, and shortly thereafter found myself off the map and hoping and guessing that features I was seeing were actually on the map. Eventually I re-found myself, and wandered over to get the control, but that just really sucked. In this terrain I didn't even know what to relocate on, or how to re-attack, since all the marshes sort of looked the same to me. Ugh. Alex = 18:19; winner = 4:15.


7-8: At this point I knew out I was totally out of the picture, but I was still running hard on the hilltops. Went past the marsh I'd already visited in my wanderings, then skirted the big one and crossed through some nasty thick vegetation, falling off more beaver dams in the process. I was a little off at the end, but in contact, so found the flag no problems. Alex = 10:08; winner = 6:44.


8-9: This was a long leg, and I hadn't checked out the route ahead of time. I ended up heading for the road, then running the long way down between some marshes, actually a nice clean leg. But then I got to the control circle and I think my brain was completely turned off, I couldn't find the right reentrant to save my life. I think I probably spent 6 minutes wandering in circles in the right vicinity. Just didn't read my clue sheet well enough, I guess. Alex = 18:18; winner = 11:04.


9-10: At this point I was done racing. It had turned into a survival contest. I was at almost 1.5hrs at this point, with nothing to eat, and barely past halfway. I stumbled along to 10, luckily there wasn't much route choice involved, and I fell off another beaver dam next to a pond I shouldn't have even been near, then got sopping wet again crossing a "crossable" stream that was actually quite deep and mucky. At least the control presented no problems, but I was physically pretty done by now. Alex = 14:20; winner = 9:51.


10-11: I chose to go up around on the road for this one, I just didn't think I had either the mental fortitude or the physical power to push through thick vegetation anymore (all that light green stuff from 10-11). It probably would have been faster to go straight, but bailing to the road was pretty quick since I could just follow hilltops going in generally the right direction, loosely in contact. Spiking the control was easy from that approach, too. Alex = 7:24; winner = 6:00.
11-12: At this point the map and terrain were more traditional forest, and I know how to do that sort of orienteering. I went back out to the road to get to 12, used the cliff as an attackpoint, and spiked the control. Alex = 3:35; winner = 3:03.


12-13: On the road-run to 12, my blister ripped completely open, and was now even more painful. I did a lot of walking on the way to 13, just because it was easier to control how I put down my foot so as to not make the stupid blister hurt anymore. The nav was clean though. Alex = 3:02; winner = 2:10.
13-14: I tried to run a little more, almost done, how bad is a blister anyway? I walked a lot anyway. Sigh. Slight overshoot to the west of the flag, but otherwise clean. Alex = 7:01; winner = 5:00
14-15: This was a disaster. I was truly hovering on the edge of a bonk, and the brain power goes first, I think. I attacked from the wrong marsh, and got to a little depression that I thought could be my reentrant, with a flag, but not my flag. I checked out a couple things in the area, nope, this is not right. Went back to the trail, and went further along it, attacked from a ridge this time. Ended up at the same stupid depression. I punched the control this time, just in case the numbers were mixed up, and then headed towards #16, just too wasted to care anymore. Along the way, I stumbled into a little open marsh, which had been my original attackpoint for my control. So, ended up at the right control in the end, but it took fucking forever. Alex = 14:51; winner = 2:41.
15-16: I messed this up too. I was basically just tripping over myself, couldn't move very well at this point, and I ended up to the north of my line, near the parking lot. That would have been embarassing, so I sort of backtracked and eventually got to my control. At which point I could hear them announcing that I was finishing, and had taken 2:16 to run the course, which is also fairly embarassing. But I stumbled down the chute, punched the finish, and headed straight for the food. Alex = 2:54; winner = 1:35.


So I obviously lost a lot of time on every leg to whoever won the split for that leg. I think part of it is hesitation, even when I was moving quickly over the open rocks, I would pause a lot to try and get my bearings, just very unsure of myself. And for many legs, I was making boneheaded mistakes - I think a lot of that was related to low blood sugar near the end, but in the beginning? lack of focus? Not sure. After control 5 its tough to compare anything anyway, since I was just hurting so much, physically. Definitely should have brought a gel or two with me (what was I thinking??), that course ended up beating the pants off of me, and I was not nearly tough enough to fight back.

Northampton 5k XC

Peter Gagarin gave me a free entry coupon to the Northampton 5k race that is run every week, so I figured I'd go check it out and see how my 5k times were looking. I haven't run a cross country race since highschool, although I've run a handful of road races since then. To the best of my knowledge, I only broke 22 minutes on the 3-mile courses, never on a 5k (3.12mi) course, and given my 22:15 in July, I was expecting to run somewhere around 22-ish. This course had hills, but the weather was a lot nicer, 65 and damp. I was also wearing my new Innov8 shoes, which are super light, at least compared to sneakers. Warming up, my legs felt all bouncy - always a good sign!

I lined up sort of mid-pack, as it turns out, I should have started much further forward. After they said go, it took 3 seconds to get to the line, and then I suddenly found myself behind a middle-aged woman who was trotting along at 9-minute pace. Ma'am, might I suggest that you start a little further back in the pack next time? Anyway, the course headed downhill and then flat along the Mill river, and I tried to hold back to a comfortable pace. My goal was to start at a reasonable pace for the first mile, then speed up and stay speeded up.

We turned up a fairly long, gradual hill at half a mile, and I kept things controlled, I was running with a couple guys, one with an ipod, and one or two girls who didn't look very serious. We hit the first mile in 6:50, and I opened my stride a bit coming back into the field and turning to start lap 2. I think I let loose a bit too much on the second mile, it was downhill and then flat for a while, so it should be fast but I hit it in 6:24, at this point I'd dropped ipod-man and the girls, and I could see another girl in pink up ahead. An old dude in a singlet was pacing with me, nice and steady, but I could tell I was starting to work.

Shortly after the two-mile mark, we headed into the woods and up a steep hill. The singlet dude took off, and I slowed down to something that felt a little more sustainable, just hoping to hold off pink-girl now that I'd passed her. We got to the top and the course flattened out, I was in a world of hurt by now, full-on fat-kid-with-asthma breathing. At ~2.6mi, the course went up a little hill, and that little speed bump damn near killed me. The earth finally tilted downhill, but I couldn't speed up much, when I eventually passed the 3mi mark in the field, I'd done a 7:07 mile, and suffered for every step. Just 200m of paved finish chute left, and I didn't have much to give. How did I used to have such a good kick back in highschool?

Anyway, my finish time was 21:02, a new PR for any sort of 5k (track, road, xc), by a long shot. Results, I was the third woman and 30th overall. Most of my cooldown was spent trying to figure out how I just went 1:14 faster than in July, especially when I feel that I have more reasons to be slow these days than fast. I think the cooler temperatures and lighter shoes is what clinched it, I'm not sure it has anything to do with training, and after driving to Canada and back while racing three times, I know I'm not rested. I guess I'll just have to run another one of these later in the fall and see how it goes!

The post-race refreshments were quite a production - they've been running this race forever, so they have a good system down, but they had apricots and strawberries and cookies and popsicles, and flowers in vases on the tables! Every last detail, I was quite impressed. Of course then the fun bit started, I had ridden my bike to Northampton, and had to ride 12 miles back to Amherst, and the sun had basically set by the time I left. I have emergency lights on my bike, but those don't do jack for seeing where you are going, just making you barely visible to the cars. It was a harrowing experience, and I was very glad to have made it home in one piece.

COC long

Oh man, I've never felt so slaughtered after a 7.8k course before. Or so relieved to be finished. The map was wicked awesome, super detailed, as you can see below - Lots of beautiful rocky ridges you could just flow along, interspersed with disgusting green bits and beaver dams. The area was truly amazing, but I was truly wrecked by the end.

The blister on my fourth toe ripped deeper at some point near the sixth control, and was getting progressively more painful, so that by the end of the race, that stupid blister was most of what I was thinking of, I just couldn't get it out of my mind. Worse, though, was when I ran smack into a branch leaving 5, it knocked me backwards and scraped my right eye, which was blurry and quite painful for the next ten or twenty minutes. After this branch-head collision incident, my balance was really shaky - crossing the beaver dam on my way to 6, I fell off four times, and I slipped off many beaver dams thereafter - having a lot of trouble with my balance. But I didn't want to drop out, so I just kept staggering along.

The first real mistake, as in I fell off the map, was on my way to 7 - I lost contact, didn't check my compass, and I still feel quite lucky that I actually found my way back to the control. I had already made an ~2min error in the circle at 2, but other than that things had been going somewhat smoothly. Then I lost probably 6 minutes, maybe 7 looking at the splits, in the circle at 9, just blundering around and being idiotic. That was where the course finished crushing my soul, and crossing more dark green beaver dams to 10, I switched from race mode to survival, so that by the time I had reattacked 15 twice and still found a control on a similar feature on a different course, I was ready to quit. In retrospect, a gel or two would have been an excellent decision. I was hovering at the edge of bonk-land - 2:10 is too long to race with no fuel. I barely even made it to the go control, just too wasted, and every step just hurt so much with that damn blister.

The lowest point was probably on my way to 8, fighting through some dense vegetation, on a beaver dam, and I slipped off the beaver dam (again) and fell in the deep end. Standing there in bellybutton-deep, mucky, warm water, with my head aching and my eyesight blurry, I said out loud, "This is not fun. I am NOT enjoying myself right now". Luckily, there was some nice open rock to run on afterwards, but there were definitely some negative thoughts going on in my head yesterday. That was tough, and I wasn't up to the challenge.

Take a minute and check out these maps - super tricky orienteering! All the bright yellow stuff is open rock, it was usually mossy and soft and quick running, so that you'd totally overshoot your attackpoint because you didn't realize you'd run that far already.

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!