GLOF

That stands for the Golden Leaf Orienteering Festival, but I prefer to say GLOF. I wasn't planning on racing here, but then I got one of those emails telling me about a sale Jet Blue was having on one-way tickets from Buffalo to Boston, so I bribed some people with cookies, secured a ride to the airport, and signed up for one day of racing. The reason for not spending the whole weekend was because I wanted to be in Boston on Sunday and Monday, coaching and hanging out with Ed. This seemed like a good solution. Have I mentioned that I'm a pro at making simple travel plans incredibly convoluted?

Ali and I were going to stay with my parents in Rochester, so we left at 3pm, looking to get there by dinnertime. Somewhere near Albany, 2.5hrs into the drive, Ali looked and me and said "we need our passports to get into Canada, don't we." Yup. We'd both managed to forget them. So, we turned around, picked up passports and a burrito in Amherst, and headed back towards Rochester. That made for a short night, since Saturday we left at one of those hours of the morning that shouldn't exist. Anyway, with a passport, the border crossing was smooth, and we arrived at the race site with over an hour before the race. Cake!

The morning race was a sprint, it was billed as a World Ranking Event (WRE), but the women didn't have enough runners with good enough points for the race to count as a WRE, which was a real bummer, but it was still a really fun sprint, with good route choices and beautiful forest. I sort of hobbled through it, never moving all that fast, which was frustrating, but less frustrating than if I'd been hobbling around an urban sprint. After a couple bobbles in the beginning, my technique smoothed out, and thanks to some smart route choices near the end I finished 2nd, behind Ali. Yea CSU! Results, and Winsplits.
Now I remember why Ali and I get along so well.

Folks waiting for the Middle to start.

A quick bite to eat, and the second race of the day was a middle distance. I'd asked the organizers for an early start for Greg Walker and myself (Greg being the guy I bribed with cookies to get me back to the Buffalo airport), so we started an hour early - at least they had the controls out! I decided that since my knee was sore from the morning, I would mostly hike/powerwalk my way through the course, but I would have to have a perfectly clean run to be competitive doing this. So then I made a mistake on the first control, talk about a rough start, but overall I just was moving too slow out there to be competitive. I ended up 6th, in the middle of a good pack of women, but it was frustrating to not be able to attack the course. Results, and Winsplits.
Map 1.

Map 2.

Boston was beautiful from the air. Too bad Ed's old iphone that I use as a camera is so worthless as a camera.

So I packed up all my stuff and Greg drove me to Buffalo, I got on a plane, and Ed came to pick me up at the airport. It was just starting to feel like another day in the life, no biggie, its all good. Ed asked if I wanted to go out for dinner to Chinatown, that sounded good, so we parked down at his office in South Boston to take the T back in. I had to use the bathroom, so we opened the door to the warehouse, and I think my exact words were, "Ed, is it supposed to be raining in here?" I've since been informed that it is never supposed to be raining indoors. Apparently, a 3" sprinkler pipe had broken on the 4th floor, and when we went to check out the upstairs offices, there was 2" of water on the floor. That's fun.

By the time we got home, around 11pm, I was starting to feel like I'd had a very full day. Can't figure out why.

Night Weasels

The last two years, Colin has been the race director for the Ice Weasels Cometh cross race, and it has been awesome both years. Granted, he didn't cause the snow to fall, making the course mucky and slimy and awesome, but by now, he's figured out to run a good race. So when I saw that he was promoting the Night Weasels race (yea branding), I was pumped. I've officially joined the UMass bike team (UMBRC), and its sweet, they pay for my entry and give me gas money, so for the first time in three years I wasn't representing International Bicycle. Well, except for the armwarmers. Nat Herz, of fasterskier fame, gave me a ride there, since he's in Williamstown these days and Amherst is on the way to Shrewsbury, and that made the time go much faster in the car. He picked me up from campus at 3pm, and we got back around midnight. That has made for a rough Thursday morning, but the coffee has kicked in by now!

We rolled in to the Ski Ward, and there were four miles of yellow tape strung across the grassy hillside, a gentle rain coming down, Guns N' Roses blaring from the loudspeakers, and cross racers all over looking pumped to be racing on a Wednesday. At some point that I realized I hadn't eaten since lunchtime, and wasn't racing for another 2.5 hours. Whoops. I tried to choose the most digestible food from a typical ski lodge menu (think: hotdogs and fries), and figured puking up burger bits was better than bonking. And then I realized potential problem #2 - how to warm up for this race? It was dark by now, there were guys racing on the course so it was closed, I had no trainer, and no lights to make myself visible on the road. The course started with a 30m climb, in the muck, and I knew if I weren't warmed up for that, bad things would happen. Eventually I realized I could just ski walk up the mountain a few times, and that seemed to do the trick. Only a skier...

They staged the race by crossresults points, and I was ranked 8th. This meant a first-row start, which out of a field of 50, is a good thing! I was hoping to at least place as high as my seed, but I knew that it would be a struggle, since mud requires power, and I haven't been on a bike since Sucker Brook, 10 days ago, except for a 20min jaunt to the train station Saturday. Literally. And two workouts in the 10 days before that. The first week or so of not riding was sort of cute, it meant I was all rested, but by now its caught up to me, and pedaling takes way more work than it should. Thank god I'm good at suffering!

I got a mediocre start, and going up the hill found myself sitting in 8th. Woot, just stay here. But then I had issues, I made three separate attempts to get past Giulia on the downhill and failed all three, meanwhile getting a bit gapped. Finally passed her near the pits, but then I just began pack sliding. The first two laps I had my garmin tucked into my sports bra, because I wanted HR data (dork), but that meant that every time I was in the drops, it would start sliding out, so I was riding on the hoods, and that meant my cornering was sucking. Finally the damn thing fell out and I tossed it to Ed, I was riding better after that, although still slowly.

Christine Fort caught me going up the hill, and recognizing a pack slide when I see one, I suffered mightily to stay on her wheel. She bobbled the steep thing at the top of the hill, and I was able to take the lead going into the downhill, which opened enough of a gap, but then next lap Catherine Sterling went past me up the hill like I was walking. Then she mechanicaled, and got the pleasure of passing me again the next lap. By now I was praying that Meredith Miller would lap me and shorten my race by a lap, but it wasn't to be, and with two laps left, I could see that I was being reeled in by a small group. Pedal, bitch! With one lap left, choking on my own phlegm, wheezing loud enough to scare even me, Libby White was within probably 5 seconds of making contact up the hill. I did everything I could to dump her on the downhill, railed the barriers at full speed, and tried to go faster. Why was there so much uphill? Aaaauuuuughgggghhhh. I was dying a slow death, but thanks to enough slippery corners, I came through ahead, in 10th.

That was good enough for 2nd cat 3, and in the money, since they paid out 19 deep. I wish I'd been able to pedal as hard as I had last week, but you need fitness for cross, and mine is fading. At least my knee didn't hurt any more by the end than it had beforehand, so as long as I haven't set myself back, its all good. But boy do I have a post-race hack - that race, despite being awesome, took quite a toll on my body!

Results.

Ooh, I know what this thing does.

Bike racing! I think that's me on the right about to pass the person taking a mud bath.

Ed met me at the finish line with a beer. What service!

These photos are mostly of me, although its tough to say, really. From Ed's iphone, the HD stuff is cool. Too bad it can't do movement.

On potentially dangerous situations

So, the other day, I noticed a flyer on the wall of the building I work in for a $30 hour-long massage. That's like half the price of most massages. I was intrigued. And a bit skeptical, because if you're only charging half the price, what is the catch? Are you a serial killer? Rapist? Pervert? So, I didn't call the number.

But, the thought of only paying $30 for a massage was sitting in the back of my head. It turned about, pushing its way into my consciousness as I laboriously worked on a foam roller and tennis ball to remove knots from my legs and hips. Called out to me as my shoulder clenched up from racing my bike while unfit for it. And so last week, I called the number. A guy answered, and we set up an appointment. I'll admit, I was nervous, mostly because I couldn't find any information about his place online. These days, if you don't have a website, you aren't for real. I called Ed, and asked what he thought. He informed me that I have good claws, he wasn't that scared for my well-being.

So, I drove down to the guy's house. Having second thoughts. Almost turned around twice. I've never actually gone to a masseuse that wasn't recommended by someone before. I actually had a nightmare last night about this. But eventually I found myself in his driveway. eek. Knocked on the door, and Mike, the masseuse, answered. He was an older dude, maybe 60, heavyset and had his gray hair in a ponytail, which for whatever reason made me think he was some sort of homeopathic freak and maybe that is why he didn't do internet. Anyway, we talked for a while, basically I was evaluating if I felt comfortable around this guy to take my clothes off and let him touch me. He was a licensed masseuse, but still, I'm a 26yo female, I've been taught my whole life to not put myself in vulnerable situations. Am I just paranoid, or is this normal?

Anyway, long story short, I got the massage, he was a good masseuse, and I've decided I like him. I might go back. His reason for undercutting competitors is that it attracts clients, and he says he doesn't really need the money. Hmm. Regardless, I don't feel violated, and I do feel much more relaxed and limber. This time, it was a risk worth taking.

Hudson Lowlander

I basically took two weekends this weekend. The first weekend started Thursday, and I headed to VT, because Ed was there, and it rained like five inches and we spent two days getting his truck unstuck from some serious mud, but mostly hiding inside reading books and avoiding the rain and damp and cold. Overall, a good time. Although attempting to pull out the truck in the dark, in the rain, with a jeep that had an electrical problem so required constant jumping every time it would stall because the clutch was dying, that wasn't exactly what I'd been envisioning, but its sort of part of the package that comes with Ed.

So Saturday I headed south, dropped my car in Amherst and took a train to Hartford (woo! trains!! I was excited), where Ross and Sam picked me up and we ended up in White Plains, at Neil's house, and Boris and Ben joined us for some delicious lasagna courtesy of Ross, and many games of boggle and that stupid dice game that Neil really likes. Woke up early and we headed to the Highlander, in Harriman state park, on a gloriously sunny, brisk fall day. I elected to do the Lowlander (half the distance), because I'm broken, and it seemed like less of a bad idea. The best idea would have involved staying in VT and maybe doing a 20min jog, but orienteering at Harriman is too much fun to miss. Second best idea would have been dropping out after the first map, but then I didn't feel like I'd have gotten my money's worth.

I watched the Highlander folks start, and then clumped together with the Lowlander racers, mostly West Point cadets, shivering a bit because long sleeves really would have been preferable. My goal was to mostly hike the course, with some jogging on trails and roads if my knee felt good. Off we went, and I was running. Dammit, stop running! Luckily there was a cliff to scale early on, so I stopped running, but with people around, its just so hard to walk! The first leg was a long one, and by control 1 I was with an Army runner and an older fellow who was breathing quite heavily. I figured I'd drop the heavy breather at some point soon, at least I hoped so because loud breathers can be really annoying when you're barely cracking a sweat. There was a beautiful stretch along a hillside to 2, and again I couldn't help myself, I ran. It felt so good, made me so happy. 3 was a downhill leg, but thicker vegetation, so I convinced myself to walk, and my knee was starting to ache a bit. That would have been a prudent stopping point, but I am anything but prudent.

Things went smoothly until the route from 8-9, I was starting to catch some of the slower Highlander competitors (they'd gotten a 30min head start), and that got me excited. I was also sort of racing the Army kid, he was definitely faster, but then he'd stop to read the map, or zig and zag a lot more, so my slower pace, probably 2/3 aggressive hiking and 1/3 slow jogging, kept up with much less effort. Anyway, I lost contact with the map for a brief second, and when I connected again I was heading up a parallel rocky reentrant, and lost 4-5 minutes searching the wrong hilltop for a flag. Three more army kids caught up during that mistake, and pulled away depressingly quickly on the road run heading to the map exchange.
Map 1.

Intellectually, I knew it would be a good idea to stop at the map exchange, in the parking lot. Nobody would blame me, my knee would thank me, yadda yadda yadda I am so f***ing bad at listening to reason. I decided to carry on, the pain in my knee was dull, not sharp, and it had sort of plateaued, so since it wasn't getting worse, I'd just do less running.

I hiked up to #22, and found the three army runners who had caught up after my mistake at 9. They zigged and zagged a lot more going down the hill, and caught me again at the stream-crossing, but then I didn't see them again as I speed hiked up to 23. A little hesitation in the circle as I was lining things up, and then on to 24. Again, the terrain was just too beautiful to not run, so I found myself bounding down the little valley. Then I found a cadet lying on the ground holding his ankle and whimpering, so I stopped to see if he was ok. He couldn't remember if he'd heard a pop, so he probably hadn't torn through any ligaments, but he was whining about how he couldn't stand up. He did knew where he was, and he was very close to a trail that would lead to a road, so I handed him a sturdy-looking stick and told him to hobble out to the road and hitch-hike. By then his three teammates showed up and wanted to carry him out, so I left them to it.

Leaving 24, the same army runner I'd been competing with on the first map passed me, obviously unfazed by his teammate's brokenness. I out-navigated him again up the hill to 25, but then made a mistake at 26, and he caught me again. Luckily he was confused, too. We were cat and mouse to 27 and 28, although I got off my line to 28, lost contact, and probably lost 3-4 minutes standing in one place trying to make things match up. Dummy. Then the army kid made a huge mistake on 29, compared to my relatively small 1-minute error of examining the wrong cliff, and he didn't catch up through 30 or the finish. Woo! I ended up first woman, but I don't have the full results yet to tell you how many guys I scalped. Not a fast race, not perfectly clean, but I thought I executed most of my routes pretty well, which left me feeling satisfied. Was it worth it? Tough to tell, the knee certainly hurts more now than it did Saturday. Hopefully it'll heal fast. Dammit, body, fix me!


The Highlander racers looked really dead as they were coming in, even Will, the winner, was caked in dried sweat and shaking a little. That is a real race, I can't wait to be healthy enough to do it.

Sucker Brook CX

I signed up for this race early, despite it mostly being a grass crit in the past, I like the atmosphere at this one. Chris Smith, a master racer for NEBC, offered me a ride up north, and it turns out he's mostly a runner, does cx races for purely for entertainment. We got along well. It was super dusty, I could barely see the riders who weren't in the front group of the early races, that much dust was being kicked up. Its been dry, and as the day wore on, the grass got completely torn up, especially in the corners, which just turned to sand. Advantage: Alex. Pre-riding the course, I noticed that they'd added more stuff to give me an advantage (love it when that happens) - Just after the sharp left-hand corner, they'd added a horseshoe that went over a log and then through the woods over some roots, and more corners on the field section of the course. Still a ton of power sections, but I knew that going in to it, I was mentally prepared to hurt.

We had a pretty big field, as far as the elite women's field goes - 16 starters. I lined up 2nd row, not in any mood to have to fight for the hole shot, but in retrospect, it might have been smart to start harder. I was pretty caught in traffic for the first half of the lap on the corners in the field, losing time on each corner to the accordion effect, but unable to make any passes, just not in the mood to be sketchy. I guess I just didn't have my competitive hat on at the beginning. By the sand pit things had strung out a little bit, and I'd managed to get in front of a small group of 3-4 girls I'd been stuck behind. Due to my ninja sand skillz, I moved up some more, and had a nice wheel to follow up the pavement. Lap two involved chasing down the next pack - I was guessing we'd do six laps, and was metering out my effort with that in mind. It was so dusty out there, and I was breathing so heavily, I was a little worried I'd have some sort of respiratory problem at some point - I was already choking on my own phlegm.

By the end of lap 2 I'd passed that second little group, and I could see Karen Tripp up ahead of me. The lap cards confirmed my guess at six total laps, and I told myself I could rest a bit when I caught up to Karen. It took two laps of absolutely railing every corner I could find to close the gap, though, and I was in full-on fat-kid-with-asthma breathing mode by the time I finally made contact. I could also see Allison Snooks fading ahead of us, but I didn't think I could accelerate much more. I didn't want to leave it to a sprint, and kept pushing the pace trying to drop Karen, it took a couple tries by eventually I got the gap to stick, by railing the downhill with the minefield of pointy rocks and then riding the log more smoothly than her. I held her off to the line, but barely, I don't think I've worked that hard on a bike in a loooooonnnnnng time. Turns out I was only 17 seconds behind Allison, so I'm thinking that with a smarter/faster start, I might have been in it, but then of course, I might also have blown my top. In any event, it was a really well-run race, and I was pumped to be part of it.

Ended up 6th, just in the money. Results.

Photo credit Dave Holbrook: www.flicker.com/photos/ejcphotography

Hammond Pond NEOC meet

I was biking down the street the other day, watching this slightly overweight, very clearly non-athletic girl jogging. My first thought wasn't "good for her" or something else charitable, it was a purely selfish "How come she can jog down the road and everything is fine, but I, an athlete, can't run without hurting myself? I didn't even do anything out of the ordinary to get hurt!" And that was when it struck me - my ordinary is not ordinary. And it's not working for me. Injuries don't have to be a fact of life, and this is totally news to me. My other big lightbulb of the week was when I decided that I shouldn't start running until I can press on my kneecap in the hurty spot without having it hurt. Normal people probably think that's obvious. For me, its like discovering a whole parallel universe.

Since the Pawtuckaway camping weekend, which definitely set back my recovery, I'd say I've been pretty intelligent about things. I've been religiously icing twice a day, not doing things that hurt (that's a HUGE step in the right direction for me), and doing the physical therapy the doctor prescribed. So good at following the rules! I decided it was time for a test. The month of October is full of national-level orienteering races, and I want to be able to race - maybe not as fit as I've ever been, but at least rested and healthy. Who is this person who has taken over my brain and replaced it with a rational one?

There was a local NEOC meet on Saturday at Hammond Pond, which is literally right down the street from us, so we headed over, Ed with plans of racing, me with plans to aggressively hike it and see what happened. The vegetation was pretty thick, and folks who had already run were warning us that it was a very physical course, even though it was short (3.0km straight-line), due in no small part to the sunny day and temperatures in the 80s. I started out hiking, luckily the first control was up a hill or I would have been super tempted to run. It was easy to read the map very clearly at a hike, and for the most part I was moving really fast - around a 15-20min mile - that's fast for a walk. I decided that since I wasn't moving fast compared to the runners, I would try to take the straightest line I could between the controls, and succeeded pretty well with that. There were three sections of trail where I did break into a limping jog - its a limp because I was trying to not bend my knee, and as long as there is nothing to trip you, that's a viable way to run.


I lost maybe 45 seconds over the whole course - very clean, which is to be expected if you're moving slow enough that reading the map in detail is no problem. There is also the consideration that I have run at Hammond Pond a LOT, so I definitely know the park well. The clean run put me in 7th overall, out of close to 40 competitors. Results. Ross won the course by 8 minutes over the next competitor, which goes to show that this wasn't a national-calibre field, but after Ross the times were pretty close. I'm not sure how much faster I would have been if I could have run - sure, I would have been moving faster at times, but I also probably would have made more mistakes. And the thick, physical forest was easier to move through knowing that I couldn't go any faster than I currently was, rather than trying to bust through it at race pace. I still managed to work really hard! And most importantly, my knee was perfectly fine at a hiking pace over rough terrain. This bodes well for the Hudson Lowlander that I'm doing next weekend. The plan is to hike everything except trails and places with exceptionally good footing, and I think if I can keep up a 10min/km pace, I will do quite well.

NENSA's nordic symposium

Last weekend was NENSA's nordic symposium, I think the first ever, and I was pretty psyched to see that it was in Boston, so signed up early on. The CSU coaches were in attendance, Rob and Jamie, and Jim and John from BKL, as well as a couple interested parents. Other people were there as well, but they're clearly less important than the CSU folks. We had a stacked list of speakers, and my only complaint from the weekend would be that there was just so. much. information. that my brain was reeling by the time I walked out on Sunday. All good stuff, though, and I always leave these coaching things full of crazy new ideas, mostly related to coaching.

I was thinking of summarizing some of the talks, but Rob already did that for SkiTrax, so I'll just link to the articles. I do have very detailed notes on all the presentations, so if you're interested in those, send me an email and I can get them to you. I highly recommend this symposium, and if NENSA holds another one next year, I'll be back for sure!

Friday evening
Saturday
Sunday

The only part that wasn't cool was that we spent all day inside, and there wasn't really time for training. But with a gimpy knee, that is probably for the best. You could tell most of the participants wanted to go do something outside, though - skiers, through and through!