Orienteering publicity, or the lack thereof

This is brilliant. Its in Polish, but, the reason its brilliant, is that it doesn't even matter. You totally get what orienteering is and how it works. The first 6 minutes basically explain the sport, how come Orienteering USA doesn't have something similar? Instead, they have this. Yawn. No wonder only old guys in their hiking boots and surveying compasses are attracted to this sport, I don't think that brochure mentions once that it is a race. I guess I shouldn't knock that brochure too much, I mean after spending 10 minutes to read the whole thing, I understood what orienteering was.

Sigh. I don't have time to take on a publicity campaign for a sport that doesn't care to be recognized as competitive... I guess that's why the serious orienteers move to Europe. At least there seems to be a growing consensus among the competitive runners in the US that we need to actually do something to change the face of our sport, and the new website is a good start. Too bad it can't also serve as a results database, then people might actually go there!

Impending doom

I'm doing my best not to A) whine too much, and B) drink too much more coffee. This whole grad school thing started out so easy, and then all of a sudden, all the shit that had been getting a nice breeze from the fan fell into it. I spent two days last week attempting some fieldwork, luckily I had a very competent FS research guy come along, he's been showing me the ropes and it makes things much easier. It still involves wading in streams in November, why did I pick a project that was going to be both wet and cold? Anyway, the problem with being out in the field (my two sites are in the West River watershed, VT, and Westfield River, MA - neither of which are particularly close...), is that the entire day is lost to getting any work done. So, that has been piling up, and I might have to give up my agreement with myself to not do any work on weekends. In Ed's words, "they don't pay you enough to work weekends". Who would have thought that school could possibly interfere with my racing lifestyle?

So last weekend, instead of studying for an exam, doing problemsets, or finishing my thesis proposal, I helped Brendan put on an orienteering race at Rocky Woods, in Medfield MA. Ed basically took it over, printing the maps (all fancy-like, with color separation and other printing terms I don't even understand), running the e-punching, and setting out and picking up his share of controls. It was a pretty low-key event, but everyone seemed to like the courses that Brendan and I had set - he set the advanced ones, I set the beginner ones, and boy is it hard to set beginner courses when you're used to trying to make things tricky.
The orange course - hardest beginner course before you move on to the advanced courses. "intermediate beginner".

I went straight from the orienteering meet to Lincoln Sudbury Highschool, to help Rob coach a NENSA coach's clinic. It was mostly Bill Koch coaches, and as Rob put it, super important to teach them the right stuff to teach the kids who'll eventually end up with us. I was in a pretty foul mood driving over there, feeling guilty about leaving the meet early (thus not helping to pick up any controls), feeling pressure that I should be doing schoolwork instead of coaching, all sorts of stuff just sort of building to a head. Luckily, coaching relieved that feeling of impending doom, and I was smiling again by the end of it. There is really nothing quite so rewarding as coaching people who want to learn. Maybe teachers feel like that, too, but its something about moving that does it for me.

By Sunday I was only feeling small amounts of doom-impendment, and after coaching the CSU practice in the morning, and Corey in the afternoon, on a gorgeous sunny Indian-summer day, I was even in a good mood. Managed to actually do some studying for the exam, and then Ed and I spent something like three hours playing in the kitchen. We made dolmades. With other stuff. Quite tasty.

Monday is always too early, in this case even earlier because I wanted to arrive early enough to do some more cramming. 5am hurts, but it was worth it, as the exam was easy and I was still riding on an adrenaline high for most of the day, crossing off many of the impending-doom-list items.

Whee! Now to just not add anything to that impending-doom-list.

Norwottuck training

Mt. Norwottuck and I have a rocky relationship. It started in 2005, when I did a Billygoat there, completely unprepared. I've talked about this Billygoat before, its the one known as the hardest Billygoat, with a 21% DNF rate, and only 48% of starters finished within the time limit. An inadequate breakfast and the first hot day of the year left me totally bonked and staggering around into trees. I was one of those overtime finishers.

I thought maybe Norwottuck and I could move past that rough spot in our history, especially now that I live out here, but it seems that area will always give me trouble. Last week, Ali and I headed out to work on moving smoothly through junky woods, and things were going ok until about #9 on the course we'd designed, where I just got totally thrown off, and couldn't recover. It was an ugly day, a bit of a soul-crusher; thank god it hadn't been a race.

You can see how after I got to #10, I just gave up and ran home. All those pointy rocks, all those little pine trees in your way, it was just an unpleasant training session.

I thought I'd give it a go again this week, when Phil mentioned that he'd like to do some compass training. I set up a corridor course, where the map is all whited out except for a corridor of terrain between controls. The idea is to use your compass to go in the right direction. The penalty for leaving the corridor is pretty high, because there is no way to relocate. We didn't bring along a full map, which was silly, but there ya go.
This went even worse than last week. I made a 5 minute error to #1; I'm actually quite impressed that I found it at all, after totally leaving the corridor. #2 was alright, but then I got pushed south by an expanded beaver pond on my way to #3, and never actually went to the right area. That is a danger when there is nothing in the woods, but anyway, that threw me off on my way to 4, and I was just moving waaaay too slowly, trying to make things match up. Just having so much trouble running. Luckily I figured out where I was, and got to the control location eventually.

Another minute or two evaporated near 5, I was in the right spot, but without being able to see the massive reentrants on my map, I just couldn't put two and two together until I'd relocated off the little lake. Sloppy sloppy. I tried to get my act back together on the way to 6, but was just moving so slowly, that I got depressed. I slogged on to 7, and then had to decide whether or not I wanted to bail, or keep going over the mountain. I thought about bailing, just because I wasn't having that much fun, but eventually decided to keep going, since it wasn't that much longer. Up to the top, and then I jogged down the trail, which was mostly in the corridor. Things were going well, and I was moving faster again, but then managed to completely overrun #10, ending up almost at the road. I took that as a sign that I should just go home, and stumbled back to the car to meet Phil, who had been waiting almost 10 minutes. Not a fun time, but hopefully somewhat valuable in using my compass more intelligently... We've decided that future trainings should be done as partner exercises, when we have a partner. Much more fun that way.

Time for more ski training and less orienteering training - I'm going to Sweden in three weeks!

Breakheart Reservation Orienteering

NEOC was holding a meet this weekend, up at Breakheart Reservation in Saugus. All I know about Saugus is that they have a good sausage shop, Ed has been there, but we didn't go to get sausage, which was sad. The map was made in like 1980, so a couple things have changed, like trails and vegetation, but it was still mostly ok. The vegetation was thick, which I found unpleasant, but there were some nice parts of the woods to run through, so that made up for it. Unfortunately, my head wasn't really screwed on straight, and I made three distinct errors that all involved over-running something on a trail, and were all really stupid.

On my way to #4, I decided that I was too warm, and I would take off my headband and put it in my pocket. I came out of the woods and hit a trail, which I knew I had to follow for a little bit, so I jogged down the trail while putting the headband in my pocket. It took longer than I meant for it to take (clumsy race fingers), and eventually I zip up the pocket and take a look at my map, and I'm way past where I meant to be. D'oh! Lost at least a minute thanks to that little move, and more embarrassingly, Ed witnessed it.

A perfect case of braindead on my way to #12, I was running on trails, and I was on the right trail, but then I crossed a little stream, and I was like "wait, there aren't any streams that I'm supposed to cross! I must be on the wrong trail!" So, I turned around, and got all the way back to the first junction before I found the stream on my map that I was indeed supposed to cross, and had to turn around. Another minute, and this time, Lori witnessed that mistake.

Things went pretty well for a while, until I got to #14, which had also been #4, a butterfly control. I punched at the control, oriented my map, and merrily set off for #13 instead of #15. I was vaguely wondering why the terrain looked similar, but I was on the line, so not that worried, until a cliff appeared that shouldn't have appeared, and I realized what I had done. D'oh! Another three minutes.



Somehow, the rest of the course went pretty well, and my knee felt fine running in terrain. I ended up 4th, and the first woman. Most importantly, I beat Ian, which I haven't done in well over a year. The whole recovering-from-a-stress-fracture thing might have slowed him down, but I'll take a victory where I can get it.
Results.

Next week I'm co-directing a meet for CSU, at Rocky Woods, in Medfield. All three of you who read this blog should be there (I guess the parental units can be excused from that order, its a bit of a drive).

Random photos from the fall

I seem to have collected lots of photos from various races and things over the fall, and felt that this was a good place to put them. I like photos.
From a recent training exercise at Mt. Tom.

Pre-corn maze fiesta. Not sure what Ken is doing.

Here, I definitely know what Ken is doing - taking straight shots of "maple magic" for some extra oomph during the corn maze.


This is Hartford. I thought it was pretty. I had time to kill on my way to the Lowlander, when Ross and Sam were scooping me up from the train station en route to Neil's.

Diaper-butt (or leakybutt) heading into the corn maze.

2nd place at the GLOF sprint.


GLOF was fun.
Working at download for a local NEOC meet.

Woooo rollerskiing. Attempting to take pictures of the juniors just get boring sometimes, and apparently my feet are more interesting.
Or Ali's feet. This was a perfectly acceptable fashion decision.

Night Weasels!

I wanted to race this weekend, but the whole road rash on the butt thing really kept me off my bike, and even though I can now ride, my legs are all weak. Alas and alack, this is the closest cross race of the season and I'm missing it. Hopefully I'll be pedaling again soon... at least running seems to be going ok so far, and rollerskiing. I can pretend to be a skier again!

Kearsarge rollerski race

Kearsarge mountain, in Warner NH, has a paved road to the top that was recently re-paved, and naturally the head honchos in CSU thought that was the perfect excuse to hold a rollerski race to the top. John and Sue LaChance did the organizing (and leaf blowing, in John's case), and about 15 people showed up on Halloween to race 6km and 440m up a mountain. Fun!

I had plans to dress up, but just wasn't on top of my game enough to make it happen, so dressed up as a CSU skier. Creative. Rob was in his Elvis costume, but I guess everyone else felt like being a rollerskier is enough of a costume on its own. After some warming up, we lined up to start, the guys on fast skis in the front, the rest of us behind, and then it started snowing. Well, that might be generous, maybe it was just sleet. Appropriate. I was lined up in front of most of the juniors except for Hamish and Chris, and when John said "GO!", I tried not to get too excited. I'd seen the profile for this race, it started with a brutal uphill the first kilometer, no way was I going to toast myself on that.

Hamish quickly took the lead, followed by Chris on his rocket-fast aeros. That was the last I saw of Hamish, but Chris faded hardcore and I almost caught him at the end. Yea pacing.

For the first few minutes, I was skiing basically next to Max and Rob, Max being one of those 70-lb 13yo kids, and Rob wearing an Elvis costume just made him faster. Eventually Rob left us, and I skied behind Max for a while - its probably not a good thing that my tempo matched his stride for stride. Time to get stronger... Anyway, he pulled away a bit near the top of the first steep pitch. The hardest part about this race was never having seen the course - I never knew what was coming around each corner, and it was psychologically exhausting to have no idea how much longer you'd have to put out this huge effort up the hill. I had guessed that it would be 30-40 minutes, so was pacing myself for that, but my watch was covered by my sleeve, so I really was just going by feel. I can tell if I'm going too hard and building lactic acid, and on a hill climb, you really want to avoid that. No surges.

After the first flat bit, which lasted for a depressingly short amount of time, the road angled back up, and Cate (one of my star J2s) caught up to me. She quickly passed me and dumped me like a bag of rocks, I figured that would be the last I saw of her. I couldn't tell if I was fading or she had started slower, I still felt pretty in control.
Cate makes the pass.

And leaves me behind.


Something I've been working on the past couple years is how to be faster on gradual uphills - that work paid off as the hill became slightly less brutal, and more gradual, allowing for some glide. I closed the gap to Cate, and narrowed some of the distance to John and his kid Max. Part of the reason for this was because the road was turning a lot, and I was taking the shortest line, while they weren't. Amazing how much a second saved actually closes a gap. But then it got steep again, and they dropped me and Max. Going over a couple rollers, I worked those corners for all I was worth, and dropped Max. I'm not a fast skier because of the uphills...
John, leading Cate, and Anne Burnham in the follow car. Jamie, Allen, Anne, and a couple others were leap frogging the racers to take photos and video - all of these photos are from Jamie. Tom and Sue (and others) were the timing crew, waiting at the top.

After the rollers, I had a sort of second wind, but I was starting to feel the effort. My left calf and shin were super tight, sort of like they get at the Weston Tuesday night races, and that made it hard to hold a good body position. As your legs crap out, you start standing up, and that is not fast. But there were a couple switchbacks left, and then I could hear someone cheering, that must be the top! Finally knowing that I was approaching the finish was a huge psychological boost, it is just so disheartening to ski uphill for half an hour and have no idea how much longer you have to keep skiing! "OMG, am I THERE yet??"

I was unable to close the gap, and ended up 10s down on Cate, and like 30s behind John. He actually beat us by considerably more than that, since he had started everyone, and then put on his stuff and chased us down. But I placed second for the girls, I think 8th overall, and I was quite pleased with my effort. For not training much recently, I felt pretty good, so, I'll take it. And next time, I'll know what the course looks like, so hopefully can put out even more effort.

CSU A meet

CSU held another A meet this fall, just one day of it, as part of the New England Fall Foliage Festival. NEOC held Sunday's meet, and we helped out at that one too, but most of the stress was surrounding the CSU meet. Ed was in charge of everything, because when you're really good at something, you end up doing it instead of someone else who is less competent, and he kept being good at everything, which was great for most of us and not so great for Ed. Anyway, the format was a qualifier race in the morning, and then a final heat in the afternoon, both middle distance races. This made for some headaches for the organizers (Ed), but it all went off relatively smoothly, with music, announcing, live results boards, and lots of other high-tech sort of innovations that other sports take for granted and orienteering is just figuring out. The cutest part was definitely that Saturday's awards were towels, and Sunday's awards were soap. Not like its a subtle hint or anything...

I was on registration. That went pretty smoothly, but it also meant that my head was still in registration mode when I started running, at the end of everyone else's starts. My knee is certainly not healed, but I figured the morning's course was short enough that I couldn't do any real damage, plus, I'm sick of not running. So I headed out into the forest, and actually had a pretty decent run, other than totally blowing #1.

Splits. I managed to pull off a 6th place, despite feeling like my lungs were working their way out of my chest and my legs were exploding - somebody is a bit out of shape. It helped that I orienteered pretty well, I guess that's the main point. I quickly changed into non-running clothes, to discourage myself from doing the second race, even though I had just sneaked into the A-final. No point in pushing my luck with my knee. Back to race organizer mode, who needs a cooldown, anyway?

This is Ali finishing. We can pretend its me, I totally have legs that long.

After finishing, first, you check results (on the awesome live results board).


Then, you post-race huddle and go over splits, talk about your race, and discuss routes. There is an order to these things, a tradition that cannot be broken.
Meanwhile, Ed scrambles to make sure everything is still running smoothly. We need like six Eds for race days.
Ed and Sam worked together really smoothly to get the second start list put together in record time - Sam and I were talking afterwards, and if I had been in Sam's place, or Ross (Sam's fiance) in Ed's place, there would have been screaming and tears from all parties, but when its not your significant other, you aren't really allowed to throw a hissy fit, and things end up going so much more smoothly in high-stress situations.

Sunday was NEOC's meet, out at Baldwin Hill, near Winchendon MA. Luckily there was an indoor area for registration/results/download and for people, because it was windy and cold and raining, unlike the beautiful sunny October day that Saturday had been. I worked registration again, but it was right next to download/results, so I got to hang out with Ed all day, much better.


You can't really tell, but we're playing boggle. Things were so much more relaxed on day 2.

Another A meet is history - next time, it'll be even better! We're already talking about WRE status, inviting over Euros, and making it part of a huge east-coast fall orienteering festival. We have to clone Ed first, though.