WRE Sprint

After some quality sauna time, it was time for the world ranking event. After having some slow skis this morning (who would have thought that it would cool down overnight??), Ali and I had time to re-wax for the proper temperature, and the skis were running much better. They started people in the reverse order that we'd finished the Middle race from the morning, so I was 30s behind Ali. Again, there was much technical skiing and not much wide-trail skiing, but it was pretty fun to switch from a map with a 1:10000 scale to a 1:5000 - hard to switch my brain over like that!

Things were going very well at first - I was slowly catching up to Ali, and there were enough doglegs on the course that I could see her, and the other four girls, frequently. Around control 5, the girl who had started 30s back caught up to me, and I ratcheted up the pace even more to stay with her. We caught up to Ali by control 6, and I was all set with my route to 7, reading my map, when I skied straight into an oncoming junior skier, and went down hard on my ass. Dammit. I lost another 30 seconds to Ali on that leg, just being a bit discombobulated. Gah. Anyway, I finished 12th, which is good, but I would love to have those 45 seconds back. That's racing...

Results, and splits.

Team apple.

Greg fitting in the clown car.



Full daylight, baby. I've decided there is more sunlight here than in Anchorage, though.

Greg on the start.

Ali skiing off to the start.

The EMIT transponders - different than the floppy EMIT brick. These things just velcro to your arm (not sure why there are two), and you have to be within a foot of the flag for them to register. Its awesome. No more stopping!

Balancing all my stuff on a pair of skis. In a snowstorm.


I'm particularly fond of this picture - I was trying to take a picture of me, and Greg walked up to attack my head or something, and so its a picture of his jacket, no head. We're team small, medium, large, here...


Map study, mid-training.

Swedish Ski-O Tour Middle distance

Saturday morning, it was still snowing. A lot. Luckily it was colder than Friday, so the snow was super light and fluffy, so the fact that there was a lot of it wasn't too slow for skiing. We had two races lined up today: a mass start middle distance (9km straight-line) in the morning, and a WRE (World Ranking Event) sprint in the afternoon. And no good place to hang out in between, other than the sauna. Works for me!

I was ranked 15th of 18 in the starting order, so my goal was to beat at least four people. These Swedish chicks are fast! I had a good start, and moved up well through the pack, into the top eight or so. The courses forked (we had three map exchanges - so you didn't know who was on what map, making it harder to follow) early on, and I was the second person down my fork. Its exhilarating, going that fast! The first map went by pretty quickly - I made one really bad route choice, going way around when I didn't have to, but otherwise it was pretty clean. Sweet!

Second map, and I saw a lot of Ali - I think we had the same map this time. We sort of traded leads on and off as we'd both make stupid decisions, but we were going close to the same speed. Near the end of the lap, someone tracked me, and as she went by, she threw an elbow, probably not intentionally, and it knocked me off balance, and I went into a ditch. Hard. Hard enough that I whacked my head pretty good on the trail, since that ditch was actually a spruce trap. And I couldn't get out. Great! Oh, did I mention its been snowing non-stop since we got here?

Anyway, I extricated myself from the ditch, and it took a while, but eventually I caught back up to Ali, who was just cruising, reading ahead on the map, on lap 3. We had the same last lap at this point, and so I decided to try and drop her. PROtip - if someone is just cruising, and you're breathing really heavily, going in front of them and trying to drop them is probably not a successful strategy. She was toodling around behind me as I staggered and wheezed my way along as fast as I could go for a while, but then luckily at one of the controls she managed to get her pole caught in the control itself, and that took a while to extricate herself. Ski-o is much more of an adventure than ski racing, wow. So, I ended up beating Ali, by about 20 seconds, but there was nobody else around us. I definitely should have paced that race a little better - I was pretty blown by the time I started the third lap.

If you're interested, here are some more details on the race, from my training log. Results, and splits. I ended up in 13th, so I beat 5 people, a new record in Scandinavian terrain for me. More importantly, I was only 18% behind the leader, a new PR for me in ski-o; and in some technical terrain, too!

I had a GPS transponder taped to my map holder, so you can see where I went. Except I think they gave me the wrong number, because my track doesn't actually line up with where I think I went. Regardless, its cool. The GPS link might not work a few weeks from now, but for now it works, unless you're using safari. Link.

Swedish Ski-O Tour

Last year, I found out about the Swedish Ski-O tour, which was going to be held on terrain very similar to that of the Ski Orienteering World Championships (Ski WOC) that will be held this March. Ali, Greg, and I signed up, excited to get on some of these famously technical Swedish ski-o maps. Unfortunately, Idre Fjall (location for ski-o Tour) didn't have enough snow, so they moved the races to Högbo Bruk, which is not at all like the Ski WOC terrain, but still technical and hard anyway. Our trio of Americans convened at the Arlanda airport, in Stockholm, and we headed to the Erik Brote's house - Erik was a CSU junior whose family moved to Sweden last summer, and they had generously agreed to host us on our way up north. Will took us for a ski at a local park, and then we were fed delicious dinner.
Mary Poppins!

Team Macintosh.

At a jetlagged version of "early", we drove up to Högbo Bruk, and attempted to obtain some ski-o maps. Failing that, we picked up Nick, a British orienteer who is trying out this ski-o thing and knows Ali, from the train station. Back to the ski area, and we went for a short ski, before waxing for the night race. A team sprint relay, in the dark! Ali and I were one team, and Greg and Nick were the other.
Also, we found ducks.

I was the lead leg, and things were going ok at first, but I was having issues seeing branches before I'd run into them. And when I ran into a branch, it would either attempt to pull off my headlight, or knock me back on my ass. Woooo narrow trails.

My first leg was fairly disastrous - I started out a bit rushed, as I thought we had 10 minutes between the men's start and the women's, and still had all my warmups on, on the wrong side of the stadium, when everyone else was lined up. I got there (skiing through two mesh fences - I can't see ANYTHING in the dark!), just in time, and I even had my poles on when they handed me my map.

I was pretty quick to find the start and #1, so when we took off, I had a good idea of where I wanted to go. My skis were running fast, and when we got to the first fork, I was in second behind one other girl. Shortly thereafter, I noticed that my EMIT brick was feeling floppier than normal - the way to attach these things is to put them around your index finger, safety-pin the hell out of it to your glove, and let it flap in the wind, if you don't have some other system previously worked out (I had a mix of dental floss and duct tape in Japan in 2009). We only got the cards about 30 minutes before the start, so there was no time to work up an elaborate holder-on-ner technique. The Swedes have cool glove fixtures, we're trying to obtain some of those before WOC.

Anyway, I noticed the brick getting floppy and then all of a sudden my hand felt way lighter. Wheee, so much easier to ski! Oh, wait. I need that thing. About 3-4 minutes (it felt like an hour) lost digging in the snow and swearing a lot, and I saw a tip of red elastic sticking out of the bank. Phew! I stuck the thing in my mouth and slobbered over it for the rest of the race - ever notice how you produce a lot of slobber in one race? No? Well, you do, but normally you can swallow or spit or gag or something, instead of just drooling.

Things went pretty smoothly for the next few controls, one 45s bobble, I passed back two more girls, and then I took a "creative" route choice to #7 - probably should have changed course earlier when there were no other ski tracks, but I figured I'd started, so I may as well continue along this route. It would have been fine, maybe only losing 15-30s, but I missed a junction in my head, and got really confused after climbing a hill. I skied down the wrong narrow trail, and luckily it looped around and shot me back to the big trail, which it shouldn't have done, and alarm bells went off. Eventually I figured it out, but that was frustrating, especially in a relay, when there is someone else waiting on you!

I tagged off to Ali, duct taped the entire brick to my glove, and then she went way too fast and I still had my warmups on as she skied into the stadium. Managed to get untangled, but I left the stadium without poles. Sigh. Someday, I'll get my shit together. It would probably have helped if I'd asked somebody the Swedish for "41", our team number, since they were announcing who was coming by number, in Swedish. Once my poles were on, though, I had a much better race. A couple hesitations, but no overtly-stupid route choices, and no huge mistakes. Much more boring!


Skiing!


This is the room Ali and I are sharing. When Nick leaves tomorrow morning, we have to fit Greg and all his stuff in here, too. Yea ski trips!

Applying fluoros.


I have a ridiculous fuzzy warm purple thing. Its wonderful.
Portapotties, swedish style. Also, the bin for sanitary napkins is called sanititteepussi. Is that not hilarious?

3pm.

London

As is often the way, I spent a couple days in London to visit family before heading on to Sweden. We've had a lovely couple of days, mostly I just do whatever Roger normally does each day - we went to the club (his gym, which is the fanciest gym I've ever been to), to his art class, spent a good bit of time reading (although in my case I was working on my statistics take-home exam), and seeing my uncle and cousins. A good way to recoup some energy and drink lots and lots and lots of tea. Do the English ever not want a cup of tea?


They have this cool rent-a-bike program in London - you can get the first 30 minutes free, and rent a bike, and leave it at any of the little rent-a-bike stands all over the city. Then its something like 4 pounds an hour, but, its an expensive city.

I can't NOT take pictures of myself like this. Laughing.


I like desserts. A well-known fact.

The desserts at my favorite shop - Ottolenghi's, the caterer around the corner from Pitt St.


From the art class. Re-remembering how to do it. Haven't drawn a live person in quite a while.

I was given a fun hat.

Double deckers!

Pitt st at night.

Myself and Olivia, cousin.

Double pole time trial 2010

I suppose you can't only write about the good races. Bad ones happen, too. I may have psyched myself out for the double pole time trial, but I think my poor performance was not just in my head - I hurt. Who knows why, could be any myriad of reasons, the biggest one is simply that I was tired.

Ali drove over from Amherst to join me for the test, and we got a bit of a late start because I was having trouble getting my butt in gear. After a barely-adequate warmup, we did the first interval, and I discovered that my poles were occasionally skipping, which was annoying. I was leading up past the steep bit, and then Ali came around, and I was all set to stay with her. But I discovered that my arms just wouldn't go. Neither would my legs - its amazing how much of your legs you have to use when you're double poling uphill. I went quickly into the red, and by the time I reached the top, just after Ali, I was sucking wind and feeling the lungburn. Also close to 20 seconds slower than my first one last year. Not good.

We headed down the hill and started the second, and it was going even worse. I just couldn't GO. Recognizing the incoming negative slump, I started pep-talking, reminding myself (forcefully) that I LOVE double poling, and I love it even more when I its up hills! My brain saw right through this scam, but I just kept repeating how much I loved double poling up hills. It didn't get me going much faster, in fact, I was another 20 seconds slower than the first one. Not good.

Third time up, I managed to talk myself into actually trying, but, that didn't amount to much, as I was only 4 seconds faster than the last hill. Not good. Luckily, at that point Corey showed up, and I had my excuse to stop.

That was certainly disappointing, but I'm not going to let it get me down. I know I'm a bit overextended right now, and with the semester done, and work wrapping up, I should be bouncing back soon, hopefully in time for the races in Sweden next week. But it still sucks to do a test that much worse than the year before. Sigh.

Ski season, incoming!

Winter sort of snuck up on me, and all of a sudden I'm about to head to Europe for the first ski orienteering world cups of the season, at the Swedish Ski-O Tour. I leave Sunday. Yup. Couple days in London to visit family and then on to Sweden, where Ali and Greg are joining me, and we'll attempt to out-ski and out-navigate the Swedes... highly unlikely.

In the meantime, there is a double pole test to contend, two or three coaching sessions, possibly a cyclocross race, possibly some orienteering, a good bit of ski waxing, some packing, and some take-home-final-examining. At least I can't say I'm bored.

Wahoooo skiing! Snow at Weston! Snow up north! 'Tis the season!! (but not that silly holiday season people are always talking about - its SKI season!).

3000m time trial

I try to do at least one of these a year, to get some indication of where my fitness is. Since I've now been running 3ks since 2002, I have many years of data, which makes my inner nerd pretty happy. Given the knee injury that wouldn't go away earlier this fall, I wasn't sure if I'd be able to run this year, but I'm mostly all-clear for running now, so figured I'd give the 3k a shot. Over thanksgiving week, I ran some 1000s on the track, just to get the pacing down, and see how my body responded. Turns out, 4min/km was quite taxing, and my legs felt like they were going to explode. Not a good sign. I set my sights on hitting 12min for the 3k, expecting maybe 10s of variation, mostly likely towards 12:10.

Luckily, I had company this year - the US orienteering team has to run a 3k as a team performance indicator thing, so most of them were running one before the superstars events started. We had a good crew, about 15 runners, some from the US team and some ardent supporters who are not on the team. My mom was on hand with Tira to give a couple "go sweetie!"s, and Peter and Claire and Ian were cheering/timing as well. I had the light shoes on, hoping for every advantage I could get.

A ragtag crew on the start line.



I knew I wouldn't be able to run with Sam or Ali, but that I'd be faster than Katia and Kseniya, the other two girls. I was hoping there would be some guys going my speed so I could draft on the windy backstretch, and it turned out that Giovanni was going just the speed I wanted. The first 200 felt effortless, 42s, and I was able to bring the pace back to something slightly more realistic coming back around the lap. Giovanni took the lead going into the second lap, and was running very consistent 95-second laps, so I tucked in and tried to stay relaxed. Things felt nice and controlled until about 4.5 laps in, when I noticed a gap growing between me and Giovanni. Knowing that the windy backstretch was coming up, I surged to get back in his draft, and hung on for another 400m, but with 2.5 laps left, I popped, and couldn't close the gap. At this point I was no longer running smoothly; the fat-kid-with-asthma breathing had made an appearance, and thoughts of lying down at the finish line were overwhelming my brain, which was taking a full 200 meters to add 48 seconds to my current time.

With one lap left I tried my hardest to rally, it felt like running was taking way too much coordination, and my legs felt like they were moving through jello, injected full of lactic acid. So hard to keep driving, but I finally crossed that line, in 11:47. 11 seconds faster than my PR two years ago, but I'm not sure how much of that is due to the light shoes. A good bit better than my expected 12:10! It is always relieving to perform better than you expect - maybe the fitness is there, after all. Now all that remains is to see how I do at the double pole time trial this weekend... I might be more race-ready than I previously thought.

Previous data:
2002 sept 13:38?
2002 nov 12:45?
2003 sept 12:45?
2003 nov 12:36
2004 oct 12:36
2005 nov 12:18
2006 aug ?
2007 oct 12:36
2008 june 12:38
2008 nov 11:58
2009 Nov 12:10
2010 Dec 11:47

Year-to-year fitness is pretty cool.

The other thing that's pretty cool (nerd alert), is the heart rate correlation to speed - Through about 6 laps, my heart rate was steadily climbing - it took 2.5 laps to break into L4, that zone just below your LT. Then I had about 2.5 more laps right at threshold, and by 5 laps in (where I lost Giovanni), I started popping above my LT, though not consistently. I made it another lap above threshold, and the last 1.5 laps, my HR started dropping, back into threshold-land, despite the speed staying pretty high. This probably correlates pretty well with where I started taking much bigger steps, sort of lurching down the track instead of running, but I don't have a video or anything to prove that. Its cool, though, to see what happens once you cross threshold - I apparently have about 3-4 minutes of grace period where I can deal with that much lactic acid, before my body can't flush it anymore, and shit hits the fan. Should probably work on that a bit... But it is fun to see how HR relates to that "comfortably hard" feeling.