More traveling...

I have more photos to dump from Mont Saint Anne. The skiing was really phenomenal, and I got my camera fixed, which made life much better. From Mont Saint Anne, I drove south to meet Ed in VT, and life got even better, by the mile. New Year's Eve in VT, and then by Sunday we were working on ski orienteering stuff, for the race we're holding in the Balsams. From there, I moved on to Rumford, where some of CSU is holed up waiting for the nationals races to be held. Not much snow in Rumford.




Aw, brother-sister stretching, post-ski.
Me, Erin, and Kevin.

The city skyline from the Chutes de Montmorency.



Quebec City at night. All lit up.

Mont Sainte Anne photo dump

There are more photos, from the work camera, but I don't have the wire to connect it.

The good news is that I was able to get my camera fixed at a local place. So now I can use my new camera again!

Wednesday was the pursuit time trial that CSU always runs each year at MSA. The course follows trail 11, first classic, then transition to skate. We have a rule that you can't use anything fancier than LF wax, and still my skis were running really fast. It was wonderful. We self-seeded across the stadium, but then we had to squash into three-across rows, and I let myself get pushed way back, behind skiers that I should be way in front of. I didn't feel like fighting for a spot, so just stood there and let myself get pushed further and further back. Not sure why, it really took me out of the running, but I just couldn't be bothered. Whoops.

Off we went, and we hit the first hill in a bunch. I was able to kick up the whole thing, although not in any sort of spectacular manner, and near the top I finally broke through a pack of CSUers and onto the Zoe-Olivia train. After a couple strides there, I knew I was feeling waaaay too comfortable to be racing, so I went around them, but at this point there was a fairly big gap to the Hannah-Cate-Max group. We were near the top of the first hill, so I tried to work the transition-y rollers at the top, but as I already had realized, my double pole is pretty pathetic right now. Not to mention, my elbow was doing its sharp pain thing with every pole. Pain tends to limit how much you want to push on the hurty bits.

Anyway, there were some nice restful downhills, and then a gradual uphill bit that rolled back up to the stadium, and I was closing in on Hannah, who had dropped off the back of that pack. I could see the pack, but the gap was closing really slowly, and I realized then how much I'd handicapped myself in the start.

I came into the stadium and had a good transition to my skate skis, but then found myself caught in between everyone else's skate skis - I couldn't get out of the transition zone! It took some pretty-footing through other people's skis and poles to eventually get back to the trail, I'm not sure if I could have backed out of my spot, but in retrospect, that would have been much smarter than attempting to turn around. We didn't really have a nice transition area set up, just piles of skis and poles on the side of the trail.

Luckily my transition time was fast enough to still close down on the gap to the pack, but I quickly discovered that my cold feet and the skittery snow were causing my left shin to cramp up pretty badly. I tried to focus on relaxing, but skiing uphill isn't exactly conducive to relaxing. The shin wasn't so bad that I couldn't flex at the ankle, yet, so I kept hammering and caught Hannah as we crested the steep climbs. I couldn't force my shin to relax, definitely felt like it was exploding, and it meant I was doing a shit job of balancing on that leg, but that didn't stop me from working the upper rollers to catch Max, just before the downhill.

I caught Jordan on the lower set of rollers, and I was definitely starting to hurt, now. Racing is hard! I still couldn't really balance or use my left leg, but I'd figured out a way around it, more or less, and I finished the race feeling like I'd put in a good effort. I don't know why cold weather makes my shins cramp up, it seems to have something to do with my feet freezing up and then doing stuff that I'm unaware of, that makes my shins hurt. Or its compartment syndrome, coming back, but its so infrequent that I hope its not.

Anyway, today my lower back is so sore I can barely move. I was doing speeds with the kids, and Corey kept wanting to race, and I thought my back was just going to break. Nothing like the first classic race of the season to remind you that racing is hard!

Training camp in Quebec

The visit to Rochester was too short before I was on the road again, this time to Mont Saint Anne, in Quebec. That is really far away from Rochester. But CSU does their post-christmas camp there every year, and I figured it was about time to see what it was all about.

I got a new camera for Christmas. I took some really high quality photos.




Then I drove to Quebec.

Mont Saint Anne!

And then I dropped my camera, lens-down, in the snow trying to take photos, and now its broken. So is my heart. I'm going to try and fix it in Quebec City tomorrow afternoon, see if they can un-stick the lens from its position. This is why I can't have nice things.

The skiing is spectacular, if cold. With hills! Everyone is in high spirits. Tomorrow is the time trial, it'll be interesting to see how that goes.

Swedish Ski-O Tour WRE Middle

We had yet another middle distance race on Sunday morning. I think they didn't have enough map for us to do a Long race. This time, it was only 8km straight-line, with an expected winning time of 42min, and wave start. I was starting in the second wave, with Ali in the first wave, and because it was STILL snowing, I found I was breaking trail for a lot of the race. Luckily, this snow is still soft and fluffy, and it isn't that hard to yank your ski tips out of snow banks. I really hit my stride in this race in terms of navigation, things were going really smoothly except for one leg, where I turned down the wrong trail for a couple seconds and had to turn around, just after taking the smaller trail when I should have taken the larger trail - similar distances. Whoops. My body felt pretty whupped, physically, though. Apparently four races in three days on top of jetlag and long travel days makes you tired. My arms were quite unhappy at all the double poling on narrow trails, and by the time I got to the hotel, it was all I could do to limp into the sauna. I have some double poling to work on before March...

Anyway, I felt pretty good about this race, but I just wasn't skiing fast enough. Good skis, bad legs - or arms, as the case may be. It was still a big improvement over the 2009 World Champs in terms of percent behind the winner, but I feel that I can improve a lot on this placing if I am smart about my training over the next three months. Results and splits.


An AWESOME pair of Karhus.

Snowy trees.

People in Gävle are serious about their bikes.

More snowy trees.

THIS is smelly.

Ali has come down with a cold, so probably at some point in the next couple days I'll be whining about being sick, too. I can't wait.

Swedish training

We had two days of training after the races, with the Norwegian team and some random Swiss ski orienteers. Monday I felt pretty trashed, so I took it pretty easy on the intensity. Since it was STILL SNOWING, things were really slow. They re-groomed, but it basically made no difference. Thank god this isn't heavy Sierra cement or something. Anyway, we did a corridor training exercise in the morning (where you can only see a small strip of map, instead of the whole thing), and that didn't actually feel all that useful, since it just felt like a line-o. Just follow the bit of trail that you can see. At least it led me to some parts of the map that I hadn't seen before, and some awesome narrow downhills.

At one hill, I came whizzing down, and had to make a left turn, but there was a sapling in the way. I mostly made the corner, but I knew Greg wasn't far behind, so I waited around, hoping he would crash spectacularly. He stayed upright, much to my disappointment, but I decided to redo the hill a couple times, because it was fun, and unbeknownst to me, he was videoing my faceplants into the fluffy snow. Eventually I made it. This is my favorite clip, because I just totally disappeared into the snow. That stupid sapling was in the way of the perfect arc, making the turn much more technical than you'd think... I swear.


The afternoon was a line-o, where you follow a pre-printed line around the course. This was cruel, because it sent us up many hills on narrow trails, which require either double poling, or an awkward herringbone-type-thing where you're pulling your ski tips out of the snow with each step. Apparently, the weaker ski orienteers, like J2 girls, train a lot on classic skis, so they can actually go up hills. Yes, I have the upper body strength of a J2 girl right now.

Give me dried banana slices, and I'll stick them in my eyeballs. I am a very serious person.

This was skiing on the freshly-groomed pow. Definitely a better day for downhill than up. Champagne powder, and I'm stuck on skate skis in a flat area of Sweden...

My arrrrrrrrrms!

Important work happens at night. The bras hanging on the portrait really make the photo. Greg's quote: "is there anything in this room that doesn't have underwear hanging off it?"

Team Apple/Team Giggly is conferring what to giggle about next. Its been a good trip.

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.