Headcam

I borrowed Cristina's headcam to ski the model event. I did the skiing, she did the editing. If you have three minutes to spare, check it out, at the team blog, or below. The video was so awesome (I may be a little conceited) that it deserves its own post.

SkiWOC 2011 - Model from Cristina Luis on Vimeo.

Tänndalen

Sunday afternoon, we packed up and left for Tänndalen, courtesy of a mini-bus driven by Erik, with some Austrians and a whole bunch of skis. Things went pretty smoothly, except for the point where Cristina and I mooned two separate cars while peeing basically in the shoulder of the road (the snow banks were too deep to climb into). We got to the event center by 4pm, found our rooms, and then some dinner and some other Americans.

Sunday and Monday have been super sunny and nice out, and we've acquainted ourselves with the general layout of Hotel Tänndalen (I just like typing Tänndalen. Umlauts are so cool).
There is a good dynamic in the girls' team, and the guys seem to be behaving as well. We're in two separate suites - the girls have a cozy one (that we actually like better, because there is a nice area for stretching, and a clothes-drying machine thing), and the guys have a slightly larger one with leather couches.

Nikolay, Greg, and Ali, relaxing in the swank (soon to be stank) room.

The Swedish Ski-O Tour company has a Ski-WOC car. So cool. Makes me feel PRO.

Very Swedish-looking place, with thatched roofs.

This is the view through Cristina's night vision goggles. It just looks cool, though blurry.

This is our waxing area. The table is quite wobbly, so Ali is performing the extremely important job of stabilizing the benches.

I like the Spanish team's suits, so I took a picture of one.

One of the Italian women skiing past a control. We're using the touch-free EMIT timing (like we did in December), which is awesome because you can just ski past a control, whack at it with your hand, and keep going. Today was the model event, (map), so we got to practice all sorts of things, like flying past controls, narrowly avoiding trees, and face-planting into snowbanks.
Walking to the opening ceremonies. I feel like there are a lot of photos of me in a red jacket and a hot pink hat.

And if you can't get enough of the media... here's a link to the US Orienteering Team blog, that has a sweet video of our pre-model-event ruminations. I think it's mostly giggles.

Tomorrow is the first race - the sprint! I'm nervous, but I feel good about this. Just go fast and don't mess up, simple.

Last day in Mora

We had one day left in Mora, and because it hadn't snowed too much on Friday, decided to go back to the place with all the narrow trails we'd been at on Thursday. The snow actually made things really nice, since it was just an inch of fluff, and that made the trails much softer. Some sprint training, with a Swedish friend of ours (Leif), then a relaxed lunch and a nap, and then it was time to go pick up Ali. This turned into more of a fiasco than it should have been...

We were supposed to pick up Ali from the train station at 5:29pm, and so we left the apartment at 5:10 to go get her. We got to the end of the curvy road, and I'm just following, because Greg and Cristina have both been outside before to do things other than skiing (Cristina needed a diet coke last night), plus, they've both looked at a map. But they turned right at the end of the curvy road, and I thought we were supposed to go left. Meh, they know what we're doing. After much walking, we got to a train station, which was decidedly NOT the train station where we'd been dropped off.

At this point, the train was just about arriving, but no Ali. We headed back to the first train station, where we should have gone first, if I had just spoken up louder. Greg insisted that we take the scenic route, which took us by the lake, and while it was indeed scenic, Ali was actually walking towards town, along the road we would have found her on had we not taken the scenic road. Argh.

So, since we were at this point 20 minutes after the train, I headed back to the school, to see if she'd somehow found her way there (we didn't have an address and hadn't told her how to get there...), and the other two waited at the station. She wasn't there, and I got out my computer to see if we had any news - maybe (hopefully?) she missed the train? Anyway, Greg and Cristina got back then, because the next train wasn't until 7:30. But then I got a chat from Ali saying she was in the Best Western, so we went over to pick her up, where she was, very much in need of a hug and a friendly face. I felt pretty horrible - there's nothing quite so bad as arriving somewhere when you don't have any way to contact or get to where you're supposed to be staying, and previously-made plans aren't working.

To top things off, we haven't fixed our stove yet, but luckily Cristina talked to more strangers, and we used another random girl's kitchen ("Cristina! There's people! Will you go talk to them...?"), and when I ran downstairs to grab a spatula, Ali was sitting on the couch, covered in nutella, and giggling, so clearly, she's doing ok.

We were supposed to bring sheets, and Greg didn't get this memo, so he stole a couple blankets from Delta. They almost fit him.

Let loose in a Swedish grocery store, the first thing I do is find the "health food" aisle. mmmm crazy eyes.

Greg, on the other hand, found a sausage of lingonberry jam. This is significant, because according to this thread on attackpoint, Greg had already eaten all the lingonberries in Sweden on day zero (context in the link).

I went for a quick run on Sunday before we left, and brought my camera. It was so pretty out!






Now, we're off to Tänndalen with some Swedes!

Photos from day 2

Out on the river trail to the Mora trails. It was snowing today, and a bit warmer - right around zero. Glad I wasn't classic waxing...

Quickroute from the first sprint that we did yesterday. You can see where I blew it on the way to #6 - took that right turn, thinking I was taking the right fork. At least I caught it, but not that quickly...
Quickroute from the second sprint. This one was longer, and had two butterflies on it. Again, I made a mistake near the end - my concentration needs some work. I missed my turn to 11, realized it, took the next turn, and then could see the control, so tried to take a downhill shortcut. Unfortunately, I hit something solid under the snow, got onto one foot, thought I could ride it out, and failed, landing with a poof in a pile of snow. Then, I couldn't extricate myself from that pile of snow, so spent a while floundering around trying to stand back up. Of course, when I got to the finish, Erik was waiting for everyone, and said something along the lines of "you met some snow, eh?" That was embarrassing. Sigh.

And from the afternoon's training - follow the highlighted line. I sort of had some issues around the marsh, and by the time I figured out where I was, I backtracked to get back on the line.

Cristina was really excited about cheese slices after the first ski.

Mora Ski Gymnasium

I left for Sweden on Tuesday, met up with Greg at the JFK airport, and we finished the trip across the Atlantic puddle and got to Mora by Wednesday sort of mid day. Erik Svensson and the Mora Ski Gymnasium have been kind enough to put us up for a couple days, and invited us to join them for all the trainings that they're doing. It's a really sweet setup, and makes a lot of logistics actually much easier than if I were trying to plan things myself. We're staying in a dorm in the basement of one of the ski dorms, and it's way more than I expected. Cristina got here Thursday afternoon, and there may even be sightings of an Ali by Saturday!

At least the main room is quite big - enough room for two couches, a table, and two bunkbeds. Living in style!Looking the other way.

The apartment comes with a very large kitchen. Better than a lot of places I've seen, actually!

mmmm sunshine.

Greg catches a quality nap on the train.

The first thing we did was hit up a grocery store for the essentials, like nutella.
Greg doesn't really have standards when it comes to food. I find nutella-cheese-baloney-jam sandwiches weird. Cheese-wrapped fried meatballs, on the other hand, are purely delicious.

We did a little skiing, too. Turns out, they groom a snowmobile path from the Mora dorms to the Vassaloppet trails, so Wednesday afternoon we went exploring on those. That was fun, but joining the ski-o kids Thursday was more fun. Basically, they get driven to a map, that has some custom ski trails on it, and they were doing two sprints, so we joined them. I can safely say that I was the second (of two) girls on that course. The entire thing was windy narrow trails - spectacular. Good rolling terrain, enough uphills to make you try hard and enough downhills to keep you on your toes. We went back in the afternoon to do a line-o, and that was also hard. My actual reading of the map isn't so bad right now, but I was unable to keep focus. Hopefully more sleep, less jetlag, and more coffee will fix that before WOC!


Cristina came prepared - with night vision goggles. I didn't get it either.

The snowmobile groomer, with one of the coaches ("trainers") waiting for the kids to start the workout.

The woods are beautiful. Supposedly it will snow a lot tomorrow, but today was sunny, if not all that warm. Swedish junior skier whooshing through the woods.

I'll leave you with this one - amazing the things you can find in a Swedish grocery store. We had to import the Greg-in-tights, and the scimitar came with the apartment, but you can get huge chunks of sausage (it tasted like hotdogs).

Here goes

I leave tomorrow for Sweden, for the World Championships in Ski Orienteering. After Rangeley and Ski to the Clouds, I'm less than certain about my fitness, but there isn't much I can do now that would be effective except rest. Never been good at that. As with every big competition, I feel woefully under-prepared and under-practiced in the skills I feel are necessary, but again, not much I can do now.

I get to Sweden by Wednesday morning, and head to Mora, where Erik Svensson is helping us get some access to maps and terrain, and it will be walking that fine line between resting enough and practicing map-reading enough... Sunday we head north, to Tänndalen. Monday is an easy day, just skiing around on model maps, and then a week from tomorrow, Ski WOC begins! I'm pretty pumped.

Ski to the Clouds

I was wrecked after Rangeley - physically and mentally. Totally shattered. I had pre-registered for Ski to the Clouds, but given my state of immobility Saturday night (you want me to get UP off this floor? Whatever for?), and the state of the weather on Sunday (mmmm, 45 degree rain!), I was sort of wishing I hadn't. I was staying at Colin's parents' house again, which was nice, because it meant not driving all the way back to Boston that night, so we did the important things - pasta, beer, massage, and play with the cat, and I started to think there might be hope for tomorrow.


This cat is dumb - she likes to drink out of the faucet in the shower, and it drips on her head. She doesn't seem to notice.

I decided to make the call about racing in the morning - I'd go for a jog and see how my legs felt. I honestly didn't think there would be any point to racing up Mt. Washington if my legs felt like they did during the marathon. I don't drop out of races, but I do decline to start some of them, if I have a good reason. The rain was fine, weather don't scare me.

I woke up before my alarm, headed out for the test jog, and decided that the race was a go - my kneecaps hurt like hell, but that receded to a dull ache after about 10 minutes, and my legs seemed to have recovered from the effort the day before. And, I have a great pair of slush skate skis, that never get to get used. Ok, let's hit the road!
Never pick up hitchhikers.

The reason we were carpooling is actually kind of sad - Cary took an SUV to the mouth while riding his bike last week, and while he's "ok", relatively speaking, he needs some major dental surgery, and apparently thought that racing a 50k wasn't the best of ideas. So the original plans fell through. Anyway, Colin was being a good carpool-mate and claimed that he didn't mind stopping by Mt. Washington on the way back to Boston, although I couldn't convince him that an uphill ski race in the cold rain was a good idea. What gives?

Nice spring day.
Mt. Washington is right there, see her?


"America's toughest 10km". Yup. 4km flat stuff, and then 6km up the Mt. Washington auto road. I knew I wasn't going to feel super fresh, but I was mentally prepared, and I was also prepared for when my left calf completely blows up. I just hoped I could postpone the inevitable to partway up the climb. This calf thing has been getting worse over the last 4-5 years, basically I'm convinced it's compartment syndrome, but haven't gotten it tested or done anything about it, I'll admit I'm still in the denial stage. Anyway, the gist is that my left calf tends to blow up when I skate up hills hard, but I keep hoping it'll behave.

My skis were rockets, and I found myself with some fast guys, cruising through the flat bit. Unfortunately, the race is ultimately decided on the climb, and the calf thing makes that a bit challenging. This time I made it about 20 strides into the hill before I felt it begin to go, and within half a km I was in agony. It feels like my whole lower calf is exploding, not sharp pain, just like there is some giant squeezing my leg. I had made sure to tie my boots super loosely; this wasn't a boot issue. But goddammit, I don't drop out of races. It turned out both V1 right and left hurt equally as much, but things were a little better if I kept my left ski on the firm-packed middle bit of the trail. I couldn't push off of that leg, but I could still stand on it, which is only like stage two of complete bodily disfunction during skate races. Only 45 minutes of climbing left!

Pretty quickly into the climb, the Bates girl who ended up winning caught me. I decided to see what it was like to ski behind her - Obviously I had to try harder, but I lasted for about five minutes before my calf started to move towards stage three, the can't-stand-on-that-ski anymore stage, so I backed off. Just before the 2mi sign, Ellery Leeds and Katie Miller caught me, and I skied with them for a bit, aided by a flat part that I could double pole, to rest my calf. Then things went steep, and I went back to being unable to push off my leg. Shortly thereafter, Jane and Meghan McClelland caught me, and I could ski with them for a little longer, but not enough. The pure limiting factor was my calf - I was watching my HR drop. Not supposed to do that on a hillclimb.

Photo credits great glen trails. See that canted right knee? That explains why my kneecaps hurt so much right now. Broken.

Anyway, it took me 3km to remember to remind myself that I love hills, and I alternated between "I love hills" and "good at hills!" in my head for probably 20 minutes. "This is fun!" was a bit too much, my brain is dumb, but not that dumb. The climb seemed pretty interminable, but I wasn't going to stop, and I'd reached some sort of equilibrium with the pain in my calf - it certainly hurt, but I could keep skiing, albeit not that fast.

The finish was a welcome sight. And skiing up the hill with a rain jacket (and dry hat in the pocket) tied around my waist was one of the few smart things I did today. The descent was actually really fun, since you could carve through the slush.

My finish placing wasn't where I'd hoped, but calf issues aside, I am much happier with this race than yesterday's - probably has to do with forcing a cheery attitude on myself. Today had the potential to be truly miserable - and it wasn't. I guess my new standard for ski racing is "as long as it isn't miserable, we're all good".

I plan to rest in the ten days between now and my departure for Sweden, but I'm just so bad at resting. Resting is a much bigger challenge to me than something like skiing halfway up Mt. Washington. Here goes...