WOC Middle Distance Quali

The Middle distance qualification was was the second one I was slated to run, and after seeing the model area terrain, I was worried it would be so technical I wouldn't know where to start. It wasn't actually that bad, which was kind of disappointing, since I know I don't really have the speed to run with these girls, but I was hoping I'd have the technical oomph. It went really well, though, and that left me in a great mood.

I decided to focus on the "safe" part of my mantra today - I wanted really solid attackpoints, after yesterday's little 10-minute detour. Spiked the first control, and then got very lucky on the 2nd one. I wasn't quite where I expected to be, but it turns out I was where I should be, and there happened to be a control with my number on it, so I just punched and moved on.

I took the trail to 3, all the way to the little trail, but this lost me a lot of elevation, and probably a minute, maybe more. Spiked the control, but I'm not fast going uphill. Pretty good to 4, and then a long leg to 5 - I actually lost the least amount of time to Ali on my long trail legs, which is sort of backwards compared to what you'd expect given our perceived strengths and weaknesses… Anyway, took the middle little trail, and that worked out.

Comparing splits with the girls, I managed to lose about 20 seconds to the camera control; I think I just have an aversion to climbing hills fast. But #7 was good, and then I took the trail out to the road to get to 8, so that went pretty well. A couple moments of doubt as I pounded down the trail, but I just kept reminding me to trust me, and although I probably lost time because I had to climb up 7 contours at the end, I think the simpler route was faster for me. But then I lost another 20 seconds going to 9; hesitating and trying to go straight, instead of blasting back north to the trail and in to 9, where I'd seen it on my way up. Silly. And then I lost nearly 30 seconds to Hannah on the bashing-out-to-the-road control, I should have just bashed straight down instead of trying to cut it shorter.
Splits


And some more photos...
Greg and his posse of Canadians (+ Ali) before one of our training days.
Sam chilling on our nice balcony with a yogurt drink.
Little girl with a huge sandwich!
Mark with a tiny espresso (Sandra's hubby and one of the world's best orienteers and mountain runners).
Ali getting all set for a training run.
Ed brought a vuvuzela to the races, and here Sergei is practicing making noise on it. We would usually send Clem to the edge of the forest to summon in our runners... sometimes, that worked! We did get yelled at by a photographer who couldn't hear his shutter clicking with all the vuvzela-ing, so had to take our act somewhere else. Enthusiastic cheering!
Hannah manages to demurely sit and read her book, while we carry on general shenanigans around her. No wonder she is good at orienteering! Focused!
Driving back down to Aix, Beatrice and I found Eddie standing on a guardrail taking photos of the view. Eddie is a real superfan, and also takes some really nice photos. it's been great having as many superfans here as we do - Peter and Gail, Eddie, Clem, Sandy, Barb and Dave and Izzy, Greg, Boris, Cristina, Ed, Wyatt's whole family, and probably more that I'm missing now. So much support!
Yes, our laundry hangs over our balcony... isn't that what balconies are for?
The crowd at the opening ceremony. Orienteering is actually a big deal here. As evidenced by the 4000 spectators running in the O' Festival, I suppose.
Ross leaping away from his last control on the long qualifier.

WOC Long Distance Quali

I think everyone assumed I'd be nervous for my first WOC race, and pretty much everyone I saw yesterday and this morning tried to offer me advice. I figured it was easiest to just ignore them all and do my own thing - I know how to play this game; other people may be better at it, but I know what to do. So I wasn't that nervous starting out. It's nice having low to no expectations. I just wanted to beat at least one person. "Simplify, be safe, be steady".

I spiked the first control, so that put me in a good mood. The 2nd started well, but then I suffered a minor brain fart, and did a 180, thinking I must have gone too far. That probably lasted 15 seconds or so before it occurred to me that I was running in exactly the wrong direction, so I turned around and found my control. Goofmuppet! One more quick leg, and then the first of two long legs. I took another safe route, gaining 9 extra contours, but spiking the control. For the next long leg, to 5, I'm not sure my route was ideal, but it was functional. I channeled my inner French cow (you know - they have one long leg and one short leg, to better stand on hills) as I contoured across a steep grassy slope, and then nearly made a mistake in the circle when I couldn't find my large depression, and found a large hill instead - luckily realized what was going on pretty quickly!

5 was the water stop, in a small depression, manned by two french people. I took a cup of sports drink, and the guy said "Allez! Allez! Vite, vite!" But I stood there looking at my map, and took another glass. And then another, at which point, the woman sort of sighed. "Courage!" they called after me. Whatever, I like my sugar drinks.

Then I spent 17:35 going about 400m. I couldn't find a simple, safe route, so chose to just go straight and pick stuff off. That never works well for me, and it didn't magically work this time, either, although I got close. But I had a poor attackpoint - mistook a dot knoll for a hill on a nose, and so when I attacked my control from two contours too low, it wasn't there. Relocating takes a long time, and I actually found the woman manning the control before I found the control. Very frustrated by that; I know I'm slower than everyone else here, but I'd like to not also be stupider. I could have at least relocated a little faster!

Three more controls in the knobbly stuff, that went pretty well (some hesitations, but no mistakes), and then the finish. After catching my breath and all that, I asked Ed if I was last. "No, you're not last! Oh, wait. Yes, you are last". I was kind of bummed, but then some more stragglers came in, and I finished 20th of 28 in my heat. Not last! I'm pissed about that huge mistake, but what's done is done.

The top 15 from each heat go on to the finals, and Ali finished 11th (I think) in her heat, enough to move on to the finals, on Wednesday. Samantha had a rough day, making a 19 minute mistake, and ended up just a minute or two out of qualification. The men have a tougher field, so none of them moved on. We think we're good, but then everyone else is so much better! This is also just such difficult terrain, that there were many people who made huge mistakes, and there was a huuuuuge spread between the first and last runner.

This map shows the winner's route; there are three separate courses for the three qualification heats, and I was in heat "B". This is the winner's route from course B.

I'm glad to have my first WOC race out of the way. I do wish I hadn't blown that one control, but I knew I wasn't fast enough to move on even if I'd had a clean race - qualifying for the finals wasn't one of my goals this year. Those girls are so speedy! Anyway, first race over, and with the middle distance quali the following day, the focus immediately moved to the next race.

Splits

World Orienteering Championships

Last Tuesday, I flew over to France, for the World Orienteering Championships (WOC). I'm joining Samantha, Ali, and Hannah on the women's team, and Ross, Jordan, Ken, Sergei, and Wyatt are on the men's team. We spent the next three days getting used to the maps, testing out the terrain. The forest is pretty gross, honestly, good thing we're in France where there is delicious cheese and bread and wine and fruit to make up for it. The whole area is this limestone karst stuff, with scrubby little trees and low-lying dead trees everywhere. The karst is awesome, from a spectator/geologist point of view, but it makes it really difficult to run fast. They have these rocky pits out there, some of which are so deep I couldn't see the bottom. So cool! Luckily, some of the courses went over steep cow pastures, which make for faster running, but contain cows. Some of the cows have horns.

Below is a pretty random assortment of photos from the last few days. I've been taking a lot of photos, but the internet has been sketchy enough that I haven't put them anyway. I'll write about the long and middle qualifier races next... but pictures are more interesting =).

Model map from the long distance test area. The yellow is all the steep cow pastures.
It's this sort of terrain...


Ed arrived in style. He actually biked from Geneva down to almost Aix-les-Bains, because then his bike rack broke. He'd been carrying about 50lb of gear, lots of it extra stuff he isn't planning to tour with later, and that was just too much for his rack. So, Boris, Greg, and Patrick went to rescue him. Unfortunately the only way the bike would fit was when it was crammed into the car in an unusual way. With a vuvzela strapped to the top tube!

At the finish chute on day 1, I noticed that Francois Gonon had a fan club. I expressed interest in having a fan club of my own, so Boris wrote up a fan club sign for "Axel Josp". Close enough...

Looking down on Aix-les-Bains from the plateau where we've been racing.

Me finishing the middle distance qualifier (photo credit Greg Walker).

Explaining routes to my #1 fan post race. (photo credit Greg).

The crew of Americans at the finish of the long qualifier (photo credit Greg).
Hanging out in the shade waiting for the men. (photo credit Greg).

Cows! You can never tell when there will be a traffic jam on the road.

Looking down the hill from le centre ville d'Aix, across the lake at the misty hills.

Hannah, somewhat dazed, after her sprint race. The sprint
was cool to spectate (I wasn't running it - just running the long distance and middle distance qualifiers, but I didn't make it to the finals, so that's it, although I may also run the relay on Saturday - Hannah and I will duke it out in a spectator race tomorrow to decide).
Looking towards our plateau past our hotel. Pretty place!

Canal Cities Challenge

The Buffalo Orienteering Club hosted the last events of the Canal Cities Orienteering Festival, a weekend A-meet consisting of sprint, middle, and long distance races. The first event was the middle distance, at Sprague Brook Park, and I was a little anxious - I knew it was a pretty thin field, in depth, but with both Angelica Riley and Galyna Petrenka (a Ukranian-born Canadian, I think) racing, I had my work cut out for me. I had calmed my nerves before I started, but still managed to do some silly stuff on the way to the first two controls. Things smoothed out a little after that, but not by much - too much stop and go, and I was thinking too much about running fast and not enough about orienteering well. Luckily, I only lost major time on the 12th control, and Angelica and Galyna both made bigger mistakes, so I ended up in front! I've never won an A-meet day before, so I was pretty psyched.


Middle distance results, splits (you have to click on the class - I'm in F21).

After a brief break, we ran the sprint race. It was over by the camping area of the park, and almost all across open grass. A tough task on a humid day. I had decided that I wanted to run a little more smoothly than in the morning, and headed out with the goal of cruising through the first few controls, but always staying in contact. Unfortunately, I didn't really have much oomph working for me, and the cruise-y pace I was trying to hold actually took a lot of work. But, I was spiking my controls, and moving really smoothly, so I was feeling pretty good about myself. Starting around #8, I began to run into some serious oxygen debt - coincidentally, this was also the point where I actually had to go uphill - by 11, I was listening to some pretty heavy breathing, and not all that surprised to discover it was me.

As I approached 12, I unfolded my map a little more, and discovered, much to my surprise, that we had 17 controls on the course, not 14. There was a whole extra lap around the little pond! I focused on this lap, making sure that I knew how I'd be approaching the controls and how I'd be leaving them, and looking around to make sure I could see the features in this open land. As I did this, I ran a beautifully straight line from 13 to 15, completely missing 14 - completely didn't see it on my map. The last few minutes of the race were exquisitely painful, from the anaerobic point of view, but I punched the finish feeling good about myself, if completely wiped from the hard effort in the hot sun. It wasn't until I downloaded the information from my e-punch that I discovered I'd skipped a control. Dammit! It wasn't really worth getting upset about it, but I was disappointed with myself - shouldn't have gone into quite so much oxygen debt. In a woulda-shoulda-coulda world, I probably would have finished 5-10 seconds in front of Angelica, for the win. Instead, I was disqualified. Well, one more day to redeem myself and try to win the weekend overall.



Ed dashing across the field in the sprint. He has acquired a vuvuzela from Ross, and plans to bring it to WOC; I practiced it on him whenever I saw him in the sprint, and I think it made him run faster. I still would have beaten him, in the woulda-shoulda-coulda world...

The long distance day dawned even more humid than the day before, and I could feel the efforts from the day before sitting heavy in my legs. I did a short warmup, just to make sure I didn't break myself, and then decided that my focus for the day would be on running consistently, none of this stop-and-go sprinty stuff. I didn't feel sharp, either mentally or physically, and this became clear when I blew three minutes on the first control. I just wasn't really paying attention. Eventually I saw Peter Gagarin heading towards where it should be, and I went and found it too, but that was immensely frustrating. Things went pretty well for a while after that; I was doing a good job running smoothly and not slowing down, but by #10 I was really starting to feel the heat.

My route (below) shows the progression of tiredness - anything uphill is getting slower and slower, and eventually, I made a mistake. Heading to 14, I started dropping contours, even though I knew I shouldn't, but it was just easier to go downhill. After nearly running off the map, I realized I was doing it wrong, and went back to the control, but that was a serious mental lapse, about 4 minutes lost there. Another couple good legs after that, but then my brain shut off on the way to 17, and I didn't pause to verify my location when I crossed the trail. This cost me another 4 minutes, easily, as I wandered deliriously through the forest for a while. From there it was just a slog back to the finish, and I sure wasn't moving fast. Turns out I was slow enough for 4th place.

Overall, I'm conflicted about this race. There was some good orienteering in there, where I was being really sharp and on top of my shit, but then there were those three major mistakes, that basically lost me the race. You can't be competitive with 11 minutes of mistakes! Hopefully, this tiredness will pass with some rest, and I'll be sharp for WOC! I ended up 3rd overall on the weekend, which was good enough to win me a pretty painted pitcher. Never won a prize at an A-meet before, either - cool!



Results from the long distance, and splits.

I'm currently in the Logan airport waiting for my plane to Lyon - on my way to France, for the World Orienteering Championships! I'm a little concerned about both my fitness and this consistent tiredness, but hopefully an easy week of training before this weekend's race will do me good. In any event, I can't wait to meet up with the team and get into the maps here!

U.S. Orienteering Convention

This past week, Orienteering USA has held a convention in Rochester, NY. Ed and I are here, mostly because it's convenient to stay at home, but also because of the high-level orienteering on the bookending weekends. Unfortunately the courses got messed up last weekend, here's hoping that next weekend goes better for the organizers. Anyway, we've been in various talks and conferences all week, some really interesting stuff going on out there, a lot regarding mapping and new mapping technologies, but also some age-old questions, like fundraising. Ed and I teamed up and gave talks on using GIS for orienteering mapping, and on ski-o mapping, and they seemed to be well-received, if a bit on the techy side. One guy we know said "what you guys were saying was way over my head, but you were just so enthusiastic about it!" Good to hear.

The afternoons have been filled with orienteering training, mostly put on for the juniors, who are doing a training camp all week, but also for us non-juniors who want to train. Monday we were at Mendon Ponds, Tuesday at Durand Eastman, Wednesday we took off, Thursday was at Webster, and Friday is the Trail-o champs and a canoe-o, neither of which we're doing. Fun!

Lindsay and Judy killing time before the picnic on Monday.
A horrible shot of us post-sprint.

Tuesday we were at Durand Eastman, and there was a "super string-o". String-o is a technique used to teach very little kids about orienteering, well in this case the string was a full 250m, with 30 controls! The idea was to just run the course as fast as possible, basically as punching practice, but it was pretty hard work, too. Here, Andrew Childs (US Junior team member) hits a corner at full speed. It was an intense sort of race!
Ed on the super string-o
My super-string-o attempt. 12 seconds off of Andrew (who won), but still 7th, so not too bad!


Ed running a sprint, so fast even the trees are blurry. Oh, wait, the trees weren't also moving?

2011 U.S. Classic Orienteering Championships

There are way too many U.S. Championships for summer orienteering, but the two big ones are the Classic champs, that consists of two days of racing and you add the times together to get an overall winner, and the Individual Sprint/Middle/Long championships, where each race produces a separate champion. This past weekend was the classic champs, and the courses were pretty long and gnarly, in the marshy/deerfly sense. I was a little nervous about this, since it's orienteering, and I haven't really run in the forest since twisting my ankle, but I have a new fancy ankle brace, and I was able to avoid re-spraining it, which is really the goal.

The first day starts weren't until almost noon, so it was pretty hot and humid. The deerflies were also out in force, which wasn't too bad while you were moving, but they started feeding if you slowed down to read the map too closely. This was probably good for me, because it kept me moving, but when I made a small mistake near 5, they moved in for the kill. Overall, the course went pretty well for me, but deep ferns meant that I kept my running to a pretty cautious pace, so as to not re-twist my ankle, and so I never really felt like I was pushing hard enough. Below is the map, with my route. I ended up 2nd for the day, just ahead of the usual rivals of Angelica and Anna. Ali had destroyed us, and finished way out front - probably not going to catch her on the second day!

The second day's course had fewer ferns, so I could run a bit harder, but then I couldn't find control 6. At this point, I like to think that I know what I'm doing out there, but I got to the point where the control should have been, and there was no control. I figured I must have gotten off the perfect path somewhere, so went to a different point to re-attack the control. I ended up at the same place. Frustrated now, I headed out to an even more obvious point to re-attack, and as I approached, was overtaken by Andrew Childs, a very fast junior runner who just returned from the Junior World Orienteering Championships. When he also couldn't find the control, after leading us to that same spot, we determined that it just wasn't there, and headed off to 7. Which also wasn't there. One missing control, and you're like, well, ok maybe they put it in the wrong spot. But two in a row, and you're starting to doubt everything.


It turns out that an over-zealous control picker-upper from the day before had removed those two controls, since they were used on both Saturday's and Sunday's courses. Somehow, vetting the course in the morning had slipped through the cracks, and so because the course was missing two controls, everybody who was running the red course had their course thrown out, voided. A big bummer, because the reason to go to these meets is to get ranking points, to contest the US championships, and in general race on a course that has all the controls in the right places. There were some really upset racers, but what can ya do.

I kept running after the second missing control, but my give-a-damn was pretty damaged by then, and I had trouble motivating myself to push hard. Then I made a mistake on the penultimate control, and just couldn't find the darn thing in the circle. Blah.

So, they used just day 1 for the championships, and I ended up 2nd! This is the first A-meet where I've ever finished inside the top 5, and it happened to be the US champs, so I'm pretty psyched. (Angelica, 3rd place, me, 2nd place, Ali, 1st)

Ed ran an open class, and got 2nd, so got a medal too.

Boom

Thing have been going alright in my prep for WOC, recently. Not great, because ski coaching does not equal time in the woods, but not too badly. Boris came up to town the other day, and we got to run in the woods, where he noted that I frequently divert from my planned line because vegetation pushes me around. So, it was determined that I must be more forceful about bashing through thick vegetation, and to do this, I was going to practice running in a straight line from one point to the next, regardless of what was in my way. With a few exceptions for things like cliffs, deep lakes, etc. This seemed like a fine exercise to me, I mean, what is the point of running through the woods if you aren't going to bash through vegetation and swim through marshes? I finally got around to it on Saturday, when my brother was visiting, so he came along, intrigued by this bashing practice I was planning.


We headed to Hammond Pond, and the bashing was going pretty well, I was starting to really get into it, when I hopped over a log, landed with my foot twisted on a side-hill, and felt the crunching that immediately precipitates a sprained ankle. This was my "good" ankle, the one that hasn't been FUBARed by multiple twists and sprains and torn ligaments like the other, and it's remarkable how much it hurts to sprain an ankle for the first time. Compounding the pain are all the negative thoughts that immediately flood your brain when you injure yourself in a traumatic way, as opposed to those ever-present overuse injuries. The realization that you've totaled your ankle four weeks before the World Championships, and you still have a good bit of work to do to be ready for those World Championships, is a hard one. I think that's most of what drives the emotion after an ankle sprain. The straight-up ANGER at your body for letting you down when you really aren't in the mood to be let down, the frustration at events you can't control. It all rages through my head for a few seconds as I think that the world is coming to an end.

But I stood up, and after a couple limping steps, I could put some weight on it. Not full weight, but there was no sharp pain, just a throbbing ache that wouldn't leave. After about five minutes, I could walk, not normally, but enough to get back towards the car, that Christophe had gone to retrieve. Dammit. Dammit dammit dammit DAMMIT! (I may have used stronger words at the time). Time to RIICE: Rest, Ice, Ibuprofen, Compress, and Elevate. That second I is an important one!

Things seem to be coming around, now. Still a bunch of swelling, but I have most of my mobility back, and the pain is mostly gone. I can walk normally, and will probably be taping it up and attempting to run pretty soon... I've never been good at resting.

We'll call these girls the enablers... not that orienteering is an addiction or anything.

Luckily, last weekend involved most of my mom's family being in town for a funeral/reunion, so my chances to go abuse myself even more were scarce. Three generations of women in the photo below, so great that my grandmother could make it up here!