2011 Sprint/Middle/Long US Orienteering Championships

Way back last fall, Ed and a couple other big thinkers decided that CSU wanted to host the sprint/middle/long individual US championships for orienteering. We had a new map being developed of Lynn Woods, and we finally had the full map (all the way around the reservoir) of Middlesex Fells, and we thought we could do an updated map of Franklin Park, to have three pretty exciting venues. We went about securing permits and coercing talented orienteers to set courses for us, and after a bit of a battle with the sanctioning committee, who basically just don't like our terrain, we were set to go.

Ed has a bit of a perfectionist streak in him. This meet was going to be perfect, or he would break himself trying. Giovanni, another CSU member, was the other meet director - basically, they both wanted to be meet directors for this thing, and we figured, heck, let 'em both do it! The problem, or maybe blessing, is that both Ed and Giovanni are very technologically-minded, and they had all sorts of new innovative things they wanted to try out at this meet. In the end, most of their ideas came to fruition, but there were a couple that we just didn't have time to do.

I was registrar, which meant that I got to deal with all the whiners, but this was a good lesson in patience, and in biting my tongue before snapping at people who were really driving me up the wall. "Of course you can have the 10:34am start time. I understand that 10:28am won't work for you. Let me see what I can do". The majority of people are very pleasant to work with, but it's those few brats who stick in your mind...

The competition was held over three days - Friday through Sunday, at three different venues: Franklin Park, Lynn Woods, and Middlesex Fells. CSU is a small club, and most of our members are in the M/F21+ class, the elites - most of us wanted to run in the US champs. This stretches a small number of volunteers over a huge task list, and everyone who did volunteer, did it to excess. We couldn't have made the thing go as smoothly as it did without the blood sacrifices of all our volunteers. Well, hopefully not too much blood, but certainly plenty of sweat and tears. Ok, maybe not even that many tears - just my own, on Sunday morning, pre-breakfast setting up the arena in the dark with the frost on the grass chilling my toes. Thankfully, Ken went out and acquired me some McGoodness, and it was hot and greasy and filling and delicious.

Friday morning was a potential disaster. Ed and I had been scurrying around since 6am, loading equipment, carrying equipment, driving places, and Giovanni and Katia had been scurrying around since 6am, acquiring our rental truck, our rental tent, and all the rental tables and chairs. Unfortunately, the rental place couldn't get the truck until something like 8am, and so the truck, loaded with tent and chairs and stuff, didn't arrive at the arena until close to 11am, with the first starts slated for 1pm. To make matters considerably worse, when Ed and I arrived at Franklin Park, the field in which we were planning to set up the tent was thoroughly soggy, and the groundskeeper waiting for us refused to let us drive any vehicles across the grass.

The tent had to go in its designated spot in the middle of the field for a bunch of reasons, so, we started carrying out all the equipment. It was ~200m walk, through soggy, muddy, grass, and we had about twelve people carrying however many thousands of pounds across this field. Thankfully we had two dollies, but we were cutting it pretty close with getting people registered and the arena set up before race start. In the end, the day went fabulously, and pretty much everyone had a really great time - except one guy, but he's an inveterate complainer, so we had no choice but to mostly ignore him.

Of course, at the end of the day, we still had to carry all that equipment back to the truck, and thankfully a handful of non-CSU runners stuck around to help us out. We would never have made it to the evening packet pick-up without their help. Actually, Ed almost didn't make it to the evening packet pick-up - his truck wouldn't start after we'd loaded everything up. We shifted all the registration gear into someone else's car, put me in the car, and I headed up to the meet headquarters, leaving Ed alone in the dark with a finicky truck to figure it out on his own. He got things working and arrived shortly after me, but by 9:30pm, when we finally got a chance to escape and have some dinner, we were both pretty wiped.



The racing was fast and furious, and visiting Canadians definitely gave the American runners some competition. Above, Carol Ross and Hannah Burgess sprint in to the finish - Dave Yee photo.
Brendan Shields, course setter, enjoying all the praise people had for his courses. Dave Yee photo.
Morning scene: piles of boxes in a field.


Ali Crocker in the finish chute - Ali made it three for three wins this weekend - champ! Dave Yee photo.

Results

Greg Balter and Peter Gagarin manned the microphone all weekend - and they did an excellent job, especially with the elite runners' announcing. Dave Yee photo.

Ed doing what he does, and fixing problems. Dave Yee photo.

Saturday was another early morning, but thankfully we didn't have to carry the equipment very far - just unload the truck and set up. It made things go much more smoothly, and there were far fewer snags through the day. The US Junior's team set up a concession stand as a fundraiser, and that was highly possible, as was the US Senior Team's meet-and-greet - people were invited to come over and talk to the team members about their routes and orienteering in general, and people seemed to really like that. I didn't get much of a chance to partake, as I was manning the registration table, but everyone seemed really happy with the whole day, meet workers included! Saturday's race was a World Ranking Event, and that definitely attracted some foreign blood - we had Canadians, Americans, Swedes, Germans, Ukranians, Czech, and Irish racing in the elite race.
Meet and greet the US team, and talk about orienteering - a typical orienteering huddle. Dave Yee photo.

Results

Tent set-up. Good times.

I feel like this photo catches the American orienteering scene really well - four runners, all on different courses and in different classes, approaching the spectator control on the middle distance race. Dave Yee photo.
Then Neil blasted past the slower runners. Dave Yee photo.

Bernie helping the juniors at the concession stand. Dave Yee photo.
Gary Richter showed up with his Icebug trailer - it was nice to have some vendors around, added to the buzz around the arena.

Kseniya showing the anxiety that you feel during an orienteering race - so much pressure to not mess up! Where do I go next? What is my attackpoint? I need to be running faster! Ahhh! Dave Yee photo.
Middle distance women's WRE course.

Saturday night was the banquet, and awards - the top three US contenders got medals, but the top three overall got prizes, and the prizes were sweet - a puzzle made up of the map from that day! People really liked the puzzles. The banquet went over well, and the food was tasty. We also all sang Larry Berman happy birthday, which I think he really appreciated.

Sunday morning dawned clear and frigid, and Ed and Giovanni made the decision that we didn't need to erect the tent. This decision was extremely well-received by the volunteers, and we quickly set up the arena and eventually the sun came up and melted the frost. By that point I had digested my McMuffin, and found another layer of clothing to wear (over jacket and down vest):
The Walker boys taking care of electronic stuff. Greg was trying out the new fashion of sideways headlamps. Apparently it's less ideal for actually seeing things in the dark.
Eric and Ali, champions for the day, handing out awards to all the other classes.

The race went very smoothly; apparently we were old hands by now, and we managed to get most people their awards before they left, so that was good. By the time we packed up and left, we were feeling pretty good about the entire weekend. I think I'm glad that we put on that meet, but I'm not sure I can handle doing it again for another couple years.

And Jess showed up Sunday afternoon, after rocking out in her xc running race earlier in the day! We went on a control pick-up hike, and I know I had a good time catching up.

Ontario Orienteering Festival

The mountain bike race I was slated to do last weekend got postponed to this past weekend, and I had already made plans for a road trip to Canada, so I managed to weasel my way out of the bike race, after all. Ali, Becky, Rob (Becky's boyfriend) and I piled into my car, and we headed north, with our passports this time, for a long weekend of Canadian orienteering. I also got the chance to see Ottawa a bit, pretty much for the first time, as Nevin and Will took us around on a tour.

The racing was fast and furious, with a really competitive women's field. Ali managed the overall win, also winning the middle and the sprint, and I ended up 3rd overall, although both Becky and Katarina Smith would have been ahead of me if they had also done the sprint. The event was very well organized, and the weather cooperated with brilliant foliage and pleasant temperatures - better for spectating than racing, as it really felt like summer out there.

We were staying with the Teutsch family, as we did last summer for the Canadian O' Champs, and as ever it was a really wonderful blast of organized chaos. Three kids, a dog, a cat, a bird, three bunnies, a couple fish, and seven houseguests... Anne didn't ever look ruffled, it was unbelievable! The Teutsch's were great hosts, and since Anne and Eric were basically in charge of the meet, they also ran a really great meet.

We were on the same maps as last summer, and that was a good thing, as I had some vengeance I wanted to wreak upon that terrain! Last year hadn't gone so well for me, and I was ready to bring it this time 'round. The weekend started off with a middle distance, at the Hidden Meadows XC ski place. Map below. This went pretty well for me - I was never stupendously fast, but I was going along pretty accurately, and relatively smoothly, too. However, I couldn't last the entire race, and I ran off the map on the way to the last control. Luckily that only cost me three minutes, give or take 30s, but it was still frustrating to mar an otherwise good race with a silly mistake! Ah well, it's all a learning process I suppose.
Results.

Note my route on the way to 17 where it falls off the map... oops.
Chasing down Katarina Smith into the finish. Stefan Bergstrom photo.
Stefan Bergstrom photo.
Finishing the middle distance. Photo courtesy of Andrew Cornett.

We didn't get much of a break before it was time for the sprint race, at Beaver Brook development center. The course was an interesting mix of very fast open suburban-type areas, and middle-distance-esque complicated forest. I found it difficult to change gears between top speed and something more sustainable for thinking, but managed to make it through probably less than a minute total of errors. This was good enough for third, 54 seconds behind Ali, who won by 1 second. But the heat was definitely getting to my stomach, and I spent a good while after the race curled up in a little ball wishing I were more hydrated.

Results.

Starting out the sprint. Punch the start and flip the map, then go go go! Photo courtesy of Andrew Cornett.

Sometimes, Ali's bag explodes at races.


Sunday it was time to attack the beavers. The terrain at the Eco Wellness Center is like a series of linear lakes and beaver ponds, all criss-crossed with beaver dams and very thin passageways, with lots of bare rock between the lakes. It is basically a barrens terrain, and very cool to run on! I started two minutes in front of Becky, so I sort of figured I'd see her out there, but I didn't expect her to catch me as soon as she did; right around control #3. I discovered that I could keep up, and actually out-run her at times, so for a while we were having a great head-to-head race, until I made a massive blunder on my way to 5, and took forever to correct from that. You can see the route below - I basically missed the control, because I can't count to two, and thought that I was crossing the first lake when I was actually crossing the second. I then proceeded to be a doofus for 10 minutes while my heartrate lowered, until I could finally get myself out of my own mess.

After that I was on my own, and things were going pretty well, except for the massive blister developing under my left toes. It caused an onset of wimpiness syndrome, and I definitely slowed down in the second half of the course. Overall, though, if we ignore control 5, it was a very good race! Results.

The blister.

Fall foliage! The leaves were out in full force, it was beautiful. Harder to find orange controls, though...

After the race, we headed into Ottawa for a look around. The light was beautiful, sideways afternoon light on a golden fall day, so I took a bunch of photos.



Becky and me on our wander.
Right.
Parliament.
Looking north, toward the Gattineau hills.
Maple trees everywhere! I liked this city, it had trees and grass and stuff in it.
The market!

Looking up over locks.
Looking down over locks.
Becky and Rob.

The last day was a two-person relay, so Ali and I teamed up as "Team Giggles". I was pretty tired by this point, and didn't race as well as I would have liked, but it was a nice end to the weekend. We won the women's division, but there weren't too many women's teams.

Alex Bergstrom grabs his map, first off the line. He and Alex Teutsch were racing for "Team Alex", and so I felt a connection to them, even though they beat us.



Ali grabs her map, just ahead of Molly Kemp.

Searching for drowned hobos

I guess that title is only funny if you know that the temperature loggers that I use are the HOBO brand. Anyway, I've been spending a good bit of time recently going around and drowning hobos. First stop was the West watershed, in VT, and that was interesting - the entire state was basically trashed. I had some major issues getting around, just because of road closures, but in the end I made it to most of my stream sites. What I found there was pretty shocking - mostly related to the stream picking up and moving its channel to the other side of the valley or something.

Look ma, no road! The first stream I hit was Bellows stream, near Marlboro VT, and that stream had decided that it wasn't happy with its current location anymore, and took out the road that used to parallel it. That bank of stones - that used to be trees. My temp logger was cabled to the roots of one of those trees. Not anymore! Despite the devastation to both the VT economy and my project's data availability, this was really cool to see. Nature is awesome!

I found my logger at this site, but I'm not sure I can extract it without bigger tools than what I've got. That loop of cable, next to a loop of wire, are both theoretically connected to my temp logger. This tree used to have flowing water over it. Oops.
New boulder. Not sure where THAT came from, but it must have made some noise.

One of my loggers is way up on the Winhall river, only really accessible via the Appalachian Trail. I called up my trusty running buddy Ken, and we headed out on a really nice run, over Stratton Mountain, past Stratton Pond, check on the logger, and back on a side trail. Overall a very nice loop, but that takes a solid 4 hours out of your day to cover that much distance and elevation!
The view from Stratton firetower was great, as always!I followed up that hike with some quality time helping Ed make apple cider, before it was time to continue on to Maine, and see how the Sandy River watershed had fared. It was a pleasant surprise to find all my Maine loggers!

Oh hai Rumford! Long time no see, smell you again in January.

Having a 4-wheel drive vehicle made for much quicker work getting to some of the places I had to go; a lot of the logging roads were pretty washed out, but the truck could handle them. No more 20-mile runs for me! Here's looking at the backside of the Saddleback to Sugarloaf ridge, from the upper side of the Hardy River, as the sun was setting.

I finished up all the driving around by Tuesday afternoon, and since I was right there, took a detour to Mt. Blue state park, just to check it out. I parked the truck on a little overlook, and had a really wonderful session of core strength and some yoga, overlooking the misty western mountains of maine. It was exactly what I needed to unwind before the long drive home, and I really did succeed in finding some inner peace, watching the sun rays stab through the ever-changing clouds. Very glad that I stopped for that, as it made the long slog home a lot more bearable.



windblown, dirty, tired, hungry, happy. Ready for some civilization and some conversation other than my own.

When I eventually made it back home to Newton, I discovered that Ian had set up a legitimate night orienteering race out in Nobscott. Ed and I charged our headlamps and went to check it out, and we had a really great time. Ali crushed me, but she also crushed everyone else, so that's ok. I was still second, and beat all the boys. It was amazing how popular the night-o actually was, we definitely hadn't expected so many people! Above, Keith and Ben are pointing at each other. I forgot why, but the photo made me chuckle.

Next up: a 12-hr MTB race. If you have any idea how little I've been riding my bike, you know this is going to be an absolute pain-fest. At least I'm on a team!