More ski racing!

Last weekend was the Williams carnival, shortened to one day and moved to Craftsbury, the same day as the Saturday Eastern Cup (on the same courses). This was great for me, because it meant that after coaching for Harvard, I could just switch camps and start coaching for CSU. The work started Friday before departure, when Chris and I made a call on the fluoro, and prepped all the skis in the waxroom at Harvard. I kept trying to take a photo of the fluoro smoke coming off the iron and ski, because it looked really cool in front of the window, but it didn't work.

So then we drove north, and I realized, for the zillionth time, that I'm sick of driving everywhere this winter. What a stupid sport, so dependent on the climate doing what it's supposed to, and then going around driving hundreds of miles to ski on petrochemical waxes on loops of man-made snow. Sigh. My passion and my profession clash in my head.

Of course, staying at Craftsbury means delicious meals, which is wonderful, but testing kick after eating a massive breakfast is hard. We had a bunch of different combinations set up to test, and eventually settled on a good one, solid kick and good glide, and our skiers looked very comfortable out there - great! As the men's race wrapped up, I switched camps, feeling all sorts of awkward, and jumped into the wax army assembly line. With CSU we were basically using the same wax, only of the Toko variety, and Rob, Jamie, Amie and I were getting the sticky klister on the skis, with the rest of the army doing the fluoros and rills. By now the tracks were squirrely, gnarly, and pretty tough to ski, but the juniors managed just fine, and we had a lot of skiers step it up and post some spectacular results. Seeing the sloppy mess of snow out there, I was glad that I had decided not to race on Saturday.

Sunday morning dawned colder, and a lot of our juniors were pretty nervous - this was the last race used to decide on the New England Junior National team, and we had ten skiers "on the bubble", in the various age classes. In the end, they all fought hard, even more apparent in mass start races, and we got six of those ten onto the team! Combined with the five we'd already qualified, CSU is now sending 11 athletes to Junior Nationals! This is a new record for us, and it is even more than Stratton Mountain School is sending - also a new record! The skiers and coaches alike were pretty ecstatic, especially those bubble kids whose fates had been unknown until the 11th hour. I won't be going to Soldier Hollow this year, but Rob will be there, as will a slew of other competent coaches - the kids should be just fine.

I did do the mass start race on Sunday, and it was certainly fun. I'm glad Craftsbury was able to run their full loop, with all the awesome downhills, rather than just a tiny loop of manmade snow. Unfortunately my legs felt pretty flat, pretty heavy, but I had rockets under my feet, so I could fake it pretty well. I tried to ski with Maria Stuber for a hill, and quickly determined that was not a good plan, as my shin was cramping up, so had to back off. From there on out, I was in a small pack, including Olivia, one of my J1s, and it was really fun to play around that course, although the uphills were fairly painful. I ended up being dropped from that pack on the last uphill, my legs just weren't responding to my brain's constant requests for more power, and finished in 7th, about 8 seconds down on the pack, and 45 seconds down to Maria. It was a fun race, and I wish I'd been feeling a little fresher, but there were plenty of reasons for the fatigue.

From Craftsbury, CSU headed east, to Bretton Woods, for our annual president's day training camp. I could only stay one day, because of commitments in the southlands, but I had a good day on Monday skiing with the team. Monday afternoon, I set up a ski orienteering event, and sent the skiers out in teams of two. They all seemed to have a really good time, and only two or three teams got drastically lost. I skied around the course backwards, so got to see them all/check up on them all, this looked like a really fun event - we'll do it again next year, for sure!

Now back to the grind for a bit - not like I ever left the grind, really, there's no escaping work when it lives in your computer. The goal is to sneak away back to Bretton Woods for a day before the Middlebury Carnival this weekend, but I need to get some more of that to-do list crossed out first.

Headcam video

The last day of the ski-o tour, I wore Ed's GoPro headcam, and then we uploaded the video to attackpoint so you can see it alongside the map. Technology is so cool. The video is here, although I have to warn you that the language (interspersed with the heavy breathing) is not exactly pg13. Not much oxygen up at 7000ft, and Ed was referring to controls 6-8 as the "wheeze train".

My body has been pretty slow to recover from the six days of racing in seven days. At altitude, with a cold. The cold still lingers, and my legs are feeling tired and heavy for the first time this season. Combined with a lack of snow down south, it could be depressing, but I had a truly lovely time skiing around on the frozen granular up at Trapps last weekend, despite feeling like I was hauling a fully laden sled behind me. I can't wait to be done with my 500-miles-a-week driving diet...

Eastern Cup finals are this weekend, and I'll race at least Sunday. Saturday I get to coach both teams, and I'm not sure body wants two races in a row yet. This "self restraint" thing is a strange concept, I'm not sure I like it. But you gotta try a new thing every once in a while!

Sierra World Cup wrap-up

Ali and I are sitting in the Sacramento airport, waiting for our redeye home, having just completed six races in seven days. Ali claims to not be tired, but I'm feeling pretty wiped. Having the first weekend of races moved back meant that the rest days were eliminated, and that makes for a tough schedule. It was a successful week, though - I'm now ranked 36th in the world based on ranking points, and Ali is 24th. This is by far the best any Americans have ever been ranked in orienteering, so we're pretty pumped. Based on World Cup points, Ali is in 6th, and I'm in 13th. In the world! I think we'll lose out because neither of us are going to the World Cups in Kazakhstan, but hopefully we'll move back up through the field in Sweden this March. It's an exciting time to be on the US ski-o team!

Map from the World Cup sprint race, at Auburn Ski Club.

After the middle distance race on Thursday, we had a mixed-gender team sprint on Friday. Ali and Adrian were USA Team #1, and Nikolay and I were team #2. Carl and Chelsea were team #3, but unfortunately ended up mis-punching, disqualifying themselves. The men mass-started, and Adrian ended up making a pretty substantial mistake on the first leg, along with half the men's field, so Nikolay was the first American to the tag zone. I went out next, and quickly found myself immersed in a complex maze of narrow trails. Panic! Each leg on the relay was only 6 minutes winning time, so you really didn't want to make a 30 second (or more!) mistake. I managed to bumble my way around that loop, but not cleanly, and Ali caught up the distance to bring team #1 back to the front.

Russia leading out the mass start in the relay.

The boys kept the distance between the two teams just about equal, and team #1 was still in front as Ali and I headed out for our second loop. This time Ali was doing the bumbling, and I passed her near the end, bringing team #2 back to the lead. Again the boys went out and kept the distances about the same, and now the Austrian team was in the pack as well. I headed out for my third loop being hunted, and that's never a fun feeling. Ali made contact about halfway around the loop, and I knew that was the end - we took one separate route choice, and my decision ended up being slower by about 5 seconds - enough for her to take a comfortable win between the two American teams. It was super fun to battle the whole way through, with leads changing so frequently - we ended up in 11th and 12th, which is alright, but we'd all like to improve!

Map from the WRE Middle distance race and US Championships. 2nd place for US, 9th overall.

The World Cups were over after the relay, but no rest for the weary - over the weekend we had the US Championships middle distance race and the US Championships sprint distance race (both of these were World Ranking Events, so many of the teams stayed). Saturday's middle distance didn't go so great for me, I was starting to feel pretty tired and I let it get to me. But Sunday I did enough of a warmup to really get going, and rallied a bit, ending up 5th on the day, behind Ali, two Czechs, and a Swiss. I've had a year to adapt to the idea that I'm no longer the best ski orienteer in the US, but it still sort of hurt to give up my title of reigning US champion. Of all skiers to take it though, I'm glad it was Ali!

Now, for some rest... finally!

On the start line.

World Cup Sprint and Middle races

Wheeee! Sunshine and snow!!!

By Wednesday morning, I could make it up a flight of stairs without hanging over the railing and gasping for breath, so I figured that the race was probably going to feel a little easier. Wednesday was the sprint distance, at Auburn Ski Club, with a shortest-skiable-distance of 4.8km. With a winning time of 12 minutes, it would go by quickly.

I started behind a Finn and in front of a Czech, and watched the direction the Finn took out of the start, so I could ski a little further without too much thought. I don't know if the GPS will continue to show up at this link, but I was wearing a GPS transponder, for live tracking, along with most of the other women. Don't mess up, because everyone at home can see it! The start beeper beeped, I flipped my map, and off I went.

Despite a few less than ideal routes, my navigation ended up going really well. This may actually be one of my best navigational races I've ever done, and every control was exactly where I wanted it to be. I attacked the hills with lots of oomph, but I think I may have coasted a bit too much on the flats and downhills, and especially near the end, I didn't have much speed to show for the amount of oomph I was applying. It was a little disappointing to finish where I did given how I felt about my race, but it was still a fine result, and skiing a clean race felt wonderful.

Eddie was out taking lots of photos, all the below shots are from him.

Snot rocketing - like a pro.

Ski waxing is serious business. Not having a wax bench = not so pro. But the skis were fast!

Ski orienteering depends on competitors not knowing the terrain beforehand, and also that they don't find out information about the course from people who have already finished. Thus, they put you in a "quarantine" zone until you start, and there is no communication to the outside world from there. It is usually a very small area, which means you have to get pretty creative about your warmup. Good thing I'm a pro at ski walking!

The finish: phase I.

The finish: phase II.

Hey, did you know - it's really hard to breathe at this altitude?

Followed by much discussion of routes, splits, and and mistakes.

Sprint results.

Thursday was a middle distance event, at Tahoe City XC area. Middle distance races are usually much more technical, in terms of the navigation, and this one promised much less climb than the long and sprint races, so I was really excited. 55% of the skiing would be on narrow trails, which usually makes for more technical skiing, in terms of staying on your feet. Basically, middle distances races are super duper fun.

I started relatively early, while the snow was still quite firm and icy. Awesome! Speed! However, I quickly found myself outskiing my brain, and messed up in multiple places. Never a huge mistake, but think of how hard it is to make up 45 seconds in a ski race - you don't want to blow that much time if you can help it. Despite making numerous small mistakes, there were large stretches of the race where I really felt in control, channeling the flow, and was just having a wonderful time out there. That was, of course, until the last control - I got confused as I came down a sweet downhill, and tried to make a shortcut to the correct trail. However, instead of ending up on top of the crust, my ski tips went under the crust, and I faceplanted, hard, in front of a bunch of guys with cameras. I'd say this was the low point of my day, because then I couldn't even see my map because it was covered in snow. Arrrgh!

In the end, I placed 13th again. I guess I'd expected to be lower in the results, given my little bobbles all over the place, but other people must also have been making mistakes. More World Cup points, and another >1000 point race, for WRE points - exciting! I'm now ranked 38th in the world, and hopefully can get even higher after two more WRE races over the weekend. Sweet stuff.

IOF ranking page.

Middle Distance results.

Out of the start. More Eddie Bergeron photos.

Coming into the map exchange. I hesitated before putting this up there, but everyone else was attempting to snowplow to a stop, too. Rough conditions. Definitely some rocks hidden in that snow. You can see I've already pulled out the old map, and there was some terrified volunteer waiting at the bottom of the hill with a new map.

Tomorrow is a mixed-gender sprint relay, also at Tahoe City XC, and I'm teamed up with Nikolay Nachev, one of our US Team men. Each skier does three loops, for six total laps. Should be fast and furious, I can't wait!

Sierra World Cup: Long distance

Ali and I made it to Lake Tahoe! Some photos, and a story:

Team giggles at Spooner lake.

Training at the model event on Sunday, Northstar XC.

More training! This looks like a snowplow turn.

Waxing outside here is super nice. So warm and sunny!

Some Finns lounging in the sun at Northstar.

Ali and Brendan thought that was a good idea, and decided to do it too.

Today was the first of four World Cup races in the Sierras this week, a long distance race at Tahoe Donner XC. This is the first time North America has ever held ski orienteering races of this calibre, so the organizers were understandably a bit nervous. Ed is in charge of all the results gear, he's good at stuff like that. From the competitor's standpoint, the race went off great! I went over to congratulate Ed after on how awesomely he'd done, and he immediately started ranting about all the things that he thought went wrong. How do you live with a perfectionist? Sigh. At least first he congratulated me on my race!

The altitude has been a bitch to get used to - I'm still hunched over gasping for breath after a flight of stairs. Ali and I arrived Friday night, after a pretty long travel day, and our first two days were spent doing short, easy, skis, and trying to get used to this altitude. It's high. I also picked up a cold last week, which hasn't made the adjustment to this altitude any easier. By this morning, my heart rate was almost into the "acceptable to go train" range, so why not do a 17km race with 440m of climb?

The mass start combined women and men, seeded so that the higher-ranked skiers were in the middle. We had something like 35 men and 20 women racing - small fields, considering that there are 90 skiers signed up for the entire week of World Cups, but stacked fields. 16 of the top 20 ranked men in the world are here. Exciting!

My goal for the race was to avoid building too much lactic acid - I tend to quickly overload my muscles when I'm racing at altitude, and that, combined with the already-leaden feeling of sick legs, was going to make this race a slog. Luckily, it was hard and icy and fast, so at least I would have some speed to play with! I had a decent start, but of course we headed straight uphill almost immediately, since Tahoe Donner is all up or down.

At the start. Photo courtesy of Eddie Bergeron.

This was hard, and I had to let a lot of girls get away from me. Thankfully, what goes up must come down, and I navigated the first loop well, coming through the map exchange in 3rd place, apparently. Of course, I had the shortest loop first, but still, it's fun to come through looking fast. Ok, maybe looking frazzled.

Ack! Need to change maps! Photo courtesy of Eddie Bergeron.

The second loop went pretty well, too, although I made a few 15-20s errors and hesitations. A group of girls got past me on the climb (of course we had another climb! Duh), and there was just nothing to do but let them go. I felt like I was just walking. So frustrating! But then, we went downhill again, and I started having fun again. This time I came through the map exchange in 6th place, just behind a Finnish girl, pretty cool!

Attempting to get the map into the map holder. Photo courtesy of Eddie Bergeron.

The third loop was the longest, and sent us way down into Euer valley. I probably coasted a little too much down the hill, as there was a pack of 3-4 girls closing on me near the bottom. I managed to put a little time on them double poling the small trails on the flats, but all that did was show them where to go. At this point I was catching glimpses of Ali, maybe 1-2 minutes ahead of me, when she'd do an out-and-back, and one glimpse of the eventual winner. Things were going well down in that valley, but unfortunately, well, what goes down, must come up. I guess that works against me as well as for. As soon as we started climbing, it was like I dropped an anchor - the Finn just ahead of me was GONE, and Norway, Switzerland, Russia, and Lithuania caught me up. To add insult to injury, I skied into a groomer rut as I was reading my map, and cracked the tip of my ski. Great, broken equipment.

By the time I finally wheezed my way to the top of the hill, having decided that those other teams MUST have spent a week at altitude already, I could still see Lithuania, but the others were gone. And of course, when your legs are using all the oxygen, there's none for your brain. Two large mistakes on the last loop, one of which cost over a minute, and another pack of girls had caught me up. Panic time!

I managed to spike the last three controls, but the other girls were hot on my tail; really I was just showing them where to go. Because we were on narrow trails, they couldn't pass me, but I was worried about defending my position when we got to the finish straight. I went to slow to punch the "go" control, and slid over some bare ice, missing the punch. I had to turn around and backtrack to punch, and one of the girls punched and got ahead. I was moving faster in the sprint; a couple more meters and I could have gotten her, but it was too short, my mistake too costly. She got 10th, and I was 11th, so much for the top 10. Actually, thanks to the strength and depth of the field, I had my best World Ranking points ever from that race. So, many positives to take away, but I wish I hadn't felt quite so crappy coming up every hill.

Results.

Map 1 from the race.

Map 2 from the race.

Map 3 from the race.

This cold will pass, and I get an easy day tomorrow, so hopefully the altitude will seem less brutal to me by Wednesday. Tomorrow is the North American championships middle distance, but I plan to treat it as a recovery/training day, so I can be rested for the World Cup sprint race on Wednesday!

I need to mention - Ali ended up in 4th place! Super cool, and so close to that podium!

General chaos of a day

After getting back from the Bates carnival, and feeling like I really could handle these three jobs and keeping my life in order and all that, I managed to have a pretty massive fail of a day on Sunday. Sunday was the first EHS qualifier race for Massachusetts, at Weston, so we had pretty much every CSU kid to wax for. Then in the afternoon, I was hosting a ski orienteering meet at Weston, chosen because that was the only weekend where I knew I'd be around to host the meet. To complicate this, Ed was departing for California for the World Cup prep at noon, and I planned to take him to the airport. Wooo scheduling!

Things didn't get off to an auspicious start when I managed to break my french press. I think something died inside of me when I saw the glass lying all over the kitchen floor. I contemplated going back to bed and staying there, but that wasn't really an option. I still didn't have a finished map for the Weston ski-o, since we'd only just gotten some snow (finally!!), and I didn't know how anything was groomed, so I still had to update the map, set the courses, and print the maps. No biggie. First I had a race to wax for. So, coffee-less, I made it to Weston, and began testing wax. Being Weston, parts of the course were freshly groomed, parts hadn't been groomed since last night, and parts had fresh man-made snow on top - basically, it was a shitshow, and no one wax was going to run fastest. We still managed to get fast skis under our kids, helped when you have fast skiers to begin with, and placed 11 boys in the top 20 (top 20 qualifier for EHS), and 17 of the top 20 girls. We also swept both podiums! Every day we're creeping closer to world domination.

I couldn't stay for the entire race, as I had to get back home to take Ed to the airport. Driving back, I hydroplaned on some barely-noticeable water on the exit ramp, and kissed a guardrail. Just a kiss on the cheek, really, quite demure, but the guardrail went and got all feisty and tried to take more than what was offered. Pretty pissed at myself for that one; I knew my tires were bad, but turns out they're actually completely bald. Anyway, I got home, and Ed told me I'm never allowed to buy another Honda Civic, because all I do is crash them. I'll pretend it's the car's fault, and not user error. Ed, being a fixer, had also found that I can replace the beaker for my coffee maker, and so salvaged that part of my day.

I quickly finished updating the Weston map, planned a course, and we piled Ed and his stuff into the still-driveable car, where we went to the airport via Ed's office so I could print maps. Then back to Weston, where I began setting up the ski-o event. That went pretty smoothly, and everyone seemed to have a really good time, but I was starting to get really cold and hungry by the end. I'd rather be skiing. So when I finally got home around 5:30, I wasn't done yet - the folks in California had just finished putting together the text for bulletin 3, and I'm the person in charge of publicity and stuff, so I was up pretty late getting that to look pretty and catching all the typos and mistakes before we published the bulletin. Oof.

Monday morning; turns out the car isn't going to be too much of a hassle to fix, and it's in the shop now, and I've ordered new tires. What is it Tom and Ray on Car Talk always say? The cheapskate always ends up paying more? Yeah. Anyway, I leave tomorrow morning at the crack o' dawn with Ali for California, where I'll hopefully not die from the altitude, and we'll put together some decent races. Half nervous, half excited. At least now Ed is out there rallying troops and getting things organized; it's hard to organize things from half a country away.

We have people from 14 different countries coming for the World Cup; so this should be wicked awesome! Team giggles attacks the world again, wahooo!

Bates Carnival

Sporting a Harvard jacket.

Last week, Chris City, the head coach at Harvard, approached me to see if I could assist him for the rest of the season. Being a sucker for people who need help, and also needing the cash, I signed up for yet another job, and now am an employee of the big H. I did actually think pretty long and hard about this, but in the end decided the pros outweighed the cons, and the commitments weren't overwhelming - I gave a very take-it-or-leave-it offer back in regard to my time, and Chris took it. One of the cons of being a last-minute addition to a ski team, of course, is that it'll be hard to build any rapport with the skiers, but they're a nice group of kids and so far we get along fine.

There's also the fact that almost nobody coaches two ski teams at once, but as long as there isn't any overlap, I think I can manage this. Given that I'm missing the next two carnivals to go to California (I'll get to that), I'm missing the one carnival that is also an Eastern Cup, where the only awkward overlap could happen. Nothing if not a master juggler, here.

So last weekend I headed back to Rumford, this time driving a Harvard van, for the Bates Carnival. It's been a while since I was on the carnival circuit, but not much has changed. The coaches meetings still deliver a solid 15 minutes of information jam-packed into an hour, the head coaches are all the same folk, and the skiers are just as speedy. Friday was a 5km/10km skate, and Saturday was a mass start classic 10km for both men and women. Chris and I quickly developed a working relationship in the waxroom, and ripped through testing and fluoring the skis with enough time to get out and watch the races. I know one of the girls from before, and I coached one of the boys as a junior at CSU, so at least with them I could scream my head off, as I'm wont to do; the others I held back a little with the cheering because I didn't want to scare them too much...

Testing wax with head coach Chris City.

The following day was the mass start classic race, and luckily the waxing was really easy; that's always a worry when it's mass start and you have 11 pair of skis to do. But the skiers performed, and although there are always crushed expectations in the first carnival, I think it gave us a really good handle on where we are, and where to go from here. Mostly, it's exciting - quite a future in this team!

Steam rising from the river, looking toward the smokestacks of Rumford's paper mill... as the sun rose, you could see the hazy glow of light diffused through smoke. Very pretty, but disturbing...

Rumford wax rooms are sweet. Love waxing indoors, and so do my hands. I get such wicked dry skin when I have to wax outdoors, and cuts all over my hands because I can feel a damn thing because my hands are frozen. So yeah: indoor waxrooms rule.

Slightly more snow in the stadium than during nationals. It was actually really great skiing, I snuck out for a workout after the race, and had a super fun time.

Chris Stock in the race. I coached him as a junior, and it's been really fun to see him progress. Actually, it's awesome how many CSU juniors were out there racing for D1 colleges - Chris at Harvard, Hannah and Isaac at Williams, Chris Burnham and Olga at Colby, Hilary at Middlebury, Jimmy at Bates, and I'm probably missing some... anyway, it was really cool to see them all in the college race, and to scream my head off for them!

Men's pack up highschool hill the first time. That hill certainly separated the wheat from the chaff.

Women's pack.