Early spring

It's barely the first week of April, and the sugaring season is already over - Ed headed to VT tonight to go pull his taps already. Spring came early this year, actually I guess winter just never happened. Winters like these mean a lot of driving, a lot of stressing about time on snow, or lack thereof, a lot of general moroseness about the gray nastiness of a weather that won't act seasonal. Not my favorite. The one thing this winter was remotely good for was running training - I'm heading into this spring's orienteering season with more miles under my feet than ever before, for this early in the season. I guess that's a good thing, but it probably just means that my usual overuse injuries will crop up sooner than typical. I guess this winter was also good for ticks - they're predicting much higher occurrences of lyme disease this summer; not what you want to hear when you spend a lot of time in the woods.

Christer Malm, a contact of Ali's, took some photos of the ultra-long, in Boden. Don't I look like I'm having fun? I bet this was on the fourth lap =)

I entered, and got in to, the Mt Washington road race this June. I don't know why I was quite so excited to get in, because I have a niggling feeling that it may actually suck, a lot, to run up a 12% grade for 7.6 miles. Why was I so excited? Tell ya what, though, I am SO getting a Vermonster, and attempting to finish the whole thing on my own, when that race is over!

Totally unrelated, I was cleaning and organizing some stuff on my computer and found a cache of photos from New Zealand in 2005, and that place is so beautiful, I felt I should post some of the photos up here. Enjoy!

The Takitimu mt range.

Same view, different light.

Sunset on the Coromandel peninsula.

Rainbow over the mountains by Wanaka.

Milford sound.

Lake Wanaka.

Lake Wanaka.

Looking inland at Kaikoura.

A beautiful place, but plenty of clearcuts to go along with the majestic views.

Boulders on moeraki beach.

Hobbit-land.

The snow farm.

Franz Joseph glacier, or at least where it used to be 30 years ago.

World Cup finals: Boden, Sweden

Believe it or not, life has been kinda crazy for pretty much all of March. Weekends were packed, and so were weeks, and I was reaaaallly looking forward to spring break. Except, instead of a break, I went to Sweden, leaving on a redeye sunday night of EHS. Let's just say I slept really well on that flight.

After some good results in California at the first round of World Cups, I was excited to do it again. I guess I hadn't really considered how much of a drain all the coaching and not-training and driving stupid amounts every week would actually take on me. I came into this week under-trained and under-rested, racing on fumes and dreams. It meant that reality was a bit hard to stomach. Both Ali and I had equipment hardships, but that didn't change the fact that I did some poor navigating and some worse ski racing. I did have a good time while here, but I really would have liked to have had a good race. Oh well, take the downs with the ups.

Wednesday was the first race, a sprint distance. I felt like a total spazz. I made some errors early on, and never felt comfortable either on my skis or with the navigation. I don't really want to talk about that one too much.

The following day was a relay, and because you need three to score, and we only had two women and one man, Ali and I joined Greg in the men's relay so that we'd have a scoring team. This took the pressure off, since we knew that we'd probably be out of it; those World Cup men are fast! So this was a good day to practice being out in the terrain and using my map intelligently. Not that I necessarily did that, but still, practice is good.

Boden has tons of bridges and tunnels and stuff in their ski stadium (Pagla ski stadium), this is the lead men flying over the first bridge.

The Swedes won wire to wire, although my mad action-photo skillz certainly leave something to be desired in this shot...

Ali coming in to the map exchange in the relay.

The following day was a rest day, so we did a quick ski in the morning, and then went on the cultural tour offered by the organizers. It was a bus tour around Boden, which is a pretty small city, 27000 people all told. The guide was sort of reaching for things to talk about, although maybe Max Hamburgers really are so good that they're worthy of mention on a bus tour - we didn't try any. Probably should have! One thing we definitely should have done was checked out the awesome indoor-outdoor waterslide at Nordpoolen. Looks so cool!

Saturday was a middle distance race, and this went marginally better, from the navigation standpoint. Unfortunately, I did a rookie move, and changed my pole baskets the night before. Naturally, I lost a pole basket, and early on, on the way to #2. I turned around and picked it up, but then lost it again shortly thereafter. This made for slow skiing, because navigating those narrow trails with one pole is not easy. There was an equipment/coaching control at #8, so I basically limped along until there, losing a few minutes. MINUTES. ouch. I got to the equipment control, and I'd missed the cut-off to put out any of my equipment, so I was begging people for poles. The Norwegian coach had an extra, so I strapped it on and set off to finish the course as fast as possible! A few more little mistakes, but overall, things were good after re-acquiring a pole. Alas and alack, that could have been a good one.

The ultra-long was on Sunday. Ski-o marathon, wooo! Women were doing 24.7km straight-line, which turned out to be 33km shortest-skiable distance. This was where my lack of fitness really showed - my arms were dead meat by the third loop, and I just couldn't go that fast. It didn't help that I'd waxed according to the weather forecast, which didn't actually predict 5 inches of new snow. My skis were dogs. I don't do well with slow skis, because I don't have the fitness to put out extra effort, but that was a factor out of my control, so I tried not to obsess about it. Nothing you can do.

The first loop went really well for me, right up until I reached the stadium. There was a maze of narrow trails basically within sight of the finish, and I'd messed that up pretty badly in the sprint and middle, so was really trying to get it straight this time. But each time I got there, instead of being logical, I would ski around like a chicken with its head cut off, and check out every control until I could find mine. This is NOT an effective technique. So, I went from the front of my group to the back, as I lost 30 seconds in there bumbling around. I figured that was ok, I could make it up, and now I could see them going in to controls. But then I made another gaffe, and took my map #4 instead of my map #2. It took me way too long to figure this out, and 2:45 later, I was back in the stadium shoving my map into its #4 hole and pulling out the map #2. D'oh! Now I'd truly lost that group.

I set off on the second loop, telling myself it was a long race and I had time to make it up. By about 2/3 of the way through loop 2, I was seeing a Russian and a Norwegian ahead of me, so I knew things were looking up. We caught up to a Finn, who was going pretty slowly, and I was starting to think that I could do this - the pace wasn't bad, and I was in control and feeling good. Then we got back to the stadium, and I totally messed up that maze, again checking out every control before eventually finding mine. WTF, Alex, you have a map to show you where to go! Use it.

Now I'd lost that group, too, but coming in to the map exchange, I could see Ali. Cool! Going up that ski slope a third time was painful, though. I was really feeling my lack of training over the winter, and wishing my arms worked a little better on the narrow trails. Third lap went pretty well, but I was mostly alone for all of it, which is kind of boring in a long race. I again messed up the stadium, but not so badly this time, only 30 seconds. Still, pretty unacceptable - I've been there how many times now?!? I picked up the fourth and final map, and I knew I was tired. The slow skis didn't help, and my triceps were cramping; a problem when you have to climb on narrow trails, since that is mostly double poling. But leaving #3, who should I run into but the slow Finn! Wahoo! Back in the game! I was feeling victorious as I took a better route to #4, but then, leaving 4, I managed to get myself completely turned around. I stood there for nearly a minute trying to figure things out, and when I finally got moving again, slow Finn was long gone. The other mistakes were bad, but this one just crushed my soul. I spiked the rest of the controls, but still felt like poop coming in to the finish. There were so many good parts of that race, but then there were so many disasters.

The ski season is definitely over now. Although 40 hours of traveling, from the arctic circle all the way back to Boston, does allow you much time for work, I am really looking forward to a couple weekends with no travel, and a chance to just stay in one place and get stuff done!

The ski-o season, despite its ups and downs, went quite well this year. I'd never before competed in two rounds (out of four) of World Cups, and that showed in the points - I'm now ranked 35th in the world for WRE points, and 21st for World Cup points. I've always known it's crazy to try and compete against professional athletes when you're a working stiff, but I think I may give this lifestyle another few years... nothing like competition to whet the appetite for more!

Championships coaching

The last two weekends I've spent coaching the Massachusetts' state team at first the J2 championships, and then the Eastern Highschool Championships. Both weekends we had great weather, but unfortunately, when you're already on a low snowpack, good spectating weather isn't good for the skiing. Both weekends were super fun, but fairly exhausting, as coaching always is. MA rocked, led primarily by the CSU skiers, but also a strong contingent of good skiers from western MA, and I was really glad for a chance to get to know the western MA coaches. We all seemed to mesh pretty well as a team. Good stuff.

It was fun to end on the EHS weekend, because my girls absolutely rocked the house. They swept the podium in two of three races, and that third race they took 1st, 3rd, 4th, 8th, 9th, and 13th. In the overall standings, my CSU girls took 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 5th, 7th, and 14th. Hot DAMN! For the boys, Eli won the overall, and one of the races, and Calvin had an 11th place in one race, which was pretty impressive. All the way down the list, I was impressed with how my skiers were racing - they almost all skied beyond their expectations. Seeing her skiers excel, that makes a coach feel good.

Misty morning in Sunderland.

My favorite troublemakers. Yes, I do want to wring their necks sometimes... but we usually work out our differences.

We had some great snow conditions at EHS. What is the best wax for fertilizer? In all seriousness though, Mountain Top did a great job with the snow they had - not easy to pull off in 70 degree weather!

Aww, I'm going to miss Corey when she graduates. Nothing like watching a skier grow up and mature, as well as kick some serious butt on the national scene.

Between the weekends there was a brief stint in Amherst, long enough for a delicious meeting with the renegade O' club, and now, after a warm, muddy weekend in Chittenden VT, I've made it to Sweden. This week is the last round of World Cup races for ski orienteering, and I'm here with Ali and Greg, to see what havoc we can wreak. I wish I were feeling a little more motivated for winter sports, but hopefully skiing on real snow, not on a 2km man-made loop, will remind me that I do actually like to ski. I feel woefully out of shape and unprepared, but who knows - maybe I'll surprise myself!

Ali attacks her food. With gusto.

Rangeley marathon

Thanks to the epic snowstorm of February 25th, the Rangeley marathon was a go, and I was set to battle my Rangeley-demons. For some reason, I always think this marathon will be flat and fast and easy, and it's never any of those things for me. It usually leaves me whimpering and cramping and sobbing and hating life, but this time, I was determined to put that past me. I was going to conquer those demons, and enjoy myself at this race!

Thanks to 12" of snow on Thursday night, lukewarm temperatures in the mid-twenties overnight, and Rangeley Lakes' obsession with grooming the course that morning, conditions were soft and slow, as expected. Knowing it would warm up to the upper thirties and probably start raining, I chose a pair of skis that runs well in soft wet snow, and was very glad of this decision about 20km into the race. I can't succeed in races anymore if I don't have the best skis out there...

I made it to the start line with just a minute or two to spare, but had no trouble slipping up near the front, next to some speedy-looking college gals. I sucked down a gel, put on my poles, and then off we went, about eighty people all told. By about 5km into the race, I found myself in a pack that included the top 5 women, with a couple master blasters for good measure. Sabra Davison, last year's winner, was out front, probably trying to ski away from us all like she did last year, but this time, Stephi Crocker and Isabel Caldwell could actually see her, and they weren't going to let her get away. I knew I wanted to ski with those Dartmouth ladies, as they are smooth skiers and set a nice pace, so we worked together for the first 15km or so, dropping stragglers behind us but keeping things relaxed. And fun! Fancy that.

As we came through the stadium, the snow had turned to sleet, and that was where I started to notice my old 1998 Fischers began to pick up speed. Wheee! These babies aren't ready for retirement just yet! I pulled for a couple klicks, but as we headed out on lap 2, I started to notice that my arms were getting tired. Uh oh. This is what happens when you don't do any real "skiing" all winter - all you do is putter around on man-made loops of snow on golf courses, and your arms forget what it's like to ski for longer than 90 minutes. Oops. Well, nothing to do now except shift more work to my legs, but in soft snow, that's not always a good strategy.

Stephi took the lead around 30km, and I noticed that the pace was starting to feel like work, now. Sabra got dropped on an uphill, and then caught back on with the help of one of the master blasters, and I knew for her it was just a matter of time until the yo-yo string snapped. So when I took my next pull, I went harder than I probably should have, starting to really push, now, hoping to drop her for good. Except my brain had clearly forgotten what my body had not - I haven't done a distance workout since December, and this was a lot of work to ski for this long without stopping to lean on my poles!

When I finally slipped back into the draft, I knew I was soon to be a goner. No cramping, but my limbs felt heavy, and skiing was now a lot of work. Oh, well. It happens. I held on to about 40km, and then Izzy and Stephi dropped me going up the wind-tunnel hill of death, and there was just nothing I could do to go faster. In marathons I guess I just have a speed I can go, and that day, that speed didn't want to last the full 50km. But I certainly couldn't just give up and die - Sabra had been dropped earlier, and I really didn't want her to catch back up, so I was skiing hard. The last 10km of Rangeley's course aren't easy kilometers - you hit the FIS-certified trails, with long winding uphills and plenty of wind thanks to the wide trails. I was alone now, and it was an excruciatingly painful final push, but I got to the line without seeing anyone else; a relief actually when you're in that situation. The Dartmouth girls had put three minutes on me, but I'd put another two on Sabra, and finally finished on the podium at the Rangeley marathon! Wahoo!

The part I was truly excited about, however, was that I actually had a positive attitude in this race. I'd say the demons were excised. For now.

Winter came on a Saturday

Wahoo! Winter! (Tony is sliding down the road in his sneakers, behind me - slippery!)

Checking the forecast for the Middlebury carnival, which had been moved to Trapps due to low snow, some snow was due to fall. What accuweather failed to mention was the ferocity with which it was going to storm. Snow started to fall lightly on Friday night, and by Saturday morning, winter had arrived, and was very definitely still in the process of coming through the door. 20+ mph winds just added to the fun!

The joy of waxing when it is around 30 degrees and snowing, is that there is a point at which wax no longer works - it isn't sticky enough to get kick, but it is too sticky for the falling snow, so you get "icing" - snow sticking to the bottoms of your skis. The solution to this is to use a no-wax ski that is not a fishscale base, but has a section of the base that is just roughed up with sandpaper. They actually make a special ski for this, called a "zero" ski - for use around zero degrees centigrade when it's snowing. We were sort of hoping it would be zeroes weather, because then we could just send people out on their zeroes, but it stayed 1-2 degrees too cold for that, necessitating kick wax. The good news is that means it's easy kick waxing, just some sort of blue hardwax. Rode superblue, in fact.

But I'm getting ahead of myself here. The morning started when Chris, Tony, and I attempted to drive the equipment van up the mountain to Trapps. They hadn't plowed in an hour or so, and the snow was warm enough that it was greasy and slick. The equipment van don't got no snowtires, so basically, we couldn't get up to the venue. Thankfully, one of the parents drives a subaru, and he came down the hill to bail us out and get Tony and I up to the venue to start testing waxes.

Someone come help us! We don't have that much stuff... just four massive ski bags, two wax tables, and three waxboxes!

Loading Jim's car to the roof. We managed to get everything in there, but it was pretty tight.

The other joy of snowstorms at 20+mph winds is that it's really hard to get the wax to stick to the ski, when you're applying it, if there are snowflakes landing on the ski. So, we attempted to set up the Harvard tent, but when it's blowing that hard, pop-up tents like to catch the wind and blow away and generally crumple upon landing. So, we lashed the tent down to three separate vehicles, and bungeed a heavy toolbox to the center, to dampen some of the shaking. This was mostly effective; at the very least we didn't lose the tent.

So then the joy of applying the wax - it was basically impossible to do this on your own. It took both coaches tag-teaming a ski - one person attempts to shield the ski from the snow with their body, while aiming the heatgun at the ski to melt the snowflakes, and the other person frantically applies the wax. This was neither fast nor pretty, but it got the job done. After that, it's out into the storm to watch the races. I don't think racing was all that much fun today, either. The wind and snow obliterated the tracks, but as far as I know, we didn't lose any skiers.

Taking advantage of the wet sticky snow and rolling a snowball.

By the end of the day, my car had about 2' of snow on it, but this was really a storm centered on Stowe - within a half hour, the roads were clear. Winter happened on a Saturday this year, and it only happened in Stowe.

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!