2012 Team Trials

The US team trials for the World Orienteering Championships (WOC) this summer took place last weekend in Carrollton, GA. This was also the 2012 US championships, so there was a pretty big crowd. Ed managed to get himself involved pretty early on doing radio controls (when a runner punches the control, it automagically gets radioed back to the announcer, good for intermediate splits) and electronic displays. Because all of this takes a good amount of gear, he drove down to Georgia, and miraculously, his truck made it down and back, in one piece! We won't talk about the four days of work it took to get the thing ready... Anyway, I decided that I may be crazy, but I ain't THAT crazy, so I took a plane with Ali and Becky, and off we went to explore the south.

Ed's erector set of monitor displays, and the tower for the radio.

The tech guys - Ed and Vladimir doing their part to raise the profile of orienteering. It was pretty awesome having live, exciting, announcing, a good playlist, and instant results displays. The tech guys are looking a little rough around the edges, but they did an awesome job.

One of the photographers had a deer camera at the radio control, and there is a hilarious sequence of photos of Ed showing up to fix the radio.

The only way to make the plane ticket to Atlanta affordable was to fly out of JFK and back into BOS, and this necessitated taking the megabus from Amherst to NYC, which sort of worked, aside from the minor detail of the bus showing up an hour late. Christophe is inhabiting NY these days, so he met Ali and me at the bus stop and rode with us on the subway, just so I could see him for a bit. Someday, I'll actually visit NY...

Sprint Race

The first race of the weekend was the sprint race, at West Georgia University. There was nothing too exciting about the map or the course, but it was perfectly adequate, if seriously on the long side. I started one minute behind Becky, and two minutes ahead of Ali, so I was hoping to see Becky and not see Ali. The beginning of the course I had to go a little slower, just to keep on top of my navigation, but by about halfway through the thinking was finished, and I could really open up and try to run fast. Given the temperature and the fact that it was just ski season like two weeks ago, this meant lots of wheezing on my part, but by control 16 I could see Becky, and I began to slowly close the gap. I ended up nearly catching her, but Ali nearly caught me - good enough for 2nd place! This is the best I've ever done on the national level in foot orienteering, so I was pretty pumped!

Running away from Angelica.

Lots of open, sunny, HOT fields to run across. And a fair bit of poison ivy, though I seem to have avoided it mostly.

We were pretty happy after the first race - I'd run well, and Ed's equipment had run well. Also, it's hard not to be happy on the first day of summer weather.

The main purpose of traveling to any of these meets is really just to hang out with our orienteering family. So much fun to see everyone all together!

Long Distance Race

The second day's race was at the Chattahoochee Bend state park, on the banks of the Chattahoochee river. Other than getting a pretty horrible country song about that river stuck in my head, we started to wonder if there were any alligators this far north, and spend a solid half hour looking up facts about alligators in Georgia. Supposedly, this was too far north to find any of them, but you never know. I'm glad I wasn't doing any swimming - if I used to be scared about sharks in swimming pools, I certainly wasn't getting into a river that connects to alligator waters!

I didn't see any alligators, but maybe they were hiding.

Today I started three minutes behind Becky, with others ranging about at further intervals. It was supposed to be even hotter, and I worried a little about not being ready for the heat, but luckily the elites started early. The park was relatively flat, which meant for some fast running, and some of the early route choices took you on some loooooong trail runs. By #3 I'd caught up to Becky, who had caught up to Angelica, and we were running together for a few controls, until I'd run away from them by #8. By then, I was starting to feel the heat, despite taking water (and eating gummy bears) at each opportunity.

My original plan had been to speed up about halfway through, but unfortunately, the opposite scenario played out, and I got slower and slower. I think this was mostly related to some blisters on my feet; the dry dust was doing a number on my toes, and having painful feet means you're less focused on moving quickly and efficiently. I was navigating cleanly for nearly the entire race; I made a 50-second goof at the last control, and as I was relocating, in my head, I said, "this is it, you've just lost it". It was true - I ended up in fourth, 10 seconds out of third.

Giacomo (fellow CSU member) finishing.

In the forest.

The evening was filled with much fun, more catching up among old friends. After two races for team trials, I was sitting comfortably in the third position, one point (out of ~290) behind Hannah, and about 20 points clear of Cristina. Unlike last year, the pressure was off for the last race. Doesn't mean I didn't still get nervous...

Middle distance race

I woke up to some aggressively tight calves, and nothing I did seemed to loosen them up. I told myself that speed wasn't as important in the middle distance, I just had to not mess up, but unfortunately, you still have to get to where you're going, even if you're going in the right direction. The terrain was hillier in this area, with more bare rock and big blobby rock formations, so that was cool, but again it wasn't the most inspired course I'd ever run. I started out pretty well, but made a few bobbles in the beginning, losing seconds here and there. I just couldn't go up the hills as smoothly as I'd have liked, but I felt like I was chugging along alright.

After the spectator control was the big mistake - I completely overran #17, losing two minutes just on that leg. When you're already not going fast, you can't blow that sort of time. Argh! I recovered somewhat, but this time I was 1:40 behind Hannah, in fourth again. A Canadian, Katarina, had taken 2nd place, but didn't count in the team ranking points.

This is probably the most consistent set of championship races I've ever run, so that was really encouraging. I also qualified myself for the WOC team, so I'll be heading to Lausanne, Switzerland this July! It wasn't a huge surprise to qualify for the team, but you never know how well others have been training - all you can control are your own actions. I'm excited to get another stab at international competition, this is gonna be awesome!

USA WOC Team: Eddie, Eric, Boris, [Ross, inserted by petition], Giacomo, Wyatt (1st alt.), Ken (2nd alt.), Ali, Hannah, me, [Samantha and Sandra, inserted by petition], Pavlina (1st alt.), Cristina (2nd alt.). That will be a fun team!

Other favorite photos from the weekend - the CSU log-throwing contest. The boys got really into this one.

Ken was doing pullups on the tree branch, Kat turned monkey-like, but did it with grace.

Clothing tree, drying out clothes before shoving them into bags...

Look! I found an Aligator on the podium!

Results for the entire weekend.

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.