West Point National Meet

Maybe some day, West Point will go really well for me. I had high hopes, feeling like I had a handle on work and life stress, but apparently my body hadn't quite caught up to where my mind thought it ought to be, and rebelled in the form of super tight calves. I used to think that the whole mind-body connection was just a bunch of mumbo-jumbo, but the old me was wrong. Anyway, it was a gorgeous day, not too hot and not too cold, and we were running in Deep Hollow, which has very nice forests.

Middle Distance
This was, overall, a satisfactory race. Unfortunately, I was unsatisfied, because I didn't want satisfactory. I wanted a good race! I went through all my pre-race routines with a good attitude, only a small niggle of worry about my calves, which were still sore from Wednesday's workout.


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The race started with an uphill, and I quickly discovered that the sore calves were actually a problem. In an example of some of the worst behavior they've exhibited in many months, they totally locked up on that first climb, aching and exploding and generally just limiting my ability to run. Arrrgh! Palpable frustration.

 As we all know, if one thing hurts, the best option at that point is to make something else hurt worse, to take your mind off the pain. So naturally, running up this stupid hill, I stepped on one side of a flat rock. It was a wiggly flat rock, and the other side flipped up just as I was swinging my foot through. Rock-foot collision, and I think the rock won out. I was left gasping for breath and wondering if I had broken my foot. Thankfully, after a moment I could wiggle my toes, so the only real casualty was a ripped shoe and broken shoelace. Carry on, kid, enough histrionics.

Now my foot hurt enough that I didn't notice my calves as much. Success? It didn't mean I could run any faster up the hills, and after making three 20-second errors on the first three controls, I'd blown the navigation, too. I made another mistake on the way to 7, when my internal compass got really confused, and disagreed by 90 degrees or so with my physical compass. Luckily, I had the presence of mind to stop and figure it out. Could have been a worse race, but certainly not what I was hoping for, and when I saw the M-20 runners finishing 10 minutes faster than me, I started feeling pretty bad about my performance.

Sprint race
That afternoon was a sprint race. In hindsight, I should not have raced, because my foot really hurt, with a big old lump and an ugly bruise already. But I got my [ripped] shoes laced up, so I figured maybe I could get some redemption for the morning's race. I gave my calves a longer warmup, and a pretty good massage, but they were just as bad. Grumble.

I was just slow, through the race, but then to add to my frustration with being slow, I took control 20 out of order. You have to go in order, in this sport, and when I realized I'd gone from 19 to 21, and had to back track to 20 and then REDO 21, I nearly cried. Race over. I plodded through the remainder of the course, upset at myself and my body and my inability to pull together a good race when I wanted to.

We had a very nice dinner at Kseniya's house, and I figured we'd get to bed early and be all well rested for Sunday's long distance race. Unfortunately, my bruised foot decided to make itself known (maybe the afternoon's ibuprofen had worn off), and I woke up around 2am with my foot throbbing painfully. I was out of drugs, and my foot hurt too much to move it, or bear any weight, or touch the bed. I sat on the floor, massaging my foot with an ice cube, surrounded by a growing puddle of cold water and my own despondency. This weekend had not started out how I wanted.

Long Distance race
Luckily, 2am is usually the worst time of day for all emotions. I slept a few hours, waking up to discover that I could indeed walk. May as well race!

My calves felt better than Saturday, and I was excited to test myself against the physicality of this course. I'd been to Turkey Mountain before, and it didn't go too well. Here's a chance for redemption!

I merrily trotted off toward the first control, enjoying the sunshine and the open visibility and the beautiful hills and rocks and things, but I made a massive parallel error. After maybe 5 minutes of headless wandering, I realized that I was definitively NOT where I thought I was. At this point, the thing to do is to go to a big obvious feature and relocate. I ended up pretty much running all the way back to the start before finding myself. Ok, try this again. This time, I found the first control. Well, THAT wasn't how I meant to start this race, either!

I tried to bring some effort to the rest of the course, telling myself that everyone makes mistakes, and maybe I can make up for those 12 minutes lost if I just nail the rest of it. But, the fight had drained out of me, and maybe it was my subconscious speaking up about the fact that I didn't really want to be racing, but I could no longer find it in me to push hard. I gave in. Walked every step of the climb up to the 5th control, and figured that actually, I felt pretty good moving at an easy distance pace, so I just stayed at that pace, enjoying my ability to run through the woods and find controls. I love finding controls! It's what makes orienteering so much fun! This attitude powered me through the rest of my run, but I finished way down in the results list. I decided not to look. It was easier than dealing with the fact that I'd blown it, three races in a row.

It sounds rough, but really, I had an excellent time last weekend. You can't let a bad race ruin a perfectly fine day, so I didn't. Not one to brood, I really enjoyed hanging out with all the wacky people in the orienteering community last weekend, and the gorgeous summer weather certainly didn't hurt. Thanks to West Point for hosting yet another national meet! Maybe some day, I'll learn to race well here.

US Orienteering Nationals

Last weekend, the Rochester Orienteering Club hosted nationals for orienteering, with a sprint at Genessee Valley Park, and a long and a middle distance race down at Letchworth.  This was great, because it not only let me compete on my old stomping grounds, but also let me see my parents and let them come spectate the races.  Even with all the technological advances, the spectating is pretty poor at orienteering races, but hey, we're trying.  

Sprint Race

The first race was the sprint, on Friday.  I had just started getting used to the feeling of a body all full of energy from a proper taper, but that morning something didn't quite feel right, with a high heart rate and sluggish feelings in my legs.  I decided to try and ignore the physical side of the race, and just run clean, spiking all the controls and keeping my head up and scanning the terrain.  This worked well, so even when I didn't have the top gear I was hoping for, I navigated very well in the easy parkland terrain, and I was fast enough to take the win. My first ever national title in orienteering!  (ski-o notwithstanding).  This was cool. I was psyched.  Unfortunately, by that evening the weird feelings I'd noticed had developed into a full-blown head cold, sapping all that extra energy that I should have had available from my taper. Not fair!

Hehe, psyched.  I'm pretty sure this photo is just after Alison finished, and I knew I was the champ.

I was anxious, trying to fall asleep on Friday night.  I know you're not supposed to race with a cold, because your body is already trying really hard to fight off the virus, it's not very nice to pile on more stress from a hard race in potentially cold and rainy conditions.  I decided that if I woke up and my morning heart rate was below 60, I would race, and this gave me the peace of mind to finally fall asleep.  Morning heart rates tend to be decent indicators of overall exhaustion, so I didn't just pull that decision rule from you-know-where.  

Long Distance

I woke up with my resting heart rate down at 50 bpm, but a super sore throat.  Yuck.  This changed my approach to the race, since I knew that no matter what, I'd be setting myself back in terms of recovery, but I had decided that I was "allowed" to race, so may as well make the best of it.  By the time I'd finished my coffee and Kseniya and her mom had driven us down to Letchworth, I was thinking I'd probably survive the course.  My git-up-and-go definitely got-up-and-went last night without me, but again, I decided to ignore the physical side, and just try to navigate cleanly.  I wasn't quite as successful as I'd been in the sprint, leaving four minutes or more out on the course in errors, but it was good enough, again.  I caught up to Alison, one of my US Team teammates, at control 5 from three minutes back, and despite two ill-fated attempts to drop her, we were together for nearly the rest of the course. I was a little distracted by this, but it was still a lovely day to be running through the woods, and I really enjoyed myself.  In the end I was fastest again, by seven minutes! Body was definitely a bit worse for the wear, but I had managed to keep myself reined in enough to not do *too* much damage.

Middle Distance
One more race to go, the middle distance, and this race has been my Achilles heel the past few years. It's tough, it's technical, it's short, so there's no time to make up for your big errors.  I wanted to do two things going in to the champs - run a clean race by focusing on the process, and bring a little more rawr to the party and race with some aggression.  I really felt like poo when I woke up, stuffed up like a cannoli and coughing, but the resting heart rate was just below 60 (59) so that meant go time.  I did a slow warm up to try and convince my body that it wanted to race today, this is going to be fun!  oof.

I started well, spiking the first two controls, but then I made a rookie error and lost 4 minutes on the way to number 3. Came up for air, found #4, and then I was drowning again searching for 5 with no idea where I was or where I should be or what the heck I was doing. When I finally came back up and found that control, I was pretty pissed at myself.  I knew I'd probably just lost the race, and both of those errors were unacceptable in how they happened.  Well, errors are part of the fine-scale navigation in orienteering, time to put them behind me and get on with the rest of the race, so I did that, and pretty well too, winning most of the final 12 splits.  I had clawed my way back up to third place, fueled by anger and frustration and thankfully channeling it the right way, but naturally I was disappointed with those two controls in the beginning.  That said, it felt really good to run with such aggression, and despite the huge blowup, I feel best about this race.  Next weekend, I'll be more disciplined in my methods, while maintaining the feistiness, and that'll be a good combo!

Ed on his way out to the final loop in the Middle.

Leaving the spectator control in the Middle.

In to the finish, wishing I had a bit more lung capacity at my disposal!

After the Middle Distance finish, with US Champ Kseniya!

CSU medal winners from the Long Distance (missing Peter and Gail, who both won some gold medals in their age classes as well).  Go CSU! 

In the end, it was a great weekend. I've never won a national title in summer orienteering before, so I'm really pumped to have just won two of the races and taken bronze in the third!  It was a lot of fun to have some competition in the women's field, even though we were missing Ali, and the Rochester Orienteering Club put on a really nice weekend of racing.  Best of all, I was able to take two national titles on home turf, with my parents there to cheer me on.  That was pretty cool.  

Now, I'm gonna kick this cold and bring my A-game to Canada for the North American Champs!