Pisgah 50k

Laramie kicked off a few weekends of racing, which is the good stuff as far as I'm concerned. Upon coming home, we had the Louisa May Alcott 5k with my junior skiers, and I jumped into the 10k, in light of my upcoming marathon. I had some diaphragm cramping problems, and sort of had to cruise my way through it, but it was definitely still fun to pin on a bib!


Managed to win my age class, by virtue of having not too many other people racing the 10k in my age class. But that meant I got to pose with Uta Pippig! 

That afternoon I headed up to Pawtuckaway, for UNO's famed camping weekend. I skipped all the daytime orienteering, but arrived in time for the potluck dinner and the Wicked Hahd Night-O. I was going back and forth with Ernst and Neil for most of it, but didn't really have the energy or ability to run away from them, and ended up in 2nd place behind Neil. Super fun!

Because two races in one day wasn't enough, I was set to run the blue course the next morning (the longest hardest one). But, enough other people around me at breakfast were running the next one down that I decided to follow the herd. The fatigue from a pretty heavy training load in Laramie, combined with the altitude and a tough week at work, meant that I was hardly upset about this decision! I had a relatively clean run, with the one exception being that I lost a trail I was trying to follow on my way to control #11. I didn't notice this for too long, and corrected poorly, dropping about two minutes. But my slow and plodding pace still netted me third overall, and ahead of all the ladies (though not by much). I'll take it! Results.

So fun to see so many kids getting ready for the vampire-o after dinner! 

The WHNO course with my track on top. Click for larger. You can see where I totally decked myself on the way to 15, because the track goes to that bright red you-were-stopped-here color. 

Sundays' course with my route. Pretty proud of how straight I went from 7-8! 

After Sunday's course, Ed had managed to show up with his new vehicle, and we went for a nice trail run on the windy singletrack. That is a much more fun trail when you aren't trying to use it to navigate! We'd offered to pick up a couple controls, since we were out there late, and as I collected controls, Ed collected a much better treasure - fresh chanterelles!

How he spends most of his time when it comes to the bus



Actually driving places now! 

Pisgah Mountain 50k
Anyway, you came here to read about the Pisgah 50k, not my wanderings around Pawtuckaway. I'd sort of been targeting this race, partly as a lead-up to a marathon in a few weeks, but partly because I haven't run it since 2013, and I wanted to run it again and successfully. The really difficult thing is that I knew I had to let go of 2013-version-Alex, because I know I am not that fast anymore. I wish I were; from the numbers you'd think I could match past efforts, but I think a large part of this is that my mindset has changed, and I'm less willing to lay it all out there in pursuit of a result. I had re-read my report from 2013, and the memory of how hard I'd been pushing, to keep up with Kelsey and then to hold her off, was pretty fresh. I didn't know that I wanted to do that again.

So, my goal for the day was to enjoy it - I usually run well when I'm smiling. I had 50 kilometers ahead of me, of this beautiful, piney, forested trails, and I had no obligations today besides putting one foot in front of the other to cover distance. So much fun! I really was looking forward to this. Unfortunately, the weather looked to be pretty awful - humid, and warming up to the mid-eighties by midday. With an 8:45am start, I knew I'd have quite a few hours of running in uncomfortable temperatures. Ugh. As I feared, the hot weather dictated much of the race for me.

Starting in a cloud. 97% humidity.

We started in a cloud, and I noticed that my heart rate wanted to climb too easily. I tried to take it easy and just chat with people in the beginning, and it was a really enjoyable first eight miles. Somewhere along the way I came to Emily and Tom, NENSA folks, and they were stopped, Tom having smashed his knee crossing a slippery brook. He insisted he could walk just fine, so I kept going, pretty sure Emily would come flying by soon. I got to the aid station about a minute faster than my last time, which was worrisome because of the humidity (was I working too hard?!), but encouraging that the marathon training of raising my baseline speed has been working.

I walked up the road climb from there with a group of three guys, and then things started to get tough as we kept going up on the trails. Emily passed me by, and I didn't even try to match her pace, feeling gassed and too out-of-breath. I ran the downhill well, catching back up to my three guys, and ran through the aid station at the bottom, passing Emily in the process, though she soon passed me right back.

I topped up on water at the water stop around 12mi, and then forced myself to do a bunch of jogging over the next few miles to the third aid station, on the lookout for bees the whole time. Didn't want to get stung again! I was still pushing the downhills pretty hard, but taking it easier on the uphills. Somewhere in here I had my first heat shivers, not a good sign. I arrived at the third aid station and got more heat shivers, so decided to back way off and just walk all the way up Pisgah mountain.

Of the three guys I'd been running with miles 8-16ish, the gray-shirt guy ran off strongly from the aid, and I never saw him again. Black-shirt guy passed me early up the climb, but blue-shirt guy, named Joe, caught me more slowly and we chatted a bit. I kept walking, trying to bring my HR down. My right foot, which has a touch of plantar fasciitis, was really starting to hurt in here. Coming down the hill, I had to focus on running, full stride and whatnot, because I just wanted to go slowly and limp on my foot. It's hard to change gears to a higher one, but it has to be done! I caught both black-shirt and Joe coming down the hill, but I wasn't feeling awesome. It was hot, I ran out of water near the top of Pisgah mountain and thus had a mile or two of dry running, and my stomach was starting to complain about this effort in this heat.

The fourth aid station is the start and the finish of the Kilburn loop. As I topped up water, guzzling quite a bit of it, the leading woman came in, having just finished the loop. She was also leading the race. Impressive! I waddled off toward the loop as she loped off down the trail and toward the finish, and I was feeling kind of negative. My foot was really unhappy with the gravel part of the trail, my quads and hamstrings were feeling the strain of running the downhills hard, and my stomach didn't like all the water I'd just guzzled. I made a concerted effort to keep sending it down the hills but I was definitely entering survival mode, and I did a bunch more walking than I should have back up the hill.

I finally got back to the aid station, and now the shortest way back to the finish was to just follow the course. Phew. I tried hard not to limp on my foot, because I didn't want to cause some other injury from running funny, and I passed a dude who was walking, which made me realize I wasn't actually that badly off. Into the climbs up Davis hill I did some pace counting to motivate myself to keep running, and near the top I heard footsteps behind me - Joe! We shared a few miles, walking the uphills and trying not to limp the downhills, and then when we hit the gravel road I told him he better run ahead - I was going to do some walking and my stomach was really unhappy.

About 0.7mi from the end, I passed the tailgating crew, and they told me I was third woman. I chuckled, and asked if they had any cold beer. I was promptly delivered an ice cold, delicious, bubbly, IPA, and it was heavenly. Finally something that I wanted to ingest! I drank about 3/4 of it before dropping it off at the next driveway (as suggested by the tailgaters), turning and giving them a thumbs up, to a rousing cheer. Started jogging again and managed to get across the line about a minute before 4th place, so it's good I didn't take the time to finish that beer.

So, while the race wasn't everything I'd hoped, I did manage to enjoy myself out there. I know I don't run particularly well in humidity and heat, so I sort of expected my stomach to turn at some point, but that was a tough one to finish. I don't like that it was 41 minutes slower than last time, so I guess I'll have to come back next year!

Super thanks to the race director and all the volunteers - the course was lovely, very well marked, and the aid stations were friendly and stocked with all sorts of good food. Great event!

Rediscovering the edge

It's been a while since I've really pushed a race effort. There were the weeks of marathon training, the weeks of not-training, a week or two of a chest cold, then the marathon itself, which, while a hard effort for sure, was not the sort of hard effort that makes you bleed from your eyeballs and scrabble in the dirt as the lactic acid demons drag you down. Those sorts of efforts need to be consumed in moderation, of course, but if you don't taste them from time to time, you lose the ability to savor that racing edge.

With my knee on the mend, it looks like I'll actually be able to do the races on my horizon. Three weekends of orienteering National Events, and a couple cross country races with my junior skiers. The skills that need refreshing right now are some basic navigation, and some re-familiarization with the pain cave.

The first stop was Pawtuckaway State Park, for UNO's famed Camping Weekend. I love this weekend, mostly for its infamous Wicked Hahd Night O. But, I actually decided to try and keep my knee on the healing track, as opposed to the more-broken track, and chose to just do one race at Pawtuckaway, instead of the usual three races. Bummer, being smart isn't nearly as much fun as making bad decisions!

My goal for the run was to stay focused on good technique the entire time. Exit direction, and make a plan. I wanted to try and do these things under a little bit of stress, because anybody can orienteer well at slow speed if you think about it enough. So, time to apply some oomph. Click below for the full map:



In general, things went well. I was forcing myself to look at my compass, and sometimes it told me to go directions that I didn't want to go, but if I listened to it, I would arrive in the right place. Useful little tool, that. I had a lot of hesitations along the way, some of them because I hadn't fully visualized my plan yet, and some of them just because I couldn't read the map while running. Never my strongest suit, it was definitely the first skill to go. Below is a zoomed-in version of some of the map, with a bit of annotation from the brain of Alex -

Prime example of how quickly orienteering skills go rusty. The green is where I'm running with some degree of oomph, yellow is sort of a slow confused jog, and red is... not fast. Also, beautiful map layout, with the label for control 12 overlapping the control 1 circle and its line... you just can't unsee this sort of shit.

Leaving the start, I had had a moment of panic - omg, I'm alone in the woods, and I don't know where I am! It didn't take more than 15-20 seconds to remember that it doesn't matter where I am, just where I'm going and how to get there, and then things were a little smoother. It was so much fun to run through the woods again, and I was pleased to find some bounce in my legs and that I hadn't lost all my ability to duck and weave and bash and jump. There's hope for next weekend if I can listen to my compass and make a plan for each leg. I was winning the course by about nine minutes when I left, but results aren't online yet, so I don't know how I fared in the end.

Next step was a little exploration of the pain cave. The CSU juniors were running an uphill test at Wachusett Mountain on Sunday, so it was time to join them. After a pretty solid warmup, my knee was complaining a little with all the bending. I decided that it was probably going to be fine; this wasn't pain, just some swelling interfering with normal movement, and uphills aren't fast enough to really hurt things. We had a good crowd there, with a number of hardcore parents joining their hardcore kids, and the weather was perfect. 

The time trial goes up the road, which is actually pretty flat except for two pitches. We started out, and like any uphill time trial, there isn't much strategy. I started near the back, and slowly moved up toward midpack by the time we got to the junction. After you turn the corner it's steep for a little while, and I did not feel efficient. Unused to this much suffering, my brain was asking perfectly reasonable questions, like "can we stop now?" and "what if we just slow down a little?" So, I went a little faster, because clearly if my brain can think reasonably, I'm allowing it too much oxygen. As we neared the top, I was definitely anaerobic, and it was sort of sad how little speed was garnered for so much effort. But, you have to start somewhere, and spending 19 minutes peering around the pain cave and dusting some of the cobwebs near the entrance isn't bad for a day's work. 

The "bonus trip up the hill" kids on top of Wachusett.

After another trip up, this time on trails and more of a threshold effort, I was good and done. My knee felt a little complain-y, but with no pain, I'm feeling positive about being able to compete successfully next weekend at Letchworth. I don't have a huge amount of fitness to back me up, but this weekend assured me that I can still muster a little speed if I need to.

My orienteering skills are about as unused as this pitchfork in our garden. 

US Orienteering Championships

After returning from Sweden, I needed a little time to not think about orienteering. With the US and North American Championships coming up at the end of September, I had a few weeks to get back into the groove of working and coaching, and my plan was to simply do whatever I felt like for training, and let the mind and body recover together.

Labor Day weekend was the annual Kern camp, a ski camp that CSU hosts down on Cape Cod, and it was great. No surfing this year, because the waves weren't really steady enough, but by Monday we were getting the leading traces of a tropical storm, and the waves were big enough to cancel ferries back to Boston, which left us in a bit of a pickle with what to do with the 25 skiers who had taken the ferry to get there. It all worked out in the end, and everybody got home.

The following weekend was the Pawtuckaway Camping weekend, and we just spent Saturday up there. After a long course in the morning, and then the Wicked Hard Night-O (WHNO), I was pretty toasted by Sunday morning, but I'd agreed to meet my juniors at the Louisa May Alcott 5k. I knew I didn't have the oomph for a proper race, so just tempoed my way around the course, but it still felt like a lot of work. By the time I showed up to the afternoon rollerski practice, I could tell that I was in a bit of a hole, physically. The problem with not having a training plan is that then I just do anything that's offered, and end up overreaching. Well, four days to recover before the US Champs at Ward Pound Ridge, over in NY, and I did pretty well getting myself to a better place. Mentally and emotionally, I was excited to go running in the forest, and physically, though I didn't feel my bounciest ever, I felt a lot fresher than the weekend before!

Becky, Ed and I found a rock to stand on

Second in my age class despite not a killer run

US Championships

Saturday's race was a long distance World Ranking Event, against the usual crew plus Ali, back on the east coast for a long-ish trip involving the US champs, North American Champs (NAOC), and then her wedding. The forest at Ward Pound Ridge was gorgeous - typical older-growth deciduous Hudson Highlands terrain. There was a little bit of rock on the ground, but mostly it was just FAST. I started out aggressively, but maybe a little too aggressively, and I lost some steam after the 5th control. From there, we entered a rougher part of the forest, with more mountain laurel and rock, and I had a bit of a low point, losing confidence and moving slower. By #9 I'd kicked myself back into race mode, recovered from that dip, but I had lost too much time. Despite a very strong finishing loop, I still finished about a minute down on Hannah, and nearly six down on Ali. I was totally exhausted, having worked those final hills with everything I had in me, and I was starting to worry that maybe I wasn't as recovered as I hoped.

That evening, the Orienteering USA Annual General Meeting went on, and a group of young-ish candidates who had banded together to run for the OUSA Board of Directors with the platform of "things need to change" managed to get ourselves elected to the BOD, and the AGM plus the following board meeting was a totally restful six hours of my evening, trust me. Thankfully Barb called in a pizza near the end of the meeting, because there really wasn't much opportunity for dinner otherwise. I can tell you I definitely have my work cut out for me, now.

Sunday dawned humid and icky, but luckily I'm used to this sort of weather by now. The course was a lot shorter, and hopefully with less climb, too. My goal was to stay aggressive the entire race, but to keep smiling, because you don't get forests like these very often - such a treat! Right off the bat, I made a stupid mistake to #1, drifting too high on the slope despite my internal spidey sense yelling at me. Like that, I'd dropped a minute. D'oh! That seemed to kick me into gear, and my focus narrowed to the task at hand. Time to apply some speed. I was focusing on really nailing the downhills, especially, since yesterday I'd felt like some of them I was being a little too cautious. No reason not to treat off-trail terrain any different than a trail, just sight where you're going to first!

By #7 I could tell I was having a good run, as I was passing masters runners and West Point cadets and moving really well. On the long leg to 10, I knew these were the final hills, and I was at the point where I was bribing myself to keep running - just run for 100 strides and then you can walk for 10! I had a plan for each control, and while forests with this much visibility make it easy to nail controls, you still have to be able to keep your head on while moving as fast as possible. I distinctly remember thinking to myself at one point "soon, you'll be at an uphill, and you can read your map THEN," only to immediately counter that with the realization that NO! I have to keep reading my map while moving THIS FAST, being THIS out of breath, and being THIS exhausted. It worked, and I kept the aggressive approach to my navigation right through the end, finishing about three minutes ahead of Hannah and about a minute back of Ali. That was enough to move me in front of Hannah for the overall championships, so now I'm a silver medalist! Woo!

The weekend of fun wasn't totally finished. Ed headed home with some local friends, and I stayed out there for a final race, a team sprint relay at Mountain Lakes. Teamed with Ali (go Team Giggles!), we had nothing on the line but our egos, and both elected to go a little easier in order to start recovering for NAOC. Super fun to run a relay, though, with maybe 25 teams out there. We both made some mistakes, and combined with a lower speed, all the elite men and speedy masters beat us. But, we definitely had the best sparkly pink tiaras.

Monday night we headed up to Sunderland, for the second running of this year's Mike's Corn Maze Orienteering. Hosted by Peter Gagarin, this is pretty much the most fun orienteering event EVAR, even including those awesome forests at Ward Pound Ridge. Peter is totally in his element hosting a ridiculous event like this, and over the course of three races there was endless laughter, mud, and cutthroat competition. I managed to eke out the win in the "sprint shuffle," but Ali got me in the "classic" and Evalin got me in the "night." So much fun!

Next up is NAOC! Time to bring that aggressive orienteering to the next venue!

Pawtuckaway

Last weekend I attended the almost-famous Pawtuckaway Camping weekend, hosted by the UpNorth Orienteers.  My relationship with this place has changed, over the years, mostly toward the good end of the dreading it --> drooling for it spectrum.  This probably has to do with the fact that my orienteering skill has improved to the point where I find all those boulders an enjoyable challenge rather than a recipe for hours of confused and abused lostness, but I wouldn't have gotten there without paying my due share of blood to the flies and tears to the house-sized boulders and prayers to the gods of orienteering.  

This is a fantastic weekend, because it is such an awesome laid-back atmosphere, with some pretty serious competition hidden in the corners. I started out with the red course, since I'd heard that the largest number of people were running it.  The intention was to take it at a race effort, and see what my knee would do in response to running as hard as I could through the woods on an uneven surface.  The good news is that there doesn't appear to be any lasting damage from this, so regardless of what the MRI results say, I think I should be ok for the October race weekends.  The bad news was that I completely and utterly wilted in the heat.  I was basically stumbling through the final controls, and all I could think of was watermelon.  Specifically, cold watermelon sitting on ice for even more coldness, like they had at Wapack last weekend.  I was going back and forth with Ernst Linder for most of the race, but in the end he had more stamina in the heat, and put 45 seconds into me on one control, that I just couldn't reel back in.  He ended up beating me by 15 seconds. So close!

The next activity of the afternoon was the canoe-o, which entailed my teammate Kseniya and I splashing around in the lake and occasionally actually finding a control.  A friend had painstakingly explained to us how to maximize our speed and direction in windy conditions, but we completely ignored his advice, more through lack of skill than lack of desire.  Luckily, we stayed upright.  

After a delicious and copious potluck dinner, it was time for the Wicked Haahd Night-O (WHNO).  The trouble with this event is that I'm always way too full from dinner to want to go out into the scary dark woods, but somehow I get persuaded to go out there every time.  Given the super hot conditions during the day, I knew I was pretty depleted even before I started, but thankfully I made it through without cramping or otherwise dying.  The pack was spreading out already by control 2, and I was near the back of it, resigning myself to just being slow tonight. Not much energy, and lots of sloshing noises coming from my belly, sapped my desire to run hard.  But, by control 3 I saw some people running in a variety of directions (none of them to the control), and I sensed my chance to get away.  It's tough to make a break in a night-o, because you can see the lights from so far away, but sometimes 45 seconds is enough to get out of sight, so I put a little oomph into my waddling and hit 4-5-6 alone.  

Christiane, a visiting German runner, made contact at 6, but she went way left to go around the lake to 8, and I was once again on my own.  Once you get over your fear of the dark, night orienteering is actually pretty awesome.  You know there are others out there, but you can't see them, and it's definitely fun to nail controls at night.  Cresting the hill to 8, I saw Gheorghe, a visiting Moldovan, bent over his leg nursing a cramp.  It had been a hot day, and tough to hydrate enough between the day's races and the night-o, so I wasn't surprised by this.  He was able to recover enough to trot around the rest of the course with me, but I could tell he was sort of out of it, not doing much navigating on his own anymore.  I overshot on 9, not having a clear attackpoint from the trail, but corrected with only 2 minutes lost, and still no lights, so this was good.  The humidity of the night and efforts from the day started to catch up with me near the end, unfortunately, and I made two stupid mistakes, 2min on 12, and another 2 min trying to find the finish.  D'oh!  You can't be slow AND make mistakes, you're only allowed to do one or the other.  Luckily, it was enough (barely) to hold off the other ladies, and I was 5th overall.  Results - scroll to the bottom for the night-o.

Sunday morning, the focus for me was on training.  First exercise was to blast through the shortest advanced course at full speed, and then do it again, to gain more confidence the second time 'round.  This accomplished, I set out on a longer course, with my compass in my pocket, to work on reading the map and doing a long terrain run.  It was a lovely cool morning, and I had a lot of fun trotting through the woods and enjoying the sights and sounds at a comfortable pace.  This meant the time wasn't very good, but since I wasn't racing, I was ok with that.  Some days, that's not what it's about.



All in all, a totally successful weekend. Super thanks to Up North Orienteers for putting it together, as always it was super valuable to my training and racing experience. I can't wait to tackle the October race weekends now!

Until next time, Pawtuckaway.  Thanks for having some crazy awesome boulders!