Vacation, and the Bogburn

From Craftsbury, it was on to Rochester for some pagan rituals involving "loot" and "goo", those terms referring to what goes under versus on the tree. A few short days, and the adventure-mobile headed north and east, through the belly of a snowstorm that added 3 hours to the trip, landing me at Mt. Sainte Anne, Quebec. As expected, the skiing was fabulous. I basically skied until I couldn't anymore, and like every year, it is too easy to fall into the routine of eat, ski, eat, sleep, ski, eat, sleep... Kathy and I ran a tight ship, and our condo of "orphan" CSU kids was well-behaved and fun to have under our charges.

After skiing more than was good for me, the trip wasn't over. South I went, and came to a stop in Weston VT, for a proper new year's celebration, where it was cold enough that the beer was frozen. So more skiing ensues, because what else can you do when it's that cold out? I suppose some might consider indoor activities, but I've never been too bright.

Finally, my vacation came to an end, and I had to re-enter the world where days have meaning and time goes by too quickly. But not without a quick stop by Pomfret VT, for the Bogburn, a true classic of a race. Individual start, single track, one lap, windy awesome trails. The course had gotten the full brunt of the snowstorm two days earlier, making for some fabulous skiing. I had trouble going any faster than 30k pace, which was unfortunate for the results-oriented department of my brain, but I really enjoyed being able to pass all the people I passed, and ski racing because I love it.    

A snowy Christmas Eve walk through Rochester. Actually a cool city, now that we're out of the suburbs.

Doing some coaching on the Mt sainte Anne trails. 

Kathy and I got out for a ski one afternoon. So cold, but so fun. 

The annual camp pursuit race went off at five degrees (Fahrenheit!) and blustery. I had fun racing with my juniors, and managed to just sneak ahead of Kathy, but Rob beat me in the all-important coaches race. 

Sometimes they are little monsters, but most of the time our group was awesome. 

Pretty star at the New Years party!

Ed's beer was frozen. Thankfully no bottles exploded!

Sharon had an awesome penguin hat!

 

Two feet of snow at -15F. Wowzers!

Craftsbury EC

Last weekend was the first Eastern Cup of the season, up in Craftsbury.  They had enough snow to hold the classic race (10k mass start) on the real race trails, moving away from the silly little manmade loop that we all end up racing around most of the time.  I nearly signed up, but decided that we had enough skiers showing up that my time would be better spent waxing, and anyway, elbow isn't really 100% ready for prime time on classic skis yet.  So, I signed up for the skate sprint, expecting that I just laid down $35 for 1.3km of racing - with all the college kids in town, and everybody all trained and fit and strong, I did not expect to be a contender.  But, skate sprints are fun, and a new pair of skis just showed up in the mail, so I needed to see how they ran!

An early morning jogeroo shook the cobwebs out of my legs - I spent too long sitting down on Friday, and then frantically packing for a two week vacation.  Woo!  It's exciting to take this time off, but a little sad how much I'm looking forward to getting some work done. Wait, I think I'm doing vacation wrong... anyway, I'd felt pretty stiff and groggy, but the jog woke me up and got the blood flowing, and I was in full-on Alex-on-a-race-day-morning mode by the time I hit the dining hall for their scrumptious bacon!  We got out testing skis, and the course was fast and hard, not at all feeling as slushy as I'd expected given the temperature.  Colder grinds and colder waxes were running fast, and our skiers were on some speedy boards by the time I rolled up to the start line.

Speaking of start line... the women's race start was delayed.  First by 10 minutes, then another 10 minutes. I'm apparently quite terrible at math, because somewhere in this mix I thought I had an extra 12 minutes before I started, when actually I had less than 1.  I heard them calling my number, and thankfully my skis were near the start, so I skied over, stripping off clothes and poles, jumping a barrier, and getting both poles on (but only one glove) with about four seconds to spare.  Whoops.  Oh well, I could use a shot of adrenaline!  The nerves combined with criminally fast skis meant I felt jittery the whole way round the course, never settling into a rhythm and never feeling like I was riding my skis.

Always treat a sprint like you've moved on, so I took care of myself and got some lunch down, before heading back into the rain for the heats.  CSU had sent 12 (including some alumns) into the heats, and I was pumped to watch all the blue suits zipping around the course!  I'd qualified in 23rd, nearly 16 seconds back (wowzers, that probably shouldn't have made the heats!), so I knew I wouldn't have the speed to just run away from my heat.  My plan became to tuck in and freeskate as much as possible, let my fast skis carry me past people on the downhills and then try not to die on the uphill into the finish.  My goal was to move up a few spots by finishing 3rd or 4th in my heat, but if I didn't move on I was quite ok with that. Ski racing is hard, and my legs didn't feel like they had three more races in them today.  That may sound pessimistic, but I was having a bit of trouble motivating the give-a-damn.

The heat played out according to plan, thankfully two girls tangled and went down on the first downhill, leaving me clear to just hang on to the front pack of Corey, Emily, and Hannah.  It was work to ski that fast, but not impossible, and I moved up into third climbing the wall in the stadium.  One last rest down the hill into the horseshoe, and then it was an uphill finish, and I ran out of gas, sort of as predicted.  Turns out, skiing takes strength and coordination, and I didn't have much of either going for me.  My oomph ran out, and Hannah snuck ahead of me into the finish lanes behind Corey and Emily, and I didn't have the fight to go around, so finished 4th in the heat.  This moved me up nicely from 23rd to 19th, so I was satisfied with the day.

I was super pumped watching some of my juniors racing.  Two of my girls are total pros, and they moved smoothly through the heats and into the A final, finishing 4th and 5th overall.  Another of my gals skied a gutsy race to move from 26th to 15th, and one of my juniors in the junior heats had a break-out race, moving into the A final and taking 4th! We had three J2s in the heats, one boy and two girls, and they all skied with heart and really learned from the experience, which was pretty sweet to see.  Despite the rain, we were all pumped to give it another shot tomorrow in the classic race.

Unfortunately, the temperatures dropped and everything froze overnight, while it kept raining.  They managed to groom the course, but the trees were so coated with ice that the branches kept falling, making a noise like gunshots.  They rightly canceled the race, because it was too darn dangerous to be skiing out there, and that was the right call, but a little depressing for the skiers who wanted to make up for the sprint day with a good grind-it-out distance race.

To leave, I had to use a metal putty knife to chip the ice from my windshield, but eventually I got out of there, and kept driving until I got to Rochester, for the holidays at home.  Next up, Mont Sainte Anne!

Racing! (on skis and foot)

Ski season is just about starting, with the first race this weekend up in Craftsbury, VT. I elected not to sign up for the classic race, given that my elbow is still not perfect and I don't want to mess up all the good physical therapy I've been doing for it, but I am signed up for the skate race. Skate poles are longer, and that seems to be less aggravating for the triceps tendon insertion. I can't wait to race! I don't feel ready, but this week I've been shoveling enough snow to actually get strong, or at least, sore, so we'll see if snow shoveling is at all ski specific. Hmm.

I did get in one opener race; while up in Craftsbury for Thanksgiving (wheee! skiing!!). That place is becoming like the home-away-from-home for us Boston skiers. I certainly can't complain about their delicious maple bacon and everything local, organic, and delicious in the dining hall. Oh wait, I'm there for the skiing? Anyway, the race was billed as a 10k, but was more like a 7.5k, 5 times around a 1.5k loop. It had been cold, but warmed up the night before the race, leading to some quality manmade sugar-slush on the hills. Not my favorite conditions, but it was fun to rev the engine a bit and see what would happen. What happened was a lot of wheezing and some burning legs, as well as a fourth place finish among the college skiers who were up there. If you plan to race yourself into shape, you gotta start somewhere, and admit that you're not starting at peak performance. Turns out, ski racing is mighty tough, and I could have used a bit more oomph, but I was totally ok with the result.


Morning view on a race day! Coffee mug on one side, wax iron on the other, and your wax table is all set.

In non-racing news, Ed's mom sent us a gingerbread house kit. Zan came over and helped us decorate, we were quite a team of sprinkle applicators. Unfortunately, Ed and I differ in our philosophies regarding gingerbread houses. To Ed, a gingerbread house is something that is supposed to sit there and decorate your counter during the holidays. Then, at the end of all the festivities, it is hard as a rock and not tasty, so it gets thrown away. To me, we're looking at a house-shaped cookie, and I want to eat the darn thing. I've limited myself to only eating one side of the roof, but Ed seems to have noticed, and is making comments like "there was more roof damage in a storm near the gingerbread house yesterday". I think he's on to me...  

Last weekend, I stayed home rather than search out the skiing somewhere.  Weston has been blowing snow, so we had an on-snow practice with the Bill Koch league, and there was even some natural snow, but not quite enough for skating.  From BKL practice, I joined up with Terry and Pat, two of the CSU runners, and we drove up to Melrose, for the Assault on Mt. Hood.  It turns out that Mt. Hood is actually a golf course; I had expected a bit more.  But, it was a hilly race, with a fun low-key atmosphere, and snow on the ground. Not quite a trail race, but pretty fun for xc.  3.5mi, ish. 

I wasn't really sure what to wear, but settled on a windblock polypro and another one on top, with two layers on my legs.  It was chilly, 13 degrees!  And then there was the guy in a speedo.  Seriously?



Exhibit A. Speedo on the right.

The race started out with the part that went up Mt. Hood, so I took it out slow, and then there was a really steep descent (wheeeee!), and an even steep ascent back up to Mt. Hood, which I discovered was faster to power-hike than to run.  I was already benefiting from my slower-than-usual start, reeling in the runners and starting to find my stride.  Pretty happy with my choice a shoe, the TrailRoc236, which have aggressive outsoles but a nice wide platform, lending some stability on the slippery snow.  At about two miles in, I could see mr. speedo ahead of me, and I determined that I would pass him.  This helped the motivation, and once I caught him, I had half a mile left in the race and I had to hold him off!  Success in that regard, but I ended up just off the podium, in 4th, for my age group (and 5th overall).  That meant that I didn't get a giant nutcracker award - bummer!  Next year...


Results


The CSU masters team took the win, and took home some nutcrackers for their effort. Go CSU!

Also, this is pretty cool. Yay thesis, woo!

Blue Hills Traverse

I've taken a few years off from the Blue Hills Traverse, even though it's a good race that's held every year and it's relatively local.  The last one I did, in 2010, was just a really bad day for me, and left a bad taste in my mouth.  So I figured it was time to do this race again!

It was chilly this year, about 24F with tons of wind, I was hearing windchill of zero degrees. Brrr.  Once in the woods I was generally ok, though there was one hillside where the wind was cutting right through the trees and I couldn't get down into a valley soon enough.  The Traverse is a mass start race, and you're allowed to follow, so it's always fun to see what group you end up running with.  This year, the fast boys took off quickly, and I found myself slogging cross country and feeling kind of cold and slow.  It didn't help that the day before had been a monster day of orienteering, setting up and taking down a meet up in Lynn Woods, but there was just no pop in my legs.

I could see a group of guys ahead of me for the first few controls, and I knew with this much fatigue in my legs I'd have to be flawless in my navigation.  Shortly after that realization, I thought I was overrunning control 3, so turned around, making some spectacular parallel errors and losing five minutes and my pack of guys.  Damn.



On to the second map, and I re-found most of the guys I'd been running with, Ben and Ari and Will and Jon, as they wandered around searching for a boulder on a hillside littered with unmapped boulders.  We got lucky and found the control, and I got mad, because I didn't think that was a particularly fair control location, so I started running faster down the hill. I couldn't quite drop the guys, but I did make contact with Tim and Juha, and I had some moments of good orienteering.



That didn't last, as I chose the wrong route to 11, losing about a minute on the route and another minute because of vaguely mapped terrain, but this got everybody, and I was near the front of the pack.  Whee!  Jon latched onto me at that point, because he'd apparently dropped his map somewhere, so was just following people in to the finish.  Not a bad solution, actually.  I pulled ahead with Ari and Jon into control 15, feeling pretty good about the race so far, and then we proceeded to be unable to find control 16.  It was a rootstock, with no solid attackpoints on a flat plain, and it turns out it was also mishung, by 50m.  So, as we wandered around, Will and Ben and Tim and Juha all caught up and passed me by, and that really broke my give-a-damn.  So when the boys still with me on the trail ran faster, I just didn't speed up, and eventually stumbled into the finish very happy to be done, and very frustrated with the parts that hadn't gone so well.  Luckily, I had my big megapoof to put on, and I won a gingerbread man, so life quickly returned to its general state of awesomeness, but I'm STILL pissed about losing five places in the last 10min of the race!

Results

DVOA Fall orienteering festival

After a lot of travel weekends lately, I wasn't too psyched about another long drive, this time down to French Creek State Park, west of Philly.  But, the Delaware Valley Orienteering Association held a top-notch meet, that was well worth the drive (which was great in its own right, carpooling with Katia, Giovanni, Anne, and Zan).  My experience running down there is limited, and there are many fewer features than I'm used to on the map, leading to a much higher dependence on direction and distance to get to your control - the boy scout approach.  I was very happy to find most of the leaves on the ground rather than on the trees, as it meant visibility was quite good, making the orienteering considerably easier.
 

Standing in line for the start.

The format of the weekend was two classic-distance races, and a combined time for the overall winner.  I didn't bother to really taper, and just hoped to hold it together for both races, despite still feeling some fatigue from the 25k Raid the Hammer race last Sunday.  Saturday's race was at a southern portion of French Creek, with some hills, but in a flat, vague sort of way.  I treated the navigation quite cautiously, and never got moving very fast during the race, though I was certainly working hard up the hills.  The footing was rough - loose stones and thick vegetation - and I didn't feel particularly stable on my feet. I also took a stick to the eye somewhere around control 4, which didn't do much for my confidence moving through terrain.  But the cautious approach worked out, and although I dropped about 2 minutes on the course because of mistakes, I came out on top of the pile of elite women, with a scant 3min lead over Kseniya.  There were quite a few M45 and M20 runners who beat me, though (we're on the same course), indicating I should probably move a bit faster the next day. Splits (includes all the men on the red course, too).



Off we go!


Map from day 1 - click to make bigger.  The red line is the route I thought I took, the green/red line is the route my gps claims I took.  A miss on #2 and #7, but otherwise quite a clean run and nailing all of my process goals. 

DVOA had set up a wine tasting event at a local winery, so many of us took advantage of that opportunity, which was a very nice touch to the event.  The official dinner was in downtown Pottstown, and after dinner, the Senior Standing Team members ran a public course review, going through some of the courses offered today and discussing the various best ways to approach different legs.  For the most part, I thought this was a really good idea, and folks seemed to get something out of it. 

Day 2
My goal for day 2 was to carry over the good navigational habits from day 1, but run a little more aggressively, especially where the vegetation was thick and rocky.  Everybody has to deal with tough terrain, I just gotta move through it faster.  Unfortunately, warming up I twisted my ankle kind of badly.  This ankle has been twisted enough that the ligaments are already all stretched out and the pain stops quickly, but it did leave me feeling very unstable on my feet for the race.  As is often the case, the footing is much better off trail than on the trails when there are loose rocks under leaves. 

I tried to start aggressively, but somehow was still losing some serious time to both Tereza (member of the Czech Republic team who is here studying at Elon University) and to the M45s.  I started to take the time back by #4, and the flat trail cruise to #5 felt good, and I was moving well.  I could tell I was running too fast, because I really wanted to stop running and sit down, but the trouble with orienteering is that the race plays itself out one control at a time, so it can be very difficult to pace yourself well.  By the time I was climbing up the hill to 7, I knew I was in trouble, physically, and had to back off the pace a little. I made contact with Kseniya at control 10, having made up a few minutes on her, and while this was a relief, I knew I had to keep pushing the pace.  I was deathly slow up the hills to 13 and 14, just unable to move any faster, and lost two minutes to Tereza between control 11 and 15.  Darn!  Splits from day 2. Luckily, the overall time was enough to net me the win!  I was pretty psyched about this.



Map from day 2.  More hills, and more green!

Raid the Hammer

Last year, Ali and Amy Rusiecki and I did this adventure race in Canada as Team Giggles.  We won the women's division, and were close on the heels of the men's teams, just five minutes out of the lead in 5th.  We planned to do the race again this year, to see if we could get any closer to the lead.  Unfortunately, Team Giggles lost Amy when she tweaked her hamstring pretty badly the weekend before in a 50 miler (that she still won. beast!). Though she could still sorta run, she didn't think she could run fast, and neither Ali nor I wanted to push a bum hamstring in a long race. So, we started casting around for teammates, needing someone faster than Alex, somewhat able to orienteer, and crazy enough to be willing to drop everything and drive to Hamilton on a four-day notice. Enter Ari Ofsevit.

Bonus fact: Ari was willing to wear a pink tiara. Woo! 

Team Giggles with their awesome glittery home-made shirts.

After a lovely evening at the Waddington household, it was go-time. The course was really physical, lots of running and lots of flat running. I started suffering pretty early on from an unhappy digestive track and very sore ankles; I guess I was rolling them around more than I thought in the first off-trail section. Not my finest day physically, but it's a team event, and you're only as fast as your weakest link, so Ali was a rockstar and towed me along for all the urban or big-trail stuff with a bungee cord. Can I hire her for my road races? There was also a wicked headwind, so it was fantastic to have Ali breaking the wind (as opposed to breaking wind; that was my job) for me.

Map 1:

We took the road around to 1, and that didn't seem any slower than cutting through the fields. Other teams were faster, but I tried to find a pace that felt comfortable yet fast.  My feet felt like in their X-Talon190s, which were the best compromise between road and hard-trail running and super slippery mud, that made up the themes of the day.  My ankles were a little floppy cutting through the woods on the way to 1, which was a bit of foreshadowing for the rest of the race. From 1, we had "the matrix", where we were allowed to split up to get three controls, and then meet back up at 2. I had the shorter, marginally technical control, Ali had the far away brambly control, and Ari had the far away trail + climb control.

The trail run to 2 was gorgeous, and knowing I'd been on the shortest leg I slowed down to a jog to try and recover. Ali arrived at the control within seconds of me, and Ari was 3:18 behind her, so we'd picked a good strategy, and we left control 2 with the top teams.  Amazing how requiring all three members to navigate breaks up the race!

Map 2:

We got stuck at a traffic light trying to get onto map 2, with the matrix-code-checker people on the other side of the intersection, so lost the top 2-3 teams there, who'd snuck ahead as the light was going yellow. Boo. I was struggling a little with the pace, and my stomach was not being happy with me, but we were holding even with the teams around us through the southern portion of the map.

From 5 we exited the orienteering bit and had some road/wide-trail running. The organizers had blanked out parts of the map, and they didn't say we were forbidden to use the roads that went through those areas, but they did say that the roads wouldn't be a huge help.  So, we stayed on the mapped areas.  The trails were a hard-packed gravel/dirt mixture, typical suburban running.  Ari had brought bungee cords, so I bungeed myself to Ali's waterbottle belt, and this lent us a smidge more speed, while bringing my heartrate back below threshold. This was where I noticed that my right ankle was really hurting. Ankles are small things, but apparently I'd tied my shoe too tight, and that was pushing on things badly at the front of my ankle, a known problem area for me. We got stopped at another light, where another coed team was stopped with us, so I loosened my shoe there, but the damage was done, and that foot felt really tender the rest of the race.  Rookie mistake!

Map 3:

We took a better route to 8, not losing as many contours, and got ahead of some teams there. But then to 9, first I needed another pit stop, then Ari's nipples started chafing, so I was digging out the tape from our med kit as we were running, and then none of us were paying any attention to the map and overshot a reentrant by a bit and had to correct by running through some tall burr things. Oops. But, I saw a decaying bicycle in the streambed, which was kind of cool. Just half the rear tire and the derailleur sticking out from the mud and rocks. We also jumped over a dead and decaying deer. ewww.

Up the hill and through the neighborhood to 10, munching on some food, and we did better with making sure that somebody was actually navigating at all points. I suppose that's an actual drawback of having more than one navigator on your team - you always assume somebody else is navigating. We were ahead of the other coed team down to 10, and dropped them on the climb up to 11, especially after I bungeed back to Ali on the flat part into the feed. In the sideways freezing rain. Both ankles were really killing me now on the flat hardpack stuff, but I was hoping that the next section of orienteering would be better, since it was softer footing. I was definitely not going to let ankle pain slow us down; they're just ankles.

The climb from 12 was a doozy, a real map-in-teeth-use-fingernails-as-tread sort of climb (see Ari's tiara photo up top). I was having a lot of trouble running fast along the trail to 13, sort of in a bad little world of hurt and pain and ow and tired and poop. Ali did a spectacular job of trail finding on the indistinct guy to 13, and then we were in the "void", a vague area with low visibility, where I just ran compass checks on Ali as she spiked controls, with Ari acting as cheerleader.  We put some time on the other teams in that section, as we nailed all the controls and were moving decently, considering Alex's sorry state of being.

17-18-19-20 were all trail running, with Ari nearly killing himself tumbling down one of the steep slopes and me trying not to whimper too much about my ankles, the right one in particular now was giving me sharp pain with every step. One of the teams that beat us saved 4 minutes and 8 contours by crossing the uncrossable river; I guess since it's AR and they didn't specifically say "you'll be dqed if you cross that river" it's ok. Probably better not to go that hypothermic for me and Ali, but frustrating to lose that much time. Anyway, a long climb on road to 21, where Ali was just pushing me from behind, then a cruise along the river to 22, a final muddy climb back to suburbia, and then bungee all the way in, managing to stay on my feet and mostly ignore the ankle.

We ended up 6 minutes back, but first coed, which was our category. All the flat running was tough, but so were the steep muddy hills, and overall it was pretty fun. Team dynamics were good, and there were no tears. woo!  Sounds like next year is the 15th anniversary of this race, and the race director promises to put together some of the best parts of the last 15 years, so it's probably worth the drive, though going that way twice in three weeks was rough.  Team Giggles for the win!  hehe.

New England autumn

This has been a glorious fall in New England. It's finally getting cold enough at night that it truly feels like fall, and the trees got that memo, breaking out into these brilliant flaming colors, coating the ground with their leaves so that you are running through a kaleidoscopic tunnel. If ever I'm having a down day, all it takes is a run through the forest, crunching through the leaves and taking in the views and earthy smells to make me happy again. It's worth appreciating the beauty around me. 

Of course, four days later, November happened for real, my glorious CSU-colored tree lost its leaves, and the sky rained on me: 

Sneaking out for a lunchtime run the other day, I renewed the conscious decision I made years ago to view the upside of situations. Life is beautiful, and when I let the busy-ness of it all overwhelm me, it's easy to get wrapped up in the daily grind, ignoring the brilliant forest that surrounds me and focusing on one step at a time, driven by the end goal. That can work, but it's the process of everything that I do that really brings me joy, not just achieving the goal, and that's worth remembering from time to time. 

Of course, that's not to say there aren't scary and overwhelming decisions and deadlines that need to be made or dealt with all the time.  Those need respect, but I refuse to give them any more of my time and energy than necessary, and I will not dwell on the negatives. I'm not ignoring these things, but I refuse to let them overshadow the beauty of life.  That choice is mine to make.

I think it's time for a run!