Training Log Archive: Ari-o

More snow, more running. Got some miles in. Goggles helped. No one on the roads!

Run out through Cambridge. Around Fresh Pond. Felt pretty good but a little too fast, pushing in to L2, and breezy. So I slowed down a bit, ran more like low 8s (with one slow mile) and got home just in time to get to the thing I needed to get to.

There was a duathlon. 6k classic, 6k skate. I had classic skis. I had a stick of kick wax. I wanted no part of a race. I was able to convince Alex of the same, and we went classic skiing, stick wax, in March (I don't do klister in March) for an hour and a half, way longer than I'd been planning but also way nicer. Got the low down on a lot of the planning excitement that went in to the racing. Then it was time for the long drive home. Craftsbury is great.

Jimmy and I convinced some of the masters to ski the World Cup mixed relays with us. I was skiing with Anna on the relay, me going first. I stuck pretty well with the field out towards the first control, took a different route, and punched near the back of the pack. Then skied mostly clean and came in to the tag right with the Canadian team.

Lap two my watch turned off in the exchange so no track, but mostly clean skiing, and Anna drew a short leg and skied fast, so I had time on the Canadian team going in to the final leg. I skied fast, and clean until the last control. But I goofed. 7 was on a big trail, and close to the trail I was on, and I figured I'd just ski up the hill until I saw the control. The problem was that it was on the trail next to it, hidden, and I didn't see it until I was well down the trail and had to stop and look at the map and ski back. This was a 1 minute mistake, or more, since I should have taken a different path.

So I was only a few seconds ahead of the Canadian team, and Anna drew a longer leg, and we lost by 40 seconds. It was a fun race, and if I'd just skied cleanly, we would have won the US-Canada cup. Also, we should race the Canadians more often.

I was talking to Greg about taking pictures of the masters relay with his expensive cameras. Then he told me it wasn't a masters relay, it was an open relay. So I found an Alex and, with 12 minutes to spare, went to grab SI cards, put on a number, find an Ed, tell him what we were doing, get to the start, line up …

Well, they delayed the start a couple of minutes.

This time, when I started, I wasn't at the back of the pack. I knew the trails. I made a couple of mistakes, pushed Alex too much in the exchange, but this was entirely for fun. We came 7th (but for the mispunch), second mixed gender team, and not too bad for my fourth and fifth legs of the day. Still made navigation mistakes, but we did stay ahead of Greg and Anna, and also Hannah Dreissigacker, who is an Olympian. Mostly because Alex is fast.

Banquet was at Highland, because reasons. I needed running miles. It had started snowing. The roads were subpar. But they were not so slidey I couldn't run, and off I went.

It turns out Highland is … high. First two miles were downhill, to under 1000 feet, and then it was a slog to get up. Steep hill on the dirt road, which I though was most of the elevation, with a slight downhill to the paved road which was slick. But the paved road was more uphill. Gradual, but up, up, up.

About five miles in a car rolled by (this was not frequent; and I think most of the traffic was ski-o traffic). A window rolled down and a conversation was had with an orienteer who will remain unnamed:

Orienteer: You want a ride?
Ari: Nope, running Boston, need the miles.
O: Want a drink?
A: Sure

At which point said orienteer, who may or may not have been driving the car, handed me a pint of cider, I had a nice long swig, and carried on my way.

A very lovely run on quiet, snowcovered roads. Had I been very on-point, I would have stuffed dry clothes and skis in Ken's car and skied back. But that would be gilding the lilly (and in several inches of new snow, it would have been slow).

Up early to head out pre-breakfast to the model event. Small trails! Decent cover in the woods, one place where I barely made it across some logs. It wasn't exactly groomed there. Not exactly ready for this.

Skiing around Craftsbury, getting ready for the race.

SKI-O!

It's still that much fun.

Mass start, starting in back, since I don't have any points.

And since I haven't done a ski-o race in two years.

Everyone is fast. Why? Because everyone is European, and if they're going to drag themselves to the US, they're not bringing scrubs. Also everyone has been doing ski-o all week. I haven't. What I should have done is figured out my first control and followed, kind of like Billygoat. What I did was basically lose my mind and start skiing and trying to read the map and then everyone else skied faster than I did and I got lost. I found my control, and got going to the second, which, by not exactly going the right way, was best accessed via a shortcut down to a big trail. Someone else had already skied it. I could see the big trail. How hard could it be?

It wasn't hard. I dropped down through the powder and hit the big trail and snap! There went my ski. I skied towards the control, and away from the start, and confirmed it was pretty broken. I probably could have skied the whole lap on the broken ski, but was pretty close to the start.

So I turned around and headed back to the start. I hadn't dropped skis in the start area, so I headed to my car, with Boris announcing my plight through the stadium. I asked Alex: can I go and get skis out of my car? Sure! So off I went.

Of course, I only had my good skis in the car. Why I hadn't brought other skis? I don't know. I now have a matched pair of unbroken skis, but one was in Boston. So I took the good skis and hoped I wouldn't break or gouge them. Alex grabbed me and knocked the sticky snow out of my boots and I was able to get the skis in and ski off.

Then I was off. Now 15 minutes off the pace, I hit the second and third controls and skied off to the other side. I came close to matching pace with some of the leaders on the skiing part but my navigation was way rusty headed in to the maze. And a real maze! Plus, once I was in there for a while the lead women came training through, so I spent some time staying out of their way, mostly. A few bobbles, the biggest one having a big brain fart and overrunning a control for a total of three minutes. But otherwise, mostly small and recoverable. Down the little trail, then back up, way behind everyone but skiing okay. Saw Alex, who took a picture of me, and then yelled at me to ski clean and fast. Thanks Coach Alex.

Out back again a second time. Felt a lot more comfortable on the trails this time. Long climb up the little trail leading some women, I matched or outskied them on the uphill, but then had to stop and look at a map while they knew where they were going. Had some legitimately good navigation, where I figure out the route and ski to the control without stopping or even slowing to look at the map. Not every time, but more than once. Took Ruthie's down instead of the little trail, it was about 5s slower but my legs weren't burning at the bottom. Coming back through the last control before the stadium I got confused a couple of times, but it turns out there was an extra trail skied and groomed in. Not a huge issue, and Alex et al did an amazing amount of work to put this on, especially with changing conditions. I didn't realize how much until talking to her and Ed and the others, and it was really something. 99% perfect, and I think everyone appreciated that they did something we've basically never done here before. Most impressive. Next time, Alex, I'll volunteer.

Back through the start for the more local loop, skied well, although I got to the mislabeled control. Since it was my last control, and since I definitely didn't want to mispunch, I checked it twice, skied around to make sure I was in the right place, and then, when I got there, asked Ken who confirmed it was the right control. Beep.

So I finished last. I had no specific ski-o training, broke a ski, and still almost came back to not finish last. 42 controls, all punched, in the right order. I really do think that if I ever did this, say, more than once a year, I could get a lot better at it. Being a faster skier would help. Being a better navigator would help a lot. I'm not going to be Andrey Lamov or Tove Alexandersson. But they also don't drive up after classes for one race every two years.

C • Nicely done! 2

Up to Vermont, still a bit of snow, accident in NH, 4.5 hour drive.

No time before dinner to ski the model. Oh well. Then off to the team meeting at Sterling. Still snowing. It snowed basically the whole time there.

Initial plan: get back, run a couple miles on the road. Got to the bottom of the hill before Craftsbury. Several cars pulled over. So did I. The Norwegian van was stuck just before the top of the hill on ice. Waiting for the Craftsbury Outdoor Center sander/tow truck. Put chains on my car. Still stuck. Well, I'll go for a run then.

Ran up the hill, talked to the van, helped use my headlamp to help the sander. Van moved. Turned to run down, two steps, and slipped and fell on the ice, right on to a think part of my bottom. The road was sheer ice under the falling snow. Slowly walked down to the car (which has microspikes in it of course). Then the guy in front had run down his battery leaving his lights on. So I volunteered my jumper cables, flagged someone with a non-prius to jump him, and he was off. So was I. Made it up the hill. Chains helped.

I have a long ski-o race tomorrow, hooray!

Run to the stadium.

50 sections, started out pretty hard, but didn't want to kill my legs before Friday. This was L2, which I wasn't really all about, so I decided to change it up on the way back.

So every fifth section I sprinted two sections, all out. Up-down-up. Tried to get down to L1 the rest of the way, and then hello speed. Pretty fun.

Here were the rest of the sections where I tried to cool down.

Hey cool, one of the boys I kept on the straight and narrow (or at least, on the right side of the road) won the sprint race at JOs or JNs or whatever we call them now.

I guess them playing rollerski tag in a cemetery paid off.

Yes, rollerski tag in a cemetery. Long rollerskis can get interesting.

Was going to try to get to Cbury but there's too much stuff I can't really miss here in the next couple of days. Looks like I'll be headed up post-snow on Thursday. Kind of sucks, only one race, but there's no way I'm skipping that. (I might have to drop a class because of it, but it's a class I don't really want to be taking anyway, and that's not entirely true :)

Things came up and I couldn't go up to Craftsbury, so a run instead. Down Broadway to cross the Grand Junction, hearing whistles, and as I approach the track the lights start flashing. So I stop.

Who doesn't?

* Four cars
* Half a dozen pedestrians
* Three bicyclists
* Another car which stopped, but was almost overhanging the track, and I tapped on their window, and they gave me a look, and I pointed at the train, and they backed up.
* Another cyclist, who, once the train had stopped so a trainman could clear the intersection, biked maybe two feet in front of the P42 waiting to cross.

So I think we'll need gates if we ever run transit in Cambridge.

Anyway, then I ran the rest of the way, having to pee the whole time.

One block in I run in to Krzyz on a run too. "Where are you going?" REI. Great, I'll run with you. As we get there I say that I need to get back to Trader Joes. So does he. So I say I'll meet him in 20 minutes, take a lap of Longwood, and roll through 20 minutes later and off to TJ's where I get in line behind another NP friend, then a run home. Not bad!

Event: World Cup and World Masters SkiO Championships
 

After running too hard yesterday, I went for a slow, meandering, L1 jog today. Success!

Janji run in Union (Somerville). 1.6 miles. Left at 9:19, predicting 11 minutes. 5 seconds over.

They gave out maps of the 10 miler, which were b&w 1/8 sheet google maps with about four road names, so basically an orienteering map. Not many people grabbed them so I thumbed my group the whole way. We stopped for a photo and people yelled at me like I was going the wrong way when I overran it, then I navigated my group pretty well (we did miss a turn to Fayerweather but corrected on the next street) back; some other groups got a little lost. Legs still sore from Thursday, but motor feels good, some 7 min miles. So totally the wrong pace for training, not L1, and not tempo. Whoops.

Run back to Janji from the top of the hill.

Not too struggly of a run home.