Training Log Archive: AliC

Word of the day: oops!

Disaster 1: lost pole basket up the very fast pole, had to ski the entire first lap ~8k without it... (Yay nice Russian coaches who gave me a new pole coming through stadium the first time.)

Disaster 2: didn't punch the 2nd refreshment control in the woods. Bah! I thought I was supposed to learn from WOC last summer? No?

Besides those issues, there were some fun times out there and definitely counts for good training for next year, even if I don't have a result. Kazahkstan, you're in my sights, well, summer-o first. =)

C • Oh no! 8

Boden World Cup Middle

Well, a better race, although not great. Ended up 14th, 6.08 back from winner Josephina. Some of that is some early mistakes, but mostly am just going slower than them weaving through the little trail mazes, I think. Well, actually, probably some fairly major hesitations that added up throughout too, would be interesting to see the splits...

In any case, we have the map this time, thanks to live tracking, so can kinda write up what happened out there!

#1 - Oh, yep, little mistake to this, cruised in from the big trail, didn't see the first little trail at all, and my plan was to take the second, so passed the one I wanted, then realized I shouldn't be going that far uphill so had to come back down and head in.
#2 - And big mistake. Was aiming to take a cut straight downhill to the control, but got turned around, and almost headed totally the wrong way. Spidey-sense kicked in and I checked my compass which was stashed in my race suit sleeve, discovered which way North actually was....
#3 - Hmph, downhill, kinda being wimpy and snowplowing, but meant I didn't eat it where a few previous racers obviously had... all good until I just barely miss the control and have to relocate off the road and a contour-nose... when I finally find it, my 2 min back, Marte Renaas is already leaving.
#4 - Chasing Marte, but she's fast, don't think I close much, but it gives extra confidence seeing someone ahead going the right way.
#5 - Choose left route, Marte choose right, she was faster....
#6 - Exactly followed plan to 6, fun times!
#7 - Totally confused by where I popped out on trail, but then realized I just had to head to the top of the bridge, so found that and went!
#8 - Spectator, easy, trying to read how to get back out of stadium.
#9 - Ok, if not confident.
#10 - Blah, not good to this one, got confused in middle little trail bit, for no apparent reason. Our control was pretty hidden behind a rootstalk, to be fair...
#11 - Could see Alex up ahead, I took big trail route choice with lots of climb to the right. Didn't quite realize how much extra climb it had and then executed it poorly to boot, missing the little trail I wanted to head down on. There was a skiable yellow ride that was apparently helpful...
#12 - Meadows, eep! But this one went fine, mostly across, hit the road, down a smidge, got distracted by a not-mine control, but then on my way!
#13 - Least happy control. There were people around going every which way. And trails going every which way. Slowish!
#14 - Decided to go right, which was a bad choice, then skied on the road for a good long time then ducked back in. The road was fine, but not super fast, can't do much with legs b/c ice. Liked my route in though.
#15 - Punched just after Alex, but then decided to also take her way out of control, despite my earlier decision to head back the way I came. Don't think either was that different, but more on principle I don't want to be distracted by others!
#16 - Took right-hand route, on purpose, Alex up head seemed a bit confused with a few long pauses, passed her when she let me on one, and continued on.
#17 - Getting to this was fine, but I just barely missed the cut I wanted to take, and then Alex did find it, so ended up at the control at the right time, but then I was apologizing for being in the way and lost track of which way the map was supposed to go, so back behind her.
#18 - I knew the bigger downhill slope had to climb contours to get to, so I opted for the first one, I knew the climb at the bottom was little and hopefully I could keep some speed into it. That was fine, except I tried to take out the control holder stand when I got close to the control. It won, by a bunch. Broke skin through my ski tights! And have a nice big swelling welt. And wiped out in front of spectators, awesome.
#19 - After I righted myself, punched 18 jsut after a Swedish guy. So got to draft off him to final control and then finish, woo!

So yeah, not brilliant, but I'm very glad to have avoided mega-mistakes out there today. Will take that as a victory and gear up for tomorrow's ultra-long. Excited for it!

We woke up early and headed out to the model area, Sävast for training ski. This is the time we'll be racing on Sunday, so not bad to get a feel for how the snow is at this time of day, although of course the weather could change. Was pretty icy today, although not as much as Tahoe was. If today and tomorrow are really warm though, could get that way!

This was a little course I planned for myself on the 1:12.5 map (scale we'll use for the ultra-long). Working on keeping the map oriented, focused on where I was, all the good things. This area is a bit easy with not a high density of trails, but at least hopefully getting more used to reading map, thinking and skiing at the same time!

C • Hang in there!! Enjoy what... 2

And the second course, on 1:10 this time. Took one non-ideal route traversing a junction, otherwise, pretty good. Sometimes took different routes than ideal just to test stuff out.

Blog posts by Alex (on sprint yesterday) and me (on today's relay) up on Team USA blog!

WC Men's Relay with Greg and Alex

Well, not as bad, no broken ski at least! The first half was kind of continuing on yesterday's extreme goofmuppetness orienteering, but pulled it together for the second half. Although I'm sure still far off what's needed to be up there.

Tagged off by Greg, who had the fastest leg of our team today, by a few minutes, glad we stuck him out first! Neither Alex nor I were too keen to go out in the middle of the men's first pack anyways...

To #1 and 2 I was totally fine, then I planned a great route to #14. Whoops, when I got there, checked the code, no good, ah, I need to go to #3, this must be #4, mad! So I then ski to an additional not-#3 control first, then finally #3, then back to #4, except, nope it is actually #14... righty. So then try to head to actual #4, but more goofmuppeting on the way, not directly going over bridge or through tunnel. Way unpleased with myself, I thought I got this panic out of my system yesterday??

One more loosing-track incident to #5 (tempted by a not-mine control), then I was more under control and smoothly skiing and orienteering at the same time, much more fun.

Goals for Saturday:
- Start unpanicked.
- Go to the controls in order
- Look at the map *lots*
- Try to make simple attackpoints (ie. buldings, roads, big trails) when possible

And hopefully that will all add up to a decent race. I also hope to keep both my skis and self in one piece, we'll see if that happens, there may or may not be a downhill ski slope as a route choice... eep! =)

C • Addition... 4

Warm up times: back and forth and back and forth. Time to scope out the competition =)

Boden WC Sprint

One of those not-your-day days for me. Basically, was multi-lost, not skiing well around others, and to top it off, broke a ski! You might think that breaking the ski was the main issue, and maybe it caused some of my skiing skills issues in the later 2/3s of the race, but really doubt it was more than 30s or a minute at absolute most.... (winners were 3.21 up, eep!)

I think partly just need to get back into ski-o mode, partly I'm not happy about the boots I brought: my skiathalon ones instead of skate ones. They aren't as stable, which I think is causing some clumsiness on little trails.

Oh, and so how did I break my ski? Trying to get back infront of my minute-back Finnish girl who caught me to #1 (yeah, that's how well #1 went...), I cut a corner, but then off balance, caught a tip, which swung ski behind me, but then also caught the tail, whacking it pretty hard on another tree. Think that really weakened it, and then next dip I went through "crack". Bummer, they were a really good pair of skis!

C • broken ski 2

Up and out, morning run with Alex. Maybe low 20s? Not unpleasant but coldish, 2 layers did the trick! Then Swedish breakfast, yeah museli without nuts!!

C • low 20's 2

Warm up around at Sävast, looking at the map, but not going for the controls. Attempted a long cut once, but the trees became thick and somehow I more or less ended up in one, hmph. Think cuts will be worth it in the races, but only if they're short....

Controls in order on the 1:10 map. Went fine, not too tricky. I like how the controls are lashed to a solid tree, much better than stands that might be whisked away with/knocked over by some earlier skier...

The inner loop of controls, clockwise on 1:5. This was going really quite well, good cuts, moving on the little trails, then I totally was a digbat when I came down to the lake out of the 4th control and went to the wrong end of the lake, because I decided that the start/finish was over there- wrong! Another map glance would have solved...

Woke up on the train, looked outside, and winter!! Woo! Still had another 3.5h on the train though... but perhaps have beaten jetlag?

Anyways, a little jogging tour of Boden, to check out the surroundings (found the supermarket, score!). Veered off left at one point, to what looked like a bike path that might go around the lake. It did for a bit, then I ended up on an island, looks like, probably why it didn't go any further...

And then a loop around town. Pretty flat. Legs and all feel fine!

Just a wee bit of strength to let the core+arms know they are about to be used.... 3 min abs, 3 x 10 pushups, 2 min back