We had a fun sprint Orienteering race at APU on Wednesday.  It was less about navigation and more about making decisions quickly.  It was a lot of fun, and I managed to win.  Here are the results and the race in RouteGadget.

The orienteering season is pretty much over, so now its time for me to move on to another obscure sport.  Cyclocross.

The Arctic Cross season starts on Sept 6th and I’m pretty excited about it.  So excited, in fact, that I wrote an article for FasterSkier.com. The Anchorage Daily News also mentioned my new fondness for ‘cross, but nobody is going to read that article, because apparently there was some other news story today.

Photo: Peter Lekisch

Every day when I drive home up O’Malley Road, I look up and see False Peak, with the higher O’Malley Peak hiding behind it. Well, not for this summer, because its been hidden in clouds every day. But in years past I’ve seen it regularly.

O’Malley Peak is a great day hike from Glen Alps, and I’ve hiked and skied on both sides of many times, but never got around to hike it. So when I woke up Sunday morning to unexpected clear(ish) skies, and I had a few hours to spare, I figured it was a good time to give O’Malley a go.

I hiked from Glen Alps up through the Ballfield, took a short detour to look down over Black Lake, then started up the scree gully to get to the ridge. The ridge had some fog on it, so when I got to the top, it took me a few minutes to figure out that I couldn’t go any higher.

Looking east on the ridge from O\’Malley Peak

Yes, that is fresh snow (and some hail) in the photo above. Is it still called ‘Termination Dust’ if its been falling all summer? Is there really a summer to terminate? I digress. My goal was to continue back along the ridge to Hidden Peak. I stayed just below the ridgeline on the south side, since the north side drops vertically for a couple thousand feet. It was good traveling (at least by Chugach ridgeline standards), until I reached the point where I started ascending to Hidden Peak. There was some fog, and I couldn’t see a safe route to the top. I traversed around at about the 4500 contour line, hoping to find a gully to take me up. But I kept getting pushed downward by small cliffs, and eventually I had gone by the peak without seeing a good route up. By then I was running out of time, so I decided to head straight down the scree and snow to Hidden Lake, then run the trail back to Glen Alps. The trip took three and a half hours of hiking and jogging.

Hidden Lake and the scree field I descended below Hidden Peak.

O’Malley ridgeline, viewed from the south. Click for panorama

Chugach State Park is so close to home that I often take it for granted and forget what a spectacular playground it can be. This was a great hike. Many people travel thousands of miles to hike through rugged Alaskan scenery like this. And I was home in time for lunch.

No doubt you’ve heard about the biggest sporting event of the year, which kicked off on August 8, 2008 (8/8/8). Apparently the organizing committee of this spectacular event, which was created to bring together the world’s best athletes in competition and celebration, chose the date 8/8/8 because eight is a special number that brings good luck. It’s sure to be a momentous occasion watched by billions around the globe.

I am talking, of course, about the World Championships of the World Summer Slalom, Extreme and Big Air XC Skiing Championships, the first ever on-snow xc skiing competition in Anchorage in August! You were thinking of some other event? Nope, this is bigger.

You know how extreme skiers have Powder 8 competitions? Well, this is the summer equivalent. The chance to ski some eights on 8/8/08 comes around once every millennium, so we had to take advantage. The event was Tim Kelley’s brainchild. He rounded up Benji, Tim M, Ian and I and we hiked up the Rabbit Creek trail to a nice snowpatch just before the lake. After the opening ceremony pyrotechnics, consisting of thunder, lightning, hail, and rain, the skies cleared a bit and the games began! Check out the photos below. I only had my cell phone camera, so my pictures aren’t very good.

Check Tim’s website for better photos and results from the big event.

P.S. I just realized that 3 of the 5 photo sets in my Summer ‘08 album are ski trips. Its been that kind of summer.

P.P.S. Tim also posted a video of the event, which you can view by clicking on the link to his website. It’s quite funny, in an embarrassing kind of way. We look like a bunch of old geezers feebly trying to ‘go big’ like the kids do. Which, my wife reminded me, is a pretty accurate description. Oh well, at least the music rocks.

I like to bike to work as often as possible.  Today when I woke up, it was raining and the temperature was a cool 46 degrees at our house.  I wanted to bike, but I was not looking forward to having my butt get sprayed with cold, grimy water for an hour or so.  So I decided to rollerski instead.  It was just as wet as biking, but at least I was working harder, so I was warm.

So there I was striding uphill on Arctic Boulevard at 7:30 AM, soaking wet and preparing myself mentally to do battle with the midtown traffic on slick roads.  From the sidewalk next to me I hear a man’s voice.

“Dude, you are out of control.”

I look up just in time to see the guy give me a quick nod and a smile.  I like to think he was saying something along the lines of “You’re crazy to be doing that, on a day like today, in a place like this.  But I like your style.”

It made my day.  I broke out in a huge smile.  The comment was perfect for two reasons:

1) It was in almost the exact same spot where recently I was biking, when a waste-of-flesh teenager in a pickup truck coming the other direction cut me off by taking a left-hand turn in front of me.  As I slammed on my brakes to avoid a collision, he swerved towards me, gave me the finger, and then yelled “get off the fucking road” for good measure as he sped away.  So now maybe I won’t think of that experience every time I pass through that intersection.

2)  These days I feel like I am under control a lot.  Not much craziness happening in my life as a family man.  And I believe that being out of control every now and then is good for me.

So if rollersking through midtown Anchorage on a rainy day brings me back a little bit of craziness, well, I guess I’ll take it.

…from the ass-kicking I took on Saturday. I did the Knoya Ridge/Dome uphill running race. It is a simple, no frills race up a great single-track trail into the foothills of the Chugach Mountains. It is just over three miles long, and just under 3000 of climbing (according to my watch). Trond Flagstad, fresh off his Mount Marathon victory last weekend, was the winner in 39:27. He was a whopping seven minutes ahead of me. In truth, I am not disappointed with my performance, even though I barely squeaked into the top ten. It was a very tough workout, which is all I was looking for. I can’t say it was fun, but I am very glad I did it because intensity has been sorely lacking from my exercise recently.

Knoya Ridge / The Dome Results 2008

While I’m linking to race results… I haven’t posted any orienteering results in a while, so let’s catch up. Our traditional meet season has finished, and now we are into the “fun” events for the rest of the summer. I think I probably finished third in traditional meet season points, behind Ian Moore and Bill Spencer. That’s pretty good for me. Here are the race results since the last time I posted:
May 28th - 1st place RouteGadget
June 11 - 3rd place
June 18 - I missed this one RouteGadget
June 25 - 3rd place RouteGadget
July 9 Score - O - 1st place

On Sunday, the local adventure racing club was having a low-key 8 hour adventure race.  Since the weather wasn’t great and some of my desired summer trips are on hold because of lots of snow in the mountains, it seemed like a great way to spend the day and beat myself up a little bit.

Ian and I paired up to compete against 5 other teams.  Darren’s course consisted of various controls around town, with each control worth a certain number of points depending on the difficultly/time involved in reaching it.  The object was to get as many points as possible. The course involved mountain biking, hiking in the Chugach front range, ‘ reverse orienteering’, and paddling Campbell Creek.

It was a lot of fun. I managed to flip my packraft in Campbell Creek (with my bike attached to it), which was quite stupid and embarrassing.  Mental note: Do not try to step, feet first, into a packraft in moving water. The hiking part (in the Williwaw-Wolverine-Long Lake area) was a bit trippy because the mountains were completely enshrouded in low clouds. We ended up coming in late (and losing some points) because we chose to get the high-value control at Long Lake.  But no matter, we still did well in the points and we were glad we pushed out to the Lake.  You can view the results here. The point values aren’t quite right, but they are close enough. Our team name was ‘Ask Cory’ because when Darren asked Ian what the team name was he said - yep - “Ask Cory.”

For many of the controls, we had to take a picture to prove that we made it there.  Thus, I have a few photos from the event. And because I’m a geek, I also drew up a map of the controls and plotted our route.  Check it out:

Thanks to Darren for a fun, challenging course, and thanks to Ian for hauling my ass around town.

I know that many of the people who read this blog live in Anchorage, so here’s a little self-promotion…

I am organizing the orienteering meet this Wednesday evening, June 4, at mile 2.2 of Campbell Airstrip Road (north side of Bivouac Trailhead).  There will be courses for all abilities, including people who have never orienteered before.

Come on out and give it a try.  You can show up anytime between 5 and 7 PM.  If you’ve never done it before, I’ll help you get started.  All you need to bring is yourself.  Long pants (beware devil’s club!) and a compass are recommended for any of the intermediate or expert courses.

To get you fired up to do some orienteering, here is the RouteGadget race from last week’s meet.  I had a very good day!

Post-Meet Follow up

The meet was a success (at least I think so).  It was probably a little on the easy side for the experts and a little on the difficult side for the novices.  I thought that might happen, as a side-effect of me deliberately trying to find the best terrain for running.  Watch the Routegadget

I don’t like racing when I am out of shape.  After years of training being priority #1, its is hard to come to terms with no longer being at that level of fitness.  It is frustrating to ‘push the button’ only to find out that the button is broken.  Or even worse, to lose the button completely.    So I haven’t done much racing the past few years, except for the really fun stuff (orienteering, Tuesday Night Races).  I keep saying “Once I start getting back in shape, I’ll start doing some races.”

Well, I’m starting to realize that racing needs to be part of journey to get back in shape, not the destination.  Races provide the motivation to get out and train, even in the face of all the other life responsibilities. And nothing is better training than hammering on yourself for an hour or two, which I rarely do unless I have a bib on.

So to that end, I entered my first running race of the season - the Turnagain Arm Trail Run - on Tuesday night.  The race starts with about 12 minutes of uphill, and I was pleasantly surprised to be feeling pretty good at the top.  Then the wheels fell off.   The downhill pounding, the fancy footwork to avoid rocks and roots, the mental battle to keep pushing even though I was careening slightly out of control - it was exhausting.  It was also embarrassing.  This stuff used to be second-nature to me, yet I felt like a road runner on his first trail run.  Am I out of shape?  Yep. Getting old?  Yep.  Not much running off pavement this spring?  Yep.  Mentally, I packed it in and decided to just enjoy the run.  Towards the end, when the trail got smoother and went back uphill, I picked up the pace just enough to avoid getting passed by the first couple of women.  yeehaw.  congratulations.

After all that, I was surprised to find out that my time (1:03:34) was only a minute and a half slower than last year.   I guess I was out of shape last year too.  No matter, it was a good workout and it provided plenty of motivation to improve.

2008 Turnagain Arm Trail Run Results

I bounced back with a pretty good showing in this week’s orienteering meet on Wednesday.  It was a fun course with more controls and shorter legs.  I finished second, only 1:18 beind Ian.  Of course, Ian raced without a compass, just to keep things interesting.

Dan and Anne’s O Meet

In the past few years, I’ve really gotten into orienteering. I love the challenge of trying to think critically about navigation and route choice with an oxygen-deprived brain, while at he same time running full-steam dodging Devil’s Club and deadfall. Hmmm, when I describe it that way, it sounds more like torture. But I assure you, it is a blast. Except for those times when I make a mistake, then it is incredibly frustrating. But most of the time it is fun. Really.

Another reason I enjoy orienteering is that I am still improving, unlike skiing and most other sports where I am already several years past my prime. My navigational mistakes seem to be getting fewer, which makes up for my lack of fitness. But on the other hand, each mistake I do make is now even more costly and aggravating. For instance, in the first meet of the season, I ran really well, and was almost keeping pace with Ian (easily the fastest guy at our meets). But near the end I made one mistake that cost me about 15 minutes. Ouch.

Another great aspect of orienteering is analyzing route choices after the fact. To that end, a few of us use RouteGadget to compare our races virtually.  We keep track of our split times during the races, then draw our route into RouteGadget after the meet.  Since we never see each other during the meet, this is the only way we can ‘race’ head to head.  It’s a little bit geeky, but it’s also pretty cool.

Here’s how you can watch our race from this week:

1. Click this link for Wednesday’s meet
2. Select the “Red” course from the “Select class/course” dropdown menu
3. Select all the names, using Ctrl-Click
4. Check the “Names on/off” checkbox
5. Click “View Animation”
6. Click “Start”

View all recent RouteGadget courses here.

View all Orienteering results here.

From June 2 to July 25, we had a constant stream of visitors. In fact, there were only three days in that entire 2 month period that we did not have family or friends visiting Alaska. It was a lot of fun. Here are some of my favorite scenery and wildlife photos I took while playing ‘tour guide.’