Two of my favorite summer activities are running in the mountains and orienteering. So I always look forward to the Arctic Orienteering Club’s Mountain Orienteering event each summer. It’s like chocolate and peanut butter. Two great tastes that taste great together.

This year’s event was on August 16, held in Bear Valley above Anchorage. It was organized by Trond Flagstad. Trond was this year’s Alaska Mountain Running Champion, so we knew it would be a challenging course. Trond also recruited a few fast runners to show up as well. It was shaping up to be an great event.

The race started with a 1500 foot climb to the ridge above Bear Valley, where the first control was located. When we reached the ridge, I was in fourth place and had a perfect view as Ian pulled off one of the best orienteering moves I’ve seen. He and Patrick (a very fast runner doing his first orienteering race) were in the lead together, chatting a bit as they ran. The trail headed uphill, just above a small band of rocky cliffs. Patrick headed up the trail, while Ian knew from reading his map that the control was at the base of the small cliff. Ian skirted below the cliff, as if he was merely avoiding the excess elevation gain on the trail. In the few seconds he was out of Patrick’s sight, Ian swept down and punched the control, without hardly breaking stride. He then rejoined the trail, and he and Patrick began chatting again. Ian let a couple minutes go by before he kindly told Patrick that he already found #1. D’oh. As Patrick turned around and headed back to find #1, he said “I didn’t know trickery was part of this.” I was so jazzed up by the great fake-out, that I could help but respond with a little smack about how we weren’t “going to hold his hand the whole way.”

We all had a hard time finding #2. The ridge line was moving in and out of fog, and it made the navigation more difficult. Ian, Bastien, Andrew and I were all wandering in circles looking for #2 when Patrick came by and asked if I needed him to hold my hand. Touche, nicely played.

Eventually all those other guys managed to find the control and slip off into the fog, while I was left wandering. Maybe I should have held someone’s hand. It wasn’t until another group of orienteers including Karl, Jen, Eeva, and Lindsey arrived, ten minutes later, that I was eventually able to punch #2 and move on. By then I was way back in the pack and pretty bummed. I didn’t know it at the time, but it turns out I was in last place for men doing the long course. Ouch. I had been looking forward to chasing Ian and Bastien through the mountains, and now I was all alone trying to catch people I couldn’t see in the fog.

I picked off the next few controls cleanly and also passed a lot of people along the way. As I descended off the ridge towards control #7 on a mix of scree, snow and tundra, I could see Patrick at the control about 5 minutes ahead of me. Bastien was about 5 minutes in front of him, climbing back up the ridge towards #8. Maybe I could catch those guys! Ian was out of sight, well on this way to an easy victory.

The second half of the race was almost all nasty side-hilling. My shoes were filled with gravel from the scree descent, and now my feet were screaming in pain with every side-hill step. I could feel the blisters forming, as the skin on my heels and forefoot moved independently from the rest of my feet. I was envisioning a shredded mess of blood and skin at the finish.

I caught Patrick at the next-to-last control. We said a few words (no smack this time, I learned my lesson) and departed on different routes. He went down the valley and up the other side, while I decided to side-hill (Arrrrgh!) around rather than lose elevation. I was confident that my route was faster, but my feet were so painful that I was barely limping along. When I reached the last control, I thought there was a chance that I was ahead of Patrick. But that hope evaporated as I descended out of the fog towards the finish when I saw him about a minute ahead of me. Bastien was three minutes ahead of Patrick, and Ian was way ahead, winning by twenty minutes.

Oh well, fourth place for me. I had been hoping for second, or even to challenge Ian for first, but it was a pretty good recovery considering my bad start.

When I took off my shoes at the finish, my feet were indeed riddled with blisters. But shockingly, none of them had popped. Ten minutes before, I never would have believed that to be the case.

The day after the race, I could not walk very well. When I did walk it was like I was stepping on tiny waterbeds. Very painful waterbeds. As I write this, two days later, the swelling has gone down and I am walking again. The pain has been replaced by thoughts of a great day racing through the mountains with friends.

Who knows, I might even be ready to run in Wednesday’s orienteering meet.

Results Here
Watch Ian school me in RouteGadget (we’re the only two who put in our routes)

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.

…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.

On February 19th, I tackled the Susitna 100, a 100 mile race through the frozen Alaskan wilderness. When I first heard about this race, shortly after moving to Alaska, I knew I had to do it. I love races like this.

My write-up of the Susitna 100 on FasterSkier.com

2005 Su 100 Results

ADN article on the Su 100

ADN Interview With Tim Kelley (not about the race)

More photos from the race

On Sept 10-11, I travelled to Skagway, Alaska to run the famous Klondike Road Relay.

Hammer Adventure Race held on July 10, 2004