…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

May 4. After a week of warm rainly weather, the crust is back! Today I went up to Glen Alps to put in my effort in the World Spring Skiing Championships of the World. There were quite a few other people up there doing the same thing.

April 3 & 4, we went to Sheep Mountain Lodge for the Oosik Classic Ski Race. The race itself was hectic - we drove up the morning of because I was sick the day before. So we didn’t get many pictures of the race, but we took plenty the next day to make up for it.