Towards Switzerland!

I just spent some great days training and racing in Jura Mountains on the French-Swiss border. I went there for two reasons: to run WOC selection races and to do some proper hill training for my next big challenge: Jungfrau marathon and World Champs in long distance mountain running. Oh yes I'm going take part to this panoramic mountain marathon that they announce to be "die schönste Maratonstrecke der Welt". This year it will also be hosting the World Champs in long distance mountain running, which makes it all even more exciting. I'm proud to represent Finland there and I'm really excited (and scared) about it!

But back to the selection races. I didn't run World Cup at St Gallen but I was really happy to get a chance to run the WOC selection races. I didn't care if my chances to make it to the team were slim, I just wanted to go there and give it a try. After all, WOC in Lausanne was my main goal of the season and this was the nearest you could get it (literally) if not selected to the team. I just wanted to see how it goes and get the project finished.

Middle distance race was held in Bois de la Pile just south of the terrain of WOC middle distance final. It was a selection race for the Finnish and Swiss teams but a number of other teams took also part, making it an impressive international event that gathered together most of the world's best orienteers. The area was small and seemingly easy on the old map but the actual terrain and the courses were challenging. I had a good start (second overall on the control 6), made then some small mistakes and got a bit tired but managed to hold it together and was happy to finish as 3rd Finn and 10th overall. Results

Long distance in Grand Jorat on the other contrary didn't go too well. It was supposed to be my better distance but I just had a really bad day physically and lost time little here and there, especially on some nearly impassable vegetation zones. A few ditch ends in the nettles I searched for minutes and I might have lost time on some route choices too. I haven't had a chance to analyze them yet, so I don't know for sure my time loss on them. I tried to go around as much as possible but not always in right places. Garmin showed that I ran over 3km extra. That sounds like a lot. I was 5th Finn and 21st overall. I was hoping for better, but it just didn't work out. Even with a clean run I would have been minutes behind Simone, so there's not much room for speculation. I just wasn't fit enough. After all, I came to these pre-games as an outsider and was happy to make it at least once among the top3 Finns. I would have needed a clear victory to make it to the team and with the day's form I hadn't been able to do it. Results

So I didn't make it to the WOC but I'm still happy that I made the trip. I got back some of my lost self-confidence, I could enjoy my morning coffee in stunning scenery, I got some hill training for free and I got used to the thin mountain air. In other words just great on-site preparation for the Jungfrau. A few easy days and it's time to start some serious training towards another champs!

Dramatic Venla relay

The highlight of the summer, the Christmas of all orienteers, Jukola and Venla relays, were held this year in urban surroundings of Vantaa, near the Finnish capital city Helsinki. It gathered together over 15,000 runners and tens of thousands spectators to Hakunila sports park on beautiful mid-June weekend. The atmosphere was fantastic and the weather was just perfect. But what would it be without dramatics? Last year we were running towards a clear victory until the last meters and the second last control where a small mistake dropped us to a second place. This year we were again running solo in the lead when the worst possible news hit and broke us: we had taken a wrong map and we were disqualified. What??? Can't be true!! But it was. We all ran well and punched carefully the right controls, just a tiny little mistake in the changeover got us disqualified. Maybe we were too focused on winning, too used to number one or just can't count any further. I can't provide any rational explanation but here's my version of it anyway.

I got the honour to run the first leg and start together with 1246 other women. It was amazing to start in such a crow and the excitement was palpable. I knew it would be demanding terrain, right from the start point, and that I should get the first control right to make a good start and a good run. I also knew the number of my map at this point and checked it several times before the bang. "2-1. Correct. Yes it is. It's still the same, hasn't changed". The way to the start point was long and there was plenty of time to read the map before that. I skimmed through the whole course and made plans to the first control. I knew where I climbed up the first hill but suddenly just before the control I wasn't 100% sure which of the parallel hilltops I was running. I made maybe a half a minute mistake on the first control. Not a big one but big enough to get a bunch of runners past me. After that I ran well the rest of the course but it took some time and effort to pass the runners in front of me. Gradually I gained places and at the end of the course I got sight to Silja Tarvonen who changed 3rd. Merja Rantanen from Jämsän Retki-Veikot got a minute gap to rest of us but I was happy to come 12th, only 23 seconds behind the second. Great start and we were along in the fight!

After the finish line I ran into another runner and got a bit confused where the maps were. I tried to find the maps with small numbers and when I after some hesitation found them I just took one with number 2 on it from the end of the stand. I was in a hurry and assumed I took the map with label 2-2 but accidentally I tore the adjacent map, the map 1-2, which was Domnarvet's map. I was exhausted and didn't notice this awful mistake. I passed the unopened map to Anni who also checked the number 2 on it and ran off. She made an excellent run and came in in the lead with a clear marginal to the chasers and sent Saila away with a happy face totally unaware about what had happened. The nightmare came out after the Emit readout which revealed that Anni had run a wrong course (the forking of Domnarvet instead of ours). We both felt bad about it and tears came out when we met.

Saila went out and ran her race unaware of what had happened. It wasn't until she came into the changeover when everyone knew for fact what had happened and she got stopped after the finish line. Venla never got a chance to fight for the medals, she was forced to wait a half an hour before they let her out. Obviously we didn't get any official result either. I feel terribly sorry about what happened, not only because of what happened to us but also for Domnarvet who missed valuable time before they got their extra map. These things happen every now and then and it certainly tears you apart when it happens to you in the world's greatest orienteering event in front of thousands of spectators.

Next year it will be even harder with the numbers because we'll be punished and won't be running then with a single number...

results first leg

tracking first leg

Selection races

On the past weekend we had our World Cup and World Champs selection races near Tampere, my hometown in Finland. I thought I was better prepared than 1,5 months ago but I wasn't able to deliver a single good performance. I think I tried too hard and forgot to enjoy it. I was in relatively good shape and had good chances to make it to the team but I just wasn't able to orienteer well enough. I made 1-2 big mistakes every day that destroyed my otherwise decent runs. There were a thousand little things which might have gone differently and saved my day but the fact is however that I wasn't able to do my best on any distance. Stable series 7-7-7 wasn't good enough to make it to the team.

I had some serious problems prior the races but I shouldn't have let them affect my performances. However the fact that my back pain affected my running disturbed my weak self-confidence and got me too worried to do my best. I don't want to blame my back, because my speed was good enough for all races, it was my head that wasn't alert enough. I'm still very angry to myself and disappointed that I couldn’t do something that USED TO BE SO EASY. Naturally it was a lot easier when I lived in Finland and could train in similar terrain but I'm not going to blame West Midlands either for my dumbness. I'm sure I have gained a lot of great qualities by training there. Qualities that just aren't the most useful in the Finnish wilderness. Strange enough I felt more like home on the pine-covered ridge of the middle distance than in the local economic forest (typical Finnish term meaning that's it's horrible to run and contains felling here and there) of the long distance. It used to be other way around.

I expected sprint to be tricky but I had no idea there would be so many controls in forest-like milieu with poor visibility (or so many dense bushes). I ruined my chances already on the first six controls where I kept missing the flags while standing beside them. On controls 1, 3, and 4 I lost 25 secs in total and then another 24 secs on control 6. To 14th I took first a wrong route choice and then I even punched a wrong control losing 26 secs. To 17th I ran left, losing 10 secs there. Nearly 1.5 mins in total in a sprint is awfully lot. Results 

On the middle I had quite a stable run apart from control 3. I came right towards it from the re-entrant but didn't climb high enough. I had to go to the trail south of the control to read myself in but I still couldn't find it straight away. It looks simple on the map but the forest was dense and the stone was higher up on the hillside than it looks. I lost nearly 2 mins there. I also had some small difficulties with controls 7 and 8 but otherwise my run was good. Results

Long was the one I had waited the most but it didn't go too well. The flow was gone and I felt I had lost touch to this kind of terrain. I just waited to get back to the north side of the road as soon as possible. On the way to the first control I couldn't distinguish anything on the map. I managed to go up between the crags but once up on the hill it took ages (30 secs) to find the control. Then it went well up to control 5, where I lost another half a minute or more in the circle. Same again with 6. To 8 I just tried to get the speed up and forgot to check the bearing, which cost me over a minute. I kept on doing these small 10-30 secs mistakes on almost every control but managed to keep it somehow somewhat together up to control 14/17, a stupid easy knoll beside a trail but which I though to be a re-entrant in the green. I shuffled up and down the re-entrant unable to understand anything. When I finally after 2 mins search found the flag I still didn't understand it. Even on the second try I didn't find it straight a way. Still looking for a re-entrant. I just remembered that it wasn't there where I thought it was but somewhere quite near. Only after the race I was smart enough to check the descriptions. On the north side of the road I didn't have any problems but my race was more or less over by then. Results

What's next? Well that's a great question with an easy answer: Jukola. But what comes after Jukola is still a total question mark. Season seems to be more or less over now for me. Three selection races and that's it. I still have loads of unused motivation and energy for the next year so I intend to keep myself fit and maybe I'll move to Finland before the home champs to find my lost flow again. But before that I'll take a break from orienteering and start to prepare myself for a marathon. That's something I've had in mind for some years now but there's seldom been time for that. Initially I had planned to do it after the season but now I might just start training for it a couple of months earlier. So from now on this blog will be less serious and less about orienteering and more about playful preparation for my first ever marathon. And no, I'm not admitting to have any goal there. I'm just too fed up with disappointments.