Training in Koli & Vuokatti

After Tiomila I travelled to Finland to take first part to two Huippuliiga events in Lohja and Tampere and after that I continued to Koli for a week and then to Vuokatti for another week to train in the WOC terrain type. It was a good journey, worth every penny, and I'm glad I did it! I trained well, mostly orienteering, and got to enjoy the Finnish summer at its best. Weather was just perfect all the time and training conditions were excellent. Drive to Koli in Pohjois-Karjala direct after a hard race felt a bit longish but Leevi and The Leavings' fantastic song Pohjois-Karjala got me into right mood :)

Training went well and there were no real setbacks this time. Well, if a bear doesn't count. In one training that I did with the Swiss Team there was a mother bear with her baby bears that almost attacked us but she changed her mind and turned away after Daniel Hubmann came and scared her. You can read more about this famous bear in Blick or in Turun Sanomat.

I was fortunate not to see the bear myself and quite happy that way. My biggest concern was just whether my o-shoes and braces, which had given signs of falling apart already after the first weekend, would hold up until the end. With some tape and good luck they held up just until the last training. After the final session (a long distance training race) I barely touched the braces, they just fell off my feet and I could see my toes pointing out through the shoes. I guess that was a sign to stop training. And so I did.

First week I stayed in a small cottage by the lake Pielinen enjoying the beauty and quietness of the surrounding nature. I orienteered mostly just once a day and ran on afternoons. One day I climbed up to Ukko-Koli to admire the views (my real attempt was to try to beat the cyclists tempo times but I failed). Swiss O-Team was training in Koli region at the same and I was glad that I could join in some of their hard trainings for middle and relay. In Vuokatti I trained with the Finnish (and French) team(s) and got to run a few more training races. Two long distance races at the end of a long training camp was quite tough but because they were the best possible long distance trainings before the champs I ran them both. First one went surprisingly easily but in the latter I was pretty tired, at least mentally. Nonetheless I was happy to get it done because it definitively gave me more than it took. All in all I'm very pleased with the whole training camp.

I also got selected to the Finnish team for Nordic Tour, a World Cup tour with races in Oslo (NOR), Stockholm (SWE), and Turku (FIN). First races are already on the coming weekend!

You can follow the races in Yle TV2. Timetable is here.  

Some of the recent TV sendings you can watch online:

Huippuliiga 3 Lohja

Huippuliiga 4 Tampere

5th in Tiomila

Tiomila in Gällöfsta in Upplands-Bro was a great event, as always. There are people who find things to moan about (such as lack of Finnish speaker?) but I think everything worked out very well and the main thing, courses and terrain, were fantastic! Even the weather couldn't have been better!

It was happy reunion with my club mates in Stockholm (people living in Östermalm don't probably regard Märsta as part of Stockholm but if you've lived in outskirts you've got a bit wider perspective) the day before. We did short model training, had lunch together and went to the arena to put up our club tent. It was a real trial of team spirit but we succeeded. After that we knew that the hardest task was done and it would be piece of cake for us in the forest.

I still don't feel too enthusiastic about the first leg (I hate it when it's packed and you can't do your own thing) but after a few attempts last year I had found a confidence how to do it. It was great to see so many familiar faces (Vendula, Karro, Lina, and Signe among others) around me on the start line and we were chatting friendly and making jokes just a few minutes before the start. Atmosphere was more relaxed than I can remember. Karro reminded me about taking my own map in the changeover (she had every right to make jokes about my last year's error at Venla) and I told her to run faster to get there before me. So we were smiling and having a good time but we all knew that after the bang we would be racing hard against each other.

Start of the relay (Aapo Laiho)

First glance on the map and I get dejavu from the last year. Again I'm tempted to take my own route choice to the first control and go around the first hill but I settle to go with the others this time. It's easier to see what pace to run and I might even see if someone is trying to make a move early. I know I have the whole 8km to make a move if I want to, so I chose to take an easy start. I just go along and pick my own controls. I have a longer forking on control 4 and have to bend to the hill on the left side while many others continue straight towards control 5. It appears that our forking is a minute slower than those who went straight. On the way to control 8 I try to make a route choice for the long leg from 8 to 9 and decide to go right (less climbing and pretty straight forward). It's over half a way now and time to start running. Vendula seems to have exactly the same plan and we rush towards the meadow together. The leg goes well and we are able to keep a good pace there but just when approaching the control after the knoll on the edge of the circle I spot a huge boulder ahead and run to it. The shock is huge when there's no flag but then I figure out that it has to be the smaller boulder just northwest from the actual control site. It wasn't a big mistake, a half a minute max, but big enough for the other teams to catch me and for Vendula to get a small gap to the rest of us. A bad route choice to 11 doesn't help much in attempt to catch Halden. I punch the last control three times just to be sure to get it right and lose a few places there but manage to send Anni out on the 9th place, less than half a minute behind Halden. It couldn't have gone much better.

Anni did a superb job on the second leg and came in the lead, just like we had calculated. Still, even if the scenario was exactly what we had hoped for, we were really nervous during the 3rd leg. Tytti, who ran the 3rd leg, is just a first year senior who has joined us this year and it was her FIRST EVER Tiomila and we just put her out there in the lead. Just imagining being there in her position broke my nerves and put my stomach upside-down. I have seldom been so nervous during a relay leg or so touched by seeing a teammate coming to the last control. I was all in tears (out of happiness) when Tytti calmly did her thing and brought us in 3rd, just a minute behind Lidingö. At that moment I felt we had already won the relay. Of course there was still two legs to go but with Saila and Venla we knew there were no worries. Unfortunately the 4th leg didn't go quite as well as it could have but nonetheless we fought well and finished 5th in a tight relay with 6 best teams within just 4 minutes. Domnarvet girls did solid performances throughout the relay and got a deserved victory.

GPS tracking

Results

World of O

5th best team in the world (Jarno Salmelin)

Between two apartments and two countries

It's been a busy, stressful but still wonderful month. First we've been living in a chaos in the middle of a move here in England and then before we had really settled in to our new home in Rugby I did a short trip to Finland to do some technical O-training and take part to first races there. Shortly, training there went brilliantly and I feel I'm getting fitter and faster day-by-day but unfortunately I wasn't able to deliver any good results because of numerous small mistakes. Anyway it's going forward now.

Before Finland I spent a wonderful weekend in the Lakes running the LOC double in Esthwaite and Graythwaite, undoubtedly among the best O-terrains in England. See Hollie Orr's great description about the weekend here.

In Finland I stayed a week near Turku orienteering there on daily basis before taking part to the second race of Huippuliiga, the Finnish premier league in orienteering. The week went well and I felt that my skills got better and better day-by-day and I got more and more used to running in that tough terrain there (believe me it's quite different from West Midland terrain!). But it wasn't particularly easy and as you can imagine my legs were pretty tired after 6 days of training there. So I wasn't expecting any high speed or miracles on Saturday when starting on to a 11,1km course in the same terrain type. But I was actually happily surprised how good and easy it felt physically all the way. Unfortunately I cannot say the same of my orienteering.

Trainings had gone technically well and I had found confidence in my orienteering but 1:15000 race map and a very detailed area in part of the race made it a lot more challenging. I had difficulties to see details on the map, such as to which direction crags pointed and whether a control site was crag or a hill (yes I forgot to see the descriptions a few times or misread them). On most legs I made very good job until the circle but it took me some extra time to spot the flag there. Half a minute here, a minute there, 5-6 minutes altogether. That's awfully lot but I'm learning, adapting, and making progress. Bottom line I'm running again, painless and without compromises.

Results

RouteGadget

TV broadcast

Tiomila, the highlight of the spring season, coming up this weekend, stay tuned!

 

Picture Suomen Suunnistusliitto