Venla and Jukola relays - back to the podium!

The preceding two weeks before the Venla relay had been all but good for me. My back had been really bad and caused huge problems to me, affecting my performances in Italy and Norway a great deal. Despite the back problem I had managed to do two decent runs in the trials in Italy and had hoped to get to run long distance in WOC. I had prepared well for that and was fairly confident that I could do really well there. I had been 6th in the World Cup earlier this year but my last run in Norway did not confirm the selectors. Terrain in Kongsberg was very different from terrain in Lavarone but it didn’t matter. I should have done better there. So, I was again the first one to drop from the team. I got the information two days before the Venla, and even though I was prepared for that, it affected my mood. I was still feeling pretty sad and down when I got to Kuopio, but we had such a good team and great chances of winning the relay, so I couldn’t let the negative feelings affect my Venla performance. I forced myself to turn the page and forget the WOC for the weekend. It wasn’t easy but I managed with it.

After having done the model event we girls gathered together and discussed about the relay, the terrain, the tactics etc. Terrain was demanding and seemed to suit us as a team very well. It appeared to be almost as tough and challenging as in Kytäjä-Jukola 2010, where we had won the last time. We knew we could do well but we had to stay humble. We kept reminding ourselves to focus on orienteering and ignore everything else. And that’s basically what we did. A thing worth mentioning is of course our tattoos. If you missed it, we had wings printed in our necks. They may not have been that visible but the spiritual message was clear: we would have wings to fly.

Anni-Maija ran the first leg and was in the leading pack all the way from the start to the finish and gave me the best possible starting position, just 10 seconds behind the lead. A huge pack of runners followed, 15 teams within 17 seconds. Pan Århus was first in from the longer forking, 59 seconds behind the lead. I started fast and tried to drop the other teams on the way to the start point. I passed the runner who had gone out first and I also got a tiny gap to the others. There wasn’t much of a route choice to the first control and it was more or less obvious to run it slightly from the left, where the climb was gentlest. But when I reached the root of the hill, I got this brilliant idea that if I ran it up from the right side, no one would follow me and I could ran away from the others. Hmm…good idea, but I forgot that my route choice was indeed slower, and also, barely anyone had taken it on the first leg, which meant that the tracks formed by the first leg runners were on the left side. But I had already made my choice and there was no turning back. So I climbed the hill from the right in very much untouched terrain, took a few extra contours, and came to my 1st control spot on but about half a minute behind the pack. Suddenly the situation had changed and all the 15 teams were now in front of me… 

Approaching the first hill - looking good

My not so good route choice...

Pan Århus cruising away 

On the way to the second control I tried to pass as many runners as I could but it took a few more controls before I caught Lidingö and Tisaren who I assumed to be the leading teams. What I did not know in the forest was that Pan Århus was the only team in the leading group with the significantly shorter forking at the beginning and had therefore gotten over a minute lead to the rest of us already by the first TV control (control number 2/3). After catching up the teams that I assumed to be in the lead I just focused on smooth orienteering. It went well and I came in 4th together with Kalevan Rasti (2nd) and IFK Lidingö (3rd), just within a minute behind leading Pan Århus. Venla did well on the 3rd leg but Pan Århus kept raising their gap. In the 3rd change-over we were 2:44 behind the Danish team, together with Paimion Rasti, but with a clear margin to the chasing teams. Saila continued the good work, keeping the chasers behind, and we could join her in the run-in to celebrate our fine second place. It was good to be back at the podium and it felt almost like a victory for us after a few unlucky years! There were no ifs and buts this time, we had done the job as well as we could. Danish girls just smashed it. In tough Finnish terrain. Respect!

Results
GPS-tracking

Celebration in the run-in 

Thumbs up from the President of Finland

This time the weekend didn’t end after the Venla for my part but continued with a second leg in Jukola, the so called long night. The darkest and the longest night leg. The fearsome long night. In a team called HappyOrNot. What a good description for a night leg…My team mates were not orienteers but colleagues that had put up a team for Jukola. It’s a long story how I ended up running in their team but they were delighted to get a real orienteer to run the long night for them. I met them briefly after the Venla and admired their attitude and braveness. When I heard how little they had experience I got worried whether they would make it through the night but they seemed just happy and were looking forward to it. I had my doubts but tried hide them. (I worried in vain, our team got through with it with just fine!)

Venla relay seemed suddenly just a piece of cake, an easy afternoon jog, compared to Jukola. First of all, it was night, and I didn’t have a head torch. And secondly, I hadn’t night orienteered for 3-4 years, except one single training. The torch problem got sorted out just around the time when the relay started. I got to lend a good lamp, one of the newest models, but the battery life was just about 70min. That wasn’t too comforting since I had thought of using 2h there. Oh dear.

Running a night leg was clearly far from my comfort zone in every aspect (cold, dark, in the middle of night etc) and when it drew closer I was hoping to find a way out of it. What if I just went back to the hotel and crept under the blankets? After Venla I had been up on my feet all night running from one place to another and it was only after the start of Jukola that I got to lie down for a while. Soon I realised how cold it was. And how hungry I was. Shit. This is not good. Feeling cold and hungry before a long run is never good. I ate a doughnut that I found at our tent. Fast energy with plenty of sugar. Good, I will need it. Then I changed back to my wet clothes from the Venla and went for a warm up. I hadn’t really thought of warming up, but after standing still for a while in the changeover area in freezing temperatures, I realised that I would freeze to death if I didn’t keep moving. Also, spotting a team mate when you are running in Jukola in positions 1000+ is a lot more challenging than spotting a team mate in the leading pack of Venla when you’ve heard her intermediate times from every kilometre. I knew that my team had been nearly half an hour after the lead in the third online control but it was difficult to estimate whether it would be 45min, 60min, or 75min at the change-over. And while standing there, there was no way of getting any information about anything, not even the positions of incoming runners. At the end, I missed my guy, but only by a few minutes or so.

I started to jog towards the start point and opened the map. Wow. That was my first thought. Wow, what a leg! You never see anything like that in Venla. Leg to the first control was massive. There was no way to see a clear route choice for the whole leg at the first glance. I had to split the leg in parts and plan each of them separately. I knew roughly how I would go the whole leg, but then I memorised the intermediate points where I wanted to get and folded the map so that I could do the first part first. Amazing. I’m still in awe when I think back that leg. After a while I realised that 90% of runners must have picked approximately the same route because all I had to do was to follow a path. Every now and then there were some branches but mostly it was just one single track. Until the transverse road before the control. There I took a unique route choice in to the control that almost no one else in the line did (road from the right instead of going straight). Up to that point I had been slogging the leg with hundreds of chaps and then suddenly there was only this one lonely guy and me. I caught him and we chatted for a while. He thought that the first leg was horrible. I told him that it was awesome. At the bend of the road we separated. Then I was all alone in the darkness, approaching a challenging control point in vague hillside. And I loved it! This is it, true orienteering. Spot on to the control and there it was again, the long line. It felt surreal that I had been all alone just a while ago. 

Leg to control 1. How would you go?

The journey continued with company all the way until the finish. It was very different from the women’s relay (might have something to do with the positions in the relay…). In Venla you usually run alone and it’s very silent. Everyone is focused on their own race and there’s seldom any talk. Whereas here everyone were shouting the codes and telling stories. The pace was unbelievably  slow (mostly just walking) but I saw no reason to overtake people (I overtook only some 400 runners on my leg but I believe this happened mostly on controls). I'd had my race earlier and now I was just enjoying an easy long run. I didn’t want to waste any extra energy on stepping off the line, so I settled to the pace the pack was going. I was bit worried about my torch and therefore I would have wanted to run slightly faster but luckily it was not that dark anymore. Every now and then people stopped in the middle of the line without stepping aside, which meant that everyone had to stop. This happened every time when there was a small climb, a decent or a thicker area. Forking controls were easy to spot too. The line spread out and you could see bewildered chaps everywhere standing still, trying to find out where they were. Before I noticed we came to the last control and it was all over. It wasn’t even long. Energy gels that I had planned to take on the way were still unused in my back pocket.

After Jukola it took a week to get my sleeping rhythm back to normal but no doubt I will do it again. Next time I would love to try the first leg. Any teams interested having a girl on their first leg? 

HappyOrNot with Jukola2014? Definitively happy! :)

Some really cool photos by Kuopion Suunnistajat here and by Jonas Birgerson here.
Some video clips are found here.

Running through the pain

A week ago I was feeling great and looking forward to 3 Days of Trenches, that is a couple of WRE races in WOC relevant terrains in Asiago. Middle and long WREs were also our selection races for WOC (along with the World Cup). I had a good month behind me. After some hard racing in April I had taken a month off from competing and focused entirely on training. May was a good month filled with high mileage, lots of orienteering, numerous controls, high quality sessions, hard workouts, race pace orienteering, and lots of hills. I had put in hours of training but was still feeling relatively fresh and recovered before the weekend in Asiago. I had been there on a training camp just a few weeks before and I had a good picture what to wait from the races. 

So, everything was looking good - until the moment I got there. Flight went okay, car hire went smoother than last time and even the drive went an hour or so faster than last time. But when I got out of the car in Asiago, my back was locked. I could barely walk and couldn’t bend it at all. It was totally jammed, something I’ve never experienced before. I’ve had some minor problems with my lower back before but nothing like this. Before the travel it was all fine but something mysterious had happened during the travel. Noidannuoli. That’s what they call it in Finnish. I went to orienteer with the others and thought that I could just run and shake it off. Didn’t happen. I couldn’t run, no chance. Even stretching was impossible. My most important races before the WOC and it looked like I wouldn’t be able to run. 

I had one day to get my back in order before the first race. So instead of doing a model event, drills and strides (my usual pre-race routine before important events) I just drove around Asiago in panic trying to find a masseur (unfortunately we didn’t have a masseur with us now that I really would have needed one). But I was lucky, there was a spa hotel near by that offered some beauty treatments. No word of sports massage, so I was pretty sceptical when I went there.. But I asked for a hard treatment and, to my surprise, I got one. It was much better than I had thought and after the treatment and spa I was actually able to stretch and bend my back a little. In the evening I felt already optimistic about running the races but next morning it was again the same that it had been before the massage. Oh dear.

I had promised to give Minna a lift to the event, so I drove her there. I picked up my number and walked around the event centre but when I tried to put my O shoes on I couldn’t  bend my back so that I could have tied the laces. Minna offered to help and I got my shoes tied. It felt ridiculous. I was totally handicapped and going to race. I wasn’t sure whether I could run or not, but took a painkiller and hoped for the best.. My back was very stiff when I started my race and I doubted whether I could run with it. I could jog but not really push very hard. Fortunately the middle distance course was quite technical and I could focus on orienteering instead of running. It was nice terrain and a good course, and I really loved the technical part of it. My navigation was good, only a few small wobbles, and I finished 4th among the Finns, and 6th overall. Considering the circumstances and the strong start field, I was quite pleased. I couldn’t have done much better. Results

I had hoped that running the middle would open my back and I could run better on the long in the following day. But no, it didn’t happen. It was the same. I felt defeated already before the start. I knew that long would be more physical than the middle and I needed to get my back sorted in order to run. Minna was a big help once again. She gave me some hot/cold gel that should ease the pain in muscles and joints. I put some of that before the race and was able to warm up. Terrain was once again terrific, as well as the course, so all ingredients for a great experience. But for me it was just running through the pain. 

I started slowly and controlled, taking the first few controls without problems. After shaking off the worst excitement and getting into nice rhythm I forgot to pay attention to the details when approaching the third control. I was a bit off from the red line and made a small mistake to the control. I lost a minute but kept myself calm. Only a small wobble, nothing to worry about. Next few controls I took nice and easy but then another mistake on number 6. 50m before the control I knew exactly where I was but then somehow I managed to pass the control by a few meters, failing to see it. I realised that I had come too far down and turned back. And passed it again. I was circling in the circle without spotting it. 1,5min. Now I’m getting a bit worried…Next leg (7) is a climb up along a path. It should be my leg, I’ve learned to love climbs. But my back is holding me back and I can’t push as hard as I want to. I try to focus on orienteering and forget the pain...Leg 8 is downhill. Running downhill is easier and I get into nice rhythm again. Rest of the course goes fine but I lose some time on route choices as I try to spare my back and avoid steep climbs. I go around more than necessary. Especially to number 10 I lose a lot by running around and doubling the distance. In contrast, to number 12 it’s good to round it a bit from the right, taking a gentler climb. I finish again 6th, and 4th Finn. Not bad but not really what I wanted. I know I could have done better. There is still a lot to learn and take home from my run. I’m angry to myself for the mistakes I made but on the other hand quite proud how I fought it through with a locked up back. Now it’s done and I can only wait and see whether it was good enough…

Results, splits, maps and everything here

And yeah, there is still one more race to win before the final selections: World Cup in Kongsberg

And my back? I’m working on it!