Jukola was once again an incredible experience, the technical difficulty was up there with some of the hardest area’s I’ve run on, particularly when half of my course was completed in darkness.
Preparation wasn’t great, half of NOPE Team Banter went out dancing and drinking until 5am the previous night, myself (ankle) and Duncan (knee) crocked ourselves in the training area (plus I had a bit of a nightmare getting into the map & terrain) which was much more physical than the actual area and put us off quite a bit.
However, come start time we were ready to rock, in some bright orange team kit, and Ally set off in the pouring rain on 1st leg with over 1500 other orienteers from around the globe. Duncan was next up, and having been woken by Ally around 1 I spent an age faffing to get ready then just as long in the pen waiting for Duncan’s return. His 30+ minutes for the final 2km didn’t suggest things were going too well, but sometime after 3am I set off for the long night leg, 12km in some of the toughest Finnish forest there is. This wasn’t just me saying this, World number 1 Thierry Giorgeiou said it was the hardest Jukola terrain he’d run in since 2001.
More details of my run (and mistakes) can be found on my map archive, linked from the image below.
After having a proper mare on a couple of controls on the training, I was happier with the performance in the race, but still wasn’t too happy with the result. Cramp towards the end finished me off, and looking at the splits I lost a good 15 minutes and 60 odd places in this latter quarter of the course which is quite frustrating having climbed as high as 701st place.
The lads after me all had fantastic runs, Steve ‘WoWoWo’ Clelland picking up 175 places, Stewart another 83 and Jonny 84 with our highest course position of 232/1293 in the process. Eddie on last had a mare, but kept us in the top 500 (just), albeit just behind last year’s result as we finished in 497th place.
We’ll be back again for more next year. I’m intending to do more orienteering next year (providing there are some decent UK events worth going to) and after hopefully doing a marathon at the end of this year (more on that later), I’m hoping to be able to improve massively on my last two performances in Finland.