Training Log Archive: CleverSky

Jukola, Hollola map, Team UNO (UpNorth Orienteers 1). Leg 2, 12.0 km, 280 m, 2:38:35, 1663/1829 on my leg, gaining 37 places to 1772nd position, team result 17:18:15, 1468th place. That's my lowest ever placing in an orienteering event, I'm pretty sure. First time using EMIT punching in a race. And just before 2 AM is probably the earliest I've ever started a course.

So! (tl;dr)

It was Alar's idea to put together an UNO team for this, and we managed to assemble seven old men (of whom I'm the youngest): Jim Arsenault, me, Jeff Saeger, Steve Tarry, Steve Olafsen, Alar Ruutopold, and Ernst Linder. We all had different travel itineraries, of which mine was the shortest: flying from Boston Friday evening, and making it back Sunday night. Part of the reason for this was that I didn't want to use any of my precious vacation days, and part was strategic, since the event starts at 11 PM local time, so I was able to volunteer for the second (dark) leg, and by remaining on east coast time, it would be evening as far as my body clock was concerned. Jim, running first leg, had a similar approach although he flew over a day earlier.

I made up team shirts using iron-on stuff (which didn't come out as well as I had hoped, but they were usable), packed them in my carry-on bag with a sleeping bag, compass, headlamp, and toothbrush, and headed off for Europe. The trip over went exactly according to plan, although the team was a bit concerned about me because they checked my flight status and saw that my plane from London to Helsinki was overbooked (I had gotten a text in the middle of the night before I left offering me 200 euros to volunteer to be bumped, but I passed on that). After taking the bus from Lahti to the event site, I was walking toward the tent area when Jim spotted me, and I got connected to the team.

I'd gotten a breakfast of a muffin and yogurt at the airport, then had smoked salmon, potatoes, and vegetables (pretty tasty!) from a stand at the event, and then had half a leftover sandwich that Ernst had made for dinner. I'd gotten some shut-eye on the transatlantic flight, some more on the train to Lahti, and I'd snoozed on the bus, but it was all very shallow sleep. No real local training or proper model event stuff, though I did wander around the event venue with a lousy copy of the old map a bit. I had never orienteered in Finland before, and in fact the last time I'd added a new country was August of 1991. So yeah, I was well-prepared.

I'd gotten the notion in my head early from looking at the old map on that this was going to be glacial sand, but it was in fact limestone karst (which I should have realized). No real difference in how to navigate between those two, but the latter can be very rocky underfoot. The other thing that I think took a lot of us by surprise was the dust. It's been very dry in Finland for a couple of months, and it was dustier than any meet I can remember ever attending, and I've done a lot in the North American west. (There's a lot of dust out there, but not thousands of runners churning it up.)

They have a pretty cool system for knowing when your teammate will be arriving for the handoff. In the warmup area near the exchange fence, there's a tent with four big results screens. They can't fit 1900 results on there at once, so they have punch stations connected to each screen, and you periodically wander up and punch in. The system reads your card, finds your teammate, and puts him on the board for a short while, showing the distance at the last radio control, time elapsed since, and distance at the next, so for example it would say "UpNorth leg 1, 7.0 km, 7 minutes, 8.7 km". The last radio control was 800 m from the finish, so when Jim got to the 10.1 km control, I knew to go watch for him to show up in about 10 minutes, then after he went by toward the finish, I could walk the 20 m or so to the exchange fence while he ran to the finish, punched in, took a hairpin turn, ran to grab my map, and then ran to hand it to me, saying "Run smart!".

I failed to start my watch until I'd gone maybe 150 m toward the start triangle, no big deal. I had my headlamp on the bright setting right from the beginning, but it never really got dark. The announcers kept talking about "this daaaark summer night", but the northern sky stayed yellow, it was never dark enough to see stars, it didn't actually even reach civil dusk. I didn't even see the moon, though it should have been there as a crescent (there were some clouds that may have obscured it). On the way to the start triangle, I looked at the course in overview, and it looked pretty long, starting out with a 2800 m leg ending in a very detailed area. But Jim had left me in a position where there were plenty of people ahead of me to catch, and I was on my way.

The start triangle was on the edge of a logged area, perhaps in part to give the drones a good view. It was already tracked up from several thousand runners having been through, and I immediately faced the problem that I could see neither my map nor where I was going. All I could see was the headlamp beam reflected back off the clouds of dust. I held out hope that things would get better once I hit the woods, and they did, at least somewhat. The next part of the leg was through flattish forest, and I was able to just stay on elephant tracks going vaguely in my direction. For the second half of the leg I took the safer trail option, though straighter may have been faster. I made pretty good time getting there, then blew it. I left the trail a little too early, went through a narrow depression that looked right, climbed up the ridge beyond it, and found a control in a depression... dang, not mine. Checked beyond it a little bit, decided I didn't know where I was, and bailed back to the trail to try again. This time I left the trail in the right place, and passed within about 15 m of the control, but I didn't have the right picture of the terrain in my head. Plenty of depressions around, though. This time I bailed to the trail beyond the control, found a distinctive spot, and attacked back to where I had just been, but this time climbed up to the hanging depression on a little shelf up above the others. And I said out loud, "OK, I found a control in Finland!". Looks like 11-12 minutes lost in the futzing around.

#2 was just out to the trail and follow trails for a short way to a water stop, and then the TV control just beyond it. #3 had a bunch of people in my vicinity (probably all on the third leg), and I ignored them, attacked from a trail bend, and easily got to the control near the bottom of a deep hole. On my way out of that one, I crossed a trail and a guy said something to me to which I just replied "Language?". He asked if I was looking for 154, and I said no. (From where he was standing on the trail, 154 should have been trivial to find.) Most of the way to #4 was in a broad, shallow reentrant in flat terrain, and when the big depression arrived on my left, the control was in the saddle on its far side, easy peasy.

#5 was in a gnarly area, but there was kind of a peninsula of non-gnarly flat stuff leading toward it, so I stayed on that as long as I could, and then went in on compass and spiked it. From there to #6 was a lot of up and down, but shortly before the control was a trail with a water stop, so that made for a trivial attack. Then #7 was a gentle downhill using a ridge on the left as a handrail. At the bottom I saw the only wet spot, a tiny mudpuddle. And #8 was a short leg to a reentrant, but the reentrant was a little notch in a piece of bare rock, a classic Finnish control spot! I made a point of going to the far end of the bare rock (a pretty tall ridge of it) and running along the length, to confirm that there was in fact no exposed rock, just thick moss and lichen. And the control was pretty easy to find thanks to the TV crew.

On my own for #9, as the other folks in the vicinity were on the next leg. Through some surprisingly untracked woods, then some very rocky stuff, to get to the water and first aid stop. That was my attack point, but the control was 200 m beyond in complicated stuff, undulating ridges that made it hard to see which contours were up vs. down. I went about the right distance, but missed to the right. On the top ridge, I guessed that I need to go left, and I went almost far enough, getting to within about 50 m, but I didn't see it, and decided to go back to the water stop and try again. This time I went more slowly, was still confused, but identified a key ridge correctly and went directly to it. 7-8 minutes lost.

#10 was directly through the area I had identified on the old map as being the hairiest, most technical section of the whole map. Quite proud of myself, as I deliberately and correctly read my way through the spaghetti. At one point I went past 3-4 guys who looked a little confused, and I think they might have followed me for a bit. Busting my way out of there to the next trail without going through too many depressions, I decided it was time for the Gu I had brought. I wasn't sure which way the water stop was, but some guys were running down the trail to the right, so I tried that way and came to it. Had some water, and then I just had to continue past the water stop a short way and head into the woods. But nothing looked right. Huh? I pretty quickly came to the conclusion that the water stop was not where the map showed it, so I turned around, went back to the water stop to confirm my theory, and then went the other direction and attacked from the right spot and found #11 (in a tricky location). Turns out there were three water stops closely spaced on that trail, but my map showed only one of them. Seems pretty weird to me, though I imagine they had some reason for that. Maybe 4 minutes lost.

Out into the woods toward #12, the first job was to just find a big logged area, and then follow tracks through it to the far side. Downhill into the woods toward the control, I was mumbling to myself "Yellow or green?", because I couldn't tell which color the blob I was looking for was. A guy asked if I was looking for 164, but I said no, 88. It occurred to me to look at the control description, which said thicket, so I knew the blob was green and it was pretty easy to find. Elephant tracks toward the next control led around the wall of fight into another logged area and another easy radio control. Then on #14, I seem to have picked a route that few others had done, because I didn't see much in the way of tracks. The last part of that I did through the green instead of taking the trail, but I don't think it cost me too much time.

Through a logged area and then into a pace line where I tried to not get trampled as we ran along too fast for me follow on the map. I knew we had to get to a dirt road, and when we did they all went left, but I went right (probably not going to the same place anyway. My chosen route went through another logged area, where to my dismay I found that few had been that way and it wasn't trampled down at all. Navigated well on my own and had no trouble finding #15. At this point it was getting quite light out (I turned off my headlamp around this point), and there were a lot more people around. The next control was in a very broad depression in a logged area, and as I approached it, it appeared to be filled with a smog-like cloud of dust.

#17 was my best control, placings-wise. It was kind of follow-the-leader much of the way, with me suspecting that I had finally caught up to some leg 2 runners and trying to get ahead of them. My control was a tiny reentrant in the middle of a large unmapped (and very new) trail, surrounded by perplexed people looking for something else. Then fast running through some flat stuff and then some trails (I picked good ones) to the warning control.

The next two controls were in an area that had a bunch of large depressions and a lot of trails. Still not sure what happened on #19, as I came to what should have been a trail crossing bit which was a T junction on the ground, but I turned right anyway and things worked out. I found another control on a boulder, but corrected quickly for very little time lost. (Near the control, somebody running by said "Hi J-J", and I correctly guessed from the voice that it was Vladimir.) I have very little memory of the route to #20, other than finding a control in a small depression that I knew wasn't mine, and again found my boulder pretty quickly. And then pretty easy following the arena sounds to the final control, and the finish. As I handed Jeff his map, I said, "Have fun, man!", which he apparently took as a dire warning. At least he didn't need a headlamp; the sun had been up for a hour by that point.

Back to the tent to wake up Steve T and to try and get a few hours of sleep. I wanted to take a shower, but was too tired, so I put it off until later. When Jeff finished I woke up, showered, and watched the 9 AM mass start for the anchor leg (including Ernst), and then the 9:20 mass start for all remaining legs (including Steve O and Alar). A bit more snoozing and then off to the arena around the time that our runners came in. Each runner gained more and more places as we worked our way deeper into the bell curve (except Ernst, who still gained more than me but not as much as the other guys). And by successfully completing all of our courses, we ended up as the top US club team (ahead of DVOA, who totally outclassed us but unfortunately DNFed).

Back to the bus with Jim, then the trains, and planes, and back to my car and I was back at Nancy's house (shorter drive than to my house) before midnight, and I made it to work at a normal hour on Monday.

On the way into the tent area Saturday evening, a guy spotted me and said, "J-J, is that you? We're in a tent just a few meters from yours!", and I said, "Oh wow, that's cool, it's great to see you!", and for the next 12 hours or so I was going, "Who the heck was that?". Eventually Ross helped me figure it out, because I had noticed that the guy was wearing a Luxembourg jacket: it must have been Ondrey Kotecky, who I supplied with a pair of pants at the Billygoat a year ago, and who I know from... somewhere else... many years ago... maybe Colorado or something? I also got to finally meet the famous Sophie (who was quite cheerful except when I tried to hold her), and bubo pointed out Jagge, who I was able to run over and say hello to.

This was a bucket list event for pretty much everybody on the team, and a few of us commented afterwards that it was pretty long, that we were pretty ready for it to be over when we were getting to the last few controls, and that although we were really glad we did it, we weren't sure that we had a need to ever do it again. Having had some time to recover, I guess my feeling is that I wouldn't rule it out, although I don't know that I'd ever be able to find such a cool team again.

Results
Team result
Splits
RouteGadget
Video 1
Video 2
Video 3

Willard Brook SE, southern half of the Challenge Loop in the CW direction, In The (basically) Dark. Just one last shortish jaunt before heading off to Finland tomorrow night, in about the lighting conditions that I'll be facing. Carried a map (of somewhere else) and made myself look at it and plan routes from time to time. All systems are go. Let's do this.

C • Wishing you good speed and ... 1

Townsend State Forest, In The Dim/Dark. I'm calling this orienteering training because I was running with a map of the place where I was, and kept track of my location on trails, even though I didn't go into the woods or look for control locations. This was particularly focused on knowing what to expect in terms of light: I worked out the sun angles such that about halfway through this, the sun was the same distance below the horizon as it will be in the dead of "night" next week at Jukola. In this case, it was gradually getting darker (beyond what I'll be facing), but on my leg it will probably be getting gradually lighter (depending of how long it takes Jim to get back). Wore a headlamp that I had on the bright setting most of the tie, and also carried a light in my hand, but used it only a few times as an experiment. I started hearing an annoying rattling at one point, which turned out to be the front bezel on my headlamp starting to unscrew, so I should put a dab of nail polish on that to keep it in place.

AOWN: up at the north end, there were several barred owls having a conversation, one of which seemed to get very close to me at one point (didn't see it, though). And driving back, just before I got home, I managed to slam on the brakes and successfully avoid hitting a deer that was about to jump out in front of me (I gave it enough leeway that it was able to change its mind and head back into somebody's yard).