Tyler linked up with me for some orienteering at Pelican Bay. Tiomila was supposed to have been run last weekend, and of course it didn't happen, and the weather here wasn't so favorable then either. So today was kind of making up up for not doing any orienteering on Tiomila weekend, and with that in mind I drew up a relay style course with two forked loops which we took in different order, for a total of just over 10 kms.
It was good challenging stuff--Pelican Bay is good terrain and it's easy to go wrong there--and made even more difficult because the maps printed up with only the barest hint of green or any of the yellows except for full open. I missed one control which I will blame on not being able to see a necessary bit of green (aspen), though really there was no excuse as there was enough other detail to go by, plus I knew what the sitrep was with the green today anyway. By the time we were done I could tell I got in a proper workout.
Tiomila is special, and special to me. I ran 4 Tiomila, and was lucky in the sense that all 4 were good competitions in good terrain, and really lucky because the weather was quite fine for all 4. And maybe really, really lucky because I did relatively well in all 4 outings.
The first of my Tiomila was just outside of Uppsala. I remember that we got there early enough to go out and do a training in relevant terrain, and after seeing how detailed the map and terrain were, I was wondering if I wasn't well over my head. But the race itself ended up going really well for me. It helped a lot that the visibility in the forest was quite good, and it was easy to see the details I needed to see. It helped even more that I ran a day leg, and did so in all my other Tiomilas as well. I don't think either the club (IKHP) or myself regarded my prospects at night favorably. Put more bluntly, I've never done much night orienteering, and basically I suck at night.
And yet, it's really the night portion of Tiomila that makes it special, at least to me. Once it gets dark, it seems like anything can happen, and back then a lot more did happen; the lights runners had were not nearly as powerful as today's lights, the maps were generally rougher, and the whole thing was much more mysterious and anticipatory, with fewer reports from the forest and no real time GPS tracking. At least to me, being able to see where all the leading teams are all time in real time takes away a lot of the magic of the event.
Even so, Tiomila remains a blend of the day and the night...
https://www.dropbox.com/s/n9rjx0bpglz06go/Day%20fo...