Training Log Archive: Swampfox

Skies were gray all day long and finally by mid-afternoon a measure of rain was issued. Where I was mapping, it merely sprinkled for about 5 minutes, and then later, while running, it was spitting rain every so often, but not near often enough to actually get wet. Town made out better however, and things might resume being green again for a while--especially areas that are favored with in place sprinkler systems.

While it was raining I looked around to see if I could spot Neil's car, but came up empty. I did run into two sets of friendly rock climber couples walking out of Pelican Bay, where they had been climbing.

Came home just as Jukola was ending (well, at least for the top teams; the rest of the field will be dribbling in over the next few days), and thus was able to go through the results leg by leg in just a few minutes. Really it's a much more humane to follow the race, as long as you don't particularly care that much about any given team.

So J-J finished his Jukola leg--well done, J-J!

Prior to the race, on Friday, I went around to our local farmer's market and interviewed dozens of shoppers and touristos and touristas about whether J-J would be able to finish a Jukola leg or not (note that I didn't know what leg he would be running; nor did the people I interviewed.) Overwhelmingly, they were skeptical, most pointing out he had at most a few words of Finnish and unsure if he had the required amount of sisu.

They should have had more confidence. For myself, I had no doubt that J-J would finish, as long as a maximum leg cut-off time of 3 days wasn't strictly enforced.

C • Finnish 2