Discussion: Jukola results

Great job Eric! He came in 76th, 2:05 behind the leaders.

Oops, I don't understand Finnish. Eric was 76th at the first radio control, not the finnish.

Right now, looks like Eric was 187th, then Vlad ran and the team slipped to 270th. Don't know what happened with Ken, as there's no result for him that I can find, but he was 300th at the warning control with 1.3 km to go. John F. came through on the fourth leg in 253rd. There are only 239 runners listed for the fifth leg so far, so I'm guessing that Greg is still out there.

The second team went: Tim Good 1077, Tapio Karras 950, Bryn Davies 825. The fourth runner is listed as "Tim", and I don't know who that's supposed to be. Carl Fey is scheduled to be fifth, followed by Greg Flynn, and then me. I don't suspect that I'll make my start, though, considering that I'm sitting in Massachusetts at the moment. :-)

Uh oh! Greg Balter was in 262nd place halfway through his leg, but he's just been posted at the finish as "hylätty", which my Finnish dictionary defines as "abandoned". In other words, DNF or some such. Let's hope that this is an error that will get corrected, or at least hope that he's okay.

Well, it's looking like Halden 1 has this pretty much sewed up -- they have a lead of about seven minutes halfway through the anchor leg. I'm now wondering if the US 1 team's issue has to do with Ken: since he's not listed, I wonder whether maybe he mispunched, and they didn't get that processed until Greg was already out (they certainly couldn't have known before John went out). And I'm pretty sure the US 2 team's anchor runner isn't going to make it. In fact, I think he might just go to bed now.

Halden wins!

At the moment, the US 2 team finished the 4th leg in 890th place, and should be on the 5th leg.

JJ is right, something is not right with the US team 1. They finished the 5th leg in 263rd place, but they do not seem to have a runner on the 6th leg. Let's hope everyone is OK.

I'm glad you have a Finnish dictionary JJ, becuase I wondered what "htl" meant.

JJ, why aren't you over there running at 4 am??

JJ, what does "menhir" mean? I don't know which dictionary to suggest, but it was used in the "English" news.

My second, larger, English dictionary has a "roundabout" definition. I am beginning to wish I never asked.

Well, a menhir is a large stone pillar, like the upright things at Stonhenge. or maybe the Easter Island statues. I don't know if maybe there's a reference to one in the story about the seven brothers or something. This is weird, a few days ago I had a premonition about needing to explain the word "menhir" to somebody. One of the few places I've ever seen it used is in the French comic book "Asterix and Obelix", where the big guy (don't know which one he is) works as a menhir delivery man when he's not off on some adventure.

Hmmm... don't know where you're seeing 263rd place for US 1. I'm still seeing hylätty, though they were in 262nd at the 5.3 km mark. And I also don't see anything for legs 6 or 7. I can imagine that they might not let the team contimue if there was a DNF or DSQ, but I would expect that they would have gone out in the mass start, maybe? Don't know. Ken Walker never showed up in the results at all, not even as hylätty, so I don't know what's going on there.

Well, my 879th best time on the anchor leg appears to have lifted US 2 to 648th place overall. My first thought was that Vlad went out for a second run in the mass start, but now I'm wondering if there's another possibility: perhaps something went wrong with Ken's (or Greg's) run, and the remaining US 1 runners were swapped over to the US 2 team, since they still had a qualified run going.

As for the real me, I had a schedule conflict which came up about a week ago, and I had to bag my plans for the trip to Finland.

not bad JJ!!

Matthias turned up as JJ... since when I came in there was no map for me. I screamed and shouteed at a smirking offical... looked at the place again and saw DisQ...
Greg didn't punch a contro he went to...
team two didn't do badly... tim2 was actually todd, a NZ junior...

i had a bad run anyway... am asleep now... cya

btw, MM (or JJ!) only took 2:15, not 2:31 or whatever... so he's only bad :) not awful... should have placed 570 or so...

cause: using the wrong emit brick...

And what happened to Ken's result???

ok, so here is the whole story in a little more detail:

After leg 1 (Eric) Team 1 was Top 200, as described. After leg 2 (Vlad) we were just in the top 300, and stayed between 250 and 300 through leg 3 (Kenny), and 4 (John). Then Greg on leg 5 mispunched, or rather went to a control but didn't punch so there was no record of him there. We tried to protest and such but that didn't have any success..

Meanwhile Neil ran leg 6 and also came back between 250 and 300, but then couldn't find the map for me (leg 7), as the Finns are sneaky suckers and had removed the map for the DSQ'ed team - and they wouldn't let me into the pre start either.

So I had got up at 4am getting ready for Neil's 7.10 arrival only to find out I couldn't start until 9.40 in the disqualified mass start (with my number upside down mind you!!) - bit of a motivation buster, so I wasn't sure whether to bother running at all for a while.

But, meanwhile our Team 2 was still going, except it was lacking a final runner. Tim Good on 1 had a tough time and came back 1000+ but the subsequent runners (Tapio Karras, Bryn Davies, Euan MacCarthy I think on 4??, Carl Fey and especially Greg Flynn on 6 with a great time) slowly pulled back places 900-850-760-626 after leg 6. And with Greg's great run we just sneaked into the last allowed changeover time (9:00am vs. 9:15) and avoided the mass start for late teams (9:30). So I decided to run for Team 2 instead of Team 1 to get a full result at least.

I had a great run to control 12, catching up loads of people (since we were still far behind), but then decided to ride the local express train for a bit cos I got tired, which unfortunately had a bit of a crash and 10 people found themselves hopelessly lost on a hilltop. 10 minutes of mistake later, we finally found the control. I added another 5 minutes wasted at the next one, then continued ok to the finish. Took me 2:14 and I came in 567th.

But, it wasn't over yet: I had used the brick from Team 1 , which wasn't allowed, so no result ! I complained of course and they said they couldn't give me the "real" result (technically not possible), but they would use the time on my EMIT brick from when I cleared it to go into the pre start - which luckily was 2:18 (only 4 mins slower) because I has timed Greg's arrival a little tight. How they got to the 2:31 in the final results, I have no idea...

Well, better luck next time??

As we talked around after the event, it was not clear to me if there will be a next time. The Jukola requires a great deal of commitment from everyone because of time and financial expenditures involved. Some had the commitment, in particular Eric and Tim, and others too. Some had less. It is not enough to just show up and run. One should also be careful about having enough rest, being familiar with the punching system, eating carefully, being ready for the exchanges, and (preferrably) doing enough physical and some technical training before the event to not disappoint one's teammates.

The thing that threw things off the mark the most was the large number of cancellations we had. I had to really scramble to put together a first team that would be half-way decent. It is obvious to everyone that things happen that would preclude someone's participation, and I don't think anyone is holding this against anyone. At the same time, the situation stinks. More on commitment: Carl remarked that Lidingö would not allow him to run even on the 2nd team unless he showed up at Sulkava on Friday morning. Orion's 1st team runners were on site on Thursday I beleve, and that from being a few hundred km away, not 5000 miles.

With his 13%-behind run, Eric showed that he is still quite fit, and is in a decent shape for the WOC relay. There is a reason Eric is going to the WOC and others aren't (well, Neil is I believe). I personally was physically not ready for the 200th-place train speed. I made about 2 minutes of mistakes but was continuously letting others pass me. My per-km speed still was 2nd-best on the 1st team, and that was for the darkest leg. Recall that before the event I was not particularly excited about being on the 1st team, and only volunteered to fill the 2nd-leg slot because William was not coming. As my fitness was clearly below the 15%-behind goal that I had posed early in the year, I should not have run on the 1st team... but we didnät really have much better runners...

As for the next time: I'll be there. I have learned a bunch of useful stuff. If we want to sometime place well, top 100 is doable. But it will require (duh... beating a dead horse...) commitment. And doing this over quite a few times. 2005 or even 2006 is the earliest we can expect to place well. Eric is also quite set on next year, and I'm sure those of you who wanted to come this year but could not will be interested, too.

One of the things I am thinking about for next year is having a dedicated on-site manager (not me) as there was way too much needless running back and forth between the accommodation place and the exchange area. The army tents also posed a problem, not so much because of the cramped quarters but because of the shower-heater noise. But the most shocking requirement would be for ALL first-team runners to arrive on time, run in the Forssa Phone Games (at least recreationally if you don't want your result to show), and rest/jog the model on Friday. If you can't do that, you should be on the 2nd team; if this requirement means that we won't have a 1st team, then we only have a 2nd team. Otherwise, I will feel bad about people who I or USOF (in some way) will invite to run to improve our chances (Neil was one such person this year).