Discussion: 10 Mila

After the Crystal Relay, the next most important relay in the world is of course 10 Mila, and this weekend is when the next edition rolls! Each year the internet coverage has gotten a bit better, and hopefully this year will continue that trend. It helps to understand Swedish, but at least a little bit of the announcing will be in English, and of course the results will be the results.

The club I have spent all my time with in Sweden--Hakarpspojkarna (IKHP)--is poised to do well in both the womens' and mens' races with realistic chances for wins! (the men will be especially strong this time around)

TYRTOM is running too - and for the club that is named after him!

Thanks for the mention Eddie. If anyone is interested I'll be running leg 6 in OK Tyr 2, a shortish (6.8 km) forked night leg right after Långa Natten.

Karen is running for IFK Göteborg in the women's relay too, but I don't know which leg.

They are going to have GPS tracking for the long night leg. I don't see anything about a web video broadcast like last year, but then I don't read Swedish. Besides the usual teams, watch out for the new team Vaajakosken Terä with the Lakanen brothers and Pasi Ikonen.

I am running anchor leg for IFK Göteborgs 3rd team.

There will be a web broadcast with speaker sound and video. Better than television!

Is there a link for the coverage? Day and Time?

www.tiomila.se/2005/. I think coverage will be going as early as you wake up on saturday. the men's relay starts at 8pm swedish time (sunset is 8:20pm)

Veterans relay 11.15
Youth relay 11.30
Womens relay 14.00
Sponsor competition 14.45
Mens relay 20.00

Of course you would expect that at a race as important as 10 Mila that new technological advances will surface from time to time. One club this year is rumored to have secretly re-engineered their headlamps so that in addition to the usual forward facing lamp they also have backward facing beams and a selection switch mounted on one wrist. The idea is that when the "reverse mode" is selected, that any runners who are hanging after them (a big, big part of 10 Mila) will start running in the wrong direction, thereby dropping precious half hour units of time, or even more!

As you might expect, some clubs are already reacting against this, and are planning protests of "foul play" and charging unsporting conduct. Whether or not this will reach the level of official protests remains to be seen. But it's a crystal example of how technology will not be denied.

I would just like to mention one of my personal favorites who will not, alas, be running 10 Mila this year. It's Jimi Hendrix, of course. He was an orienteer well ahead of his time! He definitely wouldn't have been flummoxed by any doping control.

I just went to the English version of the 10Mila web site, and among the reasons for participating in the event are "Heavy long legs!" and "Ingenious for the veterans!"

As a single guy I'm always interested in heavy long legs, but I'm not sure what the second phrase is offering me. :-)

Really? Heavy long legs?

If you mean "heavy" long legs, I understand. You Cali people have interesting lingo.

Most American orienteers are unfamiliar with Swedish terrain and are therefore probably wondering what the 10 Mila terrain will be like this year. I have done an extensive comparison of the old, existing O' map of this year's 10 Mila area with over 245 US maps, and the surprising conclusion--I was startled myself and had to check the results a second time--is that the area is so identical to SLOC's Cliff Cave area that identical twins from the same womb would be easier to tell apart. Basically if you trade out the depressions at Cliff Cave for a few Swedish type marshes, and sprinkle in a few stones and dot knolls then--Voila!--you have the 10 Mila terrain. Of course you do have to allow for a few other slight differences such as the possible presence of wood nymphs and roving night reporters, but these things are mere ephemera in the greater context.

I will be running the 5th leg for Tullinge SK team 5 in the womens' relay. Our goal is to beat the other 4 clubs that have registered 5 or more teams...

Pia

Does Catching Features have a facility for running relays? Would be kindof cool to have a virtual 10Mila, complete with long night and of course, rain.

Map from 1981 10-Mila, same area as this year, on the following links.

http://www.tiomila.se/2005/bilder_1981/karta1_mell...
http://www.tiomila.se/2005/bilder_1981/karta_mella...

Hmmm...I just tried to check the 10 MIla website to see how things were going....and things are not going well, at least as far as any internet service from 10 Mila is concerned!

I can't connect to www.tiomila.se (as of 8:30 CDT) either.

But, I've got the video coverage going. Try: http://www.streaming.telia.com/startmedia/default....
=373&n=10MILA

But now things are going ok!

Spotty though. The coverage keeps clicking in and out. Hope things get better by tonight.

I had good sound and video until 10-15 minutes ago, but no video now. Plus results service has been shaky.

" Ett kabelbrott på koaxkabeln i närmaste monitor. blev tvungen att dra om och leta efter hjälp först... sorry."

But, now they've fixed it and video is working great as the last leg for the women start.

Hopefully everything will be ready and set for the mens race later on. They definitely should have banned high heels (it was apparently a high heel spike that took out the cable.) What were they thinking???

This puts Spike's nickname in a new light.

Pia - I'm assuming 'Tullinge' doesn't mean the same in Swedish as in Norwegian?

Hm... the leading team at Radio 1 / leg 1 ran the first 3k at 4:28/k. Yowch!

First leg - 5:02/k. Where are the viper pits, quicksand and uncrossable cliffs?

The Devil Runner is now out for IKHP on Leg 3. Nothing could be more frightening!

My cousin was #2 to Radio 1 on the women's first leg, but it seems like she made a mistake on the way to Radio 2.

Her boyfriend lifted his team from #177 to #127 on the men's second leg.

I guess I don't have to go work out today if I live vicariously through them.

Actually - I have to go scout controls for San Francisco Night & Day.

I think we have to award the Devil Runner full marks for coming back with the leading group.

So do they light up all the controls with bright floodlights, or just the difficult ones?

Well, with the new radical GPSed punchsticks it really doesn't matter anymore--you go straight to all the controls no matter what.

the GPS coverage is a little fuzzy on my screen but very cool to watch. Seeing Nordberg go straight and take the lead was neat to watch. It makes training on an indoor bike more interesting...

Looks like the other group got stuck in the green a bit on the long leg.

Oh boy, I think my control scouting will happen in the dark today.

I can't make out much of the map, but the GPS tracking is quite cool. The Long Night is a bit more interesting than the tracking from the womens anchor leg.

Too bad several of the top teams didn't carry the GPS.

It looks a lot sharper now!

Seems like each time IKHP gets in the lead they blow it. Swampfox must be peeing his pants, or whatever swampfoxes do under stress.

Shorts? Shorts???? You gotta be kidding. Commando!

But at different points in legs 6 and 7 they were in the lead, the latter a clear lead. Probably good you weren't watching.

Peter, don't you need to go out and do some night training now or something? ; )

KOK is dsq (two years in a row).

Interesting... I noticed that I was able to get the splits for Radio 3 online before it happened in the video stream. I stopped and restarted the video stream, and it jumped 3 minutes ahead.

Looks like Tom Hollowell had a pretty good run. I didn't see Pia or Karen's results anywhere. They must have run in disguise.

I did a fairly good run with only a couple of 30 sec mistakes (including the bag where Simone Luder lost her chance to win) and had 58.40 on my 7.8 km, which was roughly 14 min slower than the leading pack on my 5th leg. It was a little discouraging to start so far behind, but I managed to climb from place 260 to 233 (and would have qualified for a place in our 2nd or 3rd team...).

For those who get confused by the differences between Norwegian and Swedish: Tullinge in Swedish mean "the outermost border" and refers back to the 17th century or so when Tullinge was the outermost "suburb" of Stockholm, while tulling in Norwegian sounds like somebody with low IQ (I think). Not the greatest name for a club, but what can one do?

Pia

Great run Pia! Here's my list of Norwegian clubs that don't sound that great in English:

Odd
Fart
Skeid
Vang

Due to some illnesses in our club, we ended up not having a full third team so I ran first leg instead. And for some odd reason, they had me under the name of the first leg running of our second team that got bumped up from the third team...so in the results she is listed twice: I am the Jenny Christiansen on IFK Göteborg 3, not IFK Göteborg 2 (about 4 minutes difference and about 100 places).
The guys in IFK were saying the lit up controls were a bit odd...they only did that for the radio controls though. The forests were not "that" fast...nothing seems fast after last years Jukkola/Venla terrain. They are just that good...but it was pretty flat, and the open bits were okay. The swamps were another matter (smelly even).

Nice work! Looks like they got you right in winsplits. (But not Pia). Boy, these are quite a few splits to look at...

What's it like running with that many people? Is there any orienteering going on... or mostly just trying to advance up the line?

It is necessary to orienteer, because the courses are forked, so you have to know where you are going. I think the orienteering/forking was a bit easier this year than last year.
I find running first leg a bit challenging in the sense that you are constantly trying to get around people, but you are also trying to navigate and also have to be very careful about foot placement since it is almost impossible to see ahead of you, as you would when orienteering normally, because there are so many people in the way. This was not such a problem in Jukola last year because the forest was so open, but in even slightly thicker forests, it becomes impossible (for me at least) to see the "line" through the forest, which means more concentration. I wish I could see the race through the eyes of our first team runner (see came in 11th).

I think smelly is an understatement Karen - I tried not to think about what I was running through out there! I can't believe I didn't see you in the warm up area or afterwards (I saw Sandy at the finish) because I ran first leg too - just too many people at these races!

Toni, are you running in the Surrey WC races this weekend?