Discussion: CSU at Jukola

I know AttackPoint is an international, non-denominational destination for all the children of the world, but, with CSU at Jukola, I think we need a dedicated thread to track their progress and celebrate their achievements (and hirsuteness, hoariness, etc...) So, how about right here?

First off, who is running which leg?

Who is the team mascot? Team jester?

Anyway, go CSU!!!

CSU's running order, team #673. Start is 72 hours from now, 11 pm local time, 4 pm Saturday on the east coast USA, 1 pm on the West Coast. Boris asked me how dark it is at 11 pm, and it's certainly dark enough that you want a light.

Team mascot? Team jester? Who knows. But we will be modelling our new CSU running suits. And with any luck there will be some reporting from the site in addition to the main Jukola page, since AttackPoint is an officially accredited media rep.

So what's the goal? Beating your bib number would be awesome.

I have been trying to figure out if there will be streaming video. I can't find it on the Jukola 2006 Webpage.

Goal? I don't know. What's been done by North American teams in the past? Or a team with a North American on it?

GVOC also has a team.

I saw something that said there will *not* be streaming video.

Maybe top 250 as a goal?

Last year Team Attackpoint finished 357th. To do better than that is a good goal. Note that our last leg runner was not Vladimir but Anders Lindberg, a backup runner for OK Tyr, that Tom managed to lure to run for us.

I´ll be there too - acting as assistant coach on request from Boris.
Since I don´t know too much about each runner´s experience from orienteering in Finland/Sweden it´s hard to say what result is to be expected. With last year´s Team AP´s result in mind I suppose Boris´ goal is a bit high - but still realistic.
With more than 1300 teams in the relay a place around 250-300 would certainly be a good result.
Maybe half of the masses (1000+ Finnish teams) are 'competitive' while the rest are corporations and local teams put together for this event that can´t have more than one ranked orienteer (17-39) in the team.
In addition to the US and Canadian teams there will also be an Aussie team present among all the Europeans. This could make up for an interesting fight for 'Rest-of-the-World-honours'...

Wow, Eric had a great lead-off leg last year. That'll be hard to match!

To translate our running order into AP terms:
1. borisgr
2. mahrm
3. kwalker
4. Rosstopher
5. PG
6. mindsweeper
7. feet

(Changes may still happen up until Saturday afternoon.)

Also, has there ever been a team that has actually consisted of 7 members of the same North American club? I know BAOC has done something, but did they use ringers from Finland or just their own runners?

Yes, the runners in BAOC's 1997 Jukola team were all then current club members. Jorg Hofer had spent 2 years with the club and had just returned to Germany.

Ah, cool! I thought i'd seen something about it in the ONA.

Results 1997...

If you haven´t already found them there are several training maps with terrain relevant to Jukola 2006 that will give you the right feeling. This one is from Tero´s homepage, but there are more at the Jukola page.

When Tero visited the area for some training he said: "I was quite pleased to see that the terrain of this Jukola 2006 will be quite challenging, both technically and physically due to some short but steep climbs that will probably hurt the legs. In this kind of terrain, there's no doubt that only the strongest team will survive."

It´s going to be a tough challenge...

Old map (pdf):
http://www.antin.net/keulatiimi/images/Jukola%2020...

Halikko -relay 2005, (Jukola 2006 training map) (RouteGadget):
http://www.resultfellows.com/reittiharveli/gadget/...

National Land Survey's map site:
http://kansalaisen.karttapaikka.fi/kartanhaku/osoi...

Those of you that happens to understand some Swedish, for whatever reason, can liste in to Radio x3m's streamed broadcast. There's a link on http://www.yle.fi/sporten/jukola/

There will be breaks in the streamed coverage, when the radio is playing music.

Will, PG and I went for a nice run on one of the training maps today. Some of the areas are very tricky, and there will also be a fair amount of climb. Most of the forest seems very runnable, although I haven't explored any dark green yet.

Any chance that we can get a live PG stream at petergagarin.com?

Well, all seven of the CSU team (shown here in running order, left to right) have made it to Salo, Finland, for the Jukola, which starts in a little over 3 hours.

Injury report: Boris attemping to forget about his hamstring problems, jumped off a cliff in training this morning and sprained his right ankle. Seems to have worked, complaints about the hamstring have decreased notably, and he is limping in a decidedly different fashion. He is still expecting to run, and also to finish we hope.

Consciousness report: Ross has finally woken up after sleeping for 16 hours straight.

Generally the mood is one of quiet confidence -- fully expecting to win but not wanting to be too obnoxious about it....

The main triumph so far has been the parking situation -- Kenny/Ross seem to have ended up very close to our tent in a field reserved for officials (it's helps not to understand any Finnish). William/Claire /Mikell/PG have a prime spot in the media/handicapped/VIP/families with strollers lot, for which we figure we qualify for 3 out of 4, with the AttackPoint media pass giving access to the web about 50 meters from the finish line. Not bad.

Also got a chance to try out our new CSU suits, and join up with Bubu, our coach for the weekend.

I'll try to send more later. Official site.

The relay starts in 2 minutes...

Boris at 2.2 km: place 279, time 15:31, diff +2:36
............4.7 km: place 172, time 36:17, diff +5:55
............6.7 km: place 214, time 57:20, diff +10:03

For online results, see
http://timo.jukola.com/tulokset/en/j2006_ju/JU/kil...

And even if you can't understand Finnish or Swedish, check out the speaker sound. They're speaking plenty of English.

There are some Jukola speculation interviews at Finnish TV (in Swedish) at

http://ra.yle.fi/ramgen/fst/sporten/inforjukola_sn...

Any idea how dark it is? I'm listening to the YLE radio and they've just spotted some headlamps coming toward the control. I'm wondering it if is full night O' or just dusk/dawn-like.

There's a webcam at the event center at http://www.jukola2006.net/
It looks more like dusk/dawn, but, of course, for map reading a headlamp is needed. It will get darker at 2am.

Webcam here: http://www.jukola2006.net/webcam/keskus.jpg

My experience is that it rarely gets completely dark during Jukola, but that it is full night O during the end of the first leg, the whole second and during the major part of the thrid leg. I have run leg 4 without headlamp the last two years.

Is that Bubo, or has Jeff Saeger (aka "Coach") snuck through the enemy lines and ensconsed himself? Some DNA testing may be in order to be sure. And while you're at it, and drawing the necessary blood, go ahead and draw enough so that for once and for all we can determine if coach is Man, Woman, or Other.

PS--Looks like Ross has a nipple showing (in the uniform photo.) Might want to test him too.

After the 1st leg
CSU: place 283, diff +22:11
GVOC: place 769, diff +47:09

Some bits from Boris --

Brutally hard terrain, thick, steep, lots of controls all over the place on the hilltops, people going every direction. He had a good run for the first part, then maybe three bad controls, a couple minutes or so lost on each. Was surprised he hadn't dropped more places. So both disappointed cause he could have done better, but also pleased cause he hung in pretty well.

Best time on the leg was 79, was expected to be about 70. Ditto on leg 2, leaders just came through a little while ago.

There is still some light in the sky, but Boris said he definitely needed his light right from the start. Definitely night orienteering.

Mattias is out there now, Kenny next.

OK, here is a very old (20 years) version of part of the map.

The start finish are just down the hill NW of #2, the section with 1, 9, and 10 was the model area, what's left is probably the NW 1/3 of the map. Steep hillsides, very detailed tops.

There are pictures from the start and 1st leg at
http://www.jukola2006.net/index.php?lang=en&page=g...

Maybe your aim should have been to beat team 750, Victorian Nuggets. Its the only Australian team, and at least 5 members are on attack point... AJ, Blair, Jymbo, Toph and the other pseudonym I can't remember. And I thing you have one expat Aussie in the CSU team?

Swisscheese's club (Vehkalahden Veikot) switched over to the 4th leg at 36 seconds back, but Marc doesn't seem to be on the roster this year...

CSU seems to be moving steadily up the ranks at each intermediate control with Kenny now through the second one in 225th place on leg 3.

And right now, at the second radio control on leg 3, you guys are 7 seconds ahead!

Mattias said he had a good run, almost no mistakes, being careful. Kenny is out now, Ross next, it's getting light.

Uh-oh, does Kenny know about this new rivalry? Maybe you should alert the rest of the squad to be on the lookout for hopping nuggets. Don't let the nuggets know we are on to them though.

Go CSU!

Carn the Nuggets ;-)

007 is the other Aussie runner on AP

Leg 5, 6.3km point:

CSU: 227
Nuggets: 235

difference is 3min 10sec

Looks like Peter put the moves on those nuggets, catching up over 13 minutes and then some. I bet they never even saw the wily fox.

Looks like a tight finish looming for the AP Cup! Go Blair on the last leg. Who is the last CSU runner?
Maybe you can put the 13 minutes down to the mixed team. Go Vanessa!

If you click on these two links, they will open in separate windows. I have to refresh each separately.

Cambridge Sports Union results

Victorian Nuggets results

For the lead situation, I've been refreshing this one:

Lead Situation

The last CSU runner is an Aussie on loan :)

Look like CSU's M60 managed to pick up a few places on the field - at a pretty tough point in the field too! Nice.

Is there a link for the GPS tracking of the last leg leaders?

More pictures from 2nd thru 6th exchange at
http://www.jukola2006.net/kuvagalleriat/jukola2345...

Vehkalahti's Tero Föhr in the lead...Kalevan Rasti's Thierry Gueorgiou in 2nd place only 2 mins behind the leader...Halden 1 min behind...2.7 km to go...

Go CSU!!! You guys are rocking!

I think its here we have to call on Mr Hawkins to do his patriotic duty. Go Nuggets, go socceroos and beat Brazil..... oh yeh.

Wow, Vehkalahden Veikot took home the win, but only barely holding on as the Frenchman came within 43 seconds of snatching it away from them. It sounds like it must have been a pretty exciting finish!

It's too bad Marc wasn't there this year to share in the spoils of victory...

First, just so it's clear, the Nuggets are a bogus team because they have a Swedish New Zealander running the last leg (A. Landels), not Blair as advertised, or at least that's what I hear.

Novikov is a stud. Pardon my ignorance, but who is Evgeny Fadeev?

Looks like the lead has changed again in the AP cup. Less than 90 seconds in it at the last report.

Blair was on the plane to Finland a few days ago. Unless there is injury, I expect he will run. If he doesn't, perhaps we can have the Ozzie Mr Hawkins instead? ;-}

Bah! That's low, even coming from down under :)

How is PG on AP while the race is still happening? Shouldn't you be sabotaging the competition?

Vehkalahden Veikot had a really solid performance. Their steadiness is in contrast to Halden's volatility.

Aussie or not, Wil will show how it is done. The forest will part before him.

And in any case, the Nuggets vs. CSU race is scintillating. Kudos to all of you.

It's too late, some Finnish club with an unpronounceable name already took away our victory...

Just to catch up a bit, Ross had a fine run, a couple little mistakes, nothing more, though he may well get the prize for being the most nervous beforehand.

And I get the dunce award, not being at the exchange spot when Ross arrived (I was doing my best to challenge Ross in the MN award), and the next thing I knew I heard Peter" being yelled -- don't think I lost more than 20-30 seconds.

Other than that, I had a decent run, also a couple mistakes, both maybe a minute or so. What was weird was that I had the feeling I was being passed all the time, people just continually zipping by me, so when I came in I was sure I had dropped at least 50 places. A very nice surprise to find out I gained a few.

Lots of beaten paths made the running much easier. Many of the controls were pretty straightforward, but a few were quite nasty, jumbled terrain in thick woods. I was lucky to limit the damge a couple of times.

One injury, not serious, just a gash on one thumb, but my nice new compass bought Thursday night took a direct hit and is now useless. Caught a foot descending a cliffy section and was quite lucky not to do a nose dive, but came down hard on one hand and that was that. At least there were only a couple controls left.

Feels really nice to be done. Mikell is out there now, with William to finish.

Awesome run Peter. How are the sausages?

I think I may have to go try one. So far I've been living on the free ham sandwiches in the press tent!

By the way, it's another beautiful day, but it was cold in the night. I didn't sleep at all, didn't really try. Wanted to see the event.

Right now there is a press conference going on about 30 feet from me. Too bad the winning team is Finnish, so I can't understand a damn thing, other than there have been several references to Swisscheese -- they seemed to win without him.

The Aussie 6th leg runner is managing to hold a slight lead over Mikkel Conradi of CSU after the 3rd intermediate control. They should be handing off to their last leg runners in less than 20 minutes.

Yeah, Mikell seems to be doing just fine.

The last real control is really in a nasty area -- moderately steep hillside, where there aren't cliffs there are boulder fields, it's mapped as light green, but medium or dark green would be more accurate. And of course several controls in there. Not nice.

Excellent, Mikell is in, picked up 5 places, we're 225th now.

OK, they finished with interviewing the winning team. One moment of clarity -- they interviewed (very briefly) the Swiss runner running 5th leg for them. Was he used to this kind of terrain. Oh, yes, he'd been here a week. He also said he missed the first control a little so was extra careful the rest of the way and had a good run.

Next up is KR, we'll see if Tero answers in Finnish....

Don't forget to try the Jukola sauna.

Boris, who tries everything, has already brought back good reports.

Good! Jukola followed with sauna and food, that's hard to beat...

I have to say that just perusing the photos on the oficial sit has convinced me I made a mistake leaving Jukola off my first European orienteering trip next month. I hope ORingen can match it. That mass start with the wall of runners coming at the camera, makes a joke of our local relays with maybe 30 teams. Even our anual national relay looks anaemic in comparison. As for the compacted crows of competitors, I think it looks like a contact sport!

Tero says he was more thinking of getting second place, didn't realize he was close to first under he got to the next last control and heard the loudspeaker say that no team was in yet.

So then I asked him afterwards when he was going to come to the USA. Non-committal, of course, but he wanted to come to Harriman to run on the WOC-93 maps, and wondered how much snow there was there in the winter. He also said maybe when the World Cup schedule changes in the next couple of years that different things may be possible. His ears did perk up when I said he might be able to meet Mr Catching Features himself!

Having run at 9 Jukolas, it certainly is my favorite event. Well, there's only 363 days till the next Jukola...See http://www.jukola2007.net/virkia/jukola.nsf/sp?ope...

There was some mass start video in the 2006 Jukola Promo Video (6MB) (Probably best to right-click, save that link.).

There are several older Jukola videos on TheWaterStop.org 's International videos page.

Here's a Venla video from Finnish TV
http://www.yle.fi/urheilu/mediasali/video/id42390_...

Are you fellows flagging at this? Everyone in bed already? Or given up?

Fadiing fast. I was hoping to stay up for CSU to finish, but...

Blair just made 9.3km.

There's Will in place 208, about 10 minutes behind Blair (at 9.3 of 14.3km).

Blair's specialty is endurance, so I'm not surtprised that he had the long leg and that he has made up over 30 places. He'll last the rest of the distance. It was good that there wasn't much between the two attack point teams! I didn't know what to expect when I suggested the comparison.

Blair just finished...Nuggets in 185th

CSU at 205!

Good race for the AP cup! Well done.

It wasn't Blair.

So what happened to him?

Chris Naunton got injured after the deadline for 'official' team changes, so we went looking for a replacement, and came up with Alistair Landels. Alistair wanted to run last leg (not quite sure why), so I moved to leg 6 in Chris's original spot. Not too upset not to have had another 5k, although I was feeling pretty good at the end.

Is this an injury with implications for JWOC?

we need background on this Alistair Landels character.

what's his star sign?
does he have any pets? etc

Alistairs glory days are from a time when the Australian Orienteer was all black and white...He came 4th in a World Cup race at one stage.
Still good to see the guys found someone from across the ditch for the team.
Can someone also confirm that my brother was the second leg runner. If so hes had a blinder and i'm really happy. He is also on attackpoint Pensioner (his name on here is Ezy).
Well done guys.

Here's a Jukola video from Finnish TV
http://www.yle.fi/urheilu/mediasali/video/id42512_...

Ezy... I should have remembered that. I remember his wonderful performance at the OZ Schools Relay sprinting off at maximum speed from the start, then reading his map, turning round and going the right way! Clearly he read his map this time.

nah that was ezy's brother dave meyer(crazydave) pensioner...........


......have you had your alztheimers medication today???

Someone asked about the GPS tracking during the race. Looks like it was not made available online live but can now be accessed at
http://www.tractrac.com/?page=news&nid=20060618

Looks like we've been promoted to 204th. I think we'll have to do this again and try to be in the top 200...

Yeh it was Ezy running the 2nd leg, i chatted to him just after he finished and he was pumped! He had a few small war wounds which wasnt surprising cos there was some bloody rugged terrain out there.
Al Landels also won a world cup race in NZ. Great race in the AP cup.

I´m back at my computer (in Sweden) again after spending the weekend coaching the CSU Jukola team. It was good to finally meet a few more orienteers from the AP crowd - having met only Peter and Boris before.

I´m very impressed by the solid performance put in by the whole team. If some of them where nervous before running they certainly didn´t show it and except for minor mistakes no-one made any costly errors, which is really quite a feat considering the situation and not being familiar with the terrain and mapping style.

Having heard about Boris´s hopes for the team (250th place) I looked at results from previous years and tried to make an estimate of what was needed. I came up with a schedule based on 8:30-9:00 min/km, which is what seemed to be necessary to reach that particular goal.

When the relay got underways it was obvious that times were notably slower than predicted for the top teams - but CSU actually sticked to their original plan thus moving up a bit in the ranks and finally reaching 204th. We were never more than 4 minutes off schedule for the whole race which is quite amazing! Great job guys!

PS. If you´ve missed hearing from PG for some time I can inform you that he has called off all orienteering activities for Monday and is out playing golf instead...

I also managed to brifly meet team CSU - it was nice to see some faces behind AP user names. I think I had met only Tapio, ebone and some (?) other AP team members at Sippu-Jukola 2005.

Spending time here in Helsinki, calling off all orienteering activities and playing golf instead sounds to me like going to Finnish Lapland in December and calling off all skiing activities and deciding to sunbath instead (the sun does not rise there at all).

Great job guys! It was a lot of fun to watch the race unfold and the result was super. Very impressive!

is it the best USA team result ever?

Not to be impertinent, but was there a correlation between height of runner and length of course?

We thought about it when we lined up for the photo in running leg order, actually, but i do think Will is shorter than any of Kenny, Matthias, and me.

To Bubo and Jagge -- spending Monday playing golf does not mean calling off all orienteering activities! You think I'm crazy? But going to Finland and not playing a round of golf (and thereby picking up a new country), well, that would be a missed opportunity. But after the golf, I zipped over to Porvoo in time for their Monday evening O' meet -- more on my training log.

Bubo, thanks for all your help. Keeping everything organized is a key part of having a good team. And Jagge, glad you found our tent and had a chance to meet us. Thanks for your help in finding me a place to go orienteeting last Wednesday.

And the CSU Jukola result -- my guess is that it will provide sweet memories for a long time to come.

That's probably true, and Matthias seems to have grown a lot since I saw him last. Is he really taller than you? Scary. But, you all seem tall to me (with some exceptions) though.

Just to make everybody's burden (being nervous and all that crap...) a little lighter to bear the team chose to pose for the 'informal team photo' in front of the garbage cans as 'Team Jätepiste' (Team Garbage).

A trained eye may notice a slightly more tense expression on some of the faces in the 'uniform picture' as it is now getting closer to race time. Also putting on the uniforms may automatically have triggered a certain level of concentration...

CSU, DVOA, GHO and others:
For the complete and traditionally Swedish Jukola experience the trip on the ferry between Sweden and Finland has to be included...

By the way - why not bring your Venla teams too?

It is much easier to get Venla team, only 4 runners is needed.

Jukola 2007, Lapua - same place hosted the Lapua Jukola in 1979 and the Fin5 orienteering week in 1994.
Jukola 1979 map

RouteGadget for Jukola & Venla relay:
http://www.jukola2006.net/gadget/cgi-bin/reitti.cg...

One thing which took me by surprise was how huge an event Jukola is in the general Finnish sporting year - I already knew it was one of the highpoints of the orienteering season. On Monday morning I visited some people at the Finnish Meteorological Institute who work in my field. On a similar occasion at home you would have to spend time explaining what orienteering is, what Jukola is, when it was, how many runners there are in a team etc., but here (amongst a group who, as far as I know, are not active orienteers), they were talking about how good it was that the Finnish clubs had beaten Halden SK in much the same way as an Australian workplace on Monday morning might feature some conversation about the Western Bulldogs beating Brisbane in the AFL (or, to use an American analogy, the Yankees against the Red Sox). Being a Jukola runner (even a relatively obscure one) was enough to render me a minor celebrity for the day.

I added routes/comments form Jukola (and my other events in Finland), including the master map of all controls, plus the forking scheme, which was quite something.

PG: On your description of the Finn golf course, you noted that the bunkers were not as mapped.

Can I infer an original golfer excuse, "Yes, I hit my ball in the bunker, but the bunker wasn't where it was mapped"? :)

7.8K, 4% climb, thick woods, yet just over 9 min/km on Jukola Relay leg - congratulations to PG and whole team.

I've uploaded some of the photos I took of the CSU team at Jukola. Sorry this is a bit after the event. These are scaled-down images. Send me an email or comment here or in my log or somewhere that I'm likely to see if you'd like a copy of the original (1.5+ mb) file of anything. Jukola Flickr photos