Training Log Archive: tommig

Day 2 in the mass start, legs felt a bit heavy. Sara better able to judge her effort as more ready for the terrain, and also keep me in check. Me much better at regularly eating and drinking. No orienteering mistakes really, slow and steady, but everytime we got away from the terminators they would appear somewhere in our field of vision. FInally put some proper distance between them on the LONG uphill slog between 2 and 3. Caught up the D21As at 3, and kept them in our sights through 4 and 5. 5-6 a contouring and climbing along the side of a big fell, D21s dropped low to take a straigher line but Sara suggested staying on the contour and going round and we must have taken a good 100m or more out of them. Lovely last few controls, bit of a struggle to find a place to get under the Reindeer fence but finished just under 4 hrs, 3 mins ahead of D21A pair and 6 mins ahead of the Terminators. A wonderful event as always!

Sara's first Fell orienteering, entered the longest mixed pair category. Stunningly beautiful and so lucky with the weather! Course took us up over Iso-Jehkas where we found ourselves ambushed by a massive "porotokka" or herd of reindeers. Hard to know how many there were but the whole fell was moving all of a sudden. At least a couple of hundred, probably more. My first experience of being GPS tracked too! It was fun, energy started to run out towards the end, hadn't eaten enough along the way and when I needed it found it hard to stomach the snickers bar. Also should have drunk more as water was fairly readily available to refill bottles so no need to have been so conservative. Towards the second half of course we were overhauled by a couple we named the "Terminators" as they just kept on coming relentlessly. They overtook us and beat us by 9 mins as we had a bit of a stumble coming into our 2nd to last orienteering control. Some hesitation as to where we were crossing the reindeer fence and then very rocky ground coupled with tired legs and brains meant that we were slow here. Just beaten by a pair of D21A's so we were last on our course, though the 1 minute Age handicap took us back ahead of the D21s.... the Terminators had 22 minutes age handicap so were long gone! Thoroughly enjoyable, cabin and sauna just minutes away from the event centre...

Variation on Mum's triathlon for longer run before swim in Iso-parikas with the nieces, grill some makkara and walk back to bikes :)