Note
In anticipation of early morning flights tomorrow, I'm spending the night at Arlanda (with a nice couch already claimed) with teammates Ian, Mr. AttackPoint, and Mr. Catching Features. Couldn't ask for better company….
A little more about the 10-mila trip.
This was an attempt to rectify the 2008 trip to 10-mila where we DQ'd on the tenth and last leg when Will used Billygoat rules and skipped a control he was probably within 50 meters of. Though it was only partly that, because the other part, and I'd guess the more significant part, was that it just very much a good experience to gather up a bunch of folks, make a commitment 6 months in advance, and then show up in the center of the O' universe for one of the biggest events in the O' world and have at it.
I'd been on a Jukola trip in 2006 and the 10-mila trip in 2008, both a lot of fun, so when Boris circulated the idea last fall, I signed up right away. Though I really had my doubts that it made sense any more for me to be on the team. At some point I offered my spot to Alex, but by then she had other plans. So it seemed I was going.
In 2008 we had had a few problems with the orienteering, mistakes here and there, and our placing among the 300+ teams was in the mid- to low-200s most of the night, and would have ended right about 200th had we been legit. So that was our expectation for this time, hopefully/maybe better than 200th, with making the top half of the field of 330 teams and matching our team number (#165) giving the same stretch goal that seemed quite impossible.
And the primary overriding goal was not to DQ.
Our running order was a bit wacko, determined by who was old and slow (me), who was out of shape (Boris), who was willing or unwilling to go out at night, who was maybe arriving too late to run an early leg (Ali) -- all matched up against the schedule of course lengths which had, among other things, the shortest leg that would definitely be in the daylight being the last leg, so yours truly was running anchor, Giacomo running lead-off, and Ian, Matthias, Brendan, and Kenny running the long night legs with Kenny getting 17 km.
Giacomo was brilliant, just 7 minutes back, 159th place (not quite like the US relay champs, though maybe someday?). And that set the tone. No bad mistakes the whole way, placings that surpassed our expectations at every exchange.
Boris ran second, no mistakes, changed over in 174th to Ian just as it was getting dark. Ian was very solid, came back after 13 km in 156th place. Next were Matthias, back in 170th, Brendan in 168th, then Kenny the traditional long night leg, out for two and a half hours and back in 164th as it was getting light. And still no bad mistakes.
Next was Biggins, back in 164th just as he started, handed over to Ali for the 13 km 8th leg which she crushed in 98 minutes, picking up 12 spots, and Ross out on the 9th leg, 15.3 km which he smoked in 1:51, moving up another 12 spots so we were now 140th. Not that I knew it because I was already off in the mass start with the herd.
I was clearly the weak link on the team, so the goal was to not make it any worse by being stupid. I figured I'd cost us 20 places, at least. But a good run, a tenth and final thumbs up from the official as the e-punch was downloaded, and a few hours later when all the results processing was done, and we were in 145th. Amazing.
Had we gotten better? Have the Swedes just gotten worse? Did adding a women to our team account for the difference. What gives?
I don't know. But I do know that everyone ran with the right mindset for relay racing -- that any individual can't win the race but you sure can lose it. And so the feeling was that everyone should run within themselves, stay cool, stay calm, and for sure check your codes. I don't know how much time we lost to mistakes over the 15 and a half hours, I'd be surprised if it was much over 15 minutes total. It sure wasn't very much.
We tend to have little appreciation for relays in the USA. There is often a feeling of not wanting to have others rely on you, not wanting to let others down. But orienteering, so often very much an individual sport, can also be a wonderful team sport, with its own set of challenges and its own set of memories. You just have to be willing to give it a chance.