Discussion: Venla / Jukola

listen live:
http://timo.jukola.com:8000/listen.pls

it seems like they're announcing in finnish and english this year. I haven't heard any swedish yet.

http://www.jukola2005.net/en/index.php

it's currently the first leg of the venla.

Anyone have a list of all the North Americans there?

here's "team attackpoint"...of course it's possible they switched up the order. looks like eric is doing well on the first leg.

see also:
karen's venla team - looks like a good run
swisscheese - running anchor leg for his team

Wow - Marc's team is 6th after 4 legs!!!

swisscheese is running in 3rd place after 1/3 of his final leg!

If I read that right, Karen was among 31 competitors in 17 seconds. That must have been one heck of a mess in the exchange zone.

Marc's in 3rd, a minute behind second, 4 out of the lead.

and Team AP is running in 403rd position. Looks like about 1300 teams started. very nice!

Sorry I couldn't make it. The latest info was one of OK Tyr's runners is really "Vladimir Gusiatnikov".

I didn't have a very good run, but the team did pretty well as a whole. We didn't beat 10 hours, but top 400 was decent. Too bad I lost those 114 spots :(

Quick summary of Team Attackpoint:

Leg 1: Eric Bone. Very nice run working through the crowds to be only a half dozen minutes behind the leaders.
Leg 2: Leif Anderson. Reports about a 10min error but generally held our place.
Leg 3: Tom Hollowell. Clean run navigationally but legs weren't there.
Leg 4: Mikkell Conradi. Reports 3 errors of about 15 min.
Leg 5: Tom Carr: On all but two controls I was running well, planning ahead, and was pretty clean. Unfortunately, I had 2 bad controls that cost me at least 10 min. On one of them there were, I swear, at least 20 people bashing around a green area looking for a stupid knoll. Finally, someone announced it was found and people converged from all 360 degrees, all with a mutual feeling of annoyance. I punched andhauled out of there to finished the rest of the controls clean. More details to be posted on my log.
Leg 6: Tapio Karras. An excellent 10k run in 85 minutes followed by a happy visit to the sauna.
Leg 7: Anders from OK Tyr, aka, Vladimir. We pressed OK Tyr backup man into service for the long leg, and I do mean pressed. He wasn't happy about running 15k before the race, or after, and probably not during. But by our measure, he ran a very good time and we were fortunate and happy to have his efforts. Thanks, Anders.

A couple of final notes:
* Eric was prominantly featured on the front page of the sports section of the Helsinki newspaper in US team jersey and headlamp. Leif, Lisa and I were in the background. They came through Fri night and we were one of the few in the tent area.
* This morning as the last runners were still poring in and people were analyzing results I was brought to the announcer's booth to discuss the condition of O in the US, and what was "Team Attackpoint". It appears that they don't recognize the name as an orienteering term. I had my 5 min of fame.

Thanks for this update, Tom. Great stuff!

Analyzing my race, I think I had approximately 25 minutes of errors, not 15m as Tom thought.

Team splits here.

Oh, and Swisscheese and his team did really well!.

I bet some of you would like to see the maps too.

Route Gadget for Jukola & Venla relay:

http://jukola.kyamk.fi/htbin/reitti.cgi

I just installed it, so there is not yet so many routes. But quite soon there should be lot of them.

It seems like there are a lot of courses there already. I can't find myself in the pull-down though, is it sorted somehow? I didn't manage to recognize any particular sorting order so I could calculate what page I should be on.

It is ordered by team's final position. Team AP runners are around 25-30 % from the top. You should have finished like swisscheese!!! ;)

OK, I'll improve it somehow for next Jukola. I already got lot of improvement ideas from team AP runners I met at Sippola.

Swisscheese reports a fantastic experience in Finland. But gosh, the return to the dental clinic today was all but fun. Quintessence, never start orienteering, or never go back to real life once you have started.

The Swampfox congrats Swisscheese on his fantastic experience--and even Jukola race--in Finland. Now, go pull some teeth and make 'em smile!

I want to thank tomwcarr for all of the time and effort spent organizing transportation, accomodation, and race inforamation during Jukola (and the week before Jukola). Without his efforts, our/ my experience couldn't have been as fun or seaminly effortless.

Thanks again,

Leif

I second that - thank you Tom!

Oh, and sorry to skip town while y'all were sleeping.

I would also like to thank Vladimir for getting the snowball rolling, setting up the mailing list, coaching etc. I was sad when - at the last minute - we heard you could not make it.

Thanks for your kind thoughts guys. It was a great trip! And I wish I could have continued traveling with Leif for more great O and great company.

Vladimir is the heart and soul of Attackpoint-rasti and we indeed missed him.

I would like to add that Jukka Kokkoniemi, who visited the US over the past winter and provided some excellent training a company for Leif and I, had an awesome result on leg 3, the "Long Night." He was 15th on the leg and moved his team SK Pohjantähti up 23 places to 19th -- no easy feat in that rarified air!

There are quite a few routes on RouteGadget now. If you click all the runners for a given leg, even though it says maximum of 10, you can get a little bit of a flavor for the race.

There's always next year. When I don't have two new product releases in June. Hope to enjoy the company of many Attackpoint-rastians then.

Also hope that persistent rumors of CSU and GHO fielding second-ever North American club teams come true in '06.

Plans are in motion... but we're holding off the trash talking for a little while.

Yes plans are well underway and there are rumours of GVOC and FWOC possibly fielding teams as well which is awesome!

Here's a 3-minute Jukola clip from Finnish TV.
Enjoy!

Excellent clip, giving a good representation of the crowd, the forest, and the gradations of darkness that are far from U.S. experience.

Here's a similar video clip of the women's Venla relay, with teams of 4, which took place Saturday afternoon before the men's Jukola relay.

http://ra.yle.fi/ramgen/tvurheilu/18URJ715_VENLOJE...

Take a look!