18 June 2010

Nordic O Tour World Cup and Jukola

So last night was the first race in the Nordic Orienteering Tour, part of the 2010 World Cup. The concept was a 25 minute middle distance followed by a map change and a 15 minute sprint race in an urban forest and town just north of Helsinki.

My preparation wasn't ideal, with a meeting at university the day before, and arriving in Finland 10pm the night before the race, but I ran quite well without feeling fantastic. Only 2.02 behind the Hubmann but 17th place! The standard in the men's class is just so high - 45 guys in about 4 minutes! Another stable top 20 - want something a bit better next week.

Can see the tracking here and the results here

Now it is time for final preparations for Jukola. For the first time I am running for a British club - my new home club South Yorkshire Orienteers, based in Sheffield. We have talked about British clubs running for years, but finally this year we made it happen, and we have 3 mens teams and 2 womens teams taking part.

Both first teams are quite strong, with all national team runners (current or former). The men's team has 3 of the British 2010 WOC team, 1 of the 2010 JWOC team, and Jamie Stevenson as well! It will be really difficult to do well in Finnish forest at night, but we hope that a) we can be the best British team, b) we can get the best British team result ever (currently 43rd) and c) that we can be top 25 and get a plaque at the prize giving. I am running the last leg.

The team is sponsored by Inov8 and Smartwool.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It is aloud to represent one club in Scandinanavia during one year, let see if NORT is able to give some penalty

gg said...

well, 'anonymous', actually it is allowed to only represent one scandinavian club in scandinavia during one year, as we checked with the jukola organisers a long time before jukola, i guess i got my penalty at nort though....