Jukola

What? Jukola is the biggest orienteering event in Finland and this year they had over 13,500 participants. After flying to Finland for some R&R after the ARWC I received a call from Petri Forsman, former captain of the Nokia team to see if I’d be interested in running in the event in one of his clubs teams (one of the worst ones!) Seeing as I’d been practising some orienteering in Finland and so far hadn’t clocked any last places or taken an hour to find a check point 500 m away like last year I figured maybe I’d be up to the challenge. Plus I was assured – you can just follow the tracks and others going to the same controls as you.

The next week was filled with orienteering each day, in Finland they have events several times a week and permanent courses set up for practise. The event was being held only 40 km from where we were staying and the good thing was that even though I was down to do a night leg it was almost light 24 hours a day so it wouldn’t provide to many extra problems.

The event started at 11pm so it was a long wait during the day, and when we finally arrived in the early evening the place was already buzzing with the women’s event just coming to its conclusion. The place was like a huge carnival, stands, make shift shops and massive marquees filled the immediate area and huge screens to follow the action on where dotted around the area. Our first navigation challenge was to find the Delta club tent, no easy task with over a 1000 tents. Without too much hassle with managed to find a map of the tents and made our way through to find out what we were in for.

As you might well imagine the set up for an event with 13,500 competitors is massive and when you don’t speak much Finnish it doesn’t get any easier. Luckily Elina was there translating but it was still a huge confusing circus. At the last minute I’d been swapped from running the first leg to running the 3rd leg. I couldn’t see that it would be much different but I was also glad I didn’t have to try and figure out the starting procedure. There were 7 different legs in total ranging from 7.5 km to 14km. My leg was 13.5km so it was going to be a long trip if I got lost, a highly probable scenario.

The start was something else. Close to 1,500 orienteer’s lined up, maps rolled up and hanging from lines strung above their heads so no one could read them before the start and then with the ringing of the biggest bell I’ve ever seen they were off. For close to 5 minutes the competitors streamed down the starting straight and off into the bush. Around the course cameras were set up to show the action at many of the controls and information from the controls was relayed to the TV screens to show who had passed which controls. The really good orienteer’s barely seem to look at their maps and were running at a pace no normal person could keep up without even trying to read the map. Our team was sitting around the 500’s after the first lap, already almost 30 minutes behind the lead teams, then after the second leg we had moved up a bit thanks to our team mate who had been the world Champion at orienteering some years ago. His speed may have gone a bit but he could obviously still read a map pretty well. I should have been worried by the tone of his good luck when he handed me the map but caught up in the adrenaline of the event off I rushed like an idiot – luckily in the right direction at least to start with. By now it was close to 2am and it was easily light enough to move without a light, even in the forest but everyone was using huge headlamps to help read the detail on the maps.

Things started getting confusing heading up the first hill, there were a multitude of tracks that had been created by the previous runners and there were also competitors heading in every direction. Because there were people on all different legs and all the legs also had forking, which meant that at each control the courses each person had could split to take in slightly different controls. What you didn’t know was if you were following someone were they heading to the same place as you were heading or somewhere totally different? I was in a large group heading towards the first control when the group split into two main groups – both heading in directions I didn’t seem to need to go in. A couple of others were still heading my way. I’d been going a bit fast and with all the different tracks I’d lost my orientation a little and the doubt started to creep in. Had I over run the control, was I even in the right place? The two guys up a head keep on going but I decided I’d better find out exactly where I was. It didn’t take too long to pinpoint but then I started to think maybe I was just making the terrain fit the map and maybe I should have been somewhere towards where the other groups had split? In decision in orienteering isn’t a good look and by the time I found I really was where I thought I was and that I had stopped only a couple of hundred meters short of the 1st control I’d already lost a copious amount of time. Vowing to pay more attention I set off to the second control and before long I was back to a full run, jumping through the undergrowth with visions I actually knew where I was going. I knew I was getting close but I didn’t think I was that close when.....there it was, I veered slightly off my course and up to the control – whoops not that one, I kept going and kept running into controls that weren’t mine. I’d been told the forking placed the controls still pretty close together often and so I was sure it was just a matter of time until I got to mine. By now I must have drifted well off my original course and it was plan to see I wasn’t going to find this one anytime soon unless I stopped running to every control I saw. There was a road not far past the control so I legged it up to there, relocated and looped back to the control without further problems. There was quiet a number of people who seemed to have trouble on that one and now as a collective we raced up the hill towards our next target. This one looked easy and soon it came into view. $%#! Not it. How had I missed that one? No more stuffing round and I headed back towards the area it was suppose to be I reached an area I knew (as I’d now been here several times) and headed back for the control. Somehow I missed it again and when I finally found it I realised I’d been passing within about 10 metres of it each time, just on the wrong side of some trees to see it.

Not good – the fastest expected time for this stage was 1 hour 25 minutes and the predictions had been within seconds on the first two legs. I’d already used the best part of an hour and I still had 22 controls to go.

Now it was at a forced walk I set off, determined to hit the next one and a couple of minutes later in to view it popped. I didn’t dare to believe it had been that easy but on further consultation with the map, the numbers corresponded and I ticked off the 4th. Gradually I began to get a hang of the map, the trails and the endless numbers of competitors heading in different directions. Some seemed to follow, some definitely knew where they were going and many looked as confused as I did. I started to get into a rhythm and as the sun came up (3am) I was in an infinitely more positive frame of mind than 30 minutes earlier. I managed with great difficulty to avoid following and to slow down whenever I wasn’t sure and soon I was actually moving through the field, not falling out the back of it.

Just over 2 ½ hours after I started I reached the final control and the mad sprint through to the finish and the changeover. After a mad dash through the timing I collected the map for our next runner and raced through to the change over point. I’d only meet my team mate once but he definitely wasn’t there. There was over 1000 competitors warming up in the changeover area and I was stuck on the other side of the fence yelling our team name and number in Finnish in the vain hope he would hear (or understand my Finnish). 10 minutes later a rather flustered looking guy yelled to me from the starting area. Finally he’d shown up and my run at the Jukola was done. I found out later that after seeing my time for the first 3 controls he’d gone for a sleep and something to eat as he’d figured I wouldn’t be in for closer to 5 hours – I have to agree I was thinking the same after the first few controls.

Overall it was a great experience and I learnt a lot, especially about how to approach an orienteering event with 13,500 competitors. Not likely to be an issue in NZ but maybe one day I’ll get another chance to run in an event similar over here.