A Canadian in Sweden

25 Manna

Well, I guess I was a bit misinformed about several things this weekend.

1) This competition, (www.25manna.nu) is the second biggest orienteering relay on the planet. Only Tiomila is bigger. There were 348 teams of 25 people each competing. A quick back of the envelope calculation gives 8700 racers.

2) The ride down to Stockholm in a bus does not take 6 hours as I had been led to believe. It takes closer to 10 hours if you include the 45 minute rest stop to eat in the middle. So I spent nearly 20 hours on a bus this weekend. On the upside, I got to see a lot of Swedish countryside and chat with interesting orienteers.

3) The guys I was running against on the last leg were, for the most part, running at World Cup / World Championship level. They are fast.

I was pretty happy with my performance. I certainly was not competitive with the other guys on my leg, but I put in a solid performance for where I feel I am at. No major ridiculous errors, and I ran quite smoothly for the full 8.8 km distance, doing it under 1:22. I probably could have gone a bit faster, but you have to remember I had 24 teammates who would not have been impressed if I had gotten lost or mispunched. So I chose to be a bit conservative and get the job done. Interestingly, I had one dude who followed me all the way around the course starting at control 2 right through to the end at control 19. So I was obviously not the suckiest guy out there. At the last control (see the photo below), I arrived with a group of about 5-6 other racers. You have to remember that we were 200 meters away from the finish. I stuck my SI card in the control and took off, but 10 m away realized I had not heard the little beep that tells you your punch had been electronically registered. Too many people were screaming too loudly. So I stopped, went back and re-punched just to be absolutely positive I didn't disqualify the team. That was probably the hardest part of that whole race, because I lost several positions right there. I made up a couple of positions in the sprint to the finish line, but I definitely lost 1 or 2 positions overall.

The weather really sucked. Saturday it just poured all day. With upwards of 10 000 people mucking around a field where the tent city went up, it quickly turned the ground to mush. It was really, really muddy. It was like the Woodstock of orienteering, without the drugs, mosh pit or Jefferson Airplane. People were getting naked and sliding around all over the place.

OK, I made that last bit up. Unfortunately.



Still, despite the rain it was a lot of fun. Once I actually began orienteering, I had my first experience with what people call elephant trails - that is, trails that form spontaneously in the woods by 1000 people taking the same route over the course of the day. Obviously, these elephant trails are not on the map, which can mess you up if you don't pay attention. I also realized that the actual trails were often the worst route choice because they were so chewed up and muddy, it took way too much energy to run on them.

posted by Jeff @ 11:18 AM