A Canadian in Sweden

Tiomila

Tiomila means "10 mile". Tio = ten, mila = mile.

It took me months to figure this out. It is a 10 mile, 10 person orienteering relay which is held in a different Swedish locale each year. I think I mentioned this before. Anyhow.

Oh, and a Swedish mile equals 10 kilometers. Small detail.

The race starts at 11 pm Saturday and runs non stop until there is a winner. Normally this takes about 8 or 9 hours, mostly through the night. This event is huge. While the 25 man relay I did last year is kind of more recreational in nature, Tiomila is deadly serious. It would be kind of like the Boston marathon of orienteering. It is right up there with the Finnish Jukola in terms of how important it is on the orienteering calendar.

I am running on the Umeå OK (my orienteering club) A-team, based mostly I assume on my result at Vasaloppet. I am also running the anchor leg because a) it should be during the day and b) it is really long: like 16 km. Both of these are key because I have repeatedly demonstrated my total incompetance in night time navigation starting with Army Phase training 13 years ago.

This could go two ways. If we are totally out of the hunt for any kind of result because someone screwed up their leg, my run will be reasonably pleasant and stress free. If however we are doing very well, this will make my job rather stressful, running clean-up for a team of guys who have been up all night and have a lot invested in the race. You can be sure I will be checking my controls two or three times to make sure I don't mispunch. That would be a bit awkward.

"Uh, sorry guys - I mispunched my third control and got the whole team disqualified. Hey! We are all human, right? Right? Uh - guys? "

Interestingly for a country so equality-aware, the women run a team of 5 and start at 14h00, so they only run during the day. I don't really understand this.

I will be running Sunday morning which means I will probably drive down Saturday morning. It is apparently a 7 hour car ride. The rest of the team is travelling in a sleeper train Friday night. I am bummed I will miss out on this (I love sleeper trains) but we are 3 places short and it makes sense that me being the last runner goes down later than the rest. Ah well.

I also got some nice team warmups to wear. They are snazzy. It is all about the kit.

posted by Jeff @ 10:53 PM