A Canadian in Sweden

Back in business

Hi everyone.

Well, after a lengthy pause in our regularly scheduled broadcasts, we are back in business after a bit of gentle prodding and an unexpected endorsement from Okansas.

Last weekend was the Swedish ski- o championships (SM) in Lycksele. Lycksele is the home of the ski gymnasiet that produced local wonder boy Per Elofsson. It is a nice Norrlands town of about 10 000 people, roughly 100 km from Umeå.

Ski-o is fun. I find it technically a lot easier than regular orienteering since you pretty much stay on trails 99% of the time. So really losing contact is almost impossible. The subtlety lies in choosing the best route among dozens of possibilities. In a good ski area like Lycksele, the trail map looks like a spiderweb, so skiing from one side of the map to the other you can choose to go around the outside (and maybe miss some big climbs) or go directly and get stuck double poling uphill on a narrow skidoo trail. You have to make those decisions on the fly. However, once the decision is made, you can really push hard, which for me is different from "regular" orienteering. If I try to run hard in "regular" orienteering (what I would otherwise consider "race pace", HR of at least 160 bpm), I lose contact with the map. Not so in ski-o. You can push to the point of getting tunnel vision and still be able to remember to take the next left turn. So it suits me far better, I guess.

Ski-0 has a lot in common with the annual orienteering race through the streets of Venice.

I really wanted to race the long race (20 km) on Friday, but my car broke down 20 km outside of Umeå. I managed to get to Lycksele Friday evening, but I could only register for the Open 3 category for the Saturday race. So, no SM for me. I did place 2nd in the Open 3 category, which makes me really wonder how I would have done in the real race. Still, it was a lot of fun and I am thinking about making ski-o my focus next winter rather than Vasaloppet. 90 km of double poling is kind of cool once or twice, but I can't say I enjoy it as much as ski-o.

I just found a guy who wants to sell his Vasaloppet bib, so it is confirmed that I will be racing. This year will be more a matter of survival, I think. No matter how you slice it, 90 km is a long way to ski.

posted by Jeff @ 7:23 AM