route to gold: Finnish champs ultra long 2020

17 of October 2020 I ran Finnish champs on ultra long distance.

Why? Why I, while representing Swedish club, run in Finland sometimes? Why ultra long, it's so fucking long and hard?

Because sometimes there is no events in Sweden and Stockholm and it's quite easy to get to Finland and relatively cheap (around 100 euro) and there is high quality event.
Because in champs you might get strongest starting field. Because long and ultra long is hard and this is for man, so cool.
This year in particular because I was aiming to ran Swedish champs long, but woke up with pain in foot in race day (probably injured it during middle final champs day before), so didn't run that one.
There is also some charm in running in autumn forest with yellow trees and leaves. So you even don't want to stop this, haha )

Anyway, I got to Finland. Actually, I stuck at passport control for 2 hours. Rules for entry in a countries changes these uncertain times often, so passport control thought participation in event was not necessary. But let me in after some time.

Truly to say and summarising the event now, I'm not very satisfied. Not from my result, but from event, happening. And I don't know why. Not organisation, but maybe course and race itself. I can't understand. Maybe you can.

I didn't enjoy the course setting. There is nothing wrong with it in particular, but I don't enjoy.
40 controls for ultra long sounds justifiably, but is it really necessary?
Yes, we got 3 forking places, but after last 3-rd forking we steel have been in group of more than 10 people all together.
Some of the legs have no obviously good route choices. Is it a problem? Myself I do like to set legs when I don't know how would I run the leg, but. How to run leg 1-2? 24-25? 26-27, 37-38?
Speed was an issue. I was in the alone lead after 1 control until 24. Then big pack caught me and we went around to the road. It seems from split times that Timo Sild (Koovee) and Jussi Suna (TuMe) took some other route choice, at least I never saw them and went in the lead. I saw Jussi's back on his way from 25th, when we made small mistake in the circle, he was some 30 seconds in front of us (but split times shows we were 1.22 behind him).
So, speed, or pace. When pack caught me the pace was ok on the road, but a bit slow in the forest. Why I didn't went in the lead you can ask then? Good question and I don't have proper answer on it. Probably because I was not ready good enough. My pace got a bit slower when I was running along first half of the course. I probably also was a bit tired after 2 hours of running/orienteering. My orienteering was not the best all the day, it was quite rough and I made mistakes. I don't know why. Maybe because we woke up at 6.30. Maybe because it was wet in the forest so it was almost not possible to use magnifier for this map and it's quite difficult to read a map, especially Finnish mapping style maps (btw good style) with many details at competitions speed in 15 000 scale. I also start freezing after second part of the course, so it was difficult to hold the map and emit, not even talking about proper comfort orienteering and map reading (yes, I ran in underwear under t-shirt, but it was wet in the forest after morning rain and +5 degrees).
Also one of the issues with pace was that I ran 2 or 3 times ultra long competitions in Norway ─ Blodslitet ─ and always afterwards I was smashed. It may say that my shape was not good enough those days, but it also might say that pace this time was not high enough and all we (me and guys) were not pushing hard. One prove of that is during second half I felt pace was just as at long distance running training ( Swedish långpass), when you run in moderate steady tempo around 2:30:xx and not fully exhausted after a finish, just like tired overall. Anyway.
On the other hand it was nice and surprisingly to see 10+ men who can run such a long course all together after more than 2 hours in tough terrain.

Last long leg was a decisive one.

From control 36 we went around 10 person to the road. This leg was a difficult for me for a while and I didn't decide how to run it. I made decision within half of the second then we all came t the road. All want to the right, so I turned left. I saw it was possible for a while to run on small forest workers tracks. Entry to control was bad, but it was not perfect from right "road" side either. Summarising this leg, that was a mistake from me and for me. It seems guys has increased pace significantly on the road, so I lost on my leg 2 minutes to them. All 3-11 places guys was in this pack and I was there, but took wrong route choice. Definitely I don't feels sorry for this, but can call this unnecessary experience.

All other was good :)

A big thank you to organisers for competitions in this times. A big thank you for Finnish orienteering rules that everyone at least have possibility to start and run in national champs (compare to Swedish bullshit when you are not allowed to run if you are not registered in Sweden).
As long as no one is getting younger, I can only hope my shape will be good enough to start same event some other day too.

To make it clear. I don't want to offend anyone. If you think I'm wrong, I'm apologise. I just expressed my experience.