Jukola and hanging out with Kaisa Mäkäräinen
Why do you carry skis with you?
That was the most common question I got ask during my three day journey to Jukola team competition. No surprise, summer came even to Finland and weather was literally G-R-E-A-T! Despite there were lot of places with snow two week before, at Jukola time you would have to travel far no north or ski tunnel to get some skiing.
The real reason why I carried my skis was quite boring – save money.This time I could have skis for free in the plane. I plan to move to Finland in October with skis and that time i would have to pay for them some hundreds extra. So I took them with me already now for free.
But the destine helped me to come up with a pretty cooler answer. The day after Jukola I could proudly answer ”to get an autograph from Kaisa Mäkäräinen on them!!!!”.
Yeah, it was a big gig, two Finnish biathletes Kaisa and Mari Laukkanen took part in Jukola. Yes, they ran the proper orienteering race! Shit cool I would say. And they even did really good when you consider they are biathlete not orieteers! Looks like orienteering is a very good alternative sport for world best skiers. In Czech, Lukas Bauer use to take part in o-races during summer.
It was lucky to meet Kaisa when no queue behind me so there was a time for a small chat. Really nice and inspiring to talk with her about races, trainings and orienteering. At the end she asked if I wanna take a picture with her – how could I refuse? :P
But back to the business. How was this years Jukola?
Cool! I liked it! Very technical terrain! No rain! Great Terrains! I wasn´t super happy about running the last longest leg as focused whole spring to middle distance character. But it is always cool to be the team anchor!
Our first leg, Isabel, didn´t do her best, but Indre did great on second. We didn´t get four girls from Mora for our team so we got a runner support from Domnarvets by Karin Elfving.
I didn´t catch her after my race to ask how it went for her. In placings she lost some. I didn´t know what was my starting position, my focus was on my performance. I did very good in first half of the course, but then made one 2min mistake in a very technical area. I followed the path from runners and slightly got of a correct direction. It took a while to find myself and fix my pohromu. At the end of the course I felt I have difficulties to do a good orienteering and full focus (no surprise since I didn`t practice this long courses). But I managed to take advantage of girls running around me. And when we reached the easy just-about-running course ending I put all effort and crossed the finish line in front of all these girls. I caught 16 places but not enough to make it into TOP100. We ranked overall 109. Next year. Revanche.
But you know what? Our girl team 1 made the club best result ever at Jukola!! They ended at amazing 8th place! All of them, Nastia, Olha, Denca and Kristin did a very strong performance and definitely deserve this result. Big congratulation girls, it is inspiring to be with you in one club 😊 Or guys best team ended at 31st place. It is a good result but I am sure they are aiming even higher for next years!
