Koli: Day 2

Today’s training was much more orienteering-heavy, which I liked and disliked. On the one hand, I was really looking forward to getting the practice, and I love being in the Finnish woods—it’s such a different landscape than my woods at home. On the other hand, I’m kind of terrible at navigating through them, and it doesn’t feel good to constantly be unsure of myself. But I think with practice it’ll start to become more comfortable. And I’m really starting to enjoy the challenge of it all.

We started in the morning super early (ugh) doing agility with some of the girls from the Finnish team, which is also staying in Koli at the same camp as we are. They were really good sports about doing all of Erin’s trainings, especially given that it was before breakfast. Erin went through all the stations and it was funny to see—he’d demonstrate the exercise and you’d hear all these groans from the USA juniors, but then the Finnish girls would kind of giggle or lament along with us and then we’d all be smiling again. We did a mixture of shuffles, hurdles, acceleration drills, lunges, some small orienteering mini-exercises, and other strength/agility exercises Erin came up with.

After agility we went straight to breakfast, ate quickly, and packed up our stuff for the day. Because we were training with the Finnish team we had a more strict schedule, so we were out of the cabin pretty quickly.

Driving to the morning’s training

The morning’s training was a very detailed map with a lot of intricate contour detail and marshes, pretty typical of the Finnish terrain. What was a little less typical were the long linear ridges of bare rock and cliffs we encountered on the second half of the course. Those were pretty difficult to orienteer in at first, especially because the color for bare rock looked a little bluish to me so I kept confusing it for marshes. But once I got the hang of it, the long ridgelines were actually very nice to navigate by. The other thing I think is really important in this terrain is to be careful in the control circle. I’m pretty sure I got lucky a lot of times because I got drawn into the control (Finns were pretty much always going in or out when I arrived in the control circle). But I’d really like to be able to read enough detail on the map to find my control independently, and I think that’s something I’ll work on for our next training.

This morning’s map

We ate lunch at a gas station, which sounds weird, but it was actually really nice. They had a buffet line with spaghetti and salad, and you could also order pizza and burgers and fast food-y things like that. There was also a convenience store in the station. So it was a fine destination for lunch.

On the road to the lunch spot

Eating lunch

USA lunch table (you can kind of see the Finnish team guys in the background)

Addison seriously enjoying a pizza

By the time we were done with lunch, the weather had gotten a lot worse. A fine drizzle had started up, in addition to the wind and cold (I think it was probably only in the 40s), so driving to the afternoon training we were dreading getting out of the warm car again to run again in the cold.

The afternoon training was much the same as in the morning. Marshy underfoot, almost a spongy feel to the earth, with low visibility and a kind of undulating look to the earth because of all the hidden moss-covered rocks and knolls. And that same intricate contour detail as before. I found cliffs easier to use, this time around, because there were just fewer of them and also less of the bare rock we saw on the other map. But on the whole this map was more vague and harder to read as the previous one. A lot of the map was so similar that you could be in someplace way off and still think you were en route to the control, because you could easily mistake the features around you for the ones you were following on the line. So it required a lot of careful reading.

The afternoon’s map.

Once I got moving I warmed up pretty quickly so the cold became less of an issue. It was harder later on in the course, once all my layers were soaked through, and when I had slowed down because I was less sure of myself. I bailed out on the last two controls because I was feeling really cold and I didn’t think I could do the course in the time we were given. A lot of people (Izzy, Addison, and Anne, to name a few), also skipped a couple of controls somewhere in the course, either because they couldn’t find them or because they bailed out at the end.

Everyone was shivering and wet when they got back, but fortunately Erin told us to make sure we packed a change of dry clothes, and we all stripped off our wet things and put on dry ones. We warmed up just fine on the drive back (and in the sauna and shower afterwards!) so it ended up being just fine.

Wet clothes hanging up outside from the training

Shoes from training

Dinner was delicious as always.

Mashed potatoes, homemade meatballs, and carrot salad

Discussing the day’s training at dinner

After that we had a team meeting discussing timeliness (specifically, getting up in the morning and getting ready on time), and then talked about the day’s training. We talked about our routes to each leg, and Erin and Jordan Laughlin (he joined us in Kuopio the day before we left for Jukola) gave us some advice and made some observations of their own about our performance in the woods. Many of my earlier comments about the terrain and map were a summary of what we discussed (along with what I learned myself).

Looking over courses at the team meeting

Much more sore today. And tired. Going to bed for now.

See you tomorrow,

—Addie