Dark way to hall of shame
Donnerstag, 24. Juni 2010 um 14:21 Uhr
It was a long and dark night for me this year at Jukola. After a good performance at Tiomila this year I was once again chosen to run the longest night leg, leg nr 3 in Jukola.
 I was training in Finnland already a few days since monday, so I knew how the terrain would look like and also that it would be very importent to keep the right direction.
In fact my concept worked out quite well the first controls until suddenly my headlamp stopped working around the 4th control. At an individual competition I now would have said "OK, it is enough for today - let's go home" but as it was Jukola and my teammates were relying on me I knew somehow I had to finish the race. I took my spare lamp, which was more ment to use it to make it out of the forest alive than for orienteering purposes, and continued my race.
My first thought was that the wire was not properly connected so I stopped at the first drinking point on the way to 6th control and tried fixing to problem with the help of the drinkingpoint team. It turned out that all the effort was in vain, it turned out that the lamp was connected properly to the battery pack, nevertheless it had turned off. I gave it a new try after unplugging and plugging it in again and suddenly there was light again. Only a few meters and probably 10 to 15 seconds later it was off again and I knew that there was no chance to run my race with that lamp.
On the way to control 6 I got caught by some runners which I was heading out from the start together with. I tried to take some advantage of them and their lights and followed them to the control. To number 7 my plan was to do the same but as the runability got worse I lost them because I couldn't see well enough the ground and therefore was falling several times. So starting to control 7 it was only me and my dim light.
With my small lamp in the hand I always had to chose on of three options, either reading the map, or looking on the ground to see were I can place my next step or enlight the area in front of my head in order to see which tree or branch I will hit next with my face.
As it was almost impossible to see far ahead it was quite hard to keep the direction so I turned to far to the right on my way to the control. It took some time to relocate myself on the map, but from than it worked out pretty well again. I tried to make my routechoices according to were it is easiest possible to run and also were I got bigger details to run along.
Control 14 to 15
That is the leg I cannot be very proud of. My plan to make this control looked quite simple, all I have to do is keep running the right direction. I tried to illustrate what really happened with some drawings on the map.
The plan
 was following the right direction crossing some big and obvious features which I wanted to use as a kind of tunnel to my control. On half way to the control I would come to my first tunneling lane a marsh going from north to south and a road comming from south-east continued by a marsh in the same direction. From there I can correct the direction if necessary to the next line, the small lake with a marsh and a track along. From there I have to switch to more precise orienteering uphill to the control.
Completion
 In theory it was easy in the forest it was a bit different. The first 200 meters it was OK but than I lost the direction and turned, as to 7th control, too far to the right. To me it felt like I was keeping the direction, looking at my compass I sometimes made small corrections. I thought I was running somewhere close to the line, but as my first tunneling features were not visible after minutes of running I worried a bit.
As I came to the point marked one on my map with number one, I realized that I was running wrong and, don't ask me why, turned to the right. The biggest problem at that point was, that I now turned my map and started reading and heading into the direction of the 14th control. As I than came to a lake and saw that I am at the southern end of the lake, I expected me to be at place marked 2. So I wanted to run around the lake and straight to the control, but there was a big forest road comming instead. As I also recognised the drinking and first aid station I knew it was place 3 I really was.
I was very frustrated that I made such a big mistake and asked myself why I could be so stupid. Approaching the control I realised that there was something else wrong. As I started planing the route to the next control I recognised that the numbers were decreasing and it were controls 13, 12, 11 comming afterwards. I stopped and started rethinking my race. First I thought I was running the wrong way since the lines crossed to number 7, but than I remembered that I have already been at number 14 and that it was the right direction I came from. Until there I didn't recognise that I somewhere halfway turned around and was running back.
My 2nd attempt to control number 15 was much better and I was running quite well again.
Arriving in the finish I probably was not far from crying. First there was the problem with the light running almost the whole course in the dark and, as if that would not be enough, the mistake to 15th control, running an extra loop for about 24 minutes.
As I came to our clubtent I really felt ashamed and the only thing I could do was to say sorry to my clubmates. After that race I can understand if noone wants to run with me in the same team again.
Beside my achievement that day, which gained me entrance to the hall of shame, the rest of the team was, once again, performing very well.
In the overall result we took the 40th place, but it could have been much better.
Results Jukola 2010
