This year the relay competition was held in Lakia, flat land located 4h drive north from Turku.

Our international Snättringe runners including Brais, Jesper, Joschi, Elia, Matthias, Yoav, Flavio, Lucie, Simon and Lucía started the trip earlier by traveling already on Wednesday evening and getting some preparation trainings for the big relay in relevant terrain. 

After an early start on Thursday with the short ferry and after few car-misfortunes where solved for the first time

For the second time

 

Nevertheless the early-camp runners arrived to Venla/Jukola area joining the very first training at Susivuori Kauhava: the terrain looked fast, the contours not so easy to read on and the compass an important tool to not forget to use at any time. Map of the training

With first training done, our runners moved back to the cottage that would be our base for the weekend: a lot of rest, plenty of good food and some geeking and analysis of the terrain and maps to get hyped for the weekend's relay. 

Friday started with more serious car problems:

and then the second relevant training, a short trip to the arena where we set up the tents and wandered a bit around to get familiar with the area and a bit of the essential shopping for the weekend running festival. 

The impressions from the relevant trainings were that the races were expected to be extremely fast and flat, with typical Finnish gray areas and marshes as the predominant features. The 2.5m contours make it a bit more difficult to read on and details were much much smaller than our local Stockholm maps, so an extra difficulty to relocate if lost. Stones vary in size but are a quite good detail to confirm your position. Cliffs are rather small and only visible from below. Not many green areas were visited on our training maps, but the ones we went to, are typical light green areas: a bit slower and worse visibility than the white. The conclusion was that straight is great but always know your position and have a clear plan for each leg!

And with that, Saturday arrived, the rest of the Snättringe runners had their express trip to the arena just on time to start the weekend relay! 

Although rest sounds a bit wrong, since we had 5 Venla Teams and 4 Jukola Teams this Year, the later arriving were the clearly bigger group.

Since it was quite a drive from Turku, for most women it meant to more or less start directly with preparations to run their leg. Some rain showers during the race and rather green terrain were not as welcoming as everybody did hope. 
Those staying inside the house didnt mind the rain too much while spectating Venla

 

And while the Women had to more or less start directly after arrival, the men had a bit more time to relax before their race. Between the two relays everybody had the chance to follow an air show on site.

Afterwards it was time for dinner and some final preparations before the night should start to settle.

And soon all runners were lined up to start Jukola 2024

But did it really get dark? Since it was quite far north some runners did have to carry a lamp, but mostly to read the map and not to navigate in the dark forest.

In general we had good performances by everybody. Making sure to punch the correct controls, trying to stick to the line as close as possible and keep track of what happens on the map. Unfortunately we had a miss punch for Mens team two on the last control of the course. (As usual in the last years there are two last controls, and we ended up with the wrong one.) This resulted in the following results:

Results Venla

107 Snättringe SK1

220 Snättringe SK3

239 Snättringe SK2

384 Snättringe SK4

617 Snättringe SK5

Results Jukola

57 Snättringe SK1

311 Snättringe SK3

496 Snättringe SK4

MP Snättringe SK2

While waiting for the departure of the ferry, the faster car could organise us some nice Pizza that we enjoyed at the bus stop next to the ferry terminal

 

A closer look at the results of the first teams

Venla

1. Frida Hector 163 1:03:46 +12:13 163 1:03:46 +12:13
2. Kristina Tedhamre 110 (-53) 2:03:32 +21:49 92 59:46 +11:34
3. Mira Vejedal 101 (-9) 2:59:21 +34:39 97 +14:47
4. Thea Gelius 107 (+6) 4:11:53 +50:49 135 +19:36

SSK1 at Venla:
2011: 381
2012: 361
2013: 381
2014: 362
2015: 244
2016: 283
2017: 283
2018: 243
2019:142
2021:127
2022:101
2023: mp (around 136)
2024: 107

In the womens relay we had two experienced and two young women running in the first team. Since there are only 4 legs and a rather short total time, mistakes have a big influence on the end result. Nevertheless the team almost managed to finally reach top 100 and was close to the best result in modern times. It is nice to see our own young talents beeing able to keep up with the experienced ones and proving that they will push the level in the future. Slight changes in the lineup at Venla can have a big influence on the result. And I am sure we will see the team finishing top 100 next year if everybody keeps training.

Jukola

1. Joschi Schmid 89 1:20:43 +4:51 89 1:20:43 +4:51
2. Jesper Lidmar 65(-24) 2:48:20 +12:36 56 1:27:37 +8:44
3. Mattias Kallhauge 58(-7) 4:07:45 +24:14 66 1:19:25 +11:39
4. Hannes Lindqvist 73 (+15)5:15:08 +35:24 145 1:07:22 +14:15
5. Isak Gelius 67 (-6) 6:13:45 +44:28 69 58:37 +10:14
6. Flavio Poltéra 63 (-4) 7:38:49 +1:00:58 55 1:25:03 +16:29
7. Elia Gartmann 57 (-6) 9:11:44 +1:13:23 36 1:32:54 +13:59

SSK1 at Jukola:
2011: 282
2012: 182
2013: 182
2014: 221
2015: 256
2016: 145
2017: 133
2018: 112
2019:85
2021:50
2022:47
2023: mp (around 47)
2024: 57

The mens team had high ambitions this year. After Simon (Hector) injured himself in spring and had to undergo an operation on this right foot right before Jukola, therefore not running, those hopes were slightly less high. It anyway felt like we had a strong team on the startline with a very similar level of all the runners, maybe most even ever?!, and some good ones not even making the cut for team 1. Nevertheless we could feel that Simon was missing, usually putting us in a really good position after one of the early legs, which we can use later to run to a good result. This year was therefor different, nevertheless we did fight to pick positions during the relay. And most runners managed to do so. Climbing up the field to a solid 57th position in the end. Not our best result ever, just more or less around those positions we ended up now many times. But without Simon. Which would not have been possible before. It still felt like we could and should do slightly better than we did and the future has to show if we all can improve the minutes needed to reach those positions we dream of. The team is (mostly) still young and the future might be bright if the runners are ready to commit to the training needed.

Personal note about Jukola 2024 (from Flavio):

On this years Jukola the organizers were ready to make big compromisses for having an easy accessable and easy to build arena. On Venla it ended up with only use rather boring or green forrest. In Jukola on the other hand, you had time to prepare the whole course while running 2km to a more interesting forrest right after your start.

On top, if you were unlucky with what leg you ran, you had the pleasure to also come back the rather boring part of the forrest. For my taste too big compromisses.

First half written by Lucia, second half by Flavio. Pictures Simon, Flavio, Lucie, Brais and Frida