Already Wednesday afternoon 15 SSK runners left Huddinge towards Kotka to prepare best for this years Jukola adventure.

Simon trying to find 100kg on the boat. Jekabs and a heavy bag helped out.

 

Soon it turned out that 3 cars can be very fully packed, especially when the words "bring a mattress" is taken a bit too much word for word. But somehow we did manage, with some (read 'quite many') bags on our laps, to get everybody and everything in to our cars and pick up Thomas and Ernest who did travel directly to Helsinki, making it 17 runners and a big pile of bags in 3 cars.

Thomas, Sahar, Yoav, Simon, Mattias and Flavio in the Car.

Once we did reach the accomodations we had a quick lunch and went for a training in the forest just north of the competition area. Flat and quite green terrain did await us. But in between it also had nice open terrain and some barerock areas. But we did understand quickly that the compass would be one of the most important tools this year.

On Friday we went for a model event next to the arena, where more or less all the elite teams also went for a last preparation training. That model event south of the competition terrain the forest did show that green areas can be quite dense and difficult, and the guess was that it would be even more so at night. But in general the feeling was much better on the 2nd training and the optimism did rise that we can do good races in this terrain.

We also put up the club wind shelter and checked out the arena to see the change-over. In the evening we had a nice barbeque and rubarb crumble cake with ice cream.

The traffic jam before Venla relay was heavy and you could see runners run past the queue to make it to their start. Fortunately we didn't have this problem as first and second leg Venla runners took the extra ferry to Turku to be a bit earlier in the Arena, and were there in good time ready to race. Soon after the start also the busses from Helsinki did arrive with all the other runners.

The weather did not welcome us with sunshine this time, but rather windy conditions and rain non-stop, making the race a very wet experience.

After a very good first leg of Thea the first women team was in the battle to hunt down last year club record. In the end the team with the two experienced orienteers, Chloe and Kristina, and the still very young runners, Thea and Tess, did not fully manage to achieve a new club record, but were also not far away with a strong 87th place.
Team 2 finished on position 196, Team 3 as 396th and the old lady's team 4 on position 1013 out of 1551 teams on the startlist. (Link to the Venla results)

When the night started to settle, it was time for the men's race. In the meantime the non-stop rain got even harder and the arena started to have small water streams all over the place. For most teams those conditions are maybe not their favourites, while our first team usually gets extra exicted. Pitch dark and difficult conditions is exactly what our night specialists want. The race started and waiting for the first split time is always the most nervous. We quickly understood that we had a disastrous start in the relay this year, but there was not much else to do, than fight for every position and second out there, which everyone really did. Joschi repaired his bad start and we started to pick position after position. The rain finally stopped after a few hours, and results were moving in our favour. Especially Jekabs was showing a superb run, 4th best time on his 5th leg! Wow! And in the end we did manage to achieve the best men's result in modern history, after a 26th place in 1969, finishing on position 33! Achieving this result with several legs that did not go as we hoped and having some runners with injury problems this spring, as well as the age of the runners in first team only in their mid Twenties, does show the potential of this team. We are not done yet!
Team 2 finished 119th, Team 3 as 244th and Team 4 as 323th out of 1879 teams.

What did not go well this year:

- One of the rented houses had to cancel our registration only 1 week before Jukola because of a "major issue in the house that makes living there impossible". Luckily we did manage to find another house in the area, even if there were basically none left because of Jukola.

- In one of the rented houses all of a sudden water started to run down on the wall. While some did try to locate the water source, water already started to drop down from several spots on the cealing also. The source was found around a toilet on the upper floor and we managed to solve the problem with a friend of the house owner living close by. Even if he did not speak anything other than Finnish, and our skills in this language are very very limited.

 

- Yoav managed to not only destroy his shoes in 10mila, read more about it here, but also at this year's Jukola, losing the sole of his shoe after half the race. That he started to not lose any time to the leaders after doing so, despite also stopping 30s for an urgent toilet break, is nothing but incredible!

- Sahar did start his Jukola first leg in one of the worst possible ways, falling soon after the start and causing several runners to run in to him. Luckily he did not get injured but his lamp could not be fixed on the head anymore, so he had to run the race with his lamp in his hands. Apart from that, he had already an extra challange wearing glasses in pouring rain.

- Driving with a fully packed car is quite usual for orienteering competitions with many runners in the car. But loading a car with 2 large extra mattresses was still a new experience for us. (See picture with Thomas in the fully packed car above)

- Joschi's first controls, where he got completely lost. But after that he showed very good team spirit and picked runner after runner. And only losing 1 min on the remaining 10 km of the race, while overtaking almost 500 runners, is very strong!

What did go extra good this year:

- 2nd best result for men ever! After a 26th place 1969

- Jekabs 4th place on his leg!

- Seeing Elia back in the team after struggeling 2 years with sickness. Performing well with a 82nd position on leg 6 in his first forest orienteering race since JWOC 2024.

- Thea's first leg performance

- Support team was excellent this year, especially Elin planning and having an overview of everything that was happening during the night, knowing exactly when it was time to contact every runner to make sure they are awake and ready to race.

- The team spirit, cheering for each other during the relay. Probably better cheering than we have had before

- Good trainings and fun to be so many in the precamp

- SSK's Karaoke performance on the Jukola boat with the song "Taylor Swift - Wildest Dreams"