I spent the last ten days in winter paradises of Lapland, which is really unsual for an orienteer during Easter. Because I hadn’t really even started my skiing season this year, I decided to enjoy some nice sessions and nice company hanging around in Ylläs and Levi. On Sunday, we ended the holiday or should I say training camp with Maria Rantala by skiing the Saami ski race . Maria took the 90k’s from Hetta to Kautokeino (Norway) while I was being a wice girl with my 200k’s of skiing background and only took the 60 k’s. The style was free, but we took it classic and were almost the only ones.
So, the race was a lonely and long one for me. I had tested my skiing form by skiing a couple of long ones during the week, so I thought it would have been a piece of cake if I just kept the heart rates low. However, I shouldn’t have underestimated the length by not drinking on the stations. I was in a good speed during the first half of the race but as I noticed that I wouldn’t make it below four hours, my spine cracked and the last 10 k’s were really long ( they were in fact about 1,5 k’s longer, which didn’t really help at all). Without arms it’s quite hard to ski and my skiing muscles are as old as my other equipment. Best before date was over ten years ago;) Anyway, the main point was to get a good long training, see some nice views and that was what I got.
In fact, the conditions in Lapland were just perfect almost all the time. This time i decided not to get crazy with training there but I wanted to enjoy some downhill skiing and concerts as well. I’ve learned that it’s not a bad thing to take some days off the hard training, too.
It’s still very snowy at home as well. Still I think that my skiing season ended on Sunday. The streets seem to be snowfree, so I can at least start to dream of summer now. In fact, my season start and the first Huippuliiga event will be held in a couple of weeks in Espoo wether there’s snow or not. And of course, WOC ON HOME GROUND will start in three months, so now it’s time to start to do things well, better and the best I can. For the finnish readers I’d like to remind that there will be just orienteering on TV Sportmagasinet today, so make your sports before that and put your asses in front of your tvs in the evening. There will be a lot of stuff from our TC in Barbate as well as from WOC organisation.
I’ll try to get some pics here later if and when I get my old cell to syncronize with my new apple. By the way, i finally got my papers from the university too. So you can call me the Master of arts from now on 😉 What I’ll do with those papers, is still a mystery that I’ll probably solve some day.
And now, some days of easy training and smiling in front of cameras. Maybe I’ll try to find some snowfree woods for the weekend, if i’ts even possible here in Finland.
Minttu