Tiomila is a fantastic race by itself. But like two years ago when I ran tiomila for the first time, the best feeling I bring back home the feeling of running as a team. Five girls giving their best for each other is superb.
In spite of my anemia, I’ve been able to run and spend some good time on the forest. I didn’t know how my body would react when competing again, but surprisingly I felt quite good and back on business.
This year Tiomila was held quite close from SNO-home ground and so everybody was looking forward to this! I had one training on relevant terrain on Friday and quickly understood how to play on this game – it’s fast and detailed so if you lose map contact for a moment everything look the same.
And on Saturday, at 1pm all SNO girls were carefully listening our coach (and runner) Kricko…ready for the big moment! After the meeting I started to feel the nerves and butterflies on my belly…! I ran the last leg on the second team with Jo, Lovisa, Karin and Jeanette.
My race started quite ok without big mistakes, but right after a while I started to lose self condifence and many mistakes appeared. Specially after the map change, on the way to number 150 I lost my concentration a bit and did two huge mistakes on that part. I ran most of the race by my own, but there some following group came and caught me. We ran a few controls together till we separate on the way to control number 162, because of different route choices. Then I just kept the speed running with three other girls and ran as fast as I could on the finish line to get the best place between us.
We finished at 93th place what means that the top100 goal was achieved. But that’s not the end of the story…!
After the race we come back home to take some rest (almost impossible with all the excitement of the men’s team being running). But just after a few hours Karin woke me up asking «Do you want to go running the 8th leg of the men’s SNO 5th team??» I didn’t even think twice and just say «yes! Of course!». We quickly get dressed, have some breakfast, drive to the arena and at 8pm I was starting a long tiomila men’s course. There I realize how tough it was and how hard men have to play. It was a great experience to run with such a huge map, huge legs on such a demanding terrain! ;) Unfortunately I couldn’t see Matthias arriving and celebrating the 3rd position, but just on time to see them on the podium. This year’s tiomila was very special: SNO won the junior relay, then the women did great job, we had 10 teams running the men’s relay (one of those were only girls team) and finally the SNO men reached the podium! That was amazing!!!
Ps- Thanks a lot to Karin, Matthias and Scott, my closest friends there, who are always so very welcoming and help me so much on the way to make some small dreams come true.
(Sorry but there's some problem with my blog and I can't attach my maps...as soon as it works I'll post it here)
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