For
the first leg of our Scandinavian tour Jenny, Matt Crane and I took in the Fin
5 days in Sippo, near Helsinki. We stayed in the Espoon Suunta club house and
were provided with training and a program of tourism by the club throughout
the week.The terrain and maps were fantastic with huge expanses of detailed open rock split by low visibility forest and marshes. The program was noticably light (especially compared with O Ringen elite) with 1 short distance, 2 middle distances, 2 classics and a rest day. This attracted Jani Lakanen and Vroni Konig-Salmi to take part directly after the European Champs week - 13 races in 15 days (see Jani Lakanen's site for more details).
The week started well for all of us with solid, technically good races over the first two days. A glutton for punishment, Matt took part in the Finnish Top-League sprint on the rest day. He ran a good race to finish 14th, just 1.23 behind winner Pasi Ikonen.
Day
4 proved decisive for most as big mistakes were made in the more detailed terrain.
Jenny dropped from 12 to 15 and Matt didn't finish after a bad start to the
race. I was lucky tp pick up from 12 to 9 after a scrappy run. The chasing start provided an opportunity for some faster running in an open and less detailed forest. Starting only seconds away from other runners I was expecting a pack run, but I saw no one and picked up to 7th despite some small mistakes. Jenny did run with others and managed to drop most of them to finish 12th. The day's excitement was provided by Lakanen and Salmi who had been battling for the top spot all week. Lakanen managed to close down a gap of 2 minutes and pull away by 20 seconds to win a sit-on lawnmower (he lives in a flat!). Luckily Vroni won the women's class (by a margin of 20 minutes!) so they'll be able to cut their grass anyway.