Tio Mila

TIO MILA!

Tio Mila is one of the World's great orienteering relays (along with Jukola). The race attracts several thousand orienteers with four races (youth, women, masters and men). The men's race has teams of 10 with a winning time of about 10 hours.

Mike ran the Tio Mila in 1993 with Umea OK and to this day considers it the most enjoyable orienteering experience he has ever had - way more fun than a World Champs. So when the opportunity came to run with Umea OK again this year he had to take it. This year Mike led off the Umea team against 350 or so other teams. Mike isn't known for leading off relays (he had only ever done it once before) nor his night orienteering skills but this was an experience he couldn't turn down (well actually he tried 2 nights before the race, but his club wouldn't let him). So there at 11PM he lined up back in the 9th of 12 rows waiting for the big canon to sound the start of the race. Oh did we mention that this race was being covered live on the internet and TV? So back in Uppsala Starr and Emma were watching the event live in the comfort of a warm house....

BANG! Off they went. 350 people with 20W lights on their heads heading off for a 14.7km course in the night. 5 seconds into the race Mike found him self backed up on the top of pile of orienteers. Some poor guy was on the bottom getting crushed and Mike couldn't move forward or sideways. The guy was screaming and swearing at the bottom of the pile. A quick elbow to some guy and Mike was off but then behind some old fart (although some would argue that Mike is getting old himself). A quick hop over a meter and then behind another guy. Still moving too slowly so he put his arm on the guys shoulder and the guy rightfully jabbed his elbow back into Mike. "Oh, so this is what the first leg is all about" he thought as they rounded the corner and off to the first control. A quick look up and the forest was filled with headlamps and people racing every which way. Frustrated, Mike thought he was already in 150-200th place. 260th to be exact. Grrrr.

A few easy checkpoints and they were through a tunnel to #4. "Crap" Mike thought. They are all running straight. Surely the trail is faster. But not wanting to lose the peloton (lets call it a train now -a several hundred metre long single line train weaving through the woods) he stayed in the group. The pace was frustratingly slow so he used the time to maintain exact map location and when an opening came a quick zip out and back in again. Between control 3 and 4 Mike estimates he passed over 100 people. Imagine that. More people than in a 'big' Canadian local event. Sorta puts the size of this race into perspective eh.

Control #4 - spike, Control #5 - spike, this is absolutely so much fun, Control #6 - what!?, the train is going too far right. Lacking the confidence again to break from the group he goes with them. The train stops. Lots of Swedish, Norwegian and Finnish breaks out. Translation: "where are we" "&^%^&$", etc. Aha, but Mike knew where they were so he took off north only to miss the control (he should have run NW) and suddenly he was alone. This is NOT what you should do. Rule #1: Stay with the train. A minute later he found the control at the same time as 3 others. But the damage was done. The train had left the station (and was already likely a station #7). The what seemed slow pace of the train was now frustratingly slower and Mike and a Finn took turns leading the new small group of 4. A miss on #7 and Mike could see the train was already crossing the marsh from #9 to #10.

A few controls later was a long leg back to the tunnel and Mike took off trying to catch the train. But it was only darkness. Fortunately the train had made a small trail that allowed him to run fast and pull away from the group but not fast enough to even see the caboose. He was losing time with every step. A quick spectator control after the tunnel and the lack of people cheering people on was Mike's first real evidence of the damage of the costly mistake at #6. He was in about 270th of 350 teams. "How embarassing!" Mike thought. I can't make any more mistakes he also was thinking as he left on the final loop. The next section seemed easy but it wasn't. It was three short controls after the spectator control. He had seen the woods during the day. Wide open visibility. At night with no lights it was not so easy. A maze of trails (and a few new ones from the participants). He got close to the control but saw nothing. Then a glimpse of the reflector. Rushing over it had the wrong code. Huh? The disappointment quickly turned to fear as he stared at the map trying to figure out what was up and down? What was a hill and a depression? (NOTE: Mike bought a magnifier attachment for his thumb compass after the race to use with 1:15,000 maps, no old comments please). Fear! "What if I can't find this control?", "How much more time am I losing?" "Crikey!" Mike was wondering...

Then he remembered a hint from the coach. "If you miss the control, look for people bending over to punch". And there he was the Finn - he had caught back up and he was punching the control. Back into the group and over the bridge and off. The last section went reasonably well except for one control. "I am looking for #117" the Finn says as Mike stops the check the map. How did he know to speak English? Aaah the GHO jersey. ;-)

A strong finish but Mike was a disappointing 261st. Even got beaten by his club's 2nd team. A lack of night orienteering and first leg relay experience really showed but it was a lot of fun - and that is what it is all about.

After the run Mike went to the showers. 1:30am and bloody cold sandy ground but the hot water was welcome after running through many cold marshes. Racing back to get dressed he noticed the organizers had created a make-shift sauna. 50 orienteers in a wood furnace sauna. Ahhhh. Relaxing. Time to reflect on the highs and lows of running the first leg of a Tio Mila. Frustration, fun, elbowing, fun, this is cool, fear, elation, etc. Nope it wasn't as successful as 1993 but it was still a heck of a lot of fun. In the sauna a guy offers Mike a beer. A nice Carlsberg beer. Orienteering at Tio Mila - now this is the life!

Pelle Svanslös

Emma spent the morning at Pelle Svanslös' Hus. Pelle is a story book cat. Here is Emma's report:

A lady that worked painted my face like a kitty cat and I got to dress up like a cat. There were swings and a big hammock that you could play on and there was a little building table where you could build stuff. There was a little room that had a costume of a police outfit that you could dress up and pretend you were in the police's office and put your Mommy in jail.

Inskolning

Emma ran two orienteering courses on the weekend. On Saturday she had the first time on the Open-1 course. Then on Sunday she entered her first "Inskolning" course. This is a course for young kids and the concept is brilliant. The course is comparable to a course in Canada for under 12 year old kids. Controls are on trails but after each trail junction (perhaps a few 10's of meters) there is either a happy face or a sad face on a stake. So this lets kids know if they are going the right way or not. All kids get a participation prize and their split times but no times are posted on the results.

Emma had a great time and flew up the finish line at the OK Linne race in only 44 seconds (compared to Daddy's 39). Daddy's orienteering has been mixed since arriving in Sweden. Look for a Tiomila report after the weekend.

IKEA...to the rescue

We are now in Uppsala. A beautiful city about an hour north of Stockholm and home to Uppsala University (Scandinavia's oldest University) and SLU-Ultuna (the agricultural University). Mike is meeting with researchers from both institutions and we now have a nice apartment south of the city. BUT the furnished apartment lacked a number of important things (including one bed). Well that meant we just had to visit IKEA. So in the first 3 days in Uppsala we visited IKEA two times. Did you know there are 14 in Sweden!

Off to Hogwarts!

After two days in London and before returning to Sweden, Starr and Emma took the Tube up to King's Cross got their luggage cart and went to Platform 9 3/4 where they caught the Hogwarts Express!
The three of us had spent the earlier part of the day touring The Natural History Museum. We must have spent an hour in the Dinosaur exhibit alone - it was fabulous! You could easily spend an entire day there - it was that big.
There is so much to see and do in London - we shall definitely have to come back one day.

An Eye on London

During our whirlwind visit of London, one of the things that Starr and Emma did was ride "The London Eye". The Eye reaches the height of 135m and over the half hour ride, gives the most spectacular views of the city. Each pod is quite large and can hold about 15 - 20 people. Best of all, you can walk all around inside. As we looked down, we could retrace our travels from earlier that day and Emma even spotted a nearby playground which became our next destination!

London Calling

LONDON CALLING! While Mike was giving an invited presentation to the Geography Department at the University of London Queen Mary, Starr and Emma were exploring the sites of London. Emma and I started off with Buckingham Palace, then strolled through St. James Park, headed over to Trafalgar Square (where Emma quickly noticed Canada House!) and then toured the National Art Gallery. We walked past No. 10 Downing Street, the Parliament buildings and Big Ben then across Westminster Bridge where we bought tickets to ride on "The London Eye" (as most of you know, this was something Emma and I purposefully did WITHOUT Mike!) Later in the day we all got together with our friend Dave Donaldson. Dave is doing his PhD at LSE and is engaged to be married this July! It was great to see him again.

Pride and Prejudice

Burleigh House is one of the best examples of an Elizabethan manor in England. Located just outside of Stamford it was used for filming of the recent Pride and Prejudice film and the upcoming DaVinci Code. We started our tour (with Andy as tour guide) with a stroll around the grounds, seeing the Lions Gate Bridge, many deer, and Cedar of Lebanon trees (as in the picture). Adjacent to the "House" is a Sculpture Garden. It is a large garden area (trees, flower beds, shrubs, grass, a stream and lots of trails) and scattered throughout are several dozen contemporary sculptures (our favourite was the one in the tree!). After lunch in the restaurant, we walked through the formal garden - the topiary was fabulous!
Finally, we headed inside to tour the house itself. I don't know how it could be called a house - it was huge! The kitchen alone was the size of my house! There were over 700 paintings, not including the painted walls and ceilings (one such room was the dining room used in Pride and Prejudice). The final part of the tour told us the history of one of the more recent "Lord Burleigh"s. He was a gold medal winner in the 1928 Olympics , silver in 1932, and also won in the Commonwealth Games in Hamilton!

Helpston, England

Helpston is over 800 years old. A village of a few hundred people, home of John Crane (a famous English poet) - and where we stayed for a few days with our friends, The Bairds. Yes, it has been a few days since our last post but we have not had reliable (or fast) internet for almost a week. The Baird family was fabulous and Emma really enjoyed having the two girls to play with. The village is beautiful and full of history. There were houses with thatched roofs, a church over 700 years old and even the gravel driveways were full of fossils!

To the sea...

Well it has been a week since we have had reliable (and fast) internet. So we will try to catch up on our adventures in Europe! After the second day of the JK we visited the seaside near Scarborough. Kate took Emma and the kids to the beach where they played in the sand, ate ice cream, and had a wonderful time. Dave picked up Mike and I after our race, and we joined them for a stroll along the beach walk and a visit to a small amusement park. Dinner - or should I say "Tea" that night was fun. There is a chain called "Wacky Warehouse" - there is a huge children's playroom (where we sat and enjoyed a pint while the kids played) which is attached to a family style pub. Perfect!

JK 2006

Starr and Mike are running in the JK - Britain's largest orienteering competition. Several thousand participants actually! Great terrain, great courses and lots of people. We ran into some friends from the US and Starr ran into Julian Birkinshaw who we haven't seen for years. So many people to chat to and like orienteers Worldwide - very sociable. "Where is Golden Horseshoe OC based?", several people asked... and from that a discussion would begin. (Interestingly people knew about HKF but had never heard of GHO).

Today was the JK middle distance on an open moor hillside (see photo below). The race was excellent with two spectator controls on the elite course and also a view of other parts of the race course from the finish area. An excellent announcer kept everyone up to date on all the action. Britain has amazing depth.

After the disaster in Sweden, Mike's goal was to be within 10% of the winner. He was certainly on track for that until he lost 2.5 minutes on a control hung very low in some tall grass. He ended up 22nd and just under 6 minutes down (about 20%). Starr also had a great run in W40. 40? Yes, it is 2 months and 2 days to the big day for Starr.

Finally did we say that the atmosphere of the race was awesome? Well it was! Pure dead brilliant (as some Brits would say). No gimmicks, no unnecessary hype, no trash talking and other dumb crap - just awesome terrain, awesome map, awesome course and great athletes = great competition. No wonder the UK has so much depth in all categories. Like Vicky Whaley mentioned to Starr "You go to a race like this and you gotta do more". It was a welcome change from North America.

Yorkshire

We took the train from Edinburgh to York the other day like many things on our trip so far it had an interesting story to go along with it. Because of high winds the train arriving from London was late so our train was delayed. But instead of saying the train would be 20 minutes late they announced the lateness in many 3-4 minute updates. For example it was listed as 12:03 (not 12:00). 12:03 would come along and no track announcement for the train. Then it would list 12:06... no track announcement, etc. etc. until finally an announcement. "Train to London leaving in 3 minutes on track 11" - and off raced the dozens of travellers with bags in tow. We (of course) were on the second last car. After catching our breath we enjoyed a very beautiful train ride along the coast to York.

We are now in Yorkshire visiting our cousins Dave, Kate, Eleanor, George and Oscar in South Milford. What a beautiful area. On our first day, we went to Temple Newsam. It's not actually a Temple, it is a big house with a big farm. When we were visiting the sheep, we heard that a bull was loose so they closed the barn doors, good thing since Emma was wearing a red jacket! All in all, we all had a great day.

Eau de Edinburgh

Edinburgh is an awesome city.
It has lots of history, amazing architecture, nice parks, awesome orienteering (that of course is really important) and more...BUT it smells. No it really really stinks.On our last night there we decided to do a Google search on Edinburgh smell. We found this.

Orienteering the Old Town

Edinburgh is considered one of the best University towns to orienteer in the UK so a few days before arriving in the city Mike made arrangements to get some maps from two local orienteers - Rocky and Godders. Every evening after work he has run on a different map (3 maps in 3 days). On Tuesday he ran an 8km course through the small streets and parks of the Old Town - the highlight of the week. This was city orienteering at its best. You had to keep track of the small alleys, courts and steps connecting the various parts of the old town together. Weaving around tourists and locals also made the orienteering thoroughly enjoyable. Part of the course ran through the castle, past a Whiskey museum (Scottish water control), then through the train station, past Grassmarket (site of the old executions and the "Last Drop" pub), and part way up Arthur's seat. Navigating the old town and through several centuries of history. Of course we are related to Wallace's so that may have helped guide the way. Thanks to Murray and Dave for providing Mike the maps. Punch buggy white convertible!

Arthur's Seat

Today's adventure to Arthur's Seat has been written by Emma. We took a double decker bus to Holyrood Palace and we started to walk up the hill. The name of the hill is King Arthur's seat. It is very very very high. We saw lots of prickle bushes. It was very very windy and the wind knocked Emma down. Ooof! When we got to the top we saw a lot of Scotland. When we were walking down we went over to a ruin and saw a whole bunch of swans. Then we waited along time for the double decker bus. Hopped on and went back to the hotel and went to sleep. Zzzzzzz.

Egg-In-Burgh

Today's blog entry was written by Emma! Today was our first journey into Edinburgh. We walked to the castle which was built on an extinct volcano. We were given a clue sheet to find four hidden Easter eggs. We went into the dungeons and it was very dark. We saw the Crown Jewels. We learned about the wars. Finding the eggs was a little hard but it was still fun. The eggs were all hidden inside the castle. We saw a juggling person on stilts.
We went to the Childrens' Museum. We saw a whole bunch

of old toys. We went to the City Art Centre. There was an exhibit called the Greatest Fairy Tale. It was about Hans Christian Anderson. There were different activities to do there.

Off to Scotland!

Last night we took Pelle and Lina to an excellent restaurant (Smaka!) in downtown Goteborg and had some traditional Swedish fare. Yum! We spent most of the evening talking about our stories of Whitehorse and Lake Placid and we also got to hear some stories about the legendary "Hasse".

Earlier today it was time to say good-bye to our hosts and head off to Scotland where Mike is meeting with some researchers. We took Ryan Air which was a lot better than we expected. While waiting for the plane we ran into Karen Williams (an orienteering friend from the US that works in Goteborg at Chalmers). Small World.

Arriving in Scotland we were hoping for better weather. It certainly couldn't get any worse. We had a total of 2 hours of sunshine in Sweden in 4 days with lots of rain, some sleet and some snow (see photo of Emma standing in Pelle, Lina and Piff's backyard during the snow). So what happened in downtown Glasgow? Yup, it snowed. In fact, the mountains in the Highlands were snow capped - or were those sheep?

We are now in Edinburgh and are excited about the next few days. Starr and Emma will explore the history of the city and country while Mike will talk about peat bogs (not that exciting for him, but perhaps he will be able to sample a peaty Scotch or three).

SAIK: Success and Disaster!

Today was our first orienteering race. It was hosted by SAIK - our friend Hans' orienteering club. By Swedish standards it was a 'small race' with 'only' 970 participants.

It was a big success for Emma and a huge disaster for Mike. Emma, Starr, Lina and Piff went on the Open-1 course and Emma read the map the entire course. She finished in 39 minutes and 13th place. Some of the trails Emma followed were more like streams as the terrain was very very wet. Emma ran in her KOK jersey and some borrowed SAIK pants. Mike's race was a disaster. After a great start to #1 (only 5 seconds down) he then missed #2 (1 minute), #3 (1 minute), #6 (1 minute), and then a few more minutes in the area of #9, #10, and #11. Not a great start to orienteering in Sweden. Things then started to click for the final 7 controls but he didn't have the legs in this very physical terrain to push as hard as usual. He ended up in a terrible 32nd place and the bottom half of the results. A disaster.

Results

The Jet Lag Hike

The first night we were in Sweden we slept 14 hours. The next night we found ourselves wide awake in the middle of the night. In bed, each of us would take turns sighing - hoping it would let us fall asleep. So we slept in again today and despite nice weather cancelled our Goteborg tourist plans and decided to go for a hike to get some fresh air and to wake ourselves up! Well it did for most of us except Mike. Yes, he 'hit the wall' and 'bonked' on a family hike. Maybe tomorrow he'll be 100% - just in time for his first orienteering race in Sweden.

Our Jet Lag hike was a lot of fun. We wandered through the very nice gingerbread house "suburbs" and into the woods where we came across this nice stream. Not shy to explore, Emma took off into the woods upstream to check it out. She was introduced to her first Swedish woods. Open and lovely. We quickly named the spot "Hobbit Woods" and after a battle with some goblins (well Emma and Starr fought while Mike lay lethargic on the mossy forest floor) we returned for a much needed lunch (and nap for Mike). Lots of Swedish forest adventure lay ahead for us this spring.

Flight to Sweden

OFF TO SWEDEN!
After a small mix-up at the airport where we realized that Emma's ticket was made out to an "Emma Elizabeth" and not an "Emma Elizabeth Waddington" we were on our way to Sweden and the start of our 4 month and 4 day adventure in Europe. Unfortunately the movie wasn't working on the plane but the flight was on time and early. The photo above is Emma and Mike at the Frankfurt Airport waiting for the flight to Goteborg. We flew on Lufthansa to Sweden and Emma got a small Lufthansa stuffed animal - "Lufty". We arrived in Goteborg on Wednesday and were picked up at the airport by our friend Pelle and later that evening met Lina and Piff. We are tired from the long trip and hope for a long sleep.