No major mistakes but slow going on the 2nd stage of Jukola this year.
The not-so-dramatic errors were: #2 has a 90-degree wiggle just before the control - my route to #7 was OK but very slow through the green/tick aprts - then no worries until #15 where the 'safe' choice along the road was no good at all - finally a bit of a Z-bend into #17.
Jukola this year was in an unusual terrain with lots of holes/sinkholes. Warm weather and very dry with a constant dust-cloud from all the runners all through the course and competition area.
+10 min on #1(130) after passing almost within the control circle, then wondering on what path I ended up, and finally catching up via the drinking-station at #2(37)
Wrong direction out of #2(37) and another +4 min on #3(129). Then quite ok for a while.
Smaller mistakes of 4+2 min on #14(39) and #15(152) where I found other controls not on my map before my own.
Big mistake on #9, where I stopped at the wrong cliff/hill, and the control was just to the right, but I did a big loop left before realizing this.
Otherwise mostly OK going in terrain that was much easier to run in compared to 2014 in Kuopio.
2nd leg of Kuopio-Jukola. Quite hilly terrain with soft&stony ground which was difficult to run on.
#4 drifted down the hill to the wrong control, then ran past my own control and backtracked to find it.
#5 past the control down the hill to the swamp, then back up the hill again.
#8 again found the wrong control before my own.
Here's the distribution of total time for teams in the Jämsä-Jukola relay:
Here are the distributions of individual times for the seven legs of the relay.
The histogram from the first leg shows bunching of runners into groups - this is different from all the remaining legs.
The 2nd and 3rd leg look quite similar. Note how the histograms lean to the left - there are many amateurs of varying ability which contribute to the long tail to the right.
The 4th and 5th legs are shorter and faster.
The 6th leg is again longer with the final 7th leg being the longest of them all.
Scraping scripts (requires minor modifications to downloaded results html file): jukola_scrape
I ran the second stage (13 km) of the Jukola relay in Jämsä on Sunday.
Clear skies and a more northerly location meant there was much more light during the whole night. Not nearly as pitch-black as I remember in Vantaa last year.
Since there are about 1600 teams competing there will be tracks from 2000 or more runners in the forest when starting the 2nd-stage from about mid-way or worse down the field. This means it's really more trail-running than independent orienteering 🙂 There are tracks to and from each control - you just have to pick the right track among many.
I ran the second stage of the Jukola relay around 1am to 4am on Saturday-Sunday night:
