Last weekend, I was participating to the Snowshoe trekking Finnish championhip in Pudasjärvi, Lapland. I was with 2 very good friends who I met in Oulu a few years ago. We were at that time exchange students at the University of Oulu.
Adam from Hungary (with the red jacket) and Petr from Czech R.(in black).
It was the second participation for Petr and me. However, Adam participated for his first time.
As in 2007, our team name was "the Frozen Foreigners" :)
The Pudasjärvi snowshoe race is a 2-day race. The first day consists of a approximate 15km-hike, where you need to gather as much points as you could (which mean extra-time for the second day) performing diverse activities, located at each compulsory checkpoints you need to find. After this usually tough first day, a night out in the Finnish Lapland winter is awaiting! The second day, -if you were able to make it :-) -, a race takes place, in which you need to reach the final point as fast as you could, powering in deep snow. This year, the race was 7km long, on a quite flat and never-ending ground.
Not everything went as planned during this weekend. We had a few minor problems: adam having blisters and knee pain, Petr falling into a river and me falling into a not so frozen lake (Despite the -15°C and being in the depth of the winter, ice was surprisingly quite unstable). We therefore only finished 4th, among the 5 teams in the game, well-behind the 3 first teams. But I hope that one day, we'll be able to perform a bit better and rank among the first teams.
Despite the tough moments, the whole weekend was good fun and a very good experience. And I have no regrets about it.
We were given GPS trackers for the 2 days comp'. Here are the links of the records of our race (complete team name was Frozen Foreigners 2010):
I find this application absolutely brillant!
Funny stuff is that you see our team icone going backwards during the race (at the last strech of the race). Petr, who was carrying the device while powering ahead, went too far ahead of me and Adam, and had to come back on his tracks to find us making a burnt-out break... Who on hell is going "backward" in a race?!!! :)
