Season starts with Spring Cup 25.-27.3



Pasi, Anders and Juha are ready to rock. Jonne was building up his monster-form when this one was taken ;-).


Before the Spring Cup -briefing something else: Today morning half of the Terä runners started their trip to the warm Spain. The mission is to do some quality training by running and orienteering in the fine conditions of Costa del Sol. We might hear something from them on this blog soon? Our last spring's news-campaign (only in finnish) got "a bit" out of our hands... 

Spring Cup 2011 - terrain

While we are waiting for the first report from the boys in south, it's time to take a short look at the Spring Cup 2011. I've been refreshing the SC -webpages quite frequently, and actually organized our trip this time. We are going to emphasize the relays (both night and day) and skip the classic race on Saturday. The races will be held this year near Roskilde, in a nice forest called Hvalsoskoven. Compared to the standard Hilleröd-terrains, it's a bit more demanding both technically and physically. Even though most of the SC's are arranged in northern Zealand, I've been running in this terrain for four times already. That's because the European Championships qualification races were run there as well. Take a closer look on the map piece below (this year's CC is located on the field):

Spring Cup -terrain in 2011

Spring Cup 2011 - the weapons

* Juha Sorvisto has done a great training winter and problems with his old injuries have not slowed down at all. My personal opion is that when staying healthy, Juha is among the very best o-runners in Finland.

* Anders Nordberg has been training great and the results from the training-camp show that he is going strong already now. Clearly the best in middle and 2nd after Thierry in long distance.

* Pasi Ikonen has had a training winter of his life and the speed has been high through the winter. Pasi will not run in the night-relay because he is doing night-o without compass.

* Jonne Lakanen has always been in great shape in the spring. But this spring is different. He is even faster.

* Juha-Matti Huhtanen is going to be our fourth man in the night-relay. Some rumours are circulating that JM has been doing some training?

A short posting will be added after our lovely weekend-trip to Denmark. Let's see if we are strong enough to get the cross in the Terä Hall of Fame by winning the relay...? Winning of the Spring Cup relay is not easy. But that's what we have planned to do...