As I write, it was exactly this time two weeks ago I would have been coming to the end of the bike leg of the European LD Championships in Tampere, Finland, looking forward to an 18 mile run between me and the finish line.
I absolutely loved Finland - I think I fell in love with the country when I woke on the plane at the moment we were flying over countless lakes - and this set the theme for the rest of my trip. The Finns are definitely on to something - with a population of around 5.5 million but 2 million saunas, they abandon the cities at the weekends having all flocked to cottages by lakes for simple pleasures of swimming, fishing, relaxing in the sauna... (if the in-flight magazine is to be believed). The lakes are vast and clean and invigorating. I swam everyday I was there, and only once (racing) in my wetsuit. Splashing about in a lake for no reason other than the joy is hard to beat, and a completely different experience to the frenzy of a race.
One of the minefields of racing abroad that I am quickly discovering is the issue of not having familiar food or drink. I managed to avoid the slightly dodgy looking gels during the race, but at the finish line, as promised in the race information, were pickled cucumbers. Different (but equally disgusting) to pickled gherkins, I'm wondering if these are either something supposedly native and characteristic to Finland, or some magical recovery secret the Finns are keeping to themselves... I ate a tiny piece, chased with a much better tasting swig of NouiSH. Three days of chilling in Helsinki followed and I was thankful that I was feeling pretty normal the next day, so my legs didn't prevent me from seeing all the sights on foot. I somehow think it was probably not the cucumbers that contributed...
One of the minefields of racing abroad that I am quickly discovering is the issue of not having familiar food or drink. I managed to avoid the slightly dodgy looking gels during the race, but at the finish line, as promised in the race information, were pickled cucumbers. Different (but equally disgusting) to pickled gherkins, I'm wondering if these are either something supposedly native and characteristic to Finland, or some magical recovery secret the Finns are keeping to themselves... I ate a tiny piece, chased with a much better tasting swig of NouiSH. Three days of chilling in Helsinki followed and I was thankful that I was feeling pretty normal the next day, so my legs didn't prevent me from seeing all the sights on foot. I somehow think it was probably not the cucumbers that contributed...
No comments:
Post a Comment