Like I say on the who?-page, I do enjoy the relaxing moments on campfire, but I have to confess that I also love to ride MTB or run on the same trails. I like the peace and quietness of nature - but sometimes it's just fun to go fast...

The ugly background 

I played basketball in a local team in my childhood and I was also interested in mountain biking etc. back then. So I have a youth background in sports. But when I went studying I slowly got lazy - after studying and all my photography etc. I didn't have the time to excercise - or so I told myself. After graduating I started working as a researcher at HUT, and was slowly becoming a typical overweight office worker with the fitness level of a potato... Thanks to finding the inspiration again, I ended up first running and skiing, then everything else. I just started to look in the mirror and didn't like what I saw. I decided that life would be much more fun if I was in a good shape. You can read more under the subtopic "running".

At the moment I'm starting to be in the best physical condition (endurancewise) in my life. That's not much though, and I'm certainly not stopping here. I'm still aiming higher. After loosing a lot of weight during these past few years, I'm now able to run further and lighter - with less stress on legs etc. So I,ve been able to increase my training distances. If you ask me, I've only scratched the surface of what I can do. 

My wife now calls me a sports maniac and I'm kind of proud of that. On this page you'll find some stories behind the sports I'm nowadays involved with.

Orienteering 

As an orienteer I'm still a beginner. My first encounters with the sport are from childhood, and I've allways enjoyed it. But I've been more active only for the past few years and when you talk with orienteers, you often hear people saying: well, I think this is my 20th year... So I feel like a total novice. I try to go orienteering as often as I can (there are evening races five times a week around my hometown...) and lately  orienteering has been on top of my list of sports. Although I know I'm too old to become a competitive orienteer, I'd like to develop my personal skills further - as a fitness level orienteer. That's actually one of the reasons why I like orienteering - I can do it on my own level.

Orienteering has started to fascinate me to the point that I've been reading books etc. about the sport - trying to learn why I make the mistakes I make etc. It's a tough sport - some call it a cross between trail running and chess. I still haven't run a mistake free track... And I'm not talking about wrong route choices that you only realize while studying the map afterwards, but mistakes I could have avoided. But that's part of the sport - you have to try to run as fast as possible but slow enough to not make navigational mistakes... As you get better in navigation you can speed up, but then you face the same problems again...

My long time orienteering dream was allready fullfilled when I run my first Jukola-relay in 2009. I also attended Raatojuoksu the same year, but I'm still running without a competition license - so it's not that competitive. I could go on about orienteering for ages - one of my only regrets considering sports is that I didn't try orienteering when I was younger. But I was playing basketball 5 times a week, so I really didn't consider anything else. 

Running

When I was a teenager, I hated running. I actually even didn't turn up for my basket ball teams summer trainings as they involved running... I think my longest run those days was around 6km.

I hated running until I was 30 years old. It was around that time when I tried running every now and then again - just because running seemed like the easiest sport to start - no joining a team, buying expensive equipment etc.... Even though I was out of shape I started noticing that it was...well, kind of fun... So I started running more actively and when my weight started to drop I soon realized that I'm falling in love with running. Who would have believed... First I was in such a bad shape that I could barely run a kilometer or two. I remember my first goal in 2004 was being able to run a complete loop around the local roads - it was only 4,5km with a long uphill and I couldn't do it... Slowly I started to get in shape and after a year or so I finished my first 10km run -  and I was so excited I sent SMS's to people about it. After all, at that point it was the longest run of my life. Now it seems a bit funny, but back then it was a huge step for me.

Well, my runs got longer and longer, and a year or so from my first 10km I was running 15-18 km runs. And a little later my first half marathon. 

Nowadays I'm running 20-50km a week, sometimes less sometimes more. My usual run is around 10-12km, a long one is around 15-20km. Longest runs have been around 30km. I've also "run" longer distances, but that hasn't been clean running - I've had short brakes and walked a bit. I'm dreaming about a marathon during the next year or two...

Kayaking 

When I was a kid, my father and I used to have a canoe and we paddled it on the nearby lakes etc. The canoe was sold years and years ago, but I ended up dreaming about buying a canoe or a kayak one day. Years went by and I ended up attending a fiberglass course where I manufactured my own sea kayak. It's an Arctic Star 570-hull, with a few modifications of my own. After paddling for a year I got my dad interested and now he has bought a kayak too. We've been paddling few trips together again and I've also done some trips with my wife. When visiting our familys summer cabin, or my parents in law on the coast I usually take my kayak with me. I'm a member of a canoe/kayak club Vesisamoilijat and I've attended their "advanced kayaking" course with the goal of becoming a kayaking instructor some time in the future.

Rogaining, Adventure Sports and Others

I'm also competing in rogainging. It's a sport that has been called endurance orienteering, or adventure orienteering. To keep it short it's a long distance orienteering race, where you determine your own route. The races are usually between 8-24h, with 24h being the official length in championships etc. You are given a map with numerous control points and you decide yourself which ones you are going for. The control points have a point value based on difficulty, distance etc. The idea is to get as much points as possible inside the time limit. So the winner is usually not the one who finishes first... My friend Petja and I have an outdoor oriented sports team called C9H13NO3. We've attended national rogaining-races and in 2008 our first Rogaing World Championships. During 2009 we are also competed in our first multisport/adventure races. 

I also play badminton in the winter, and I try to ski cross-country a few times every week. Years ago I also built a Marin IFT mountain bike from scratch and I've been updating it every now and then. So I try to also go mountain biking when I find the time... When I have office days at work, I try to go by bike if weather and work schedule permits. The route to my workplace includes some short trails, and when going back home I can make a few curves to find more trails...In the morning I ty to ride easy as I don't want to sit around the office sweating like...you know.

Like I said in the beginning of the page, I'm also an ex-basketball player - I'm 202cm tall after all... I played during my childhood into a teenager, and I've made a comeback every now and then. It's been a while though - the last time I played more or less actively was during the winter of 2000-2001 in the 3rd national division...Not exactly NBA... After that it's been very occasional, but I love the game and would play more if I had the time.