RR Day 7 - the last day

None of the normal route for today is skiable, Instead, it has been arranged that we will ski from Kalle - our normal lunch stop at the ski centre out to a café inland and back - 23.5km each way. This track is part of the ski centre network and is groomed throughout the winter with one of the big trail machines, which means that there is a good hard packed base.

I notice when we get there, there is a banner up for a race along that trail in 10 days time. Without a drop in temperature and some fresh snow, this may be hopeful.

The trail is gently uphill and nice and fast when we start out; there are some patches of ice where the bogs have thawed and frozen again. I use the trail to build on the fact that I can sustain double poling to get to grips with the double pole/single kick - a technique I have known for years, but never been strong enough to sustain. The difference now that I can keep these techniques going is significant.  I am able to get and sustain a 20% increase in speed, although until I have finished studying the heart rate data, I won't know how much more effort it is taking, and thus whether it is actually more efficient overall in terms of economy.

The track was a bit thin in places, and at one point volunteers were shovelling snow onto the track. On the return trip, the temperature had made it harder to glide, and some of the bog ice simply could not support the weight of skiers by the time we got to the end, and many of us failed in our attempts to cross it without wet boots. These included picking our way gingerly around or across to, I believe, and attempt to jump it, which didn't work either. Still it provides a good test of the properties of ski socks, and within about twenty minutes, mine no longer felt cold and soggy in my boots.

And so we come to the end. We have skied across Finland from border to border, at least where conditions and safety permitted. We have coped with (as Jonathan describes) "interesting" conditions (where "interesting" has different nuances in English).

I have been tracking the merits of the "zero" skis - skis designed to operate without wax only in conditions around 0C. Some people love them, some hate them; at +5C even the proponents resorted to waxed skis and klister. On the injury count, it is a draw - one all ( 1 - 1) - one injury due to a zero ski suddenly gripping when the skier didn't expect it and the same happening to a traditional ski with klister. Both happened at low speed, on the level - this sort of thing happens to me all the time - sufficiently so that maybe I am so used to being caught out and falling in these circumstances that I have perfected the art of falling. Many people have told me that indeed these is an art to falling, so perhaps I have found something I am good at!

I took a quick trip to the sports shop to see if there were any end of season bargains (cross country equipment is nearly impossible to buy in the UK) but the zero skis were not on offer. I suppose it avoids the comment when I get home of "why do you need yet another pair of skis" from someone who has nearly as many horse saddles as I have skis.

There is the RR tradition of each nationality providing some form of entertainment after dinner on the final evening - a sort of revue/cabaret. Those of us who are alone as a nationality can join another group. This year, having grown up in what was a Danish village twelve centuries ago, and having shared rooms with the Danes, I join them. Our theme was "The RR story as it might have been written by Hans Christian Anderson".  As it has been requested, I provide the story at the end.

This year it was the turn of the Kuusamo municipality to provide the souvenir (the six municipalities the RR passes through take it in turns). It is a lovely handmade ceramic votive from the pottery in Kuusamo (run, according to my source on the first RR, by a Brit).

Many friendships develop over the course of the RR. It also throws up coincidences - two of those from the US are actually fellow Brits and it turns out that for two years, the three of us were at the same university, but in different departments all of fifty metres apart.

During the RR, we have normally been in bed and asleep not long after 9pm, but the last night is when we catch up on fun. There is a 24 hour bar across the street from the hotel, which is how I find myself playing bingo in Finnish - with some help on the numbers as I only know about half a dozen of them. It is mostly the same people each year - those who like to work hard and play hard. Most of this hard core group of us will be back next year. We were comparing notes on what we do for a living, and concluded that a high proportion of us work either in healthcare or IT, and many of our reasons for doing the RR are similar - physical exercise and away from the stress of modern work, the RR provides many of us with a week of "active meditation"; some of us (i.e. me) are so tuned out that we take wrong turns. In the evening entertainment, someone described it like "kindergarten for adults" - we are told when to get up, eat, which bus to catch, when to go to sleep. For those of us who have (or are expected) to be in control all the time, this release and letting someone else organise and take charge is what we need once in a while.

Finally the weather has one last trick up its sleeve - as I come out of the bar sometime after 1am, I look up to catch a few minutes of the Northern Lights. This is the first time in many trips to Finland I have seen them, and it makes a magical note on which to finish.

And in the words of a famous Austrian,  I know that  "I'll be back"!