Alexey Smirnov's blog

This Saturday I participated in a race in Tuusula, the place where I ran a marathon last year. Initially I was planning to run a half-marathon because this was the first race in year 2010. In addition, I had only one long run this year after which I felt pain in the legs and was not running for another couple of weeks.

So my mindset was configured toward an easy half-marathon until the moment when I arrived to Tuusula. But I will start with what I was doing on Friday. In the evening I had a check-up training session under rain after which my mood was between not running on Saturday at all or running a half-marathon.

However, on Saturday the weather improved and the sun was shining. I went to the bus station and boarded the bus to Tuusula. It was quite a low-cost comfortable trip in a tourist bus. It costs less than 6 Euros one way, 30 kilometers from Helsinki to Tuusula. I was astonished when I got off the bus and breathed freshest air and saw the cleanest sky. It is a kind of feeling when you arrive to a village after spending time in the city. And I thought – such a beautiful life, why should I spend half of the day at home? I should spend all my time on the road today – and I decided to run a marathon against all odds!

A marathon is always a challenge. But I have learned the lessons of the past and started the marathon slowly. Because of the nice weather lots of people were walking or biking. Many of them were also participating in marathon but as cheerleaders. Look at these nice posters in the hands of children. They are saying Hyvää which means Good in Finnish. The spectators make the run a lot more enjoyable.

The course goes to the town of Järvenpää – the town of Jan Sibelius and Joonas Kokkonen, the two famous Finnish composers. It was surprising to see an amusement park there. Besides the traditional carousels a helicopter tour was offered for only 60 Euro! It is well known that in big cities it costs a lot more, probably 300 Euro or so. Of course, I did not fly the chopper this time but if I were visiting Järvenpää as a tourist I sure would!

After leaving the town the course goes through countryside. At this time of year the trees are not green yet and there is no crops on the fields. However, the spring has definitely come and the last patches of snow are disappearing under the shining sun. It is very nice to watch the nature waking up after winter sleep, such an enjoyable feeling.

I have completed the first lap 21km in 2 hours 25 minutes, slightly slower than last year when I was running a marathon. However, then I felt crams in my legs because I have not adapted to the shoes yet. It is one of the best shoes you can get. The original price is nearly 150 Euros but I got them on a sale for 70 Euros. I guess their biggest advantage is that they treat your knees well – a typical problem of an experienced runner. Indeed, I should say that on Sunday my legs were in good condition, much better than earlier even after half-marathons. However, during the second half of the race I felt lots of pain in muscles and thus had to walk, not run.

De-hydration is another typical problem during the marathons. I was in the winter pants, I used to skate during freezing temperatures in this pants. I decided not to buy the sports-suite because I thought the weather will get warmer and I will run in the shorts. But for this race I definitely needed a sports suite, not the winter pants. This is why during the second half of the race I needed to drink a lot. Even though the water stations were available here and there I felt thirsty at thirty kilometers. Fortunately, there was a Siwa shop near the road. Another lucky coincidence was that I had money with me, but only 3 Euros. It turned out that the energy drink costs 2.99 Euros. This drink healed my legs, the muscle pain was gone and I was able to run again! I guess I was super-lucky on that day!

So I completed the marathon walking the middle part of it but otherwise running. The net time is 5:16:41 which is worse than what I thought of in the beginning but much better than what I was thinking during the race when my legs started to hurt. I thought I would have to walk the second half of the race in which case my time would approach 7 hours.

Overall, nice run in a joyful atmosphere. A tough battle to finish the race but this is a marathon after all, the sports of Gods! From now on I think I should try marathons every time. Because a half-marathon is a shorter distance I am always trying to beat my record which takes lots of effort. I feel a lot more exhausted after a half-marathon than after a marathon. Also a marathon gives a lot more satisfaction – not everybody can do it.

And I just did it! Again!

A few days ago I went to Oulu, a city in the north of Finland to attend Linux Symposium which was featuring Bjarne Stroustrup, the inventor of C++.

I left Helsinki on Monday night and arrived to Oulu at 7:30 AM on the overnight train. It was so-o-o co-o-old in Oulu! We did not have such freezing temperatures during the whole winter in Helsinki. On that early spring day it was -20 centigrade. Because the train arrived early initially I planned to walk to the Oulu University which is located approximately 5km from the train station. I actually walked there but I froze like I have not frozen for a long time already. What was surprising to me was that local people were walking and even riding bikes normally. Apparently, they got used to such temperatures. In Finland there is a special word sisu which means persistence and stubbornness in a good sense of the word. Now I know that the city of Oulu is the city of sisu – sisu students, sisu workers, sisu everybody.

I barely had time to warm up in the university lobby before the conference began. It had a keynote speech dedicated to the looming C++ 0x standard as well as two tracks: business and technical. Before the conference I have spent lots of time studying the agenda trying to decide which track I want to go to. But there were interesting talks in both tracks. So I needed to remember the order in which I would visit the tracks. It turned out that there is a simple algorithm which tells you which track to go at any moment of time. The idea is that it is best to always switch the tracks, for example if you are listening to a talk in the technical track now then the next interesting talk is in the business track. So I followed this algorithm and I enjoyed every talk that I attended.

But the first was the keynote. Bjarne is a great speaker! He was describing his work in the standardization committee and the features that were selected in the new C++ 0x standard. He said that name of this new standard comes from the year in which they wanted to get it approved – anytime before year 2010, but at this moment the standard is in the Final Draft phase which means that it will get approved in year 2012 probably.

Bjarne pointed out several criteria that they used when selecting features for the standard. Basically, keep it simple was the main criterion. Any extra functionality should go to a library. Keep the run-time as small as possible. One of the goals was to make it possible to use C++ as the first language during teaching in a college. It is an ambitious goal as most of US universities are using Java as the first language. New set of features for writing parallel programs was described. Mostly, it was related to locks, semaphores, etc. and avoiding deadlocks and other problems, as well as inter-process communication. To me it sounds like a pretty low-level stuff. After his presentation I asked whether the committee thinks they’ve chosen the right level of abstraction. Nowadays there are a few interesting parallel programming frameworks such as Map-Reduce and transactional memory. Bjarne said that it is too early to standardize any of those which is probably true.

The funny thing is that the committee does not necessarily accept the features that Bjarne proposes even though he is the inventor of C++. For example, he was trying to get lexical_cast into the standard which is basically string tokenizer. But the committee voted against him because of possible problems with locale. On the picture above Bjarne is trying to persuade the audience that lexical_cast is a cool feature.

Here are the notes from a few other talks:

Sami Paihonen. Implementing cross-platform UI

The core of cross-platform UI is UI style.
Lots of research. Empty screen is the best place to start.
6 design principles: avoid clutter. Too many things on the screen. Two hands is not mobile usage.
IPhone open-source contacts has a better UI than official app.
UI style defines core UI identity
Smoothness and stability are most important. Steven Frei blog.
blog: dizzyhorizon.com

Mikko Välimäki, Tuxera. Open source and IP licensing

This is the guy who won Espoo half-marathon!

Tuxera – is company doing filesystems on non-Windows systems
GNU GPL – free of charge to everyone.
Is it possible to use Android UI on another hardware? Apple is suing HTC for Patent infringement.
Jonathan Schwartz blog. Bill asks royalty for every download of OO b/c of patent infringement.
Microsoft sued TomTom over usage of FAT file system.
Mixed, dual-licensed, open & proprietary models will win.

Alexander Bezprozvanny. Traditional vs agile/open source

different roles that a person takes in multiple team in agile.
key differences in OSS projects: no project managers. Project leaders are models.
Healthy community is the key.
Definition of healthy community, various paths that a project might take depending on how developers interact with users. Nice diagram.

Examples:

1) Too late means never. Affix and bluez bluetooth stacks. Commercial vs. open-source. A company that missed release.

2) High admission price: OpenBSD community. A success at a high price.

3) OSS contribution from software company: bureaucratic barrier too high. Disclaimer of rights is difficult to explain to management.

4) Maemo case: combining proprietary and OSS SW.

Ari Jaaksi’s speach and consequences in his blog.

After watching the performance of Idiot in Espoo theater and concluding that actors do not understand the great Russian writer Dostoevsky I decided to try to explain how I understand Dostoevsky myself. To start with, I think that Espoo theater has done a great job because they at least tried to interpret Dostoevsky even though I think that their interpretation was not correct. With the following explanation I would only like to deepen their interest in studying our culture and Dostoevsky in particular. Basically, they need to read other works that Dostoevsky has written even though they are probably not translated into Finnish.

Dostoevsky is one of the most controversial writers in Russian literature. The following saying of Annensky characterizes him:

Read Dostoevsky. Love Dostoevsky if you can, if you cannot – curse him, but READ and only him if possible.

I got to know Dostoevsky not through his books but through a movie Idiot by Bortko which I saw in 2004 or 2005. At that time my interpretation of Idiot was also limited to the relationship between Myshkin and Nastasya Filipovna. Such a love story with a tragic end. But after reading other works of Dostoevsky, in particular his diary I think there is a deeper interpretation of Idiot.

Dostoevsky saw a deep division between noble Russians and ordinary people. These were opposite classes of our society in the end of 19th century. They were not able to tolerate each other, thus Dostoevsky was predicting revolution long before it happened in 1917. Of course, he blamed noble people for their betrayal of traditional Russian values in favor of modern European values. This has occurred because in the 19th century it became obvious that Russia was far behind Europe in its industrial development. Noble Russians did not want to identify themselves as such because Russian became a synonym of barbarian.

But Dostoevsky was saying that traditional Russian values were good. Those were the values of kindness, love to every human, Christianity. According to Dostoevsky, only ordinary Russian people possessed those qualities because educated Russians were trying to follow Europeans in every aspect of life and despised everything that looked like Russian.

The main point of Dostoevsky Idiot is that there were noble Russians who also admired traditional Russian values which in this case is Prince Myshkin. This is very unusual and controversial, this is why nobody likes him. If you read the complete version of Idiot, not the abbreviated one that was sold in the theater before the performance you will see lots of Idiot’s monologues in which he shares his values. With relation to people he says that everybody is worth forgiveness. During the performance Idiot often talks to Jesus Christ. But Dostoevsky did not mean that. Idiot doesn’t admire Jesus, he probably does not know all this theological stuff because he is an idiot. But he admires every ordinary human, a fallen woman for example, every sinner. He is the bearer of Christian values even though he cannot explain this.

The actor who plays Prince Myshkin should show that he represents Jesus during this performance. He should convey this message to the audience but do not show the image of Christ! Make the audience think of Idiot’s role in this drama. This actor will succeed only if the audience becomes convinced that he is Christ.

With relation to Europe Prince Myshkin says that Russia will surprise Europe. But not with aggression which there was a lot in this performance, but again with love to every human. He thinks of Russia as a more Christian country than Europe. Russian people who have adopted European views do not have those good qualities such as mercy and ability to forgive.

To summarize, the Epanchin family is visually very respectable. They are Europeans in the best sense of this word, very noble people. They would not shout at each other as they did during this performance. They do not drink vodka or smoke. They are very polite. But they despise traditional Russian values. And here comes Idiot, the true bearer of traditional Russian values and Christian values. He brings the joy with him, the universal love to human beings. He is ready to forgive everybody despite that he is a Prince. He behaves like ordinary people – he is joyful and sincere. And this is why Epanchin family hates him. He reminds them of traditional Russian life that they have betrayed.

This Saturday I went to see Dostoevsky’s Idiot in Espoo theater. Even though I don’t understand what the actors are saying because the performance is in Finnish I am always trying to check out Russian authors performed in Finland because this allow us to understand how Finns perceive us, the Russians.

I should say that Dostoevsky’s Idiot is no different from Gogol’s Revizor which I saw one year ago in Tampere Workers theatre. Russians are presented as wild barbarians. They are drinking vodka all the time, smoking cigarettes and punching each other. It reminds me of a Hollywood gangster movie when cowboys of the Wild West are trying to decide who is the best to represent the nascent United States of America. The movies are different but the play is the same. But this time the music made me laugh. Most of the time it was Tchaikovsky’s Illness of a Doll. So I guess Nastasya Filipovna was that doll. And she was sick and eventually died because prince Myshkin the Idiot did not marry her. Or she has actually died because she was waiting for too long. She thought that she would get too old before Idiot would drag her to bed. So the moral is that if there is a pretty girl it is your responsibility to sleep with her otherwise she will get sick and die. I wonder whether the great thinker, the theorist of Russian greatness Dostoevsky ever had this in his mind.

But probably I am too strict. I have watched Idiot movie by Bortko. Many great actors were playing there. Of course, it is impossible to avoid comparing them to this small theater. Also I guess Bortko has read every work of Dostoevsky, at least most of them whereas the young actors of this theater probably did not read Idiot completely because it is quite a big piece of literature.

But the fact that Finns are thinking of us as of wild people is actually our problem, not theirs. There is a certain well established cliche that Finns are using whenever they think of us. Despite the proximity of Helsinki to Saint Petersburgh we were unable to change their mind, even though Saint Petersburgh is the cultural capital of Russia. How is it possible that Finns think of us as barbarians when our capital of culture is a 5-hour ride from their capital? What do they think of the remaining parts of Russia? I guess people of Stone Age are inhibiting those areas. How can we change their perception of us? It is big problem. For example, I wonder whether Russian literature has been translated to Finnish language at all.

In the theater an abbreviated version of Idiot was sold in Finnish. It was a small 50-page book. Is it possible to understand Dostoevsky using a small book? Even reading the whole Idiot is not enough. Dostoevsky had his own school of thought with relation to Russian nation. It is not explained in one of his book but rather has been developed through his lifetime. In his diary Dostoevsky explains that Russian noble people have separated from the ordinary people because they admired Europe too much. Then Dostoevsky says that ordinary people have better values, the true values of humanity, kindness than rich people that adopted false idols. But in his other novel Brothers Karamazov Dostoevsky shows that ordinary people are not always right. They actually cannot appreciate the high spirit of noble people, they are narrow-minded.

But understanding Dostoevsky is a different topic which I would not dwelve in right now. I guess I should summarize how I understand Dostoevsky myself in one of the later posts.

Here is part 2 of the description of my trip to Savonlinna. Earlier in part 1 I described getting to Savonlinna and walk around the castle.

On the next day the castle opened and I went into it. Upon entering you can see a huge statue of St Olaf.

Then the guided tour goes up to the middle level. From there it is possible to see the inner court. Then the tour goes up to the towers. Earlier there were five towers in the castle but two of them were destroyed. In part this is due to prominent history of the castle. During numerous wars the castle was sieged a number of times. Their duration and severity varied. During one siege a huge hall in the wall between two towers was made after two thousands canon shots were fired.

There is a whole maze inside the castle. This is why going on the upper level is allowed only with a guide. After the one-hour guided tour ends tourists are told that it is possible to explore the ground levels on your own but you cannot go into towers. This is a bit frustrating because there are so many things to see in those towers!

After the not so long tour of the castle I went to explore the lake system on a boat trip. A variety of them are offered. The lakes span huge territory reaching Russian border areas. Earlier it was an important trade route.

I went to a 1.5 hour cruise on a steamboat. It goes through a beautiful archipelago with a thousand of islands. I guess earlier it was a convenient area for independent people because it was possible to live free on any of these islands. Most of the islands are habitable these days, that is a number of cottages are visible on the shore. But I wonder if they have electricity and water supply.

After looking at the archipelago I wonder why that particular island was chosen as the location of the castle. There are bigger islands, thus it was possible to build a bigger castle. Olavinlinna is a strong castle but it is quite small. In case of a war not too many people would find protection in it. This only means that the surrounding villages would get destroyed. In Russia, each major city had a Kermlin – a strong castle which size was 5-10 times the size of Olavinlinna. I also noticed that the elevation of the island on which Olavinlinna is situated is low. Going on the neighboring island lifts you above the walls of the castle.

Thus to me Ovalininna looked like a Trojan horse. It is attractive because it was a stronghold situated on an important trade route but it is an easy vulnerable target. The history proved that as the ownership of the castle was transferred many times during its prominent history.

There is a museum of history in Savonlinna but it was closed when I visited the city. Thus, after visiting Olavinlinna I have more questions than answers. The castle hides lots of mysteries within its walls.

View test in a larger map

Juhannus is the mid-summer celebration. The tradition is that people go on various trips on this holiday. So I decided to go to Savonlinna, a town in Eastern Finland to check out the only castle that I have not visited yet – Olavinlinna. As usual, taking train was the cheapest and fastest option. However, the above map shows that there is no direct train between Tampere and Savonlinna. The train network is going pretty much in north-south direction with short distance connecting trains that allow to jump between one branch and another. In this trip I had to take four trains which sounds like a crazy idea. In addition, the day before the departure an accident happened on Tampere-Helsinki branch, thus the delays were introduced.

So I started the trip 10 minutes late. The chances to make it to the first connection were really minor because the time between the trains was only 6 minutes. Thus the whole trip was in danger. Of course, I thought of back up plans but it would not make me happy to start the trip with a backup plan. But it was amazing how well the railroad network adapted to this delay. Basically, it was propagated to all related trains. I guess the algorithm that controls this network has a notion of relevant train. For example, if lots of people are expected to change trains at a certain station at a certain time then the connecting train waits for all the incoming trains. It is an interesting algorithmic problem.

I was also impressed with the extremely mobile connecting trains. It can have as few as just one car as this connecting train in Savonlinna.

Because of that, I made all connections on time! I could not believe it but I arrived to Savonlinna as planned! I stayed in a hotel with swimming pool and spas situated on a lake. Upon arrival I checked out its saunas. Nice place. Then in the evening I went to the town and walked around the castle. Because of the holiday it closed earlier in the afternoon thus I only walked outside. The castle is very impressive. It is built on an island which is basically rock. It occupies the whole island in order to prevent the medieval warriors from getting hold of it. During the opening hours a bridge connects it with the mainland. I did not take a boat trip around the castle. Instead, I jumped from one island to another taking pictures.

I like building 3D models of various castles and churches but this time I used Nokia Maps 3.0 on my Nokia 5800 to get the model of the castle. Surprisingly, the map is not aware of the island which the castle is built on, it is showing it on the water.

Check out the following images of the gorgeous castle!

I have participated in another half-marathon in a village called Kyronjoki in Finnish or Stukachio in Swedish.

As this event was only a month after a half-marathon in Seinajoki initially I thought of it only as the next step of preparation to run a marathon. I did not aim at any high goal such as breaking 1:50 time. During April it was colder than expected, the temperature was near freezing. However, on the day of the half-marathon it suddenly became much warmer, near 20 centigrade.

I brought a jacket and pants with me but ended up running in shorts and T-shirt. While I was warming up I realized that running in such conditions might allow me to achieve a higher result than that in Seinajoki, to even improve my personal record. Thus I decided to do my best in this half-marathon.

I was preparing to sustain cold weather for two hours. I have eaten a lot before the half-marathon. However, running in sunshine does not require that much energy reserve. It can make you throw up if you get overheated.

The course in this half-marathon is nearly flat thus it looks easier than it is. What makes it difficult is lack of any shadow during the entire course. In the summer the organizers plan the route in the shadow because everybody knows that overheating is dangerous. This time it was spring therefore nobody thought of overheating. But the conditions were quite tough – no shadow, no wind, direct exposure to sunshine for the duration of run.

A marathon in Kyronjoki is quite popular event even though the place is located quite far from any major city. When people began to gather I noticed that their average age was greater, these were really mature people. Typically, lots of young people participate, but in this event it was not the case. I guess this competition is known for its toughness.

Surprisingly, I have finished with the same time as earlier – 1 hour and 50 minutes. This course it totally different from Seinajoki, however. I have completed the first half of the run in the same time as in Seinajoki, in 50 minutes. However, this time I decided to take a break, I was walking for a couple of minutes. Then I spent another 10 minutes getting back to the pace in which I was running previously. Lots of people have overtaken me. I found out that it is convenient when people run past you as you can try to run after them. They give you an idea of how fast you need to go.

Anyway, in the end of the race I picked up the speed necessary to finish with a high result. However, during the race I thought many times of slowing down or stopping completely. It was a tough run.

How is it possible to finish two different races in the same time? The following anecdote came to my mind. Soviet spies obtained the sketches of top-secret Western jet. The engineers started building it but they got a locomotive instead. They thought for a while, then disassembled the construction then assembled it again in a different way. But still it was a locomotive. They were totally confused and did not know what to do. They sent the spies again to get additional sketches that would allow to make a jet. The spies indeed brought back additional instructions. It was a tiny pamphlet that had only one sentence in it: After assembling a locomotive use chisel to shape it into supersonic jet.

Official results are here.

Last week I have watched a spectacular game here in Tampere. Russia was playing against Finland. Previously, I have been to the Finnish SM-league games only which of course are also quite entertaining. However, I found out that when the players represent their country they play with doubled effort.

I liked the game even though Russia lost 2-4. The Russian players look quite differently from Finns. They are much leaner, they are playing ice-hockey like an art. It is a common saying that when they try themselves in NHL they find it very difficult to stay on the pit long enough to touch the puck because the defenders push them away. Being able to survive in the vicinity of opponent’s goal is a key component of ice-hockey as a team game. Russia did not succeed in this component as Finns are obviously bigger guys. However, individual play of Russians was very impressive.

The Finns were in power play when a Russian player was able to run across the whole field, deceive a defender and the goalkeeper to score a goal in the upper corner. When another goal was scored the shooting angle was nearly flat, that is the Russian player was nearly on the line of the goal. The puck went into goal from goalkeeper’s back.

I was surprised to see the open hockey that the teams played.Russians demonstrated pressing even when Finns were in power play. I think Russians were a bit opportunistic whereas Finns played more standard ice-hockey.

As I found out that the game would take place only an hour before the game began I did not have time to pick up my Panasonic with 12x optical zoom. Thus I used the built-in Carl Zeiss camera of my Nokia 5800. I found its quality pretty good. It supports digital zoom and obviously image stabilization. I remember that taking pictures with zoom using an earlier camera was prone to blur. This camera has lots of options such as contrast, exposure, gamma correction. During the weekend I learned how to upload the pictures to the web easily. The default firmware has Flickr support. I found out that there is a nice web application Pixelpipe which connects your phone with over 50 online galleries. Thus it is possible to overcome the limitations which a free account imposes.

I have participated in Tassuralli the previous year. I remember that I have not prepared enough. I felt hungry and exhausted my strength. This year I was better prepared and improved the time a lot. Now it is 1:50:36, a staggering 13 minutes better than last year.

Since early March I was running on Sundays and one time during working days in the forest, approximately 15 kilometers each time. This year the spring is colder but there is more sunshine. Thus the running is more enjoyable. Learning lessons from the past, proper eating was another important component of preparation. I consumed a lot of kebabs, meat steaks, and hamburgers.

On the day of the run I woke up to see the sun shining in the window. The sky was clear. It is an enjoyable feeling when you wake up and you realize that today something good will happen, that whatever obstacles you will face you will make it. The first problem was the missing bus. On Sundays their number is reduced but I found that out only one hour before the train to Seinajoki. So I had to run from home to a distant bus stop to take a different bus. Other than this, I arrived to the starting line quite comfortably.

There were lots of people, I think twice as many as there were last year. Learning another lesson, I started in the head of the pack to avoid unnecessary overtaking. However, those guys were really fast and ignoring a common wisdom that you should never start a long run fast I started at 4min/km pace which is too fast compared to 5-6 min/km, my average pace at the half-marathon.

So the odds were that I would not make it after quick start or that I will slow down in the end as it happened earlier. But I survived.

The race included two laps, 10 km each. Another difficulty was the lack of drinks, simple water. They gave us juice after 5 km and that was it. I expected refreshments after completing first lap, that is 10 km, but there was nothing! Ugh-ogh, I continued without stopping. The wind was blowing into the face, but I had to maintain the pace of 5-6 min/km because I wanted to improve the result. Overall, the tactics that I chose was quite risky. I wanted to run as long as possible at the higher pace of 5min/km, then slowing down to 6 min/km. But the danger of this approach is slowing down too much. That is, after making an initial effort you think, oh well I only need to recover doing 6 min/km and then I will accelerate again. But in practice the recover only slows you down entirely.

Anyway, in the second lap I was doing 6min/km until I arrived at the same spot where they had drinks earlier. Fortunately, the drinks were available on the second lap as well. I continued at the average pace of 6min/km to the final stretch of the distance that included hills. At the mark of 20 km the time was 1:44 but ahead of me were hills that I was climbing easily during the first lap but would I make it during the second lap? In addition to all the troubles my lace was undone! I stopped, fixed the lace and then continued. But the precious time was lost. I climbed the hills using all my strength only to see the electric watch showing 1:49:50 at the final stretch. I had to make those 100 meters to the finish line in 10 seconds like a world champion.

Loosing with pride, I only made it when the clock showed 1:50:05. Then I found out that that was not the finish line, there was another turn and a different clock. I walked that distance in another half-minute laughing. After the race I was recovering during four days. Only now am I able to write this post. The race was exhausting but I am quite happy. Aiming at another half-marathon and breaking the magical 1:50:00 time that I have approached very closely.

The results are here.

I have got Nordica skies at Himos. The whole set including skies with bindings, boots, and poles was only 350 Euros. On Amazon, such skies with bindings cost over $1,195! Thanks to Pekka Jokela who told me that it is possible to get the skies directly at Himos.

There is a nice bus connection between Himos and Tampere. On Saturday morning the bus takes the passengers to the hill at the time of its opening at 10AM. It is good because later on long queues build up. Also, the snow on the hills is untouched but later during the day the surface gets icy. The bus leaves Himos at 4PM.

Himos has a number of hills in it known as West-Himos, Central Himos under development at the moment, as well as North-Himos. Each hill has a number of slopes. In order to get from the western hills to the northern hills you have to take a very long slope that goes diagonally through the central Himos. The length of that slope is over 1 km. The slope map is here.

I am going to Himos every Saturday so I tried out all hills that are open. The funny thing is that in January only the western hills are open. Then they open additional hills every Saturday. So there are news at Himos every weekend.

Often, there is a possibility to test new skies. Top brands such as Atomic and Salomon offer their new models. Then next year they sell those test skies very cheap. This is how I got my Nordica skies – they were test skies the previous year.

I liked Himos so much that I advertised it at work and in fact a few guys decided to go there and check it out. They also liked it and got the skies as well. In other words, winter in Finland is definitely skiing time, and it is not cross-country but downhill skiing.