Burlington, MA, US

During past 5-6 years I have been seeing lots of very different kind of hotel lobbies and even most of them I have somehow managed to spend times. This time I have found extermely nice lobby from Boston. This lobby is from Omni Parker Hotel, which is one of the most attractive hotels I have spent my time in US. The whole decoration is following some kind of guidelines with dark to different shapes of browns. Very attractive.

Boston, MA, US

Boston is the home of Red Socks as well as Bruins. During past seasons, the Red Socks has been a bit more successfull than the ice-hockey team. Anyway, compared to several other east coast cities, Boston has some kind of traditional concervativeness combined to educational environment. The city is nice, not that busy as New York or not that sleepy than San Francisco, but has own very nice rythm. Since I visited Boston first time, I have liked it a lot. Somehow famous educational institutes, like Hardard and MIT will increase the attractiveness of the city as well.

For some reason, this city is very attractive and it is easy to like... Somehow it is calm and the "processing speed" or "clock speed" is a bit lower than in New York.

Jukola relay, Orienteering, Finland

Orienteering is fun. After running my own 7.64 km turn, I started to wait that rest of the crew will come back from the forest, I got my map, which I was reading, before the needed sleep came. Being awake and prepairing for running means, that you might be a bit tired during morening time. I moved my camp outside from the tent, because temperature was pretty good, sun was shining and light breeth of wind was giving relaxing part to whole cooking.

After Timo was driving back to Tampere, Jaana did excellent lunch and I was sleeping in Nokia with Timo and his wife for several hours before I was able to drive back to Espoo. Thanks for Timo and also for the orienteering guys letting us to join to their team. Excellent guys and extremely good team spirit :-)

Jukolan viesti, Orienteering, Finland

Jukola is the world largest orienteering relay. Venlojen Viesti is female relay with 4 shift and Jukolan viesti is mens relay with 7 shifts, where the shortest is 7.5km and longest part from seven is more than 15km. I ran 5th part and it was 7.63 km. That was good, because relay was just one week after Stockholm Marathon. Timo, my brother was in excellent shape and ran 7th shift (the last one) with excellent time.

Well, before mens relay there was ladies running in the forest and with new GPS technology also orienteering has started to approach more watcher friendly way to follow-up what is on-going so from the big LCD-screen we were able to found out what is on-going in the forest.... each of the top team members carried GPS positioning equipment, which was sending the location real time and that line was drawn to the map, which was on-date, so it was very visible to see, what kind of route selections each of the top members have done in the forest.

Spaghetti "Shitti" / Jukola / Orienteering / Finland

Well... well... even the orienteering has been interesting focus of the weekend, I need to say, that we did, before the relay was starting in the middle of the night (yes, in the middle of the night), we decided to take a Spaghetti. Timo, my second brother (in the picture with blue shirt, left) and Samuli Talvia (my friend from the younghood). That was probably one of the worst choice ever, because with that Spaghetti Shitti, I needed to run toilet like 3 times during the night. I dont know what kind of meat they were using, but probably nothing expected....

8 km / Stockholm Marathon, Sweden

At some point in Stockholm Marathon, everything was going ok. I had drink necessary amount of energy and sport drinks to keep up my liquid balance with all needed particels needed by human body, running was going well, no matter there was no wind at all and about +29 Celcius degrees.

I need to admit, that even my Marathon was a bit shorter than expected, I liked the atmosphere of Marathon. Swedish people are extremely nice and probably the world best marathon was more than positive exprience. If I wont ever run this, I probably will go and see this at least some times.

Stockhom Marathon, Stockholm, Sweden

For some weird reason (still dont fully understand how), my dear friend Tommy (in the picture the atheletic in blue runnish shirt) managed to convins me to join to Stockhom Marathon 2007. I started to practice with Tommy and Raimo (in the picture the runner number 7115) August 2006. That give me interesting insight the running and everything went pretty well until spring, when I was planning to get longer distances.

Eventually, both Tommy and Raimo did excellent run, but my run was cutted dramatically at some point near 20km where my left leg was logged no matter how much I did for it even with ice gel, and doctor run to me and said that my race is over in the middle, just at the beginning of the second round. I knew that there is no point to run any further, so I said that "you are right" and that was my race in Stockholm Marathon 2007. I was a bit disappointed (a lot), but then I thought that I will visit in doctor and ask how to avoid this nerves to lock. Later on the appointments has been set in place and I know now how to treat my back.