Coming to crossroads

"Life is journey, enjoy it!" says one of my favorite books: "Led by Destiny" by Kinga "freespirit" Choszcz.

My journey just reached a crossroad and I had to take a decision on which way to go. The decision wasn't that easy but I flew today to the Netherlands with one-way ticket. Tomorrow morning I will start my internship and in October I will already be in Berlin...

Have you ever been leaving from somewhere having the mixed feelings of excitement and sadness? That is exactly what I went through during the last couple of days. For me leaving Helsinki and finishing my at AIESEC in Finland was not difficult. What was hard for me was to realize how many nice people I had met and how many of them I might not see again, at least for a while. Eventually as I have already earlier written, a place is just as good as the people you know in it. In this respect Helsinki and Finland as whole were a great place. There are many people I will miss dearly.

Once, a couple of months back I read a column in a daily newspaper in Helsinki. There was a young guy or girl using a very nice metaphor I still remember. He/she compared meeting people in life with meeting a stranger at a campfire when hiking in the wilderness. You come from different directions, you settle down and spend some time together getting to know each other. You might share some things of yourself or you might have fun together. Now matter what happens, the morning will eventually come and you need to go separate and continue your journey to different directions. The column author proposed that one should not feel sad about this but instead you should be happy about the things your got from one another. These things you can keep with you further on. Letting go is a lesson in life. It is not possible to hold contact with all the people you have met during your life. And is it even necessarily? When the fire goes of in the morning, just say: "Thank you and good bye".

I would like to thank all the people that have made the last year in Helsinki and Finland for me a year to remember. I know that I won't be able to keep in touch with all of you, but you and this year will stay always in my memories. To ease up keeping contact I will keep on writing about my journey in a new blog. New chapter of life, new blog: http://jounigoesabroad.blogspot.com

And maybe our roads cross again at another campfire. Enjoy your journey!

With dear hugs,
Jouni

P.S. Netherlands or Germany are only a couple of hours away from Finland;)

Helsinki city run

Well my blog seems to turn out to more and more a running blog. Well I'll try to change this habit after Stockholm marathon...

This weekend there was the HCR = Helsinki city run in Helsinki. My final (net) time was 1:46:14. My initial aim was to finish HCR with a pace faster than my marathon pace. My average pace at HCR was: 05:01 min/km. My goal for Stockholm marathon is 3:30:00 which means a pace of 4:59 min/km.

From here you can already see that I was supposed to run much faster at HCR. What was the reason for being not that successful? Well, the last 2-3 weeks I had been sick (having fewer and some infection) and this obviously still pulled my results down. At HCR already after 8 km my hearth beat started raising to ridiculous numbers with an average pace of 04:45 min/km. I had suddenly heartbeat of 170 hb/min which is way too high for me. At that pace I should have had HB around 150-160. I would guess that the high heartbeat was due to the fewer and decease I had had earlier. After 10-15km I wanted to fasten my pace but I couldn't as my HB was so high. And this was very funny as I didn't feel that tired. Even at the end of the run my legs were totally fine and I could have run faster. It was just the HB. Strange...

I hope that I will get fine before Stockholm. There I would need to run with the same pace for the whole marathon. That means that my HB can't be that high! Let's keep fingers crossed!

German test and Input

Next week seems to turn to be an interesting one for me. For one side it will pretty much show how the next 6-12 months of my life will look like, for two it will decide where AIESEC in Finland will got for the next term 2008-2009. I have my german exam and AIESEC in Finland has Input, the national planning seminar.

As I am slowly reaching the end of my working term at AIESEC, I am also starting to put more thoughts on my private things such as this exam. I just realized that the end of my work at AIESEC is just a matter of few weeks.

My German exam... I was just pondering through some model exams and I am not toooooo confident of my success. On the other currently I am a man who has nothing to loose. No, not that I would do something very desperate or stupid;) I just mean that it does not really matter what my result will be. If I will fail, then I will just have to exam again. A simple fact of life, ain't it: If you fail, you must climb up again. On the other hand sometimes climbing up again to where you were (or where you thought you were) is not that much fun.

I am getting once again a bit scared of the openness of all my options that lie before me in just few weeks. But at the same time it makes me smile inside to see much more open I have become to different options, to options I wouldn't have considered earlier, to options I didn't knew existed before. I think that I have grown...

Exploring in my thoughts at home. Greetzt to all who still have the energy to check my blog even though I'm such a lazy writer.

Some quote I think I already used before:
"Enjoy yourself. These are the 'good old days' you are going to miss in the years ahead."
-- Anonymous

Running test # 2

Today I ran another running test in Liikuntamylly in Myllypuro, Helsinki.

The results are the following ones:
HB 150: Time 10:40 => 4:26 min/km (Average HB 149 - Kcal 117 - Max HB 157)
HB 160: Time 10:20 => 4:18 min/km (Average HB 159 - Kcal 126 - Max HB 165)
HB 170: Time 09:28 => 3:57 min/km (Average HB 170 - Kcal 126 - Max HB 177)

The results when I did the test last time were:
150 hb: time 12:47 = 5:20/km (average final hb 149)
160 hb: time 11:19 = 4:42/km (average final hb 158)
170 hb: time 10:21 = 4:19/km (average final hb 169)

From here we can see that in the lowest HB I have taken the time down by 2 minutes!!! That is quite unbelievable. It results straight from running a lot of kms under my LT. This also shows that I should be able to do much better in the marathon which is to be ran under the LT. My marathon goals (3:30:00) pace is 4:59 so my pace at HB 150 is already under this. This just means that I should be able to run 3:30:00 marathon with HB under 150!

The results with the higher HBs have also increased by 1 minutes which is also pretty good! However if I would like to develop my speed with the shorter distances I should run also speed / power trainings which I haven't done that much lately. My program has been focusing on running at a steady pace long kms.

That's about it for now. It feels good to see that I have reached something by running 5 times/week!

Have you considered of living in a jungle?

Greetings again to the "cyber-world". Life is a busy place. No time to stop and think. Self-reflection is so difficult when one is busy. Well greetings anyway to all and here under I wrote about a book I just finished tonight.

The ones who speak German might know the book called "Das Dschungelkind". I bought it at the airport in Berlin when leaving back to Finland. Well that's a bit less than a month ago and I managed to read it through (even if it's in German).

Have to say that it was a really good book. Or maybe more correct would be to say that the book itself wasn't extraordinary or written in an extraordinary way. However the story that the author was telling was an extremely extraordinary one. Most amazing thing about the story is that it is a true one.

In AIESEC one is talking a lot about the cultural shock. Well this book gave me a totally new perspective to the whole word. The book tells about a German girl who moved with her family to the jungle in Papua-New Guinea to live by an aboriginal tribe when she was under five years old . There she then lived with her family until she was 18-years old after which she moved back to Europe. The way of living in the jungle and the difficulties she has when she comes back to Europe are very interesting ones. I totally can recommend this book to anyone interested about different cultures and culture shock.

Back to the real World...