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!