Way to Yukon River Quest 2020: vol 2

Hi to all of you!

As promised at the end of the last blog post, we will share the steps to Yukon River Quest that we have done till the beginning of 2020.

Here, let´s continue with October 2019

At that time we were pretty sure we are going to be presented on Yukon River Quest 2020 but beforehand we needed to deal with one real key action - registration. I am coming to this story separately. But at this period we also knew that preparation counts and long-distance challenges will be supportive of our performance on Yukon.

From left: Anette, Robert, Linda (42+ km finish)

So, we decided to take part in our very first (running) marathon “Estonian Wilderness Marathon 42+k” (check more about it here: ESTONIAN WILDERNESS MARATHON 42+K/25K). We did/do not consider ourselves as runners. To think back on our sports backgrounds, both of us (me and Anette) have done mostly sitting sports from childhood. But we liked the idea of moving on foot while being in nature and on tracks and developing at least a bit of our endurance capacity. Without any special running preparation, we managed to reach the finish with the time 5:34:44. It was a nice experience and we noticed that doing this together (me, Anette and Robert) appeared to be more valuable than we actually expected.

After this marathon, we took some time to recover. I (Linda) was away in Sardinia for ten days, but with Anette and Robert, we held the contact and shared moments by describing how it is to walk stairs :D and how the recovering process is going. I would say that all of us managed to come back to our training schedules pretty smoothly and well.

Important day… 1st of November 2019

This day (or a night :D) was about the key action I mentioned - registration to Yukon River Quest 2020 got opened at 3 AM according to Estonian time. All of this took place during one Halloween party at my friend´s place. We prepared some info about ourselves in advance, also had some fun time while dancing with friends, but keeping an eye on a clock very precisely.

Exactly at 3 AM, we were sitting behind a computer and waiting for the registration page to become opened. It did! This punctually (surprisingly)! Quickly we started to insert needed information. The registration, well, to say the money transfer appeared to be a real challenge as some technical problems appeared. So, just a few minutes before 4 AM I took a call to Canada and one really friendly and helpful guy answered my call. He helped to finish our registration and we just needed to send him the transfer receipt. I remember clearly how he also asked: “ What is the time in Estonia at the moment… it must be 3 AM or smth like that”. I said: “Yeah, it is almost 4 AM in the morning.” And he replied: “Wow, you are strong ladies.” Quite after the call, we appeared as the 90th team on the registration list. Can you imagine! And there were/are only 125 spots for teams. Anyways, we were happy, we also kept an eye on K2WOM teams and I personally hoped that there will be more than only just us in our class. In the end three teams in K2WOM class. You can find more about the teams and their bios here: Racer Bios for 2020 Yukon River Quest Entrants

Excitement during this night did not let us fall asleep immediately. After some sleeping hours, we were fully energized to go to paddle on the Emajõe river. Big and important step done, we knew there will be many more actions needed to manage in progress of going to the Yukon River Quest.

What else in November… Dipole Challenge through the night. Check more from here: Dipole Challenge 230 km

Dipole challenge 230 km: at the Neris River in the middle of the night

December (action plan and skiing camp at Jõulumäe)

Winter did not arrive during Christmas month and we had a great (let´s count it like this) opportunity to do trainings on the rivers. Meantime scheduling a meeting with Andres and Leivo (who took part in Yukon River quest 2018 and won K2MEN class), getting ready together with World of Kayaks and being presented in short TV-show to introduce where we are going in June 2020 (possible to see in the Estonian language here: Duubel: Eesti naised süstaga maratonile).

From left: Linda, Ahti, Anette, Matti (TV3 studio)

We also had a great opportunity to go to skiing camp at Jõulumäe (thanks to artificial snow) with our young kayaking athletes’ group. We started with camp right a day after Christmas Eve. This time there, together with Anette, we wanted to use it in a maximum way. In a sense of planning an action plan and doing training. The action plan was about putting deadlines when we are contacting possible sponsors, when we are doing other endurance training, organizing logistics about our actions feed, etc.

Skiing camp at Jõulumäe :)

Fun boardgame evening

Training hours in the camp were really good and doing training together was valuable. We had also lots of fun (by playing board games and doing braids) thanks to our lovely young kayaking girls (Säde and Annabel) with whom we shared a room. Good training rhythm appeared quite fast: 8 AM morning run/gym, ca 10:30 skiing for two hours, ca 4 PM skiing another two hours and/or gym. On 30.12.19 we did also run/hike on a 25 km trail in the darkness, which was also a good experience. And fast as that the camp got to the end and also 2019.

Stay tuned #lindanettechallenges