Ruska 2025 E06: The Wet Tar Pit

ENG and FIN subtitles available! 👌

Live tracking and replay:
https://sportrec.eu/gps/ruska-2025

Ruska is an annual ultracycling event held every year in September, mostly in Finland but also other neighbouring countries are often part of the route.

More info about Ruska 2025:
https://www.randonneurs.fi/ruska-ride-across-finland-2025/

#ruska #ultracycling #pitkänmatkanpyöräily #randonneur

🎥✂️ Pekka Tahkola & Marko Kerola

Ruska 2025 starts on Friday 12.9.2025 at 19:48 o’clock at sunset from Verla. This time the theme is forest. The first control follows tar trade routes from Lamminaho’s house to Suomussalmi local heritage museum. The second control is Siperia forest trail at Rovaniemi with various coniferous tree species from all over the world. The third control is Tsarmitunturi with a view to the Finland’s northmost spruce forest. To finish at Snabburdalen, the world’s northmost pine forest, participants have to ride via Hietatieva dunes at Kalmakaltio.

Participants have 8 days, 5 hours and 12 minutes to ride their self made route. Private resupply is forbidden so participants can only use equally available services such as shops and restaurants. You may cheer on the participants, but helping them, even online, is forbidden.

So, and then we reached the old Oulu-Kajaani road. This area is quite a mystery because that highway has gone from so many different places here sometime in the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, and today, of course, from a completely different place again. This is a great road. It’s a shame that this is cut off a little further on. Hmm which line should I choose? There are quite a lot of ruts hidden there under the grass, so you have to ride carefully when riding with one hand only. You may ride carefully with two hands too. It is completely allowed. Yeah, let’s switch side again. Dum du-dum du-dum dum. Apparently it has been a bit slippery here, judging by those tire tracks. Nice road, this one, too. It’s interesting terrain, when there are these little canyons here, which then get really deep there further. Oops, a bit of a big gear. Are there lingonberries here? Let’s have some lingonberries. This area has also been in quite a bit land reshaping, just recently, when a new transfer loading station was built here, where you load stuff from log trucks to trains. That one big project is apparently over there, where that main road culvert is being replaced. That culvert is in that canyon, so it’s quite deep, so there seems to be quite a huge amount of work needed. I don’t know to how many riders it has come as a surprise, even though there were big signs on the side of the road saying that the road is closed. And here, apparently, the culvert has already been replaced at one such canyon. Fortunately, we can ride over this one. Those canyons lead down that way to the Oulujoki river, so they are quite deep. But that earlier canyon, which I didn’t cross now along this road, but using a much smaller track road much higher up there, where that canyon was lower, so that canyon is still under construction and this road is closed back there. Ahh, there’s yet another canyon over there, where the culvert has already been replaced, further on. Well, arriving at Lamminaho house, i.e. the beginning of Ruska CP1 parkour, and so that thunderstorm also arrives. Should find a tar pit here. It must be here. Lamminaho’s house is there, and the tar pit should be found here. Is it there now, or a little further here? So here. Tar pit. Ah. Well, here we are. Distance is exactly 485 km from Verla, and the tar pit is there. And it’s 5:46 p.m. Well, right after starting the parkour, I put on the rain jacket, as it’s going to start raining here anyway, and then it took about 30 seconds for the rain to start. Sheesh that was heavy rain. It’s still coming and there’s a pretty nearby rainbow there, which starts from that river. It’s almost worse when the sun is shining. It’s so warm in the rain clothes. Dammit, so heavy rain. Huh. Completely soaked shoes, as I didn’t bother putting on rain pants. It would have been worth it. I don’t know if that would have saved (my shoes dry). There it’s still going, that rainstorm. I bought a metric fogton of food and drinks from the grocery store. The backpack weighs on the back, and we set off towards Alassalmi ferry. Sorry, I’m in a bit of a hurry for the ferry! And then we turn towards Alassalmi ferry. 5 kilometers, and 22 minutes time for that. The ferry is operating. Nice. I checked, when I left Vaala, that I wasn’t in any hurry. I should have had an hour and a half to go, and 30 km of distance, i.e. an average speed of 20 km/h. It rolled quite nicely there, at around 24-25 km/h. Then, a little later, I realized that even then an average speed of 21 km/h would not be enough. So I would have gone even slower than I should have. I’m guessing that something was rounding the kilometers incorrectly, when I looked at the points from the track, it only rounded the distances to the nearest kilometer. I didn’t come up with anything else as an explanation. It would have been nice to stop and chat a bit with Markus, but I didn’t dare to risk having to wait in the rain. That rain over there is coming directly towards the ferry too, so I don’t want to wait there for an extra half hour in the rain. I don’t remember at all if there is even any waiting shelters.
(the ferry goes every 30 minutes) Arriving at the ferry, and it’s pouring again for a change. Phew. Is there anything here? It’s 19:51, apparently. I wish there was something here, where I could at least hold the rain a little. There. Now Otso is aboard the ferry, and let’s get going. There are others here too. G’day.
– Good day. He said there that I could come visit here.
– Yup you may. So did he just, was he a little late from the previous ferry? – Yeah, yes.
– Dammit.
– He was coming there somewhere, over there on the hill. Check. May I film? – Yeah you can film. – Where did you start pedalling from?
Well, we all left from Kouvola yesterday evening. – So I was like, what’s the thing, when little by little there have been more cyclists crossing here, that.. Yeah, there’s probably going to be more of them soon, as probably only the first ten of us have reached here, so.. – Yeah.
Almost 80 of us started. – Whoa.
Maybe, I don’t know how many have the energy to pedal through the night, but there might be people who come here to the ferry even at night.
– Yes, yes. – How far will you pedal?
To Northern Norway. – No way in heck.
I’d say. 607 km ridden now with these eyes (without any sleep), and the time is 22:19. Yeah, I could continue riding, but maybe it would be wise to have some sleep. I just got the hunch that the place I’m going to is going to be pretty popular. I hope I’ll fit there. My guess is that Puustinen will go there, and Alonurm is already there, but we’ll see. There aren’t really any other places here. Jutila and Sirkiä conquered the previous lean-to. Whatever, peace finds place for us all, or something. Don’t they say like that? Day 1 totals:
Distance: 611 km, including 31 km from hotel to the start Moving time: 25 h 23 min
Elevation gain: 5380 m 389 new tiles
Squadratinhos +3486
405.172 new kilometers There would have been sand there. I wish there had been water. Wonder where I could get some water? There is still some, but by no means too much. Whoah. Morning, sun!