In the last couple of days I've seen some inspiring performances (especially for those of us getting older).

Arja Hannus from Sweden won the women's ski-O world champs in Russia. Arja is 40 and won her first world champs 18 years ago. She has won both ski-O' and orienteering (note that I refuse to call it "foot O") world champs. She won the World O' Champs in France in 1986.

A 37 year old woman won the women's Olympic marathon trials (sorry I forgot her name). She will be the only US woman to run the Olympic marathon. There seems to be some controversy about the way the selection races were designed. It turned out that if the winner had not previously run sub 2:33 and did not run under 2:33 in the trials, only one person would make the Olympic team. The winner also reportedly did most of her training on a treadmill.

-- Michael (meglin@juno.com), March 01, 2000

Answers

Wasn't there a time a few years back when Peggy was making a big push to rename OK to FOK, which was to have stood for "Foot Orienteering Kansas"? I'm sure glad we nixed that idea! What was Peggy thinking of anyway?

-- Mook (everett@psi.edu), March 01, 2000.

Ahem. These are all women, who have been long been known to be the sturdier sex. How about some male examples?

-- Fritz Menninger (fpmenninger@hotmail.com), March 03, 2000.

Fritz -- how about the "old man" Mikell P.? I think he is 40 or 41. His training is pretty inspiring. It'll be fun to follow his exploits in Sweden (he's heading back to Sweden for a spring of O' and training; leaving this weekend).

http://www.forestfeet.homestead.com/

-- Michael (mike_eglinski@kmco.org), March 07, 2000.