Sporty Finns, part 1

Part of Finnish life is doing sports. At any time of the day on the streets, fitness paths you can see people jogging, roller-blading, Nordic-walking. On the lakes people are kayaking or rowing. In the winter time you can see young boys playing ice-hokey on ice rinks located on the school yards. Ice-hockey is one of the most popular sports in Finland, so if you want to blend into Finnish society successfully knowledge about ice-hockey teams and matches will definitely help. Cross-country skiing is also very popular. There are naturally loads of other sport related activities that Finns involve in. Doing sports is facilitated by the surroundings (forest, bicycling paths, numerous sport centres, swimming pools etc.) as well as initiatives - sport events organised throughout the whole year. And once there it is difficult not to hear about any of them. It is surely easier not to sign up, but you get a feeling of being a weirdo by skipping participation.

One of those sport events is "Ladies' day". Initiative to promote healthy lifestyle and get together. The meaning of this event is to walk or run 5 or 10km and at the same time have fun. This year the event took place 15th of May. Organisation as usually in Finland was perfect. First registration, some time to hang around, then warm up lead by ladies from a fitness centre:Famous Finnish ski-jumping coach Mika Kojankoski gave a short speech about being active:... and when all of the ladies were ready on the start line he gave a signal to start:









I have to admit I was surprised by the number of all participants. The event had also fun part which was competition for most entertaining costume:
















Participants wearing the funniest costumes were awarded a prize: sticks for Nordic walk. I was in one of the lucky winners and even if I have never considered Nordic walk very appealing type of sport I have tried it and it is really nice way to relax. After reaching the finish line each participant received a little gift for accomplishing the distance:

After run/walk stretching was guided again by the ladies from the fitness centre and we could head for "after party" :)

The "Ladies' day" is only one of numerable sport events organised in Kuopio region. They are great opportunity to get together. Finns are usually so busy with work that they often don't have time to meet and socialise. That is why this sports events are often a great opportunity to take care of human social needs and contribute to overall well being of the society.

Pics by courtesy of Piotr Rutkowski.