Tarppiboys

The name of team Tarppiboys (“Tarp boys”) suggests that they do like to sleep in tarps. But will they do that also in Lapland Wilderness Challenge?

Why did you decide to register to this race?

We heard about LWC from a colleague of Risto’s who is into rogaining. We were immediately intrigued. The combination of being in the wilderness, having a clear objective and pushing ourselves over five days sounded exciting. We started speculating about all the different aspects of the race and its planning. We ended up registering soon after finding out about the race.

What kind of trip you expect LWC to be?

Above all we expect it to be physically challenging. We have little experience of race environments like rogaining or orienteering, so there are many interesting aspects to this event. We expect to enjoy ourselves (at least at dinner and bed-time), but it might be the kind of trip where the best part is when the suffering ends on the Thursday.

Tell something about your team. What does the name stand for?

Our team consists of two brothers and a long-time friend. Lauri and Risto have done summer trips for many years, usually canoeing or climbing. Last year Mikko joined for a canoeing trip in Vätsäri. The name “Tarppiboys” arose as an in-joke based on banter during that Vätsäri trip. We imagined a series of satirical instructional videos where we set up tarps in our back garden to demonstrate “extreme tarping” as a way to survive in severe conditions.

What is the longest distance you have traveled in terrain (by foot) in 24 hours?

In the other interviews 100 km seems to come up as a kind of marker. Well, we’ve done more than 100 km off-road, at least if you add up our individual maximums… 🙂

What’s your goal in LWC? 

To push ourselves close to our physical limits while enjoying trekking in the wilderness. This will require successful pacing so that we can progress steadily for the whole five days, and hopefully we’ll finish with a feeling that we couldn’t have gone much further. We don’t want it to be pure suffering though, so we plan on getting a decent sleep during the nights etc. Hopefully we can avoid bad blisters etc that would stop our progress altogether.