Finland's Sauna World Championships

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Outside Magazine, March 2005

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Hotties (cont.)

LAST AUGUST, A FEW days before the event, I visited Leo Pusa at his summer house on the outskirts of Helsinki. Eager to reclaim his world-champion status, Leo immediately invited me to join him in—surprise!—his backyard sauna. In typical Finnish fashion, we stripped naked, sweated it out, then—wrapped in towels—ate and drank our way through a spread of sandwiches, sausages, and a dozen or so beers that Leo's wife, Marja, had laid out on the picnic table. After the feast we returned to the sauna for more steamy air.

Leo's electric stove ran on only eight kilowatts, much less powerful than the Terminator. Still, the sauna was 195 degrees and humid enough to make me wish I'd brought along my scuba gear. Leo, who's built like a bear with a large paunch, was training the way he always does: by logging time in the hothouse. After we sat down on the aspen bench, I asked my host how he perseveres in the face of, if not imminent combustion, at least extreme discomfort.

"For one thing," Leo said, "you need to sweat a lot, and I sweat so much that it's dripping off me even when I eat spicy food. But you've also got to have sisu."

Sisu, not to be confused with sissy, is a Finnish word whose rough translation is "guts." If you have sisu, you can hold on to a rope for a few minutes while dangling over a precipice—and then a few extra hours. Sisu is what sustained the Finns in fighting multiple wars with Russia, while losing virtually every one of them.

"How can I get sisu?" I asked. At the moment I needed something that would help counteract my fear of frying.

"It comes with mother's milk," Leo replied, "so you probably have it."

Maybe because my mother fed me infant formula, I left the sauna right after this exchange. Fifteen or so minutes later, when Leo emerged, he was holding the half-full can of beer that I'd inadvertently left behind. The beer, I noticed, was boiling.

When Leo emerged, he was holding a half-full can of beer that I'd inadvertently left behind. The beer, I noticed, was boiling.

So why doesn't one's blood boil, too? Because the human body is a better-designed heat-removal apparatus than a can of beer. The hotter it is, the more we perspire, and our perspiration balances the temperature differential between the surface and the core of our bodies. Of course, this apparatus works for only a relatively short time. A Finn named Reino Tarkiainen told me that he'd once survived a sauna temperature of 300 degrees—for more than two minutes. If he hadn't gotten out when he did, he would have been toast. Once the temperature of the human body reaches between 105 and 107, irrevocable cell damage begins to occur. It's only a matter of time before you die.

While Leo and I were training, the other competitors, like Luke Edwards, a 26-year-old dark horse from Australia, were hydrating with beer. Jolly, relatively fit, and about six foot two, Luke was competing in the SWC for the second year in a row. He'd also competed in the World Cell Phone Toss, the Gloucester Cheese Roll, and the Air- Guitar-Playing World Championships. In 2003's Sauna World Championships, Luke informed me proudly, he was "the Southern Hemisphere record holder," though he'd lasted only four minutes. He quickly admitted that no one else from the Southern Hemisphere had entered the competition.

"Last year the skin on my ear lobes split open from the heat," he said.

"Then how come you're doing it again?" I asked.

"Stupidity outweighs discomfort," he grinned. "Besides, this gives an unathletic person like me a chance to compete at a sport. I mean, all you've got to do is sit and sweat."

I mentioned that the odds against him winning, according to Centrebet, were 46 to 1.

"Are they that good? They were 81 to 1 against me last year," Edwards said. "But that's OK. You have more fun when there's hardly any chance of winning."

Before we parted, I asked Luke if he had sisu.

"What's that, mate?" he said.

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