Endurance go, go, go

Like every december, we put our focus on endurance in the last two weeks. In our traditional St.-Jakob-weeks we are much x-country skiing, doing hill intervals and also some O-trainings if it is possible concerning the snow. Two weeks ago I trained 17h and last week even 21:20h, which is a personal record I think.
Yesterday I celebrated my 21th birthday, so I made myself a nice present with 21 hours of training on my 21th day of birth. This week will be a semi-easy one before starting our special speed training on 30th december.

Christmas-O on Wednesday




















Week 51/2009
























A special thanks to our readers and Merry Christmas to Everyone! :)

Planning weekend for 2010

One week ago we had our planning weekend for the next season in St. Jakob im Walde. The two new coaches enforcing our trainer team - the Swiss Rolf Gemperle as a new nationaltrainer and the second junior trainer Libor Zrídkavésely from the Czech Republic - were also there to introduce theirselves, talk with us, speak about their intentions and of course train together with us. The highlights in orienteering 2010 will be WOC in Trondheim, WUOC in Borlänge and EOC in Primorsko. Things as Jukola, 10Mila, Worldcups and National Championships are on the schedule as well.

Austrian Night Champs and Austria Cup Final

After Wartis preview it was expected to be a hard fight for the medals.
Finally the terrain in St Johann in Tyrol proved to be very hard physically and it was somehow difficult to cope with the map at night.
So many mistakes happened within the whole starting field.
Best was (as usual) Kerschi with a good margin to Bindi, who nearly caught me at the 10th control but then lost some time there. Warti had a stable race with few mistakes and got 3rd, whilst I had to stay out of the podium as 4th not so much behind Warti. My race was full of mistakes and missinterpretations of the map. The terrain was also not my favourite one with high undergrowth nearly everywhere and lots of green areas.

The next day was expected to be a thrilling race between me an Warti. The main reason was Kerschis departure and journey home already at night. This led to the situation that both of us had the chance to win the Austria Cup overall ranking this year.
Course data seemed to be a nice middle distance with not too much climbing. Reality was totally different. The Elite courses were set in a much harder and steeper terrain than the other categories. So the result was a hard and long race through thick and steep forest parts mostly mapped white or light green undergrowth.
I started first of us and tried to push very hard at first controls. Then to the 4th my first mistake was the result of too much pushing and I decided to stay calm and go on with some physical reserves. In the end I did two other mistakes and lost about 3 minutes overall. It was enough for a 3rd place 10 secs behind Markus and 51 behind Bindi who won. Warti got 4th 1:39 behind me and so I won the Austria Cup ranking with just 0,48 points in front of him.

Night-O Preview

On Saturday the Austrian Night-Championships are going to be held in St. Johann/Tyrol. Terrain will be typical tyrolean style, i.e. technical demanding mostly open forest with ditches, but also areas with low runnability and marshy parts. Course length for men elite is 5,2 k in the night and 6,5 on Sunday at the last AC for this season. The starting field is easily manageable: just 10 participants in the Champs.

I'm looking forward to try and test my new Petzl Ultra-lamp, which I got some months ago from the Austrian distributor Agentur Berger in Grünau/Upper Austria, under competition conditions.

Additionally, we made a short night-training yesterday evening. Have a look at the map enclosed.

Austrian Military Championships

Today Warti and me ran the Military Champs in Orienteering.
Usually there are just categories using a mapscale of 1:25000 and not very detailed and old maps. But today organisers prepared a very special course for us. It was very similar to the course on the 1:25000 map but with some extra controls. The special thing for us was that the course crossed 3 different o-maps. The first one was 1:10000, then 1:7500 and finally 1:5000. So we had 3 map changes, but all maps were already handed out at the start.
We, all 5 of us from the military sports group started in between the other starters in an intervall of 3 minutes.
I had a little advantage over the others cause I had ran on all of the maps before.
So to the 9th control I caught Warti who started 3 minutes before me and then I managed to get a little gap to him and finished in 40:18.
Finally this was worth the second place just 49 secs behind Gernot "Kerschi" Kerschbaumer who won. Warti finished 4th with a time of 43:55.
It was a nice race with not really difficult controls but some routes and next year we will run again.

Some day in 1986

...a mapmaker drew the map "Hilmtor" somewhere in the Wechsel-area. And exactly on this map we made a training on last Thursday =) It was really interesting how much features didn't change, most of the paths, all water ditches, stones, cliffs and even some thickets stayed the same. Of course, the contour lines were correct, too. Reasoning (clearances became thickets, ...) and a bit of combining made it easy to orienteer. Nice training!

soon finished...

Last weekend we had another two championships: Salzburg district championships in Relay and Long distance (which was rather a shortened middle). Both were organised on a new map in Kals am Großglockner/East Tyrol. As I had some kind of a cold before, I was not sure to start, but finally I was able to compete. But I recognised that this season is getting too long now and I want to end it. Soon... Military championships on 7th of October and then I want to run the Graz half marathon on 11th. Currently, I have a problem with my feet and if it won't disappear I fear that I can't run... :S we will see, I hope all the best! :)

Anyway, I ran the relay with Markus König and - yes :) - we won. On Sunday I could collect another LM title :)

ÖSTM Relay

To compete in the relay championships on Sunday we had to skip the CISM banquet and go home directly after the CISM relay on Saturday.

As well as in the ÖSTM Long distance I wanted to have a medal here, too. 2007 we achieved a bronze medal and 2008 even the silver one. Unquestionable, the gold medal was pre-reserved by HSV Pinkafeld. But then are much teams following, which can fight for the remaining two medals. Among them, of course, ASKÖ Henndorf with Woif, Markus and me. This time it was closer then in the long distance, but still no medal for us, 4th place. I had a good run with 2 min. mistakes, but the deficit was already too big.

CISM in Võru/EST

This years Military World Championships (short form CISM) were held in Võru in south-east of Estonia. All nations were accomodated in the Kuperjanov Batallion barracks. The program was quite easy with two model events and three competitions spread over a week. Directly after the model event for middle and relay some of us climbed Estonias highest mountain, Suur Munamägi, which is amazing 318m a.s.l. :D

Beside the long bus travel from and to Talliinn Airport (4 hours per way) and the missing of the closing ceremony + banquet, my first CISM was much fun and I'm looking forward to 2011 where it should be in Rio de Janeiro/Brasil !!!! =)

ÖSTM Long distance

Some days after recovering from tough and long TCT (see the article before), the Austrian Championships in Long Distance took part in St. Lorenzen/Wechsel/Styria. I felt quite good and with a bronze medal in middle champs and a silver in sprint this year, I definitely wanted to gain another medal! Starting good, I made my first mistake when crossing Wolfi, who started 6 min. ahead of me. On the last 500m I got cramps in my calves and had to stop twice, once even in the finish sprint. In the end it was a disappointing 5th place behind the clearly leader Kerschi, 2nd Markus and Bindi and Wolfi 3rd and 4th.

TCT - TrainingCamp Trondheim

Following the slogan "Better later than not at all" I will briefly summarise our trainingcamp in Trondheim at the beginning of september together with the Swiss national team. The 8-days were fully packed with demanding trainings, competitions and the "Trondheim test". We had a big range of different trainings including route-choice trainings, snake and compass training, marsh-orienteering, as well as a sprint training and two partner trainings. On Saturday we ran the Austrian-Swiss middle distance camp-championships and on Sunday the KM relay near Trondheim.

Unfortunately, Wolfi got sick on Tuesday and so he had to skip most of the trainings. At the camp-champs Tobi twisted his ankle, but he already could run the day after again. Luckily, I was untroubled by injury and sickness.

We should be back in Trondheim at Easter time 2010 for our next training camp. Enjoy the enclosed maps :)

WOC Middle Qualification

WOC started today with the Middle Qualification race. Kerschi, Bindi and me were running.
Right from my selection it was my wish to run Middle at WOC because I thought it would be my best chance to reach a Final.
Although chances seemed to be quite low I tried to have fun and be careful all the time in the forest today. Immediately after the start signal and the first meters I realised that the map was extremely well drawn. This rose my motivation a lot. Even if I didn't felt that well physically it looks like I had a good pace compared with my running skills.
To first control my plan was to run over the charcoal burning ground and then along the contour line to the control. But unfortunately I was a little bit too high on the hillside and had to go down about 20 meters. Next controls were good and it was possible to develop some kind of flow.
Then the green area started and I knew that I should have a clear concept for every control inside this area. So I took it safely and had no problems here.
Finally the last technically challenging area was between 10th and 14th control. There I did a small direction mistake to the 13th and destroyed my shirt completely to the 14th.
The last controls were just fast running in my opinion.
In finish I saw that I am 6th and there was someone 2 secs in front of me. In the end there were 3 guys 1,2 and 3 secs in front of me. Therefore I waited quite nervously in front of the board till the end and then Per Forsberg salvated me by announcing the finalists.
So I made it to the final as 15th of Heat A with a time of 29:10 just 2 minutes and 34 secs behind the winner.
Puh that was close but now I am very happy about it because reaching a Final was my dream goal for this WOC.
Next is Long Qualification tomorrow with Markus, Warti and me.

WOC Preparation Hungary

As part of the WOC preparation the National Team spent 4 more days in Mikolc in order to make the last technical preparations in relevant terrain.
As expected the forests became much thicker than just some months ago, which will influence all distances. We started our training camp with a control picking exercise consisting of 50 controls. The following days consited of a WOC simulation with one middle distance training on the 2nd day, followed by 1 long distance, or two sprint trainings. The last day was devoted to the relay, where we completed 3 loops of about 1,5 kilometers together with the hungarian national team.

For my part the training camp was another step towards my top shape, as my running improved every day, with an extremly good feeling on the last day. My main focus was of course on the 2 sprint trainings which started both times really well. I securely punched the first short control, made the right route choice to the longer second control... On the first sprint, a parallel mistake costed too much time to run a good time, and at the second sprint I missed the "easiest" control with almost 1 minute... Analyising the control area after the race made Wolfis and my mistake clear, as we both entered the control area at the right place, not seeing the control flag, which was about 20 meters too much to the left. As all the others dealt with this situation without losing time, we should work on our flexibility in such situations.
I will learn of my mistakes , and after some more sprint trainings here in Austria I'm feeling very confident to show a good performance in Hungary!

O-Ringen MAPS

stage 1






























stage 2




















stage 3

















stage 4




















stage 5

ORINGEN 09

Oringen started for Warti and me with the mass start.
The task was to do three loops, each about 2,8-3 kms and then a final course of 9,5km. There were 6 combinations of the loops. Forking was done by combining two halfs (A to C) inside each loop with a common control in the middle.
The race started very well for me and I was always in sight of the leading pack when passing the first map exchange. Warti had some problems on his loop and fell behind some minutes.
But the troubles started on the second loop also for me. I did a bad route choice to the second control and also lost contact to the other guys. Then I was not even able to attack the control properly and lost some time there.
After this I tried to push harder to close the gap to a pack in front of me. Right after some minutes a bad feeling in my stomach made me stop. Finally even the last guy was gone. So I decided to change my plan and try to complete the race as a normal fast training.
Not even that was possible when I fought another 45 minutes and I gave up the race at the 3rd control of the last course.
Warti had a good race after his troubles in the beginning but skipped one control near the end and got disqualified.
Results 1st stage
So that was a very bad start to 5 days of Oringen for both of us.
Next day was the WRE event. My plan was to forget to do a normal race without any special plans. The preparation was really bad by eating just some toasts and a little bit of pizza after the massstart. Right from the beginning I felt really awful physically and had to push hard to keep a proper speed. To the third control I had my first mistake and a lot of little mistakes were following. I became 63rd and Warti was the best Austrian as 52nd.
Results 2nd stage
But the highlight of the day was Markus Lang who won the Hill prize.
The third day for the Elitserien runners held a Sprint in the city center of Eksjö.
I had a good race and just some seconds mistakes but the speed was horribly slow.
Warti was some seconds slower than me and became 57th and I was placed on 52nd position.
Results 3rd stage
After the rest day the middle distance was held. It became a fine race technically and I just lost alltogether about 1,5 minutes.
Warti took it not with full speed and became 69th whilst I became 53rd.
Results 4th stage
So due to our bad result at the first stage Warti and me were outside the chasingstart on the last stage. He started 15 seconds in front of me about 32 minutes after the last chasingstart runner.
We had a nice race together and I led most of the time. To the 10th and 11th control we did stupid route choices and lost some time. So we were caught by Daniel Wernersson and Jan Troeng at the 13th control. We lost contact to them to the 15th and then we fought against our tiredness till the end. Especially the last loop after the spectators section troubled us a lot and we lost some time here and there.
Finally we completed the race as 56th and 57th.
Final results
That concluded our Oringen trip and we went back home today. It was a nice experience as every Oringen and showed a lot of things to work on. But now the focus lies on WOC starting in 3 weeks.

From Wednesday to Saturday we will go on a training camp to Hungary for the last WOC preparations

O-Ringen TC has started

Yesterday late evening we finally arrived in Eksjö after pickung up Patrizia, Kerschi and Helmut from Skavsta airport. We are staying in an awesome (really big!) house near a beautiful lake, just some minutes away from O-Ringen torget and the city center. Fantastic! It couldn't be better :)At midnight I did a short jog with the city map and today we started our a.m.-training at 12:30 :P Second session launched at 18:00 ó clock and was a fast 2,7 km one with 30 sec. chasing start.

Friday a.m. (south part) and p.m. (northern part)

Like in Italy this will be another endurance-preparation-training-period for WOC. Our competitions (Men Elitserien) will start on Sunday late afternoon with an Ultralong distance (~ 17km), followed by a long distance on Monday (~ 13km), a Sprint on Tuesday and a middle distance on Thursday (~6,5 km). Fifth stage on Friday is a long distance with chasing start. I intend to run 1st, 2nd and 5th stage full speed, maybe also sprint, we will see. Next days will be loaded with orienteering trainings, morning jogs and strength sessions.
Catch you later and have fun in the meantime :)

Finished a hard training week + interesting maps!

On Sunday I finished a hard training week including a lot of orienteering, some running, strength and a mountain trip. Overall I trained 18h, 13,5 h without hiking. For me - especially in summer - this was pretty much. I really enjoyed orienteering in the steep slopes with loads of stones and rockfaces in Italy. 2nd stage of Dolomiti 5-days was held on Passo Rolle in half open and half forested terrain. 3rd and 4th race were middle-distances in San Martino di Castrozza, right beneath Passo Rolle. Last stage was in Val Canali with an interesting beginning, an easier middle-part, very tricky controls near the end and just running the last km. On that day I achieved my best result with 12th best time of the day. Finally, I finished on 23rd place overall in M21Elite. The french top runner Francois Gonon won the 5-days of Dolomites 2009, with Mattias Millinger in 2nd and Rasmus SØes in 3rd position.

Now, three relaxing days before I will start my next hard training block, lasting 10 days starting on Thursday and including the O-Ringen competitions in M 21 Elitserien.

Here are my maps from stage 2 - 5 with some short comments under every picture:

Day 2, map Passo Rolle, shortened long distance

I even started with a bad route choice to control 1: drifting too much to the right when crossing the flat depression right after the start. Then two mistakes in the control area at 5 and 6. Then the biggest mistake to 12th control: I lost height and came down to the small marsh. Nearly the same mistake to control 14: But here I climbed a little too much. Maybe a bad route choice to control 10 and a worse one to 15?

Day 3, map San Martino Sud, Middle-distance

Again I started with an awful routechoice to the first control. A very small mistake at 2nd control and some needless highmeters on the way to control 8.



Day 4, map San Martino - Centro, Middle-distance

Guess what? YES! I made a mistake to the first control. Oh, you are familiar to that. Me too :S Running on the yellow area next to the control I thought I'm passing the semi-open area more behing. I don't know why I had such fool mind. But the unbeatable highlight in this run was control 7: first I left 6th control in wrong direction and then I searched the flag for around 3,5 min. because control description said "dry ditch, north-east end", but it was situated on south-west end. Additionally, the control was too high, because making some steps I already reached the yellow area above the control point. It was more than weird there and I was really angry. I managed the tricky part in the end nearly perfectly without big time loss.

Day 5, map Val Canali - Piazmador, shortened long distance

Wuhu, no mistake to the 1st control! ;) As I mentioned before, the last stage was my best one. Although being tired, I was able to push the whole course with hardly any mistake. Small mistakes at controls 4, 8, 20 and 27. A bigger one at 18th control. Bad routechoice to 22nd, where I didn't see the small path leading to the control.

I gained a lot of experience in this week and I'm looking forward to O-Ringen! :)

Results, photos, JWOC, ...

Ciao bella Italia

After a thrilling Follow-Eyoc-2009-in-Serbia-online-weekend we left sunday early morning for our military training camp in Italy. Because nobody of us is running JWOC, we are all participating in the 5 days of Dolomites 2009 in San Primiero/Trento. Except Monday (we had the same event center, but the JWOC Sprint was in Imer-Mezzano and stage 1 of the 5-days was on a map at higher altitude) the finish area was respectively will be the same: Yesterday Passo Rolle - JWOC Long, 2nd stage, Thursday and Friday San Martino di Castrozza - Middle Qualification and Final, stage 3 and 4, Saturday Val Canali - Relay and last stage of 5-days.

We are living in a small but nice appartment in Imer and thus most of us will take part in WOC we are taking the 5-days as a good preparation to try and improve different things e.g. use a power-gel, do a morning jog, warmup-routine, ... Accordingly, no one will push hard through all of the stages. Today we went hiking on a beautiful mountain where we enjoyed an amazing view :)

As scheduled two middle distances follow tomorrow and on Friday and another shortened long on Saturday.

Stage 1 - San Giovanni-Caltena

Thermenland-Open - International 3-days-Event

After accomplishing the 5.000m track-limit on Thursday with 16:38 min. I was very happy and looking forward to a nice orienteering-weekend. This years TLO (ThermenLand-Open) took place in Fürstenfeld/Styria. TLO is a 3-days-orienteering event alternately organised by Austria, Slovenia or Hungary. Although 6 nations were present in M21E class, this meant just 13 competitors.

The most exciting part was the 1st stage on Friday: A night sprint consisting of two very different parts. First part was a "normal" sprint with a 1:5.000 map in the town centre of Fürstenfeld. Arriving on the main-square you had to turn around your map and completing another orienteering course in a labyrinth built up with portable steel barricades and tapes on a 1:500 map! Some trees, a fountain and some small houses made it a bit easier. I tell you that this was much fun :D

On Saturday stage 2 followed, which was 5th Austria Cup and also an Hungarian Ranking Event. Despite that fact only around 600 runners started.

3rd stage was the traditional chasing start, for the elite classes both start and finish again on the main-square. Winning the night sprint and achieving a fourth place on Saturday, I started in 3rd position and was able to keep it until the finish line. Tobi mispunched in the labyrinth (wanted to run only the sprint anyway) and Wolfi just ran the Austria Cup, where he was 3:20' faster than me ;)

Night-Sprint Part 1


Orientshow


Austria Cup, Saturday


Sunday - Chasing start


Results
Fotos

Silver medal at ÖSTM Sprint

Saturday, 20th of June 2009. Feldkirch, Vorarlberg, Austria. 17:20 p.m. Nice weather. Lots of people. A young austrian first-year-elite-runner is picking up his map and running towards his silber medal in the austrian sprint championships. But let's take it from the beginning.

The weekend ago around 1.900 orienteers from Austria and Switzerland gathered together in Feldkirch to enjoy a sprint in the town on Saturday (austrian championships and 4. National OL for swiss runners) and a middle distance in Göfis on Sunday (swiss middle distance championships and 4th austria cup).

The sprint was one of the most interesting and most difficult I have ever run. Until 3 p.m. it was allowed to walk through the city and some runners took advantage of this. There was also a quarantine zone for all elite runners, but - weirdly - we were mixed up with all other runners afterwards so it didn't make any sense to separate us before. Anyway, after a long warm up I was looking forward to my run. The start was in a subway right under the main street. Much runners took the wrong exit and lost valuable seconds already before the first control. Neither did I - luckily. Then the first critical situation on the way to control Nr. 2: The hedge was drawn as passable, but you couldn't pass it. For a split second I had no clue what to do. Then I saw the entrance and continued running. To the 3rd control I made a wrong route choice. Control 7 had the wrong number. I stopped, took a look on the map and recognised my mistake. To 8th control I should have run completely to the left, not the route passing control 14. Some extra meters (I didn't see the passage fast enough) to control 11 and 13. Last part was good and I was satisfied with my speed. Finally, it was fast enough for the silber medal, only 5 seconds ahead of Wolfi.

Overall I finished 11th place, 1:13 min. behind the winner Matthias Merz (15:22). Kerschi finished 2nd (15:26) and thus defending the title of the sprint champion.

Tobi mispunched at control 7. I hope that won't happen again! ;)

results

Sunday was a WRE, too. Although Daniel Hubmann made a big mistake, he managed to win by 6 seconds ahead of Matthias Merz and 37 sec. ahead of Marc Lauenstein. Kerschi (overall 4th place) won the Austria Cup with Markus Lang 2nd and Wolfi (who is happy again after the sprint :D) 3rd. I got 4th and Tobi 6th. The mens elite course had two butterflies and technically interesting parts.

results

map with hubmanns route part 1 / part 2

All in all it was really worth travelling the long way to our most western province. The chance to compete against some world-class runners was really nice and showed that there is a lot of development potential in Austria (in much categories the first austrian runner was around place 5 - 12). I think we had much fun and enjoyed the friendly get-together with our swiss neighbours :)

Mikkeli Jukola

After NOC all three of us traveled to Mikkeli on Thursday.
We did some trainings offered by the organisers in more and less relevant terrain for this years Jukola.
But prior to the race we had already known the characteristics of the terrain. The old map showed very untypical Finnish terrain with lots of paths and nearly no bare rocks. Also less detailed and just some tricky green areas. So it should be fast and not so difficult running with just some more difficult parts.
Me and Warti were running for OK Tyr on 4th and 7th leg while Wolfi was running 7th leg for GMOK 2. Our last years position (183) was a quite big step back and we were very motivated to show how good our team really is. With Jonas Leandersson and Henrik Brohede on the first two legs we had a almost perfect start and were in the top 25. On the next legs we lost some positions which was also partly my fault on the 4th leg. After the WC Middle distance my body seemed to perform pretty strangly as my legs felt so heavy during all the running sessions. At Jukola I tried to push hard from the beginning but soon I realzied that my legs were not ready for a good speed today. It was a strange feeling to feel totally relaxed with my heart rate and my breething while the legs just couldn't run at normal speed. Wel,l I lost about 9 positions and after some up and downs on the next legs we finished on 69th place which was good for our young team! We believe in this team and in a few years we will be ready to fight for the top places. Warti and Wolfi both running on the last leg had stable runs and finished their trip to finnland with nice impressions in the fast Jukola forest.
I have to say it was really nice to be at Jukola again as it is just amazing to see that we are obviously not the only O-Freaks... :P

WC Middle and Sprint

After a relaxing rest day the middle distance was on the program. For 3 first year juniors this was definitely a very exciting experience! It was not an easy job to fulfill, as the terrain was quite technical and pretty tough to run in. 5,4,3,2,1, biiiiip my race started and I would lie if I would tell you that I was as relaxed as I would have liked to be. The first control was good but I realized that I was more focused on my running and thinking how Hubmann would cross this green area, than my orienteering. I built up my focus again and was back in my race again. The first 3 controls went really good as the GPS tracks showed after the race. To number four I lost the direction from the control and came too much to the right. This small mistake and a little swing in the control area costed me 40 seconds. To number 9 I should have climbed up the hill at the beginning which costed another 40 seconds. The rest of the race was without bigger mistakes but at the last hill my legs couldn’t run as fast as my mind wanted them to and I lost a bit too much on this last loop. I’m really happy with my race but the result was a bit disappointing. I was really not expecting any “good” result as thought I knew how fast those guys can run but having a good run and losing 11 minutes on Öberg was quite a shock! Damn it they run fast!! Wolfi finished after a good last loop 40 seconds before me and Warti was about 1 minute behind me.

Feeling really tired after the middle distance I was quite unsure how the sprint would go. Warti and me started at the same time which was a good possibility to check my speed during the race. I had a good start and after 4 controls my legs were still feeling good. On the long route-choice I decided to cross the hill and lost a bit too much there. Somehow I was always behind with my orienteering and at the end of the course I made some more really stupid mistakes. The result was really unacceptably bad and I hope I can improve my sprint skills before next weeks ÖM. Wolfi had a good run and finished 44 seconds from the cut in his heat. Warti had similar problems like me and wasn’t satisfied with his race. Well what can I say, it was a bad day but for my part it was much more a mental problem as I started this race without a clear plan or goal which was simply unprofessional for a WC race, this won’t happen again.

Now we are sitting in a nice cottage at the camping place 5km from the Jukola CC and on Saturday/Sunday we will try to fight for every position at Jukola with Warti on the last leg and me on the 4^th. Kiitos for reading!

First time in Finland + NOC Relay

Finland here we come. Yesterday the austrian military team arrived in Helsinki. Afterwards we drove to Salo, where NOC is going to be held. There we met the other team members from the Austrian NOC team. It will be "dark" around 24 ó clock, so you don't really have a problem training at 7 p.m. It is my first time here in Finland and I absolutely wanted to do one training before the important competitions. I enjoyed the forest very much, especially running on the rock faces. Good visibility and just a few green areas made it even more fun. The "hills" are in general small, but they can be tricky, too. Most important for me was to get familiar with the terrain and try to interprete everything right (map-nature, nature-map). It worked out quite well and so I was looking forward to todays relay.

I ran 1st leg for Austria 2, followed by Wolfi on 2nd leg and Tobi 3rd position. The start wasn't as fast as I thought, but due to a "big" mistake (~ 40 seconds) next to control 2 I lost my pulk. I could quickly continue running my rhythm and therefore I only made a few small mistakes linked to control area (nr. 3, 10) or route choices (nr. 9, 11) with 10 - 30 seconds each. Generally, I'm satisfied with my race although there is no way to compare my time with the others. Wolfi did a semi-good job by losing much time with unnecessary mistakes in the beginning. Towards the end he could improve his technical work and had a good flow. Tobi had a stable run with really few small mistakes finishing one second ahead of me :P (37:02 min.).

Tomorrow we use the "rest day" for the middle and - who wants to - sprint distance model event. On Tuesday and Wednesday the NOC competitions continue with Middle and Sprint distance, also World Cup 1 and 2.

relay map M21E


Results