Markus Lang and me had been discussing a while about our options for the weekend around the 1st of May. There were several possibilities like Alpe Adria Cup in Regensburg or Tipo Cup in Hungary. But then we discovered the Memorial Cika Dusko Jovanovic some kilometers south of Belgrade in Serbia. Organisers offered a free accomodation and entry fee for runners ranked R in the current Worldranking. Additionally it was possible to win some prize money for the first 6 in the WRE Event on Saturday.
So we were covinced that it would be a nice trip although the travel was a very long one.
Finally we started at 8:00 on Friday 1st at Seebenstein and then drove via Budapest to the Hungarian-Serbian border. There we had to wait about an hour due to strict controls at the EU outer border.
When arriving in Serbia the first impression was a lot better than expected as the Austrian Touring Club told Markus the streets are in no good constitution. Also the landscape and the villages along the road were similar to Hungary or other countries in Eastern Europe.
At approximately 16:30 we arrived in Ljig the city of the evening sprint, the first event of the 3 days competition. We didn't know exactly the place were the competition will be staged so we wandered around the towncenter and then we saw some people with orienteering equipement.
Luckily we found the finnish area and were greeted by an old CISM colleague, appearing to be the main organiser.
The sprint then started at 20:30 with mass-start. It was already very dark and we were glad to have our standard night lamps with us unlike other runners having just a small LED lamp to read the map.
The order of controls was free and so it was a little tactical. Maybe a different route at the beginning would have been better concering the loads of crowds at the first controls. I really had to push the speed a little to get away from the huge pack.
Then my race went ok even though the stinging nettles at the slopes in some areas were really painful to my legs.
I became second some 50 seconds behind Ionut Zinca, who won while Markus had some troubles by almost forgetting one control.
Afterwards we drove to our accomodation up in the mountains. Markus' car had a loose contact and we got stopped by the police. They wanted us to pay a huge amount of money but luckily we could avoid this with the help of one of the organisers.
Next was the WRE on Saturday. Organisers did a very good job and provided a nice finish area with some shops, even live results at a screen and the roasting of two suckling pigs each day!
My race started fast and secure with the first 3 controls. But to the 4th and 5th I had some problems with the right interpretation of the map. To 4th I was unsure about the actual position related to the green and open areas and lost at least 30 seconds. The 5th then should be an easy control, but it became my worst of the whole race. My plan was to run along the path till the end and then to the second ditch were the control should be located. Unfortunately the path was ending much too early and I looked a few ditches before the one with the control => 1min was gone. The remaining controls then went without major problems and I finished 4th just 1 second behind the 3rd. That was a hard fact, but "even one second mistake is still not good enough"(T.G.) so I deserved the 4th place.
In the evening it was time for lunch at 17:00 and then dinner at 20:00. Afterwards again dinner cause the organisers invited the representatives of all clubs to a nice dinner with good meat of different kinds and some drinks.
But that was not the last thing that day. Right afterwards we joined the ongoing party in front of the accomodation. Nobody in Austria would even think about partying the day before a championship ( it was Serbian long distance championship next day). But here it was really funny and a lot of people joined the party.
Then finally the last day arrived with long distance starting from 11:00. The winning time was planned to be about 75 minutes on the 8.6km course with over 450m climbing. In fact I had a good races and used 69 minutes, while Ionut Zinca smashed the race with a time of 61 minutes.
I became 3rd and also overall 3rd. I received a diploma and a herbal extract for that. That day I also tried out the suckling pig, which was really delicious. So a great orienteering weekend in Serbia ended on Monday 1:00 back in Seebenstein.
There is another post at Markus Langs homepage concerning our weekend in Serbia.
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