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

Last selection races for WOC

Last weekend everyone who wanted to qualify for the Austrian WOC-team travelled the long way to Miskolc to take part in the 3rd and 4th selection races. Similar to WOC we stayed at the Uni-Hotel Miskolc, which offered us nice 4-bed appartements with internet access and cooking facilities. We arrived late at night so we postponed the start of the sprint to 11:45. Mens course was 2,7 km + 110 hm; ladies course was exactly the same, but without controls 15, 16. It was around 50/50 forest/housing estate.

With a strong first part with no mistakes and a good pace in the second half I finished on 3rd place (14:58) behind Bindi (14:30) and Kerschi (14:34). Tobi and Wolfi achieved 4th (15:43) and 5th (15:50) place.

After the race I recognised that it was one of my best sprints I have ever run! :)

In the afternoon there was the possibility to run a model event for next day's competition. I took the chance to relax my muscles and get more familiar with the terrain.

Sprint on Saturday, 30. 5. 2009



On Sunday it was time for our last selection race. It was a middle distance race (6,6 km + 295 hm) and part of the hungarian borsod-kupa. I again had an excellent run with just one and a half mistake: the bigger mistake I made at 17th control where the green area was really strange, where I lost direction and where it took me ages to run along the small river which runs next to the control. The 0,5 mistake I did when I left the 6th control: I should have run directly to the path and not stumbling around in the green-lined area. Although the Czech Michal Smola run an incredible 41' on the course, I again was very happy with my performance (especially the technical parts) and therefore with the result as well (austrian ranking):

1st Wolfi: 47:21

2nd me: 48:06

3rd Markus L: 49: ..

Map "Tekenös" with my route

On pentecost-monday we participated in the Herman-Ottó relay, too. Austria 1 (Kerschi, Wolfi, Markus), Austria 2 (me, Tobi, Thomas L.) and Austria 3 (Helmut Gremmel, Michael Stockmayer and Agoston) were fighting for good positions. Much (fast) hungarian teams, some polish and a spanish team completed the start-list. Austria 1 managed to win ahead of the strong first hungarian team with Zsolt Lenkei, Istvan Zsebehazy and Adám Kovacs and Poland 1.

According to the motto "All good things come in threes" I had a perfect (technically) run with just a small unsureness at control 3. There is still much speed missing, but it's some time left ;)

Additionally, my time was the second fastest that day among the Austrians.

map from relay

On Sunday evening the WOC-team was fixed as well.

Men:

Kerschi, Wolfi, Bindi, Markus, me, Thomas Krejci

Women:

Ursi, Anita, Thea, Karin

Summarising the weekend I only can say that I'm really happy to represent Austria at WOC and I'm very satisfied with my technical shape. I need to work a bit on my pace and then I'm looking forward to WOC! :)