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! ;)
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.
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 :)
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