O Freaks: 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