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