Austrian Cross Champs

Now it is time for me to report about our race at the Austrian Cross Champs this weekend.
Like last year, our whole military team competed on Sunday in St. Pölten on the long course.
Last year Gernot Kerschbaumer, Markus Lang and me got the silver medal in the team competition. Our goal was again to achieve a medal.
This year nearly all of Austrias best athletes were running on the long course.
Therefore it was much harder work for our team to get good individual placings.
In the beginning the race started really fast due to Günther Weidlinger and Martin Pröll battling in front.
For me it was clear that also Markus, Kerschi and Helmut Gremmel were too fast to follow.
I started fast but with caution. On the first small lap I then caught Warti and we ran at least the first two laps together with me in front. After a time I realised Warti could not follow me any longer and I had already seen Helmut G. in front of me. I then stayed at my pace and could also overtake Helmut within the next laps.
This was quite unexpected. In the end he was 50 seconds and Warti 1min 26 secs behind me.
In the teams competition Markus, Kerschi and me became second like last year.
It was also a nice feeling to be a little bit less behind them than last year.
So the next big competitions for me are Stigtomtakavlen and Tiomila in April.
This means a lot of training time ahead of them to convert the speed in orienteering speed.

Results individual

1st Special-Elite Privat-TL

This year I am organising (or at least organise the organisation ;) some training weekends to guarantee constantly orienteering trainings. The first weekend was in Graz from 4.-6. March. Our training schedule varied quite a lot: Starting with a contour training Friday morning it continued with an indoor-training (strength, Pilates, sprints), followed by a night-sprint. Saturday morning we did a short track training consisting of running technique and sprints to warm up. Then we had a sprint qualification and afterwards the final with chasing start. In the afternoon orienteering intervals (4 loops) were done. On Sunday we participated in a small local competition (middle distance with Micro-O) in the morning and the last training was a contour training.

I was happy to see a lot of people using the trainings during the weekend; around 15 runners who did all of the trainings. Nevertheless, sometimes I was missing the "right spirit" and attitude among them, which resulted in for example no warmup and cooldown, no goal-setting (although I told them) and no or only a bit route discussion after the trainings/race.

Some organisational things have to be considered for next time, e.g. plan the time very carefully to have enough break between the trainings, don't forget to bring the maps to the start, don't hand out the wrong maps on the start. But we learn with mistakes so make it better next time :)

All maps can be found here. Soon I will get my new toy, a Garmin Forerunner and then I can use Quickroute as well.
The next Special-Elite Privat-TL will be around 19th - 23rd May in Salzburg.

Awesome TC in Portugal

Summer, sun, a beer and a lot of orienteering! hehe, except the beer everything is true - and even this is partly true ;)

February 2nd me and twelve others flew to Portugal for a great week of orienteering. First 3 days we stayed in small appartements in Quiaios, a bit north of Figueira da Foz (POM 2010). Then we went upcountry to Gouveia for two competitions. First one was one of the most technical ones I have ever run! Second day of Meetin Orientacion de Gouveia was a middle-sprint-combination, which is always fun to run. As the terrain was more similar to home, we achieved better results. Nevertheless, Thierry won all two days, winning each with a clear margin.

After this short intermezzo in the heartland of Portugal we moved back to the cost, more precisely to Mira. It was my first time in Mira and I immediately like the appartements :) comfortable, big enough and internet access!! haha, you don't know how important that is...

On Wednesday 9th most of the others left, only Heli alias Honeybear, Markus and me stayed longer; for one more week. Franky the ghoast train guard joined us for this week. The second week was even more fun than the first one. I have laughed a lot and really enjoyed it. Anyway, on Friday we drove to Lisbon, but for one night only. Lisbon is a nice city next to the sea. And it's steep! Really steep!
Next day we continued our trip direction north to Coruche, where Hugo Borda d'Agua (Ori-Alentejo) organised a contour training extra for us. In the afternoon we ran a middle-distance in Lamarosa. Hugo joined us for both trainings. Next day we took the chance to run a longdistance-massstart-competition near Almeirim; Austrian triple win ;)
Last three days we spent again in Quiaios - yes, in the same appartement.

This two weeks was just great!! All this trainings which included sprint, long, contour, control-picking, night-o, middle, workshop and the competitions were perfectly organised and high quality. I trained in different types of terrain and had a huge technical input early in the season. But in the end I started to getting tired in the brain, so two weeks with non-stop orienteering is maximum for me... In total I "collected" 569 controls, most of them without any problem.

As usual, maps with my routes can be found here. Soon I will get my Garmin Forerunner 305 :) Then I don't have to draw my routes by hand anymore.

And some funny pics from Portugal (only handy-cam quality):

Furthermore we made a funny video: Franky the ghost train guard :D
Have you ever tried natural yoghurt with honey?? ;)

2011 can come :)

Hej guys!

First of all, I would like to wish all our readers a happy and successful new orienteering season 2011!
After some time without posting we try to write regularly this season and report from our orienteering experiences.

Some friends and me was in the Puglia-region in Southitaly for a nice training camp in the christmas holidays, from 27.12.2010 - 4.1.2011. Due to some work with my studies I had no chance to write about that earlier.
This week was full of amazing sprint trainings in old italian villages with narrow alleys, small and steep stairs and a lot of routechoices. Sometimes it was simply not possible to run full speed because the technical part was too demanding. Of course we made some forest trainings as well.
Tobias Killmann, Wolfgang Kampel, Lukas Scharnagl, Helmut Gremmel and Manuel Gaßner joined for this nice eight days. We stayed in a beautiful appartement between Peschici and Vieste, next to Foresta Umbra.

All maps with my routes can be found here in my new map archive (thanks to Markus).

Cross Country Champs

After our last post again some time passed. We had our training camp in Portugal with the national team, where all of us participated. There we had some good and technically challenging trainings. I think it helped us a lot to get back some routines.
After all the trainings in Portugal we came back to cold Austria. On sunday it was time for the Austrian Cross Running Champs in Vienna. Our goal was to run the long distance and win a medal with the team.
Warti had a bad day and was far behind. Markus and Kerschi, both ran a very strong race and achieved the individual placings 4 and 5. So it was my task to do my best to fix our medal. Unfortunately from km 6 to the finish I had some problems with my stomach, maybe due to a virus that had caught me the week before.
Finally just 5 seconds or two placings would have been enough for me to finish in place 17 and get us the gold medal. That is truly not the best feeling. Although also the silver medal is quite nice and next year we will be back stronger.....
Results
While we ran the Cross Champs Tobi ran at Lipica Open and was not very satisfied with his races full of mistakes.
His story later here....

Again?

You may have recognised that we have been training in St. Jakob for one and a half week now again. Last week was really nice and I achieved 20 hours of training. Around 70% of that time were X-Country skiing, but strength, indoor cycling and hill training were included as well.

After two years I tried skating on Sunday once again. Sandro came from Graz and we trained together. This 90 min. were a lot of fun and I really enjoyed it!

But maybe last week was a bit too much :S After lunch on Sunday I felt some slight pain in my left foot for the first time. It wasn't a bad one, but still unwell. I rested monday afternoon and did a hill training tuesday a.m. and cross-country skiing in the afternoon. After 85 min. I quited, because I felt the strange pain. Today I tried to skate again and it worked well until 1 hour, which meant I ended the training after 75 min. I'm afraid now that it can be or develop to something serious like I had 1,5 years ago. I couldn't train there for 4 months...

In the afternoon is recovery time and I hope it will be better tomorrow.

short review

Since the last post, some time passed by. I was almost two weeks at home over Christmas and New Year's Eve and had some nice trainings with "my gang" (Richi, Markus, Wieszwerg, Woif, Schani and Mani G.) ;) My main activities during the holidays were sleeping, training, meeting relatives, eating and playing Nintendo Wii with neighbours and friends :D

As you have read in the previous post we had two big X-country skiing weeks in december. That was the reason why I took it a bit easier before Christmas, because the days right after we did our second SSS (special speed session). As there was no snow (let's better say "to less snow for X-country skiing or frozen ski runs") in the surroundings of Henndorf, I ran all intervals. A middle distance course which I ran with Elisa's friend Johan, another O-training with two loops (1 uphill, 1 downhill) and the New Year's Eve run in our neighbour city were included.

At the New Year's Eve run not less than 23 people started for our club, which brought us the second place in the team ranking and therefore a big food box with cheese, ham, pickles, an extra-large salt stick and a 10 l beer barrel :) The course was 5,8 km with I guess some 20 Hm. I finished 7th overall in 19:46 min. and thus 3rd in M20. (I won a bottle of sparkling wine ;)

In the evening our old Richi "canonball" Gathercole celebrated his 40th birthday. He organised a nice party with a delicious meal and beverages. It was a lot of fun and after eating we handed over our gift: the "Fatkiller" :D It's a mixture between a training plan and an Advent calendar. The goal is to bring Richi to train 3 times a week. If he achieves that, he will get a small reward like a chocolate, a beer or some sweets. If he trained just two times, he would get a light penalty (ironing the clothes, 1 day no TV) and doing only 1 training means a hard penalty, e.g. 1 week no alcohol, cleaning the whole flat... We all hope he will pervade the trainings and join us at the 1st AC!

Ok, well, those were my highlights in the last time :D

Currently we are again in St. Jakob im Walde to complete another two endurance weeks. More about that coming soon :)