Author: Steffen

After 2 successful city races in 2017 and 2018 Luxembourg OC brought an combined forest and city race weekend in 2021. Middle distance race in Bambësch forest and Saturday and long distance city race in Luxembourg at Sunday. The city race was part of the City Race European Tour. Normally this will attract a lot of runners from UK. This year the international guest were mainly from continental Europe.
Saturday was in nice open runnable forest we some steep valleys and technical areas. The nice forest leads to a lot of direct running.
Sundays main race area covers the old town, Rham and Kirchberg plateau and the Alzette valley. This means old town, fortifications, some modern parts, a little forest and a lots of climbing. Route choice were tricky and often it wasn´t easy even to find a route. Elite course has 38 controls, ~15.2 km to run and 310 m to climb. So it was hard to keep up concentration other the whole race.
It´s definitely worth to run in Luxembourg city so keep an eye on upcoming events.
You can find all information’s about the weekend on Luxembourg OC homepage.

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After one year break the ArgeAlp was back. This year Bavaria was the host of the orienteering competition. As co-team leader it was clear that I will be there. With over 50 runners our team from Baden-Württemberg was one of the bigger teams entered. The event consist of a relay and a individual competition, spanning a age range from 12 to 60. Relay is the first competition of the event. After 1 and a half year with nearly no competitions it was quite difficult to set the relay teams. Our Team made 4 podiums so it looks like we did a good job. Same number of podiums at the individual competition leads to a 3^rd place for the team in the overall ranking.
My own performance wasn´t that well. I was 2^nd leg runner of our M35 relay. I started as 5^th and came back as 6^th. In the individual race I finished 11^th in M40 being the worst runner of our team.
Jakob’s performance was better. Running men elite he finished the relay tam in 7^th place. In the individual race he finished 17^th place.
Here you can find the official page of the competition:
https://olg-regensburg.de/arge-alp-2021/

After 1 year and 2 months waiting the Arctic circle Jukola took place in Rovaniemi. Late August instead the usual midsummer date means that we had the darkest Jukola ever, instead of the no night Jukola that was planed. The August date made it a little tricky to complete but with two Swedes we made it up to 7. We travelled a few days earlier to visit the Santa Claus village (always when Santa was already resting), the Lordi-square and to made two of the Jukola trainings.
The Jukola had far less visitors than previous versions. The long travel from major airports and international travel restrictions payed their tribute. Coming from a small o-country is as still a big event with a lot of people around and many big shops. We made a quick visit at Friday to pick up our team bag and do some shopping before the big crowd arrives. Saturday we transferred complete to Jukola. Temperatures were quite low and there was some rain but we managed to watch the complete Venla relay.
As expected from the old map and one of the training maps the forest consist of a lot of marsh. This makes running sometimes very hard but still a lot of. We all had good races but our 3^rd leg runner made a mispunch so we didn´t take the chance for a good result.
You can find our results here. Next year Jukola will be in south Finland and hopefully back to normal date.

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After one year without international championships the World Masters Orienteering Championships takes place in the hot Hungarian summer in the area around Velence. For me a first year M40 it was the first WMOC. Original the world master should have been together with the World Masters games in Japan. When the World Masters Games were moved to 2022 Hungary stepped in to host the world masters this year.
Format was the usual sprint qualification, sprint final, forest qualification, middle final, long final. Sprint races were host in Székesfehérvár. Forrest races take place in some semi open areas between Csákvár and Székesfehérvár. I was at the Hungária-Kupa 2000 in Csákvár, so I had a good idea what I have to expect
Sprint qualifying was around a big park with some residential area. Fast running speed was necessary and as expected I didn´t make into the A-final. Sprint final was in downtown Székesfehérvár and more technical than the qualifying. I had a stable race but my ranking wasn´t really an improvement.
As I made a late entry I had the last starting spot in the forest qualification and was running in the midday heat. I made a big 15 min. parallel error at the end of the course. Without the mistake the last qualification spot would have been possible. The final races went OK but again didn´t lead to big improvement.
You can find the results at IOF eventor and my maps in my map archive.
So would there be more WMOC for me? Maybe as you get a high quality IOF controlled event were the master classes are not only a add one. But I´m not so hooked that I´ll go there just because I need to go to WMOC.

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This years five days of Italy (moved from last year as most things in these times) take place in the beautiful Dolomiti Paganella area. We had good memories from ArgeAlp 2010 taking place in the same area and it was nice to have the chance to compete international again, so we entered. To have most out of the competition we entered the M21 elite course. The elite had a small but good field including former Swiss junior squad members Florian Schneider and Lukas Diener and 1972 WOC relay silver medallist Dieter Wolf.
First competition (a sprint) was scheduled for the evening, so we took the chance to go to one of the model events in the morning. The map Rifugio Meriz had some tricky parts on it that we didn´t manage very well but gave a good feeling of what to expect in the upcoming competitions.
First competition was a sprint in Fai Della Paganella. Two interesting map pars that were connected with one long leg. Course was a little long but I didn´t want miss any part of it. Results of day 1:
https://www.5daysitaly.it/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/split-stage-1.pdf
Day 2 was long distance in Andalo on the forest of ArgeAlp 2010. That year I wasn´t very successful but this year I had the feeling that everything was under control. Results of day 2:
https://www.5daysitaly.it/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/spilt-stage-2.pdf
Day 3 was middle distance and take place in the neighbouring forest to yesterday. Very detailed in the beginning and some route choices in steeper areas in the end. Route choices and orienteering were quite bad today. Results of day 3:
https://www.5daysitaly.it/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/split-st3.pdf
The afternoon we hiked around Lago di Molveno and added another 12 k and 350 climb to our day.
Day 4 was another middle distance an brought us up to the Chalet Forst. Steep area with technical parts. Interesting forest but hard to run. Results of day 4:
https://www.5daysitaly.it/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/splits-stage-4.pdf
In the afternoon we took the lift to La Selleta to hike La Paganella were you have a fantastic view. We found a lot of nice looking tracks so the hike was longer than planed and added another 11 k and 350 m climb to the day.
Final day brought us back to Fai Della Paganella. A longer middle distance race in a very technical terrain we some running in the end to come back to the arena. Orienteering went fine but running was more fight. Results of day 5:
https://www.5daysitaly.it/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/split-st5.pdf
We both ended in top 10:
1. Siro Corsi 4:09:15
2. Albin Alisö +0:15:10
3. Mads Møller Skaug +0:15:49

6. Jakob Schach +0:35:08

10. Steffen Hartmann +02:37:45

You can found total results here. For maps check our map archive. If you plan to orienteer in Italy check orienteering.it for upcoming events of PWT Italy. They are always worth to travel.

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