German championships and WRE

Last weekend we travelled to Willebadessen for the German championships over the middle distance and the World ranking event the day after. Before the races we took the chance an did the model event to get a feeling for the map, the course there was nice to run and you had the chance to avoid the green areas.

Because of the bad weather of the last days the start had to be postponed by 1 hour so everybody had enough time to walk the much longer way to the competition center in time. The weather however was very sunny and warm, maybe a bit too warm. For the race we had just a few good to run controls in the first part and then it was mostly climbing, running through rough terrain and undergrowth forest. So the running speed was quite limited and it was more of a stumbling than real running. In the end I finished in 20th place and Steffen in 46th.

For Sunday we hoped for a good long distance with route choices around the rough areas, but there were a lot of routes through the rough terrain again, which was debilitating. Unfortunately I forgot to take an energy gel with me and so I suffered a lot in the end. After more than 2 hours I ended up in 19th place and Steffen finished in 31th place.

Nikolauslauf Tübingen

After 3 years we decided to run the Nikolauslauf again. This was our traditional last race of the season. I was not very good in shape and thought about a time of 1:40 to 1:45 for the half marathon with more than 300 meters to climb, Steffen also wanted to run about 1:45.
The temperatures was a bit cold but with 2 degrees not the coldest Nikolauslauf we participated in. About the first 2,5k we were about the same pace and on the first bigger climb I was a bit faster than Steffen and so we lost each other and we both did our own race. The course was slightly different than the last we time participated, which resulted in less trail running. We both were faster than we expected in the beginning, Steffen finished just under 1:40 and was less than a minute slower as in 2019 and I managed to get a time of 1:33 only 2 minutes slower than 3 years ago. So we both were happy with our results.

Rammert Run

The Season this year is coming to an end and we took the opportunity to do an orienteering competition that’s a little bit different than we’re used to. At the Rammert Run you have to run as a pair together and do a score-o in 3 hours. You have to run the entire race together an cannot split up the controls. The controls aren’t the white orange ones you know from orienteering, there are just small white papers sticked to trees with codes on them. The map was just a topographical map with a scale of 1:21500. Our start time was around 10:30 and the fog was still there. We decided quickly for a direction we wanted to go and see then how many controls we could get in time. At the beginning it was a lot of road and path running so we made up a rough plan that we wanted to check after around half the time. After the first control wer decided to go more directly and cut the long distances of the paths and trails. The first half of our race was much up and down so we had to climb a lot and we did it cross-country. After the fog started to clear up we had some nice views with still some fog over the trees. Just a little after an hour in the race we checked out timing and decided how the race would continue for us. Later we decided to risk something and try to get an extra control with the option to let one go in the end. But in the end we had some time left so it were quite enjoyable last meters to the finish. After mir than 21k and 750m climb we finished in first place with just one control more than the second team. We had a lot of fun and a good long training.

The last climb today
One of the controls
The map

Regional Championships middle Baden-Württemberg

The first regional event this year was the regional championships organized by the SV Wannweil. Even though I wasn’t a big part of the organization this year I had to set and pick controls, so there was no chance for me to run in the championships. The map in Ohnastetten on the Schwäbische Alb is in some parts really stony and especially these parts were used in the course setting. Most Competitors were grateful we held the competition, as all the other competitions in the region were canceled so far. The difficult courses and small fields of competitors had the effect of longer victory times.

Steffen was one of the competitors in the H19 class and ended up in second place.

  1. Per Dammeier 1:17:41
  2.  Steffen Hartmann  1:20:26
  3. Manuel Werner 1:56:03

Results can be found here and for the maps check out our map archive.