competition – Orienteering Schwaben

Taunus-Cup 2025

The 2025 Taunus-Cup was our season start. The cup consists of 3 individual races and a final sprint relay at one weekend. Start was Saturday with a middle distance. I hit my knee there mid course and was a little handicapend for the rest of the weekend.
After the middle distance the weekend changed to urban events. Saturday evening we had a night sprint on a ruined castle. 1:1000 scale makes everything coming quite fast. Sunday morning shows an individual sprint with nice route choices and some climb. Afterwards there was a 3 person sprint relay. The relay consist of a lot of forest and climb up to the castle, so it was a very demand last race. Jakob finished 2nd in m19, only beaten by New Zealand’s international Toby Scott and I finished 7th in M19.

18. Rammert Run

Mid November the 18^th edition of the now traditional training event Rammert Run took place. It´s an 3 h Score on a topographic map. Participants are mostly from outside the orienteering community. For me it was the 3^rd time at the Rammert Run. I ran it first time in 2022 were I won the race together with Jakob. Last year we hosted the race as there is now a Gentlemans agreement that the winner will host next years edition. Jakob had already run it several times before with another partner.
This year the race took place in eastern are of the Rammert. Jakob and I tried to have not too much pressure as we both said we don´t want to win this year. Even I would say we both have know that this isn’t really true. Planing is on that kind of maps isn’t always easy, so we didn’t start with complete plan. At the beginning there were two passages with hard running that slows us down. But we were still good in time at control 30 which was our first target to plan further. We then were discussing our route on the run. That part of the forest. went faster so we were able to add some controls on the go.The last part we need to go a little faster but this was OK as it was mostly downhill. We managed to take 21 controls and ensured the victory. You can find the map in our map archive.

Hungária Kupa

Hungária Kupa 2024 takes place in the Vértes hills around Csákbéreny. A area I already visited for the Hungária Kupa 2000 and the WMOC 2021. Both events I really enjoyed. It also acts as spectator race for the European Orienteering Championship.
The event started with an prologue in semi open former mining area. Lot of controls forced you to focus on your map all time. The day was super hot that means only 5 people finished the longest course. The other five days had 4 middle and one long distance race. We run in the middle qualification, the middle final, long distance area and two maps close to the middle qualification area. So you could have a good feeling for the EOC races. Only the relay forest were skipped as Hungária Kupa had it last event in the morning before the EOC relay. We had some of the hottest days in Hungary during the races, so running in the semi open areas was quite hard. Surprisingly I was able to finish in the top 10 of M40 in the overall result. You can find the results on the Hungária Kupa Homepage.

World Masters

WMOC in Turku were the my second World Masters. First have been in Hungary 2021. So far not the WMOC were the reason I chosen the competition. In 2021 it was just a competition that happend and this year it was because I never was in the Turku area.
The competition didn’t work super good. Already and the pre-WMOC open event at Thursday I had trouble with the fine details and vegetation. The WMOC itself starts with the Sprint-Q at Saturday. I didn’t expect much as I’m not a good sprinter but really underperformed. My running speed was to slow and I made some bad route choices and technical errors at the end. The final the next day went a little better but my speed is still to slow. In both races I had trouble with the traditional EMIT-punching as I’m used to have all races with touch free punching in Germany. My last sprint without touchfree punching was at the Fin5 two years ago but went quite well at that time. At the forest races I still had trouble with the contours and vegetation so I was far away from a A-final. Only at the long final I was happy with my technique. But this was the last race so it was to late. As side event there was a Indoor-O the Friday before WMOC. This was my first Indoor-O. I had a lot of fun but forgot to visit two controls. It was a nice event but I prefer all age events. So I only will went for another WMOC if I like the place were it will be. Japan 2027 could be a event that attract me. You can find results, Livelox and pictures at the WMOC homepage.

Bavarian Forest 5 Days or running in the stones

Ok first to say it wasn’t that stony than the previous editions but you still need to count the rocks. The 2024 edition took place in Philippsreut, Haidmühle and Waldenkirchen. South of the Bavarian Forest national park just at the border to the Czech Republic. With entries from 26 countries it has become a real international event.
Day 1 was a long distance in Haidmühle. A lot of route choices in the beginning and tricky rock controls in the end. I didn’t solve and execute the route choices very well but didn’t have much trouble with the rock controls.
In the Morning of day 2 you had the opportunity to compete in Trail-O. The Trail-O was organised by Trail-O relay world champion Ralph Körner. Very tricky controls along different rock and contour features. My performance was very poor but I learned a lot for the next competition days.
In the afternoon there was the sprint race in the city of Waldenkirchen. Sunday afternoon and not so good weather means that orienteers had the city mostly for themselves. This still means a lot of traffic at some controls.
Day 3 to 5 shared the same event center in Philippsreut. But used different parts of the forest with different characteristics.
I wasn’t in good running shape and made to many mistakes so I finished 7^th out of 11 in M40.
The 2025 edition will be from 23 – 27 July with two races in the Czech Republic. You’ll find official results, pictures and Route Gadget on the event website. You can find my maps in my map archive.

Season opening

The “4-Löwen Pokal” (4 lions cup) marked this years season opening for 4 German states. The competition consist of 4 races other 2 days. First race was a forest competition that also served as our regional long distance championship. The forest was open and with good runability but the course has less to do with a long distance. Unfortunately this is a quite common issue with long distance course in Germany nowadays. In the championship Jakob finished 4^th and Steffen finished 7^th in M 19.
Second race was a night sprint in Külsheim. A very tricky course including controls in and around the local castle.
Final day has a sprint and sprint relay in the medieval city of Wertheim. Both races include a climb to local castle that has some tricky passages. The sprint relay has a good route choice up to the castle that splits the trams very well.
You can find the results here.
The maps are visible in our map archive.

End of season / start of season

Last weekend we had the last two orienteering races of our regional season. The races were moved from beginning of October so we had a very late season end. I was on training rake from mid October and only back in training for one week so for me it was more the start of season.
We had a double sprint race at Saturday in the city of Wannweil. The sprint were Ok but my speed was still very slow. Sunday were our regional long distance champs. They took place in the nearby mountains were there was already snow. Running didn´t worked well for me so I end the race after 4^th control, what w2as the last chance to shortened the race. For me it would have been better to skip the races and focus on winter training.

ArgeAlp 2023

Mid October was the date for the traditional ArgeAlp (Alpine countries working group) orienteering competition. Going through the member regions, Trentino was this years host region. In the nice mountains around Folgaria we had a relay race at Saturday and a individual race at Sunday. At the relay I ran last leg in the open category. I ran 3^rd best time on the leg and get our team in a final 5^th place. At Sundays individual race I ran M40 and finished in 7^th place. I made a bad route choice so probably 5^th place would have been possible.

World Maze Race 2023

This year my club hostet a event for the World Maze Race for the first time. The concept is easy. One identical maze all other the world to find the world fastest maze runner. Building the maze was quite easy and surprisingly faster than setting controls on an orienteering map.
I tried two of the training courses and the race course by myself and it was really tricky cause you need to make fast decisions. Looks like most competitors had fun but also trouble to follow the course. Maze running is a quite easy way to introduce people into orienteering and my club will use it definitely more often now.
You can find the world wide results here.

Swiss Sprint Champs or playing with the big boys

Without Jakob but with one junior we train I´ve be at the Swiss Sprint Champs in Laufen. Laufen was the host city of the 3^rd round of orienteering world cup 2019. The map has been used for sprint and knock out sprint at that time. Course was super tricky and wasn´t really able to plan ahead the whole course and didn´t always take the best route. My time was 22:07, 08:54 min behind winner Joey Hadorn who run the course in for me unbelievable 13:13. You can find the course with some tracks on Livelox.