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.
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 3rd 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.
World Maze Race is coming. This year in conjunction with World Orienteering Day. So why not host a World Maze Race at your World Orienteering Day activity. My club will do so this year. You will find a list of registered events on the World Maze Race website.
In US TV shows kids have always to write an essay about there summer. I don’t know if this is true. I never had to do this in my German school. But I´ll write you an essay about my orienteering summer. Total I made it to 3 international multiday orienteering competitions.
My first trip brought me to to Finland. Mid July I travelled to Lahti for the Fin5. I thought it will be a good idea to enter M21 Elite because of it´s 2 world ranking events. Well afterwards I would say it was not. First day was a long distance WRE. I´ll know beforehand that this would be hard to me. I made a lot of mistakes and decided to quit the race. Rest of the week brought 2 middle distance race were I made still to much mistakes but was able to finish and one awesome WRE sprint. Final day should be a long distance pursuit. Because of my bad performance I changed to a open course which I should make more often in Finland in future races.
Second trip was end of July and beginning of August to the inaugural edition of the Bavarian Forest 5 Days. In former times there was a strong tradition of multiday orienteering events in the Bavarian forest but they disappeared at some time. Now Peter from Endspurt Events brought them back. The race consisted of one sprint and 4 steep and stony forest races. This time I run my age class M40 and was able to finish all races. I was able to finish 6th in the overall results.
My 3rd event was the 2022 edition of Hungaria Kupa. Competition center was at the south Hungarian city Soltvadkert. Part of the maps have been used for the 2018 JWOC. Maps were semi open with a lot of small green dots. Counting bushes I tell it. Made one bigger mistake in every race so I only finished 9th in M40 overall rank. Like always HUngaria Kupa has some nice accompanying events like Night Sprint, Microsprint, Thriathlon-O, Mobile-O and a Beer Relay. I tried Night sprint and Microsprint and had big fun at both but unfortunately never seen a result list.
I know I´m a little very late, but this event deserves it´s own post. After 10 years there was again a race through 3 countries. I´ve already run in the first race in 2012 and now it was back. This time the race was part of the City Race Euro Tour. The race started in Switzerland, crossing the border to Germany and ended in France. It was a nice course, even the most special about is was crossing two borders.
Part of the course. See full map in my map archive.
WE got the first WRE events since 2014 in Germany. National middle champs and a long distance NRE gave the opportunity to go for points. Jakob got injured at middle race and had to skip the long distance. One weekend later I run also the Swiss sprint champs so I was also able to put me back on sprint world ranking. You find us at the bottom of the list but it’s great to have the names back on the list.
*long day for me This year I was able to run at my first TioMila. TioMila was always on my bucket list but I was never able to fill a team. This year I was able to join the second team of my friends from OK Älvsjö Örby. We already had planed this for 2020, but you know. I was chosen for the långa natten (mainly because I was the only that could survive the distance), a 14.8 k unforked straight line through ugly green forest . I had heard a lot of stories about what could happen through the legendary long night. But it has come different. As the long night was moved from 4th to 5th leg it was clear I wouldn´t get much night. Unfortunately our 2nd leg runner has trouble with his headlamp and lost a lot of time. This brings us behind our schedule and I started my leg at 05:42 in full daylight and into a empty forest. Running a long distance in an empty forest was also an interesting experience but not what I had been prepared for. So I made some unnecessary mistakes and was out for other 3 hours. You can find my route here: http://doma.leberkaesbriegel.de/show_map.php?user=Steffen&map=1480
World Orienteering Day is coming. Only 10 days left till the start of this years World Orienteering Day. I´m ready to go. What´s about you? Have you already planed and registered an event? You can find the flyer for my event here.
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.
