Saturday I was on a local street race with my companies running team. In the last editions we´ve been quite good in the team ranking that counts the overall finished kilometres. So I chosen the half marathon. Just than figured out that we had small team and did not compete for the team ranking. The course is relative flat so can go faster times. Muscular issues prevent me from training very well the last weeks so I has some trouble to find the right pace. Second half becomes hard for me but also for some fellow runners so that I was able to overtake one on the last kilometre and nearly close the gap to another one. My time of 1:38:06 min was OK. Better were my results as I finished 5th overall and 3rd in M40.
Yesterday we had our season start. OK, we had a local trainings series and I´ve been to a night sprint event before but this was more for training reasons. Our regional season starts with the regional middle distance championships, so it was already one of the serious events. Competition was held in Zizenhausen near Lake Constance. We haven’t been there since 2021 so it was nice to come back. Start of the course were not so difficult (even some runner lost a lot of time) followed with some technical controls and a compass bearing part. For me it started quite well until I made some bad bearings. Jakob finished first taking the gold medal but challenged by still M18 Nico who we train in the regional squad. I finished in 8th place with already a big gap to Jakob. Most probably I would have won a medal in my age class M35 but would have missed the competition.
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.
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.
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.
With one year delay the legendary 24 h Thuringian orienteering relay host it’s 23rd edition. I run my 8th time with my team “sechs Schwaben” (six Swabians). Even with the event held end of May the competition night was really cold with freezing temperatures. Team perfomance was not so good. With 2 MP and one DNF we run total 31 courses and end up in 41th place our 2nd worst result ever. After the race I didn´t had the mood for another endition but my team said that running the 24th edition in 2024 is a must. So we will see. You can found the results on the organizers webpage: https://24h-ol.de/en/
*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.
