Category: the world

Bavarian Forest 5 Days 2025

2025 was the 4th edition of the Bavarian Forest 5 Days, organised by Peter and his team. I missed 2023 but have been on all other editions. With nearly 900 competitors from 29 countries it has become a international event.
This year the first two stages took place in the Czech Republic. I struggled little with the map, as it was a little unusual style for me. The map wasn’t bad, I just needed some time to get along with it. Map was a nice hilly forest with less stones than the German part.
Next two days were in the same German forest than last year. More stones and a little more green makes it a different challenge.I was more used to the map maker and course setter, so I was more satisfied with my orienteering.
Final days was a sprint in Grafenau. Not my favorite discipline. I made a stupid ~1 min error that costs me two places at the stages and one at the overall ranking.
Except of day 2, I managed a top 10 at all days and in the overall ranking. You can find results and pictures at BF5D homepage and maps in Livelox. Next year the vent will happen from 1st to 5th August in a new area arround Bad Weissenstadt. Earlier that year (18th to 19th April 2026) you can have a weekend of City Races at the Munich-O-Fest organised by the same team.

Day 3 Photo point (pic. Mike McDonnald)
Final sprint (pic. Lukas Faltejsek)

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.

Trophies
Day 1-3 arena

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 7th 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.

Sprint day (pic.: Lukas Faltejsek)
Final day prestart (pic.: Mike MacDonnald)

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 3rd best time on the leg and get our team in a final 5th place. At Sundays individual race I ran M40 and finished in 7th place. I made a bad route choice so probably 5th place would have been possible.

Relay mass start
Day 2 view

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.

materials and awards
action during the race

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 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.