Orienteering Schwaben

*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 4^th to 5^th leg it was clear I wouldn´t get much night. Unfortunately our 2^nd 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

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.

After one year break the ArgeAlp was back. This year Bavaria was the host of the orienteering competition. As co-team leader it was clear that I will be there. With over 50 runners our team from Baden-Württemberg was one of the bigger teams entered. The event consist of a relay and a individual competition, spanning a age range from 12 to 60. Relay is the first competition of the event. After 1 and a half year with nearly no competitions it was quite difficult to set the relay teams. Our Team made 4 podiums so it looks like we did a good job. Same number of podiums at the individual competition leads to a 3^rd place for the team in the overall ranking.
My own performance wasn´t that well. I was 2^nd leg runner of our M35 relay. I started as 5^th and came back as 6^th. In the individual race I finished 11^th in M40 being the worst runner of our team.
Jakob’s performance was better. Running men elite he finished the relay tam in 7^th place. In the individual race he finished 17^th place.
Here you can find the official page of the competition:
https://olg-regensburg.de/arge-alp-2021/

After 1 year and 2 months waiting the Arctic circle Jukola took place in Rovaniemi. Late August instead the usual midsummer date means that we had the darkest Jukola ever, instead of the no night Jukola that was planed. The August date made it a little tricky to complete but with two Swedes we made it up to 7. We travelled a few days earlier to visit the Santa Claus village (always when Santa was already resting), the Lordi-square and to made two of the Jukola trainings.
The Jukola had far less visitors than previous versions. The long travel from major airports and international travel restrictions payed their tribute. Coming from a small o-country is as still a big event with a lot of people around and many big shops. We made a quick visit at Friday to pick up our team bag and do some shopping before the big crowd arrives. Saturday we transferred complete to Jukola. Temperatures were quite low and there was some rain but we managed to watch the complete Venla relay.
As expected from the old map and one of the training maps the forest consist of a lot of marsh. This makes running sometimes very hard but still a lot of. We all had good races but our 3^rd leg runner made a mispunch so we didn´t take the chance for a good result.
You can find our results here. Next year Jukola will be in south Finland and hopefully back to normal date.