Training Log Archive: feike

After a nighttrain, a sportshall and another nighttrain to sleep in and so many events in between, I was pretty tired today. There was a plan to go up in the mountains from Jesenice, right from the train, but I skipped it already before I knew if the weather would be good enough for that.

Ehm, speaking about weather, what is it with the weather? Next week it will be July, it kinda looks March or April .... :-(

Event: Swiss Championships Middle (Swiss/Austria)
 

Feldkirch - Göfis.
The walking trails around Feldkirch are excellent indicated, but when you don't know the area, don't have a map and the trail runs through the restricted zone, you need to be a bit more inventive or walk on the main road.
I tried to follow some small paths alongside the road. They disappeared a few times, but I was up sooner than I thought anyway.

It was kind of funny to see a village being overrun by a number of O-runners that is way bigger than the population of the entire village. I hope the inhabitants of Göfis also appreciated the event :-)

With my experiences from yesterday fresh in mind I went to the start more then an hour before to check out the whole procedure, but this time the maps were put down at the startboxes.

We were warned for lots of controls in the forest, there were many controls in the forest. The area was quite small and almost each age-category had its own course.
I was tricked by that on the 2nd: I thought I was too far to the left, which I wasn't, then I saw a control straight right of me and off I went, checking my map already for leg nr 3. But it wasn't the one, and the one next to it also not. Nr 3 was great, towards 4 was the vegetation a bit thicker than I expected, was looking a bit around for nr 5, but by then I knew the terrain and the map and to the end everything went smoothly

The last few hundreds of meters was running through the village, with me quite some others came from several directions. impressive to see, and to be part of. Punching the last control and the finish control is then a sport at its own :-)

The price-giving ceremony ended a bit in an anti-climax because of the rain, but also because the Austrian elite-men couldn't be there because the doping authorities didn't release them before the end of the ceremony.

I made some extra walking around before going down to Feldkirch again.
From Säntisblick there was a great view over the Rhinevalley.
Route : (this time I could pass through the race-area :-) )
Göfis - Gasserplatz - Säntisblick - Hofen - Gasserplatz - Feldkirch

Event: 4. Nationaler OL (Swiss/Austria)
 

I arrived in Feldkirch 10 hours before my start, and the innercity was restricted area, so time for a little walk in the surroundings.
It was actually a while ago that I visited a country that I visited never before, but now I've added Liechtenstein to the list. I didn't manage to buy a map of the area, so it was a bit of a random walk :
Feldkirch - Nofels - Schellenberg - Mauren - Tisis - Feldkirch

City sprint in the old town of Feldkirch.

I totally had to get used to the hectical start, normally entering the boxes for the last minutes are some moments of relaxing, but now....
About 15-20 people were starting every minute. With 2 clear/check controls that means there is about 5 secs for clearing and checking. After that you need to find the right piece of control descriptions also within one minute with 20 people packed on 10 sq. meters.
The organisers at the start must have been completely worn out by an hour or so, I hope they had some replacements ...

At the end of the startboxes there was no other startline to see, but also no maps. We were told that the maps were to be picked up at the real start. I was on the front of the "field" so when the clock beeped I started running on full pace, made it down the stairs (maps were in a tunnel under the main street) grabbed my map and was stopped there by an official, because we had to wait for another clock to beep :-((

The real start was a pedestrian road crossing under the main road-crossing so there were different exits. I didn't manage to keep my mind organised with all these hectics and picked the wrong exit. Even more unfortunately the first 100m looked kind of identical. By the time I relocated and found out that the only way was back through the start, the group 3 mins after me was already starting.

I was a bit demotivated by this, but managed to recover and do a really nice run for the rest. I never did this before in an area like this. The streets were not very crowded, apart from all those O-runners. But still other people, and a bit of traffic were a factor to count with. After crossing the river we got to some parkland, which was slowly transforming into a mudland, but the run-in was great to do

It was only 15 mins, but for me quite a big experience and if the occasion is there, worth another trip

Walk along the Wörthersee in Austria. Very hot weather.

Regional sprint in Klagenfurt. I'd never been there if it wouldn't have been more or less on the way to Feldkirch.

Very easy terrain, almost all the legs could be done on straight line. I just ran as fast as I could. Caught the guy before me already at the 3rd control.
No significant mistakes, a small moment of doubt on the 2nd and a non-optimal route-choice at 8 can be mentioned. I lost 2 minutes to the winner, I guess 1.45 by running slower and 15 secs by mistakes.

By the way : only hours after the race I realised that the controls didn't have any flags. Totally didn't notice that during the event.

omg, from the NOC, gps tracking :
7 very respectable orienteers gathered around a world-class orienteer, going into a completely wrong direction. Only 1 sticks to the right direction and one other finds out halfway, the other 5 .... : woo-article

quote of the day from one of the members of this group :
I thought that I could just blindly trust her [Simone Niggli] orienteering. But no - it didn't help at all

It obviously happens to the best of us :-)