Regional Sprint Champs - Burgenland
Sonntag, 10. Mai 2009 um 15:38 Uhr
Yesterday the regional Sprint Championships for Burgenland and Steiermark were held in Pinggau. This race was the debut for Gernot Kerschbaumer as mapmaker and coursesetter.
As a Top 10 runner in last years Worldchampionships in Sprint, we expected a challenging and demanding Sprint-Race from Gernot. High expectations - but he even topped them ...
It was a nice Sprint in partly urban and partly park-like area. Although there were a lot of controls, 27 controls on a distance of only 3 kilometers, it was very challenging to take the right route choices. The course always demanded full concentration in order to take the right decisions and not to miss one of the gates through the impassable fences.
Especially the last part of the course was very interesting. A lot of direction changes with very short distances between the controls made it very difficult to plan controls ahead. As a consequence some of the routechoices at the end were not made by rational decisions but by some kind of "stomach feeling" after only a short glimpse on the map.
I really enjoyed running this sprint although I had some problems keeping my concentration on the right level.
From control 2 to 3 I made a mistake planning my route to number 5. On my way to the control I recognised the mistake and was glad that I didn't loose any time because it was the best option to run the control 5 passing number 3. In other races such a mistake might have led to an abrupt end of the competition because you are totally lost.
The bigger troubles started to control 12. I didn't see the option running over the bridge at the south-end of the map so I took the longer route choice on the righthand-side via controls 3 and 4. This loss of 5 to 10 seconds is only a small part to what happened next.
While running to control 12 I started planning the next longer legs. As a consequence I knew that I wanted to run 14 on the left-side on the road. After punching control 12 I concentrated all my efforts on running because the long uphill part was next. Until some meters before I came to my control everything seemed to be OK but than I had a look on the controldescription to check the controlcode and recognised that something was wrong. I remembered it was 12 I punched last but now it is 14 I am approaching to. I had another look on my map and than recognised I forgot control 13. I have already seen it but I was too much focused on running and therefore only considered it as a ladies control when I passed by.
I turned around and ran all the way back to control 13. On my way down I meet Matthias Müller, who started 1 minute behind me. As he saw me he was a little bit confused and started looking on the map panically. (As I talked to him afterwards he thought, after seeing me running in opposite direction, that he had missed the junction to the control and thought to be already out of the map). Matthias was not the only one confused by my mistake. Also Martin Binder (started 2 mintutes behind me) was a bit influenced. He started looking for alternate routechoices to the next controls because we met us running in different directions.
In total I lost about 2 minutes and 20 seconds at this control and made a lot of unnecessary extra meters.
The last part than was quite good but the speed was lower than before because running uphill the second time I overpaced a bit.
The endresult was an 11th place. 3 min 16 sec slower than Matthias Müller. Martin Binder was 2nd, Thomas Lang 3rd.
A cool race and a fantastic debut for Gernot Kerschbaumer as mapmaker and coursesetter...
 ...one more disastrous sprint race for me - I definately should concentrate on longdistance (or middle and relay)
Map: Bgld. u. Steir. Sprint MS
Link: Results Bgld. u. Steir. Sprint MS
