Austrian Championships Night-O - Austria Cup
Mittwoch, 11. November 2009 um 00:22 Uhr
Last weekend the last competitions in the Austrian O schedule took place in St. Johann/Tirol.
The first competition, on saturday evening, was the night-championship.
As a preparation for this championships we had one night-o training this week, a training that will stay in my brother's and my mind for a while.
I changed the batteries for our lamps to new Lipo-Type batteries which are much smaller and lighter than the old ones. Those batteries need a special charger and that is where I made a small but very relevant mistake. Configuring the charging properties I mixed up the charging rate with the battery capacity-leading to just partly charged batteries.
During the night training, after about 40 minutes, I recognised that my headlight is getting weaker and weaker and I started worrying about how to find back home. At this moment I saw another runner about 150 meters away, on the opposite slope. I started running downhill into the small valley, climbing up the opposite site and started chasing that runner I saw. After some very exhausting uphill meters I could catch up with the other runner. It turned out it was my brother I was chasing after. Just at the moment I caught him he turned around and than said to me that his light is getting very weak as well.
Two runners and no light - fortunately it was a very clear night and about 10 to 20 cm of snow in the forest which made it a bit easier to find the way in the forest and we managed to find back to our parking place.
After this experience I worried a bit about wheter or not my light will last for the championships.
The light was not the problem this time, it worked pretty well. I had some mistakes, one bigger one with about 4 minutes to the 12th control. Until 100 meters before the control I knew exactly where I was, nevertheless I couldn't manage to find the control properly and made some circles in the control area.
I only made it to a 5th place, a very unsatisfying result. Kerschi won the race, Bindi was second and Warti third.
The next day we had a 6,5 km race with about 250 meters of climbing. Sounds like a middle distance, Bindi won the race with 54 minutes, I came in second about one minute behind. The map of both days was almost the same, with just an additional part for the sunday race. During daytime it was much easier to orienteer, neverthelesss it was a very tough race, a lot of meters to climb in a very steep area and big areas with dense undergrowth made running very difficult.
It was a nice weekend with two good competitions in a physically very demanding area.
Now the season 09 is finished but training for the next season started just right now.
Map: Austrian Championships night-OÂ 07.Nov. 09
Link: Results Night-O
Map: Austria Cup  08.Nov. 09
Results: Austria Cup
