Between two world championships

WOC Switzerland is over. There were so many impressive performances, remember for example the sprint race with Matthias, Matthias and Matthias on the podium. ;-)

I competed in the swiss-5-days and could therefore follow the world championships very well and enjoy a nice week in lausanne. Note: Never leave your baggage alone in Lausanne-Ouchy (and everywhere else if possible). To the one who took my sports bag there: If you really need the things inside, use them and be happy. Otherwise give them back to me or another one who can use them! On saturday during the womens sprint final I had to say goodbye to my compass, my SI-Card, running equipment and clothes that can't be simply replaced. But there are much worse things that could have happend, so I still view myself as the lucky one. And beside this incident, Lausanne was just great!

The Jorat (long distance terrain) was not that ugly, you just had to take the paths. Ugly were rather some parts of the 4th stage of the swiss-5-days (Bretaye), where I couldn't see the stony floor covered with fallen trees and the bushes were too high to see the terrain around me. I like running, yes, but there it was not for running. By the way: during this race, after big mistakes, I decided to concentrate on the finish-battle, where I succeeded and won an ice cream. Thanks! And a big SORRY for the one I ran into during my very very important finish sprint.

Somehow it's impressive that I never lost the motivation until the end. I caught the chance to run as a prerunner for the long distance final and the relay, which meant one extra race on the break day of the swiss-5-days and one extra race after the end of the swiss-5-days. So, I've done seven orienteering races whithin seven days, four of which were longer than 75 minutes! My body is not that bad, I'm proud of him ;-)! In the long distance final race, I finished with 1:29:57, which would be the time of the 23rd place in the WOC-race. Not bad, I'm satisfied. But I also tried to find out where I could be faster.

I've done no single orienteering training last week (which would have been impossible before the world championships, when there were training possibilities everywhere and anytime in switzerland!) Instead I used the time for some important high-quality getting-fast-trainings, and of course the bike tour to Colmar and back. This was another real adventure!!

Happy to finally reach Colmar, the northest place of my bike tour.

So, let's start the preparation for the next world championships (in finland)! On saturday the swiss team is flying to Joensuu to start one week training camp.