Austrian Night championships and Austriacup PDF Print E-mail
Written by Klaus Schgaguler   
Monday, 22 October 2007 21:15

Last weekend I traveled to Sonnberg near Linz for the last national competitions in Austria for this year. It was time for night championships and the final competition in Austriacup. Even if i don't consider myself a night runner, recently i started experiencing a lot of fun in night trainings and competitions. That was also why i came to Sonnberg with high expectations. And the weekend was not bad for me.

Saturday was cold. It was snowing already on the way to the competition and it did not stop when it was time to start. Really beautiful to watch from inside, but not the best conditions for night orienteering. It was the first time I used my new headlamp. I started very confident of my actual shape. But already on the way to the first control i slightly lost contact to the map. It was only then, that I realized the map scale 1:15.000. The forest was very flat with just little distinctive details at night time. Fortunately I could come back on the right route quite fast and so I lost just about 30 sec. I realized, that i had to change my technique for that kind of conditions. I started to take longer route choices and safer attack points. It worked out well! I had a good race with just some small hesitations near some controls. Only at control 12 (same place where i got lost on my way to nr 1) i did a mistake of about 1 minute. Nevertheless, when i came to the finish i was sure, that it could be a good result for me. In the end i was beaten only by Pierre Kaltenbacher who whit a great performance became Austrian champion.

On Sunday, the forest was changed. On daylight the orienteering was very easy apart from some small green areas, and it was merely a matter of keeping the speed high for the entire 13 km. I felt tired from the run the night before, but i tried to push hard. I did a nearly perfect race, with just one stupid mistake at control number 8 where I was not able to slow down near the control and take the time needed. I finished 2nd again, this time 2 and a half minutes down on Matthias Müller.

Here my maps from Saturday and Sunday.

Results and spits can be found on the organizers page.