Patrick Hofmeister

Now, as the heatwave is hitting Germany with a vengeance, it is time to provide a little review of the happenings of the early phases of this summer. Almost four weeks ago I packed my stuff and left Jönköping to travel through Scandinavia in order to take part in the Nordic Orienteering Tour (NORT). I wrote already about the first stage in Finland where I had a pretty good race and kept the time behind the winner to a minimum. Race number 2 was a knock-out sprint held in Stockholm. First, there was a regular sprint qualification from which the best 30 runners made it into the quarter finals. I made one big mistake at the control right before the long route-choice and lost 15s there. The rest of the race was fairly good which brought me to 58th place at the end, a little bit more than 2 minutes behind the fastest man that day. The finals in the old town of Stockholm were very interesting to follow although there was still a lot of room for improvement as far as the TV production was concerned. Four days later the NORT stopped in Raufoss, 100k north of Oslo. This time the competition format was a longer middle distance held as a chasing start. I started around 10min behind the leader of the overall standing Daniel Hubmann. Nevertheless, there were a bunch of other runners heading out into the woods around me. Already at the fourth control we were a group of five runners. Apart from the short loop in the middle part of the race, I had runners around me all the time. Technically it went very well making maybe 1 minute mistake all in all. At the end I finished in 42nd spot, mainly due to the fact that many runners skipped the last stage. Anyways, I was happy with my overall result that reflects three solid runs in demanding Scandinavian terrain.
The day after the last World Cup race, the German team took part in the O-Festivalen relay. I was running the third and shortest leg. Physically I could not push that hard but technically it went well again. We came on a decent 10th place at the end. After a short stop at a local pub watching Germany demolishing the English football team, we drove north to Trondheim. The 6 hours road trip already gave us a little foretaste of what was to expect in Trondheim. Through the car windows we could see the amazing landscape consisting of open highlands, wide marshes, mountain lakes and small streams meandering through steep valleys. Most of the trainings in Trondheim met our expectations, especially those on the maps Bosbergsheia and Iladalen. At the end of the week, we took part in the selection races of Sweden and Norway. First, it was Sprint where I showed another good sprint performance this year being only 1min31s behind the best time. Unfortunately, the middle and long distance were disastrous. A lot of green forest and huge mistake made me ending up at the end of the result list.
Now, I am at my parents place enjoying the lovely hot German summer. For those who do not know yet, the World Cup races were my last competitions this season. In two weeks, I will be sitting on a flight to Singapore where I am studying the next 4 months. This means no WOC for me this year. I made this decision already some months ago and adapted my season plans accordingly. Instead of the World Champs I was running the European Champs and the Nordic Tour. For the rest of this year I am prioritizing my studies which draw to a close. According to the latest ranking the Singapore Management University is among the top business schools worldwide. Thus, I hope to get some further inspirations for my master thesis. Drop by on this Blog to stay informed about what is going on with me in Asia. Then however I will be providing more daily life and travel reports than orienteering news.

The Nordic Orienteering Tour consisting of 3 World Cup races in Helsinki, Stockholm and Oslo kicked off yesterday with the super-combination, a combined middle and sprint distance race. I became 59th out of 77 runners and was around 6min30s behind the winner Daniel Hubmann. The first part of the course had middle distance character. I think I managed that part pretty well only losing a couple of seconds here and there due to slight hesitations. After 5k there was the map change and a seemless change to urban sprint terrain. Apart from some slower route-choice to the 8th, 14th and 17th control I showed a decent performance also in this part of the course. As good as it went technically as bad I felt physically. Since the EOC relay I have been suffering from the Tibialis-anterior-Syndrom, an injury that attacks the muscle at the under leg close to the shin bone. Before the start it felt pretty ok but during the race it went worse and the leg felt horrible especially on the sprint course. It was like a huge recurrent cramp that went through my leg. Due to the fact that I was not nominated for the first IKHP team at Jukola, the decision not to start at all at this competition was not too hard to make. I will try to recover instead until the World Cup Tour goes on next Tuesday with the Knock-out Sprint in Stockholm. If I am able to continue the tour and go up with the national team to the WOC training camp in Trondheim will be decided after the Sprint on Tuesday.

You can check my GPS track here: http://www.tulospalvelu.fi/gps/20100617mcH/

The European Championships 2010 are over, time to have a short review. Starting with the sprint distance on Sunday where I had a very bad day as far as my o-technique was concerned. In the first part which was open forest with a dense network of difuse aisles, I totally got confused and made almost two minutes mistake. Of course, the run was ruined. By hindsight i should have relied more on my compass and distance feeling than counting the aisles. With regard to the long qualification the next morning, I decided to leave out the B-Final on Sunday afternoon which was a good decision since I felt pretty strong on Monday’s long qualification.

Technically, I had a good run I must say. I just lost some time on the routechoices to the 7th, 8th and 12th control because I did not manage to follow the planned route. As I came to the finish I heard Per Forsberg saying that I didn’t make it into the A-Final, but was out only by some seconds. This placement, however, should only last for a short moment until I read out my SI-Card and realized that I had a misspunch. Apparently, I did the rookie mistake not punching the refreshment control. I definitely have to work on this since it was not the first misspunch at an important international championship.

The following day it was time for relay. I was running the last leg after Alexander Lubina and Torben Wendler. Alex had a solid run, not in the very top but only a little bit more than 3 minutes behind the leading teams. For Torben, it was almost the same, not a very good run but neither bad. So, I went out in the woods together with the Portuguese team around ten minutes behind the leader. My legs felt strong that day and I could find a good pace at the beginning. To the 4th control, however, I made a huge mistake when I came down the slope too much in western direction. I mixed up two ditches which gave me a hard time to relocate. To the 6th control it was better to cross the green and run over the hill instead of running around. Another mistake happened at the 9th where I did not see the yellow area in the terrain and got confused. The rest of the course went pretty okay. Unfortunately, two teams (Estonia and Ukraine) managed to pass me on the last leg so that we came 18th in the nation’s ranking. As Top15 was our stipulated goal, we were running a little bit below expectations.
Unfortunately, after the relay my shin bone started to hurt. Probably, due to the fact that I was running in dobb spikes for the first time since last year’s world champs. The pain was getting worse the following days which prevented me from starting in the Long Distance B-Final on Saturday. Now, after three days without running, it felt a lot better which is why I am confident with regard to the upcoming Nordic World Cup Tour.
As there are a lot of discussions going on about the quality of this European Championships, I would like to comment on that. From a logistics point of view it was a very good championship. The accommodation was just fantastic providing good food and services. It was situated 200m away from the finish area of both sprint qualification and final. All other trainings and competitions could be reached within 15 minutes driving. Another plus point can be given for the course planning. I think all of the courses were technically demanding and complied with the IOF regulations. The deviation in winning time on the long distance was probably mainly due to the hot weather although this could have been taking into account during the preparations since temperatures around 30 degrees are not unlikely during summer in Bulgaria. But there are two things I would really criticize. First of all, the poor media coverage has to be mentioned. An international championship without GPS and up-to-date live results is not attractive to follow. In the finish area, it was okay to follow the races, compared to the World Champs in Hungary or Ukraine, it was not a big difference but looking at the online results made people going nuts. But my strongest criticism is related to the map drawing. How can it be that there are tons of new symbols on a map for an international championship? Small trees, water features etc. got their own smaller symbol on the map which were not readable while running. I think this is even more worth to discuss than other topics. Nevertheless, it was fantastic to compete in the nice Bulgarian forests. In my opinion this event really contributed to the diversity of our sport, which is good. The above mentioned issues, however, should be evaluated carefully.

The first international highlight of the season is coming closer. On Sunday, the European Orienteering Championship kicks off with both Sprint Qualification and Final. This year’s venue is Primorsko, a small town located at the Black Sea in Bulgaria. Due to my last exam on Friday, I will join the team a little bit later on Saturday. Despite the very tight schedule, I am very confident before the competitions. The feedback of the last weeks of training was very good and I believe I have improved considerably here in Sweden. Unfortunately, I got sick prior to the Swedish Sprint Championships and the Elitserien competitions in Arvika two weeks ago which were supposed to be the last serious test before the EOC. Nevertheless, I managed to get back on track in time and had some very good training sessions last week. Control picking, Orienteering Intervals, Long runs, 6×1000m (3:10-3:15 with 2min break), Fartlek just to mention a few of them. Now it’s time to charge the batteries. The program is tough for me with Sprint, Long and hopefully relay.

Program:

30.05.2010 Sun Sprint Qual + Sprint-Final
31.05.2010 Mon Long - Qualification
01.06.2010 Tue Middle - Qualification
02.06.2010 Wen Relay
03.06.2010 Thu Model Long and Middle - Finals
04.06.2010 Fri Middle Final
05.06.2010 Sat Long Final
06.06.2010 Sun Closing of the Event Centre

Offensivt och koncentrerat was our slogan for this 10Mila 2010 and an improvement of last year’s 9th place the announced goal. Well, short and crisp: we didn’t make it and finished 27th. Currently, we as a team are trying to analyse the reasons for the failure. Here is my part of the story from the pre-start to the finish:

Before the start: I had a fitful sleep before the race in the youth hostel, 20k away from the competition centre. A mix of nervousness and the unusual time prevented me from a deep sleep. But it felt ok when I got up at 1.30 in the morning to eat some sandwiches and drive to the arena. When we got there, I immediately wanted to know about the race situation. After a decent start and an even better second leg, the prerequisites for the “Long Night” were perfect. But unfortunately, we lost a lot of time on the third leg and were more than 20min down on the lead. Of course, this update was not a motivation stimulator but anyways, there were still 7 legs to go and we were definetely eager to get back to the TOP20 at least. Finally, Vagnis sent me out on the 6th leg together with Halden’s 2nd team, where no less a figure than Tore Sandvik, himself former world champion and multiple 10Mila winner, was sent out. 6km unforked were waiting for us.

Start-1st: I took the route under the power line and approached the control from south-west. Saw the stone 100m before the control but then went to the wrong gaffling (81). Corrected and punshed after Tore Sandvik the first control.

1st -2nd: Decided to stay behind him for a couple of controls because it was still quite dark in the forest and I knew about his technical capacity.

2nd- 5th: Running behind Tore Sandvik. Had full control but did not want to run away although the speed felt way too slow.

5th -6th: We ran down to the crossing of the paths. Suddenly, Tore went left but I decided to go straight through the swamp. Then missed the control a little bit in the control cycle so that we were together again.

6th - 7th: Running behind him again to get the control back. No problem. It was brightening up.

7th - 8th: It’s time to attack. Down in the flat area I speeded up and got away from Tore Sandvik. Punshed the 8th before him.

8th -9th: TV-control on the top of the slope. Knew the control from the screen. Finally, I could push hard for the first time in the uphill.

9th -10th: Crossed the paths and hit the control from north-west. No trouble whatsoever.

10th -11th: Leaving the control I increased the speed again. Saw the cliffs on the line and was about to approach the control at the slope. Then I saw this huge cutting area which was not marked on the map and got totally confused. Was I already close to the forbidden area? I went a little bit down the slope and checked the compass direction. Everything was alright. Plus, I was completely sure that I passed the big cliffs on the line, so I had to be right. Then I follow the slope and saw the stones. Maybe 1min was gone and Tore Sandvik back again. Afterwards, I was told that this cutting area was new but apparently announced in the PM. So, next time I have to read the final instruction a little bit more carefully.

11th-12th: Full control, around the hill, over the path up to the top and behind the cliff to the control.
12th-13th: Left the control and was running over the small hills but suddenly saw a control and turned right. Checked the code and realized it was not mine. After a short look at the map, I relocated in the valley 50m away from my control. Corrected and punshed the right one.
13th-14th: Compass. No problem.
14th-15th: Hit the control over the top and the cliff. Felt pretty good.
15th-16h: Took the route over the path. Was standing on the little knoll in the control cycle for some seconds because I did not take the time to read the control description.
16th-17th: One of the most easiest controls of the course but my biggest mistake of the night. Left the control and was running over the yellow area crossing the path and up the slope. I did not really know exactly where I was on the slope so that I was a little uncertain about the precise location when I reached the top. Continued eastwards but suddenly I found myself almost standing on the crossing of the big roads. I immeadiately realized what had happened and turned back to my control. Maybe another minute mistake.

17th - Finish: Full speed no mistake. Was not satisfied at all when I changed over to David. Saw Tore Sandvik coming into the finish, maybe 30 seconds behind me. Apparentely, all the other runners struggle as well. Thus, my leg time seemed pretty ok. Nevertheless, I am not satisfied with my performance as such although I managed to gain some time on the leading teams.

In a nutshell, it can be said that I am able to run either offensive or with full control. But the key to success is the coordination of the two. And there is still a lot of room for improvement.

Newspaper article before the 10Mila:

The highlight of every Scandinavian orienteering club is coming closer: 10Mila. This year’s venue is Finspång which is round 100km south of Stockholm. For me a dream came true when I was nominated for the first team of IK Hakarpspojkarna. Still some months ago I did not even dare to dream of this scenario. But after last weekend’s 2nd place in Stigtomtakavlen the coaches rely on me to run the 6th leg in our team. And it’s going to be exactly the same distance: 6km unforked. But this time, it will be night or at least twilight. The legs are feeling great and I hope I will get a similar starting position among all the top teams as last weekend. I think we have a very strong team this year and are definitely fighting for the very top places. But before it is getting dark, there will be Elitserien Sprint in Norrköping on Friday. You are welcome to follow both events online with Web-TV, GPS tracking and live results!

IK Hakarpspojkarna 1:

1. Håkan Öhlund
2. Andreas Jansson
3. Joakim Hederskog
4. Peter Jacobsson
5. Mattias Karlsson
6. Patrick Hofmeister
7. David Lingfors
8. Erik Holmberg
9. Patrik Karlsson
10. Henrik Jansson

Finally, after several attempts, I’ve won my first individual German orienteering championship title. On my best discipline, the sprint, I was 18 seconds ahead of the shared silver medalists Alexander Lubina and Felix Spät. Only 48 hours earlier my start was in severe danger due to the volcanic eruption on Iceland. However, as a good sprint orienteer you know how to make fast appropriate decisions so that I booked my train ticket down to Germany immediately after I had heard of the air-traffic collapse in Europe on Thursday.

Thus, I took the train on early Friday morning, via Nässjö, Malmö, Kopenhagen down to Hamburg where I was picked up by my former club mates from Lübeck. After 14 hours of travelling, I reached the final destination Kassel – Kaufungen, right in the middle of Germany. I think it was a wise decision to go out for an easy run on Friday evening to get rid of the tiredness in my legs. The Saturday started with the qualification race in Kassel Wilhelmshöhe. Ten runners were supposed to make it into the A-Final. As usual the qualification was technically rather easy, characterized by a few forest controls, but mainly it was downhill park orienteering. I tried to have a fluent run avoiding any mistakes. I did not fully succeed and made one mistake of 10 seconds when I was standing on the wrong gaffling. Apart from that, it was a decent qualification run where I didn’t push too hard. Although Christian Teich was 55 seconds faster in my heat I was confident before the final race since I knew that I still had a lot of reserves.

The A-Final on early Saturday evening was expected to be a lot more technical and even more downhill than the qualification. I started among all the favorites as the fourth last runner. The first controls very completely downhill. Thus the speed was incredibly fast, but I managed to keep control all the time. Then, there were some short technical controls in a part with a lot of paths and greens. I had some smaller problems in this part: a short hesitation on control 7 using the stairs and paths instead of going straight. Then, running out of control 8, I went back the same way as I was approaching it loosing 5 seconds there, and the same mistake leaving control 9. From then on, it went perfect. I made the right routechoices to the 10th and the 12th control and still had some energy left in my legs. The last controls in the stones went good and I was pretty sure when I crossed the finish line that this might be my first national title in the senior class. Finally, I was 18 seconds ahead of Felix Spät (still a junior showing an outstanding performance) and Sprint-Ace Alexander Lubina who had exactly the same time. Of course, I am very happy about the result and fortunately all the exertions paid off.
Today it was World Ranking Event Long Distance. The forest was very green and I had a hard time fighting through the bushes. I really have to work on my motivation during such unpleasant competitions. I made one big mistake on the 8th control: I’d better followed the paths instead of trying to go straight! Some more mistakes followed during the course so that I was finally 2 minutes down on the lead. Now I am at my parents place in Lübeck. Fortunately, they are giving me a ride back to Jönköping tomorrow because they have planned to visit me this week anyways. Otherwise, I would have had problems to come back to Sweden since the volcanic ash is still disturbing the European air traffic.

The forests around Jönköping and Huskvarna are still full of snow, which is why we decided to drive down to Denmark to run competitions in snow-free terrain. Except for the one week training camp in Spain and some trainings with the national team in Germany, I haven’t had too many chances so far to practice my orienteering technique. Therefore, I didn’t know what to expect from the competitions.
Straight after having finished my last exam for this term on Friday, we headed south to Hilleröd. We stopped by for a moment at the night relay and saw our clubmates doing good jobs. On Saturday, it was time for Spring Cup Classic and almost as usual the weather was awful. The heavy rain made the marshes and streams even more wet which is why the 13,1k course became quite tough. I wanted to start slowly trying to get into the map. However, already on the way to the 2nd control I lost map contact and ran too far finding myself at the wall behind the control. To the 3rd and 4th, I didn’t follow the planned route consequently. At the 7th control I did my biggest mistake of the day when I got confused with the network of minor streams in the greener area. I had some smaller hesitations every now or then later on. Nevertheless, I was satisfied with the speed during the whole course. Even after one hour running time, I was still able to push a little bit harder. I finished in 49th spot but almost 14min down on Daniel Hubmann who did an incredible run.
On Sunday I was running the first leg for IKHP’s first team. It was very nice to see that our coaches relied on me in my international club debut. And I think I did not disappoint them. Apart from two times where I stood at the wrong gaffling (5th and 15th), I had a good run and felt physically strong. At the end I came in 19th position, 2:25 after the leading teams. Unfortunately, my teammates lost some places finally finishing in 31st spot.
After the Spring Cup, I travelled with my German club to Bad Harzburg where I have been staying for some days working on the map for the national university championships in May. The venue of the competition is situated up in the Harz mountains, in Clausthal-Zellerfeld, on 500 meter above sealevel. I am the mapmaker for the sprint relay which is going to be held on the campus area. Changing the point of view from being a runner to being a mapmaker is a valuable experience. And if you make a mistake by drawing something in a wrong way, you get as angry as you do during a competition when not finding a control immediately. Of course I have the time for some good workouts here. Yesterday for instance, I was running back from Oker via the Ahrendsberg Forsthaus down to Bad Harzburg. 15k up and down through the lovely nature of the Harz national park. Amazing!

On Friday I am travelling back to Lübeck spending the Easter weekend at my parents place. I am looking forward to some relaxing days at home.

Whole Europe is facing a pretty hard winter right now and Jönköping is no exception with temperatures far below zero (up to minus 20 degrees) and 40cm of snow in the upper parts. During these days running training and orienteering becomes even more demanding. I came back to Sweden 10 days ago and since then I have done 3 pretty tough night orienteering trainings. Technically they were not too demanding but physically they were pretty rough though. Due to the deep snow that has accumulated on some open cutting areas up to half a meter, it is usually better to take route-choices far around on roads than wading through the snow. You can follow my routechoices of the recent night-o trainings on the map samples below.

Nevertheless, I also took advantage of the positive side effects of such a strong winter when I decided to go on a skiing trip with some friends from school to the nearby ski run in Ulricehamn, 45min driving from Jönköping. All in all, they had two lifts and three perfectly groomed ski runs there. Since we went on a Monday there were almost no other people on the slope although the weather was fine: sunny and pretty cold. I really enjoyed carving over the slopes and I also had my first experiences on a snowboard for some minutes. It is a totally different feeling but it was worth a try and did not end too badly!

In two weeks from now, I am already in Alicante for a training camp with some guys from IKHP. We will be running “la Primera Prueba de la Liga Espanola”, the first competitions of the Spanish national ranking including a WRE. Afterwards, we will be staying for some high quality map trainings without snow, hopefully! I am already looking forward to training in the sun and also talking some Spanish again!

A lot of things have happened here in Sweden after my last article on my blog. It was a good mix of orienteering and non-orienteering stuff that has dominated my life in the last couple of weeks. So, let me do a short update of what has been going on here in Jönköping:
The october still offered some nice opportunities for orienteering at the end of the season. Especially the big relays 25manna and Smalandskavlen were a blast. At 25manna I was running in the second team of IKHP on the second last (the longest) leg. It went pretty well for me until the spectator control. Unfortunately, I lost a lot of time on the last loop due to some stupid mistakes on two different cutting areas. Nevertheless, I was fairly satisfied with my race given the fact that it was my first relay for my club. As a team we came 36th which made us the best second team in the competition. Since our first team finished 3rd, it turned out to be a very successful day for IKHP.
At Smalandskavlen I started for my German club MTK Bad Harzburg. Honestely, this time it was more about having fun with good old fellows and less about achieving a good result. Nevertheless, we gave our best for sure. I went out into the woods as the last runner. Sadly, I was part of the mass start for late runners. Still, there were a bunch of eager guys in there and I wanted to beat them for sure. The only problem was that apparently they handed out two different course length with me getting the longer one for sure. So, I could not win the mass start as such but was still the fastest on my course although my run was full of smaller mistakes here and there.
After these competitions in october I took it easy with the training focusing more on socializing with my new friends from the master programme. I really consider that as crucial because only if your environment is working well including friends, family and academic carreer, you will be able to perform on the highest possible level. If non-sport life sucks, it directly has a bad impact on your training motivation and your performance. But, for three weeks I am now back in training. My training plan stipulated a total training load of 35 hours and I will almost accomplish the intented amount of training hours. However, I had to reschedule some of the workouts because I twisted my ankle twice the last month. Nothing to be too serious about but some slight adaptation were inevitable. So, I might have improved my swimming and cycling skills in the last weeks which is not too bad because it constitutes a good basis for the upcoming tough winter training. Soon, the night orienteering season really kicks off with the 20Mila. 20Mila is a training on the basis of 10Mila held on a weekly basis during the whole winter. Each week a different stage of 10Mila will be arranged. It is going to be a challenge for me, that’s for sure.

What else happened? Well, i have started my Swedish class in university and I think I am doing good progress. Actually, i was proud of myself being able to present myself in Swedish on our elite team meeting last week. By the way this meeting I am talking about, was held at the Scandic hotel in Jönköping which shows the professionality of the sport here in Sweden and especially in Huskvarna.