Patrick Hofmeister

The last weekend was supposed to be the highlight and simultaneously the end of the national season 2008: the German Championships held in Baindt (next to the Lake Constance). I started my long journey from Barcelona via Girona and a short flight with a famous british low cost airline to Basel, Euroairport. After my brother having joined me at Basel Bad,the train brought us directly to Ravensburg where one of our teammates met us at the station. We drove to our hotel which we had chosen before to ensure a perfect preparation.

After a short morning run, my legs felt quite good. Let’s get the party started, I thought!
The finish area was unique by German standards: large spectator area, elite start directly connected to the finish and a speakerteam that tried to entertain the runners already before they go out into the forest. So, my motivation increased more and more until my start.
As I picked up the map my first impression was that it’s gonna be fun to run the course: long route choices, short legs in more difficult terrain and at the end a butterfly waiting for me. I chose a moderate speed at the beginning to avoid a breakdown at the end because my long runs this year were rare! This helped me to concentrate on the given tasks. To the 3th control I took a wrong route coice running rather straight through the green area. After this it went good and at control 6th I already saw Roman next to me. But now I tried to be even more focused on my orienteering because I knew running in a group has been one of my weaknesses. There was no further mistake until the 17th control where I first ran the wrong route on the left through the two green areas and then missed the control about 30s. Anyway, I saw Eike ahead of me and tried to speed up a little bit to catch him. To the butterfly (21st control) I finally managed to increase the gap between me, Eike and Roman so that I could run the short legs on my own. Besides of some slight hesitations at 22nd, and 23rd, it went ok. But still some controls left to the finish. To the 30th control I lost pretty much time to the best split but I didn’t really know why; perhaps because I came a little bit from the right where it was greener. Having reached the finish I was quite satisfied due to a technically good run but as I heard that it was not enough to gain a medal, the disappointment was big. This was definetly not supposed to be my season: 4th in Sprint, MP in Middle, 3rd but lost final sprint in relay and 4th in long distance. Anyway I will be back in 2009, hopefully with the same stability but on a higher level.

By the way there was still a German club relay called “Deutschlandcup” held on Sunday: no surprise that we finished 7th! Maps and route choices can be found on routegadget soon!

Since more than three weeks the Catalan metropolis can be considered to be my new home, nevertheless I spent a weekend in Germany to run the national relay championships in Flöha (Saxony): time to take revenge for last year’s 4th place. The forest was a quite typical german low mountain range forest with a lot of small tracks, some green areas and a number of gullies, in the same time not very steep. I had been chosen to be the anchor man of our team which was an absolutely new situation for me but I was really looking forward to this task.
Eike, our man on the first leg, did a really good job changing over to my brother Christoph just 1.30 behind the leader. Unfortunately, he made some mistakes and was a little bit weakened by a disease so that he was not able to run as fast as he wanted. Anyway, I went out into the forest in second position but already two minutes behind the defending champion TU Ilmenau, a team of three very young runners, and only one minute a head of the next teams. From the very beginning I was very motivated and my legs felt quite good. After having received my map I was a little bit confused because I had not expected such a short first control so that I had problems to differentiate the distinct green features in the terrain and already lost some 45 seconds there. After that it went quite ok until the 10th control where I suddenly saw Ingo Horst and Phillip Müller behind me after another mistake of 30 seconds. Furtunately they had not the same gaffling so that I could speed up a bit to get away from them again. Two controls further Ingo was back again and from that point on I knew that it was a fight for the medals between Alsbach and Bad Harzburg. The following controls until the end were not very special, nevertheless we made slight mistakes here and there. During the second part of the course I tried to figure out where I can attact but I didn’t see a possibility because the last controls were just downhill orienteering, which is not really my favourite. So I pushed up to the 20th control but it was not enough and Ingo was still in the package. Just a few seconds later I recognized Christoph Brandt from TU Ilmenau some 150m in front of us. But we didn’t managed to catch him up in the final sprint where Ingo still was the strongest. So we took the Bronze which is better than nothing but anyway a little bit less than we had hoped before. Directly after the race we took off towards Hannover where we celebrated the wedding of our clubmate Sven and his wife Sarah. It was a great party and a “wild night” in the Hannover Zoo where the ceremony took place.

But what had happened before in Barcelona? Well, after 5 days of “hardcore-flat-searching” I finally found a nice totally renovated shared flat in the very city center of Barcelona, next to the famous Ramblas. Given the circumstances I have quite good training conditions as it takes me just 7 minutes running to reach the olmpic park St Montjuic where you can run almost 90 minutes, partly non-asphalt, without seeing something twice. Besides I have already made my first training sessions together with the catalan orienteering guys which I really enjoyed. Besides I am now a member of the Catalan Orienteering Club (COC) and already took part in my first Copa Catalana race. I have to admit that I sometimes had problemes to read the map correctly in a terrain that was quite typical for this area around Barcelona: many climbing, green and yellow areas and some rocks and cliffs. Anyway I finished 2nd which was not bad for my first competition in Catalunya.

The university has already started last Wednesday and my schedule is already fixed with 2 classes in Economics, one in British culture and history and one introductional class of Catalan. I consider this class to be very important because everyone here speaks Catalan which is very different to the original Spanish, the Castellano.

Next weekend there will be the last championship in Germany, the long distance. I am flying from Girona (BCN) towards Basel where I will meet my brother who has recently started his master studies in Zürich. From Basel we are driving to Ravensburg (next to the Bodensee), the venue of the national champs. Map extracts and terrain description make me really looking forward to it.

Hasta pronto!