Patrick Hofmeister

Foggy Iberian Championships in Portugal

Patrick | 10.12.2008 | Kategorie: Allgemein | 3161 Kommentare

Last weekend I took advantage of a general holiday in Spain travelling across the Iberian Peninsula to participate in the Iberian Championships held in Portugal, in a small town Idanha-A-Nova next to the Spanish border. I kicked off already on Friday morning in Vueling towards Madrid to get a picture from what the capital has to offer. In less than 3 hours I rushed through the city to catch a glimpse of the essential sights such as Sol, the Royal Palace, Plaza Mayor, The Prado Museum and El Parque Retiro. I have to admit that Madrid is really worth to visit, although Barcelona is even better. It has much more this international feeling that I do really apreciate. After that short stop in Madrid, we went on in a minibus of the Spanish Orienteering Federation.

Having been arrived at the Portuguese border I availed myself of the absence of one Spanish teammember and gota nice warm bed to sleep in… nice start! Saturday was supposed to be the day of the Middle Distance. 5,6k and 245 meters of climbing on a day that was rather made to stay in bed than to run an orienteering competition: 8 deegres, fog with visibility under 50m and awesome dizzle all day long. My performace was as poor as the weather conditions as I failed to read the map properly at the beginning which produced some big big mistakes to the 2nd and 4th control. Although on the route to the 4th there had to be something strange on the map because many runners had problems there, some even got lost out of the map. After these big mistakes it went ok, but I couldn’t really push very hard knowing that the race had actually been already over at the 4th control. At the end I still finished in 3rd position, but definetely all the other runners might have had problems as well.

In the evenings the prize giving ceremony took place and all the 1000 participants could enjoy a typical Portguese dinner sponsered by the local community. On Sunday there was a World Ranking Event held as shortened long distance with an estimated winning time of under one hour. The terrain was more open than the one of the day before but offered as well some interesting stony parts. Fences and stonewalls made a steady running rhythm impossible, as it is shown very tellingly in my GPS track(the blue line in the map is the route of my clubmate Biel Rafols). I made one big mistake in the first tecnical part at control 6 where I could not hold the compass direction searching on a wrong hill. There I lost 2:30. To the 9th I chose the direct route through the green and some stones which was not the best option I think. Slightly before the finish I made another mistake coming too far away from the compass line to the 21th. Anyway, the pace was ok as I ran almost the same split times as Tommi Tollkö. Nevertheless he won the race with a gap of 6min ahead of me.

From now on I am focusing on the final exams in January, but in the meantime I will be in Germany for some nice Christmas celebrations. I am really looking forward to seeing my family and to enjoying the festive spirit at home.

Merry Christmas and a happy new year to all the readers of my blog! See you again next year…

Patrick Hofmeister

Foggy Iberian Championships in Portugal

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