Patrick Hofmeister

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.