Patrick Hofmeister

10Mila 2009 is over… and it was really worth a trip. We took off already on Friday to run the Elitserien in Helsingborg. It was a very interesting forest-sprint with a steeper part at the slope and a flat part in the middle of the course that offered some good route-choice possibilities. I was totally absent that day, crashed at the 4th and 6th control and lost almost one minute at the two controls. Another stupid mistake occured at the spectator control where I misinterpreted the thickets and the race was completely botched. I seem to be not focused at the moment, it has to be considered why…
The 10Mila, the biggest relay originally held in the Stockholm region, came down to Skane this year. So we took the opportunity to participate with a German team that was composed by regional OWL (Ostwesfalen-Lippe) runners and some friends such as my brother, Eike Bruns, Lars Resch and Alexander Lubina who was our man at the starting line. He did a good solid run and changed to me in 97th spot, some 6 minutes down to the leading teams. Then, it was my turn. Already at the 1st control I crashed. I tried to close the 200m gap to the group right before me, overpaced and got stuck at the wrong gaffling and lost almost 8 minutes until I was able to relocate. F***, I had to re-start… But now I could run my own race, passing team after team until the spectator control. On the last loop I made another stupid mistakes in the marshes and lost again some minutes. Furthermore, the coldness of 3 degrees below zero and the wet marshes made my muscles cramp so that the speed wasn’t the best at the final part of the course. Finally, I finished in 124th spot but lost more than 20 minutes on my leg. Incredible… But 10Mila is a team-competition and my team mates mostly did great jobs, especially my clubmates Eike and Christoph on their night legs brought our team next to the Top100. Some up and downs in the following legs resulted in a final 128th place of 349 teams. For our first 10Mila not bad…

eliteserien.jpg
10Mila