Patrick Hofmeister

After last week’s WC races, the national season continued with German Middle Champs this weekend in Oelsa, Saxony. I tried to recover as good as possible from the hard competition programme in Finland avoiding too much running due to the recurrent Achilles tendon inflammation. Additionally, our club organized a regional school competition with more than 500 runners so that I was once again on journey.
Then, on Saturday we had the German Middle Champs which were at the same time WOC test races. Already in the morning I felt that there is something wrong with me. Anyway, the feeling during the warm-up was not that bad.
I started with a slight hesitation to the first control where I already lost 20s. Then, I had some good controls until the longer leg to the 5th. I didn’t prepare the leg in advance so that I was first running along the path but then turned towards to the road because I reckoned that the straight one would be too slow due to the fern. I lost more than 1min compared to the best split on this leg. Anyway, still among the best at 6 control but then 2 mistakes approaching the control at the following controls and I was more than 1 minute down on the lead. The next controls went fine and I could close the gap a little bit until the 15th control. But then I made again a big mistake because I couldn’t find the deerstand in the terrain, I searched around 50s there. Another 2 mistakes at the end and I was finally down to 7th position. Comparing the splits in the finish I realised that apart from several mistakes I could never run a top speed. A few hours later I knew why. After the price giving ceremony I got totally sick so that I could barely move. Shiverings and fever made it a terrible night so that I decided not to run the long on Sunday which definetely was a good decision.