Patrick Hofmeister

After only three weeks in Jönköping, I came back to Germany this weekend to run the German Relay Championships with my club MTK Bad Harzburg. The venue of the competition was the beautiful woodland with a lot of sandstone rocks around Kirkel, only 30km half an hour driving from Saarbrücken. Flying from Gothenborg to Frankfurt Hahn with a famous Irish low-cost airline I could reach the venue in a cheap and quite fast way. To ensure optimal preparation we decided not stay in the mass accommodation but in a very lovely hotel in Kirkel. Friendly service, modern and comfortable rooms as well as awesome breakfast and dinner made it a very pleasant stay there. So, the conditions were perfect. But what about our performance?
We started with Eike on the first leg. Known as a routine start-runner, we were a little bit surprised not see him in one of the first groups coming to the change-over. What happened? The forest turned out to be more difficult than we had expected. Some green controls and tough slopes separated the starter field already in the beginning. Moreover, there was a butterfly forking with 3 loops of different lengths. Eike made some mistakes here and there and was already 9min behind the leader Post Dresden. Christoph was not in his best shape, nevertheless he was able to catch up with some teams on the second leg and was in 6th position when I headed out into the forest as our last leg runner. I started fast, pushed hard on the though first leg, had a bit shorter gaffling I guess and caught up Philipp Müller (Post Dresden) quite early. Our group was unfortunately destroyed by the butterfly which was in my opinion in this way inappropriate for a relay. I had the long loop and also made a mistake of 1min there as I mixed up two cliffs in the control circle. Another mistake on the route to the 12th control and I had no chance to fight for the medals because Ingo Horst and Philipp Müller had already passed me in the butterfly. Finally, we came 6th but more than 15min behind the winner Planeta Radebeul.
The next day was a Middle Distance held as a World Ranking Event. Since my flight was supposed to depart in Frankfurt Hahn already at 15.40, I had to start very early in the starting field. Nevertheless, I had a stable run with only a few smaller mistakes. To the 2nd control I lost some 20s standing on the stone above the cliff, to the 5th I came a bit into the green area and in general I was not sure about my routechoices. Maybe some seconds here and there. But altogether, I was very satisfied with my performance although I knew that there are some guys who can simply run faster than me. Thus, I was not very surprised when I came home to Sweden opening the result list in the internet seeing that Christian Teich and Alexander Lubina were more than 3min faster. The season is now more or less over for me because I decided not take part in the German Long Distance Championships. I intend to make use of the running timeout until November to give my body and my Achilles tendon a break and to focus on university stuff.