Patrick Hofmeister

The Nordic Orienteering Tour consisting of 3 World Cup races in Helsinki, Stockholm and Oslo kicked off yesterday with the super-combination, a combined middle and sprint distance race. I became 59th out of 77 runners and was around 6min30s behind the winner Daniel Hubmann. The first part of the course had middle distance character. I think I managed that part pretty well only losing a couple of seconds here and there due to slight hesitations. After 5k there was the map change and a seemless change to urban sprint terrain. Apart from some slower route-choice to the 8th, 14th and 17th control I showed a decent performance also in this part of the course. As good as it went technically as bad I felt physically. Since the EOC relay I have been suffering from the Tibialis-anterior-Syndrom, an injury that attacks the muscle at the under leg close to the shin bone. Before the start it felt pretty ok but during the race it went worse and the leg felt horrible especially on the sprint course. It was like a huge recurrent cramp that went through my leg. Due to the fact that I was not nominated for the first IKHP team at Jukola, the decision not to start at all at this competition was not too hard to make. I will try to recover instead until the World Cup Tour goes on next Tuesday with the Knock-out Sprint in Stockholm. If I am able to continue the tour and go up with the national team to the WOC training camp in Trondheim will be decided after the Sprint on Tuesday.

You can check my GPS track here: http://www.tulospalvelu.fi/gps/20100617mcH/