Aargauer 3-Tage-OL 2008

Just before I left home for Switzerland I had checked the course parameters for this competition. The first stage was about 4-5km and the last two ones about 7,5km, so I was prepared for a middle distance and two shortened long distance races. However, you must take into account that I checked the class I am used to running in, that is M18... but during our O-camp it turned out that all older boys are bound to run in HAL (men's elite). Don't think I was anxious or sad about it! I was delighted I would have the opportunity to spend more time in Swiss forests and just learn more:-)

1. Etappe [German version] - middle (5,8km and 180m climb)

At the beginning of the course I had some technical and physical problems. My legs weren't working as I would wish they did. Luckily, in the middle part of the race I saw Zielu in the forest and it gave me so much power and determination I thought I could fly then and the rest of the course went almost perfect. As I stood in front of the results table and saw I had beaten Hevi by over a minute, I knew I had a really good performance. Only the last Polish starter - Rino - conquered me... by a second. Undoubtedly, it was my best race during this 3 days' competition.



2. Etappe - long (10,2km and 155m climb)

I knew it would be flat as a table and was prepared for very fast running and speed thinking. There was only one thing (or frankly speaking - millions of them) which made this prestart assumption much more difficult to put into operation. Ditches, ditches and one more time ditches... Furthermore, the map scale was 1:10 000 and our course was over 10km long. For that reason I really often had problems finding the next control on the map I should have looked for.
In addition, I would like to say I think I've never had so many controls (29) before and I found them all! That's my personal record;-)

There was one more trouble we had to cope with during this 2nd stage - control descriptions. I have quite a good eyesight but while running they were just impossible to read for me. I had to stop for a while and remember about 3 controls in advance not to waste time later.

3. Etappe - long, chasing start (10,1km and 290m climb)

After 2 previous days I had such an enormous time advantage over Hewi that we were forced (?) to run together. I started the whole 3 seconds ahead of him... I didn't really feel like running a chasing start race that day as I felt a quite intense pain in the very upper part of my calf because of yesterday's race. As far as the terrain and course are concerned, they were really interesting in my opinion and the forest was fairly... friendly.

All in all...

I ended on the 11th place in men's elite of over 30 runners and the 3rd of 7 Poles. I think I could easily make it to the top 7 (only 2 minutes behind after 3 days).

Furthermore, this was a so-called observed competition in reference to the EYOC 2008, so I think I did quite a good job in my way to success:)