Autumn season opening
After some wonderful training weeks in Graz, second biggest city of Austria, it was time for the third Worldcup round in Cesis, Latvia. On the middle distance, I was not amused about the many fallen trees in the terrain and neither amused about my performance and result, 49th place, zero points. Nothing more to say.
In the relay, we showed a good team performance, I found a better rhythm than the previous day and Robert Merl, Matthias Gröll and me finished 10th in the nation's ranking.
In the sprint qualification, a solid race was enough to qualify for the final. The final itself offered several route choices and tough uphill running around Cesis castle. I was satisfeid with my performance and finished 22nd.
(pic by Jānis Līgats)
The days after the Worldcup, we spent in WOC relevant terrain on training camp. It confirmed the experience from the Worldcup races: "you don't know" - where to run not being surprised by fallen trees.
During the first weekend of September, it was time for the national autumn season opening. In Bad Leonfelden, I succeeded to defend the title on the middle distance. It didn't feel that easy during the race, I always had to push myself really forward and there were some minor technical difficulties. In the end, I was happy very happy with this victory. Robet Merl came second, Matthias Reiner third.
The day after, we ran the Austrian Team Championships (3 runners, one SI card, you decide yourself where you change over the SI card and in which order to run the netof controls, 3 out of 48 controls were "gathering" controls where you had to pass together.
It was the first time I was running this event with the Gremmel brothers. And we succeeded directly to win a medal, silver. We were even close to the victory, but Henndorf found a better set to run the last net of controls. However, again, this event was fun to run and thrilling to see the excitment live in the forest.
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