Gold, Grants, and Grrr!
SaMa news: We have been busy, successful, and sick… it has been an interesting few weeks for us.

Marc started school at the end of October, which opened a whole new saga in our lives. His last year in Dentistry is going to be wicked tough… and we are trying to adjust to the new lifestyle. Marc’s typical school day consists of getting up at 6am, leaving for school by 6:30 to get there at 7am, preparing his patient reports before classes start at 8am. For half the day he is in classes, and for the second half he is treating his patients. At 5pm he finally has some time to complete his patient reports, plan his patients treatment, and start working on the lab work that needs to be done. This means he typically leaves school at 8pm at the earliest. His day is not yet finished, because if he has the energy he runs the 16km home, only to get home around 9:30pm. Eight and a half hours later the whole thing starts again! Please don’t get me wrong, Marc is not unhappy with what he is doing, but he is just very busy.

Sandra’s situation has also changed a bit; originally I was only going to be working 50% starting in November, but there just happened to be a project that I could join (and be paid for), making it possible for me to work 100% until the end of the year. I certainly don’t mind, although it makes it a little more challenging to train, but I am very fortunate that I can train over lunch, plus I am very happy to be part of a new team and working on a publication. But I am also somewhat busy!

What has happened over the last three weeks… lets start with the Gold!
Marc, with his teammates Baptiste Rollier, and Thomas Hodel won the Gold at the Swiss Team Orienteering Championships on November 6th, 2005.
Team orienteering is a normal orienteering race completed in teams of three. There is one punching unit (SI card) per team, and two mandatory control points where all team members have to be together. All other controls can be run by single members of the team, the tactic being that breaking the race up between team members is faster than running all together. The team decides at the start where the next meeting place is, and one member begins running to the controls, while the other two run to the meeting place. From stories that I have heard, it doesn’t always work out to meet each other and in this case the member with the SI unit continues, because waiting would result in too much time lose. Marc, Baptiste, and Thomas had a stratigical meeting the evening before to workout the details, but you only see the map and course at the start. The race was close, Swiss team members Daniel Hubmann and David Schneider, with brother Beat Hubmann were only 30” slower on the 12.6km and 650 meters climb course!
Congratulations to the Swiss Champions!

Sandra has also had her success!
I spend most of the summer and into the fall working on writing a research grant to fund what could be my job for the next two years. We turned the grant in on September 15th (Marc’s birthday) and had to wait over a month for a response. Finally on November 22, the Federal Council for Sport had a meeting to decide which grant applications should be accepted, and my grant has been fully financed!!! This secures my job situation for the next two years, and is also a personal success because I wrote the grant myself! In order to celebrate Marc made sure to have the appropriate drinks!



So what is all the Grrrr about?
Well Marc and I are at the time being both sick… it’s nothing very serious, but we have strong enough head colds that training has come off the schedule. While Marc is already feeling better, I am at home sick as a dog… hence I actually have time to write something on our blog. Hopefully we’ll be up and running soon! (no pun intended :-))

Take care and until next time! SaMa