SaMa 2nd and 3rd at the Berner Kanton Cross Championships!

On Sunday Marc and I decided to take part in a cross country race. It was the Bern Kanton championships, but also the Swiss University champs. Marc ran a good race, he completed the 8.4km course in 29:39 minutes and placed 7th overall. His placement was good for 2nd in the Berner Kanton championships as well as 2nd in the University champs. The University of Bern, where Marc studies dentistry won the team division. The women's course was 5.4km long, and I finish the race in 23:07 minutes. There were lots of women ahead of me, but it turns out not so many from Bern. I ended up placing 3rd in the Bern Kanton championships and 12th overall.

The course was interesting. They managed to wind 1080 meters into a small field. The loop had 3 180° turns and 2 more turns greater than 130°, this, plus the soft muddy ground made it a relatively slow course. The winners of the men's 8.4km ran 28:59 and the women's winner of the 5.4km course ran 20:55.

Marc and I will run at the Swiss Cross championships in Geneva on March 5th. Rumour has it, that it will also be 1km flat loops; we both are not particularlylooking forwards to doing 12 or 8 rounds each respectively… orienteering is really much more interesting.

205 Controls!

Marc completed a new world record for most controls in an orienteering course, 205 controls over 27 km. Sandra completed the women’s version, which was 150 controls over 21.4 km.

This event was put on by the Golden Club, a club that gives donations to the Swiss National team in hopes to support the runners to greater and bigger success. This annual event is held in February and is usually a long orienteering mass start race for club and national team members only, followed by a dinner all together. I had the luck of being invited despite not fitting the criteria. Thanks Tom for the invite, it was a lot of fun and an experience finding 150 controls!

A news report can be found here! (in German)

There were 4 map exchanges for the men, and 3 for the women. The women did not complete the first map.
Here are the maps!
Map 1.


Map 2.


Map 3.


Map 4.


Our personal experience can be seen in our training diary, just click on the link that says “Marc's training” or Sandra’s training”

Enjoy!

1st Swiss National O-race of 2006
Effretikon Sprint Map
Women's Elite category






I finally figured out how to load a scanned map up on our blog.