On Tuesday we had a really nice training session at the track by the Salzsachseen. The weather, as it has been, was fantastic and perfect for running and the group was really big. Warti, Frank, Markus, Robi, Norbert, Luki, Mani, Andi and me - 9 in total - split into 2 main groups. The fast ones consisting of Warti, Frank, Robi and Markus and the slow ones (the rest) and really only a "matter of opinion".
The session was 8 x 1000m with 2 minute breaks and boy did it go well. As Warti and his group sprinted into the distance, my group spearheaded by Andi and Norbert set about running about 3:45 min KM's and we were able to stick to our guns, running the first two in 3:48 and 3:47. At this stage Mani and Luki had a longer rest and Andi, Norbert and I pushed the pace to under 3:45 and ran the next KM in 3:43. Man it was going well. Norbert was looking like he was starting to feel it, but I was still going strong.
Mani and Luki joined us again and the pace was definitely increasing, with Mani taking the lead with Andi and running these two KM's in 3:41 and 3:38. At this stage Norbert was fading and Andi was looking a bit jaded. For 2 of the last 3 Markus joined us as well - the fast boys had spit him out the backend. The 6th KM looked like it was going to be a lonely one for me, but at the last second Norbert, Markus and Andi decided to run with and we were able to push out a 3:36, this time though Norbert fell a bit behind and this turned out to be his last km, and Markus was leading by a good 10 seconds.
I was looking good for two more and the boys (Mani and Luki) would be joining us. Andi decided not to run this one and so it was left to Markus to push the pace, and push it he did. Mani was able to keep up as well and we finished off with an excellent 3:32 km. But the pace was telling though - Richi was still feeling strong - the boys were fading, the men were standing *grin*! The last one was just down to Mani, Andi and myself, and right from the word go we were pushing hard. Andi took the first lap, but then I went past and started to accelerate. Christian joined me for the last 300m (thanks) and I was able to churn out a 3min 21 km - my best KM this year. Mani took a bit of strain but was still able to run very quickly. Andi just broke the 3:30 min barrier.
Truaely a great session, and immensely enjoyed by all - I hope we have more of these over the summer!
Friday, April 20, 2007
The one with the Sprinting...
On Monday afternoon, we had a sprint practice and I really can't say anything more about this training. As a trainer I went into the map area to observe and make points on our elite runners. I found a really good spot where I could see controls 5, 18 and 19 and was able to identify a few basic sprint mistakes, and I'll just write them down here
In a sprint always go the shortest way, ie a STRAIGHT line. It's amazing how many people forget this rule. Always know before you get to a control the direction in which you will run away from the control, stopping to examine this point only wastes time. Always check your control number and control description - in a sprint it's a small area with many controls - so the area for mispunching is huge.
I had a nice run after everybody had left, however as I had already seen 4 or 5 controls it wasn't really fair. Additionally the sprint was REALLY easy so no thinking involved. The only problem was between control 5 and 8, because the control setter had already removed the controls 6 and 7 and so I had to chase her about 150 m in order to get to them, so additional distance, but I didn't actually go to the place where nr. 7 should have been.
Made up some good time at 20 by jumping over the wall - very few people did that, mostly they just ran round. 9 min 45 for 2.6 km was really OK I thought, at about 3:35 pace. I enjoyed it!
In a sprint always go the shortest way, ie a STRAIGHT line. It's amazing how many people forget this rule. Always know before you get to a control the direction in which you will run away from the control, stopping to examine this point only wastes time. Always check your control number and control description - in a sprint it's a small area with many controls - so the area for mispunching is huge.
I had a nice run after everybody had left, however as I had already seen 4 or 5 controls it wasn't really fair. Additionally the sprint was REALLY easy so no thinking involved. The only problem was between control 5 and 8, because the control setter had already removed the controls 6 and 7 and so I had to chase her about 150 m in order to get to them, so additional distance, but I didn't actually go to the place where nr. 7 should have been.Made up some good time at 20 by jumping over the wall - very few people did that, mostly they just ran round. 9 min 45 for 2.6 km was really OK I thought, at about 3:35 pace. I enjoyed it!
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
The one with the route choice...
Well, back to Hungary and it's challenging tasks set for me. Monday dawned earlier and brighter than normal, as it was a working day for the masses in Eger and as our room had windows onto the road (I need to sleep with the windows open) we were rudely awoken by the sounds of traffic driving into Eger for work and school!
The training was again to be route choice and this time there were actually one or two routes choices. It was my plan to try one or two things out and my first goal was to get round with as little climb as possible - which worked to a degree, but the route choices were not always so good. And my second was to test out the thickets (as they were sending us through some).
S-1: Naja, climb to the first control :)
1-2: also good
2-3: dodging the thickets was OK
3-4: the long left (but flat) route - going straight would have been faster, but far more strenuous
4-5: Test of thicket (dark green) - took me 2 and a half minutes to do that 250m (downhill). An extremely interesting exercise as the green between 5 and 6 was completely the opposite - no problem to get through at all.
5-6: Did some extra climb, this route was substantially faster than the right or the left one, even though I was running through thicket.
6-7: No problem
7-8: Running on the steep hang was not possible, so I walked over on the contour. Map was not so good here either. Dropped a few meters and had to climb at the end.
8-9: My do or die NO Climb goal can to a standstill here. My idea to run over on the height had to be adjusted halfway thru the leg. However the approach to the control was good, and certainly better than going direct.
9-10: Here I made some silly mistakes. Lack of compass bearing to road cost me time as I thought I was on the main track, but it turned out to be only a side one. Then the map came into play. At mistake x6 the map was substantially inaccurate as although I took the right path, it was incorrectly drawn on the map. Bummer, this cost me 5 minutes, as I couldn't get through the private property. I can't blame it entirely on the map of course and if I had checked first before charging down the path, I would have noticed that the road had an additional bend on it not drawn on the map - this would have saved me much time, but there you go. As Thomas said to me afterwards, that's the way they do it in Hungary, so all in all a good lesson.
10-11: good
11-12: very good
12-13: Tried to stay on the height and climb at the end, but I should have climbed at x7 - this would have saved me heaps of time.
13-14: just a slog
14-F: jogging on the paths back to the car.
Ended up running 12,6 km with 630 climb in 116 minutes. The interesting part was that I only managed 140 climb until halfway through 8-9! Kerschi ended up with over 850 m I believe.
Lessons learned: Learn to ensure that you are where you think you are on the map (double checking). In Hungary there is going to be climb, even running to save climb I ended up with over 600 m so train those hills. Thickets are very differently mapped, so if it's really dark green, go around - not through!
The training was again to be route choice and this time there were actually one or two routes choices. It was my plan to try one or two things out and my first goal was to get round with as little climb as possible - which worked to a degree, but the route choices were not always so good. And my second was to test out the thickets (as they were sending us through some).
S-1: Naja, climb to the first control :)1-2: also good
2-3: dodging the thickets was OK
3-4: the long left (but flat) route - going straight would have been faster, but far more strenuous
4-5: Test of thicket (dark green) - took me 2 and a half minutes to do that 250m (downhill). An extremely interesting exercise as the green between 5 and 6 was completely the opposite - no problem to get through at all.
5-6: Did some extra climb, this route was substantially faster than the right or the left one, even though I was running through thicket.
6-7: No problem
7-8: Running on the steep hang was not possible, so I walked over on the contour. Map was not so good here either. Dropped a few meters and had to climb at the end.
8-9: My do or die NO Climb goal can to a standstill here. My idea to run over on the height had to be adjusted halfway thru the leg. However the approach to the control was good, and certainly better than going direct.
9-10: Here I made some silly mistakes. Lack of compass bearing to road cost me time as I thought I was on the main track, but it turned out to be only a side one. Then the map came into play. At mistake x6 the map was substantially inaccurate as although I took the right path, it was incorrectly drawn on the map. Bummer, this cost me 5 minutes, as I couldn't get through the private property. I can't blame it entirely on the map of course and if I had checked first before charging down the path, I would have noticed that the road had an additional bend on it not drawn on the map - this would have saved me much time, but there you go. As Thomas said to me afterwards, that's the way they do it in Hungary, so all in all a good lesson.
10-11: good
11-12: very good
12-13: Tried to stay on the height and climb at the end, but I should have climbed at x7 - this would have saved me heaps of time.
13-14: just a slog
14-F: jogging on the paths back to the car.
Ended up running 12,6 km with 630 climb in 116 minutes. The interesting part was that I only managed 140 climb until halfway through 8-9! Kerschi ended up with over 850 m I believe.
Lessons learned: Learn to ensure that you are where you think you are on the map (double checking). In Hungary there is going to be climb, even running to save climb I ended up with over 600 m so train those hills. Thickets are very differently mapped, so if it's really dark green, go around - not through!
Monday, April 16, 2007
The short long Austrian Champs
So before I carry on with the analysis of Hungary, here is the newest up-to-date OL story from the house of the Eurogathers :)
On this weekend the Austrian Marathon OL Championships were held in Furstenfeld, and for the elite it was quite the mouth full, but I felt that for the H35 it was possibly just a little short (and also there was almost no climb). We were running on a 1:15000 map, a total of 15.4 km with 235 m climb and 15 controls. I was hoping for quite a good showing and for the most part it started well.
Looking at the start list I knew that a top 4 would be out of the question, and so my aim was to finish 5th, as close to the other 4 as possible. So with that in mind here is the control by control analysis:
s-1: good controlled start, was able to plan 7 - 8 (not really much of a route choice *smile*)
1-2: Staying on the roads, but I could have used the forest more - came round the bush the wrong way...
2-3: Small correction of route choice (xA) when I saw that thicket in front of me. In the thicket by the control I ran to what I thought was the clearing with a control, but it turned out to be a clearing (not on the map) with a plastic bag. Small correction and straight to the next clearing (on the map) where I had the control. I can't really even call this a mistake, although it cost me 1
minute.
3-4: Great
4-5: almost perfect
5-6: Again good
6-7: Route choice - should have just gone to the road!
7-8: I think my route choice was quite good. At mistake "xC" I should have just stayed on the road rather than cut off the corner. The other mistake "x2" was purely compass related - I didn't check the direction - but quickly corrected, and not really much time lost. I stopped to drink at the water, and this is where my problem occurred. As I left the drink control and jumped over the ditch towards 8, I must have landed funny on my feet and I ripped the skin of my foot (sole) from the actual bottom of my foot (this is not like a blister - there was no rubbing or blister water). It has happened to me before, but this was really very painful. So I have a 3 by 3 patch of skin over a largish 3 by 3 wound. I'm not really sure how to explain it, other to say that it hurts like hell. From here on until the finish I was really hampered.
8-9: Concentration (due to pain) was not high, and I misread a path / road junction and then ended up making my only "real" mistake of the race. This mistake cost me 4 minutes.
9-10: Felled area, was murder to run over and I almost gave it up here. Didn't see the control as I ran past and had to come back for it. Lost about 1 minute.
10-11: Limped but OK
11-12: was ok, getting over the gully to the west was hard. Couldn't see the same dam and so overran it slightly, came back for it.
12-13: Again, very painful to get past the small lake on the NW side. Otherwise no problem.
13-F: Limped jogged - no mistakes
I was really disappointed afterwards. I ended up running the last 5 or 6 controls with a heart rate under 160, so obviously I could have gone substantially faster. Still although I got my 5th place, I should have been 4th (as Much didn't actually start) so I missed my goal. On reflection, the mistake at 9 (and it was a mistake) cost me that so I can't be too disappointed. And that was the long. Christine was third in her race and so she was very happy.
The foot will heal quick (it always does) and I will even be able to run today (in normal running shoes) if it's not too bad this afternoon. More about Hungary to follow in the next days...
Check out the results here!
On this weekend the Austrian Marathon OL Championships were held in Furstenfeld, and for the elite it was quite the mouth full, but I felt that for the H35 it was possibly just a little short (and also there was almost no climb). We were running on a 1:15000 map, a total of 15.4 km with 235 m climb and 15 controls. I was hoping for quite a good showing and for the most part it started well.
Looking at the start list I knew that a top 4 would be out of the question, and so my aim was to finish 5th, as close to the other 4 as possible. So with that in mind here is the control by control analysis:
s-1: good controlled start, was able to plan 7 - 8 (not really much of a route choice *smile*)1-2: Staying on the roads, but I could have used the forest more - came round the bush the wrong way...
2-3: Small correction of route choice (xA) when I saw that thicket in front of me. In the thicket by the control I ran to what I thought was the clearing with a control, but it turned out to be a clearing (not on the map) with a plastic bag. Small correction and straight to the next clearing (on the map) where I had the control. I can't really even call this a mistake, although it cost me 1
minute.
3-4: Great
4-5: almost perfect
5-6: Again good
6-7: Route choice - should have just gone to the road!
7-8: I think my route choice was quite good. At mistake "xC" I should have just stayed on the road rather than cut off the corner. The other mistake "x2" was purely compass related - I didn't check the direction - but quickly corrected, and not really much time lost. I stopped to drink at the water, and this is where my problem occurred. As I left the drink control and jumped over the ditch towards 8, I must have landed funny on my feet and I ripped the skin of my foot (sole) from the actual bottom of my foot (this is not like a blister - there was no rubbing or blister water). It has happened to me before, but this was really very painful. So I have a 3 by 3 patch of skin over a largish 3 by 3 wound. I'm not really sure how to explain it, other to say that it hurts like hell. From here on until the finish I was really hampered.8-9: Concentration (due to pain) was not high, and I misread a path / road junction and then ended up making my only "real" mistake of the race. This mistake cost me 4 minutes.
9-10: Felled area, was murder to run over and I almost gave it up here. Didn't see the control as I ran past and had to come back for it. Lost about 1 minute.
10-11: Limped but OK
11-12: was ok, getting over the gully to the west was hard. Couldn't see the same dam and so overran it slightly, came back for it.
12-13: Again, very painful to get past the small lake on the NW side. Otherwise no problem.
13-F: Limped jogged - no mistakes
I was really disappointed afterwards. I ended up running the last 5 or 6 controls with a heart rate under 160, so obviously I could have gone substantially faster. Still although I got my 5th place, I should have been 4th (as Much didn't actually start) so I missed my goal. On reflection, the mistake at 9 (and it was a mistake) cost me that so I can't be too disappointed. And that was the long. Christine was third in her race and so she was very happy.
The foot will heal quick (it always does) and I will even be able to run today (in normal running shoes) if it's not too bad this afternoon. More about Hungary to follow in the next days...
Check out the results here!
Friday, April 13, 2007
The one with Bindi...
After a relaxing midday, it was back up onto the mountain for our second training of the day. For those of us with enough stamina it would be a 9 km run, similar to the run in the morning, but with a specific training in mind - route choice. I was forced to use my trail runners, as blisters on both feet prevented me from using my OL shoes. On reflection the main reason for these blisters was running in the hang, and so I will need to work on this in the future.
To be perfectly honest, here the organisers let us down badly, as for many of the controls there just was no route choice available and we were inventing routes to try it out. Perhaps this did help us define that no matter what we thought, it was invariably the one route choice that lead us correctly and quickly to the control. Every thing else should be left at training.
1. After a nice warm up to the start, the route choice to 1 was simple and in order to make it interesting Bindi decided to run low and come round the bottom of the rocks North of the control. This didn't work and he ended up running the same route as me - no difference here.
2. Here I stayed on the contour and Bindi ran over the top on the flatter part. It should have been a no contest, but Bindi was quicker due to my shoes having no purchase. Normally though, stay on the contour.
3. My BIG mistake. Bindi ran straight (normally the only choice) and I was going to run left on the road. Firstly, a run in with deer threw my concentration a little, and then I made the silly error of misreading the map and interpreted a path as a road, thus running higher than planned. Additionally I then made a parallel error when I thought the area above the (nr) 16, was the area to the SW of it. To top it all, when I had discovered the error, instead of just turning around and running the intended route, I ran my mistake out and round the fence to control 3. No more comments here *sleepish grin*
4. We decided on more or less the same route and that threw us. I stayed low until I hit the last but one green (and here I must add to my defence that the map was not quite right - the green/white was badly mapped), saw the depression in green (which I mistakenly thought was the pit in white), thus believing that I was more or less at the correct height and ran over on the contour. Bindi thought that I was more or less correct and he ran after me, and past. I was able to relocate on the open area / steep dip combo and ran back to the control. Bindi did not have so much luck, and spent another 2 minutes looking for the control.
5. With a struggle we figured out two route choices here, one over the top, one round the hill right. Bindi got the correct one, and I the one that was normally not a choice. Added to this was the fact that the map was not great in this area, and that they had set the control on the wrong charcoal burning site, meant I was a lot longer looking for the control than Bindi and only found it when I saw him standing high above me.
6. Again we struggled to find two viable routes and eventually decided on straight line (me) and right over the road (Bindi). Straight line is normally faster and if it wasn't for the fact that I'm so slow on the hills at the moment, so it would have been this time. I was barely able to keep up with Karin and Thea. One lesson learned though, running at an angle over a hang can be very quick and you can make some HM easily in Hungary, especially when the ground is so stony.
7. Here we couldn't find an option and ran together to the control.
I ran back then over the road and let Bindi run on for a few more controls at his own pace. My pace is so slow. Aisha and I came upon a deer, and although she was not on the lead she behaved impeccably and didn't even think about chasing it. She was just as buggered as I was.
All in all a good training with many high meters and a few lessons learned. A quick word to the map. Generally speaking it was not bad in the scale 1:15000, but there were some areas that caused us both a few problems and certainly they were not of EYOC standard. I am sure that the maps will be better for these competitions although Thomas Krejci mentioned that this is normal standard in Hungary.
To be perfectly honest, here the organisers let us down badly, as for many of the controls there just was no route choice available and we were inventing routes to try it out. Perhaps this did help us define that no matter what we thought, it was invariably the one route choice that lead us correctly and quickly to the control. Every thing else should be left at training.
1. After a nice warm up to the start, the route choice to 1 was simple and in order to make it interesting Bindi decided to run low and come round the bottom of the rocks North of the control. This didn't work and he ended up running the same route as me - no difference here.2. Here I stayed on the contour and Bindi ran over the top on the flatter part. It should have been a no contest, but Bindi was quicker due to my shoes having no purchase. Normally though, stay on the contour.
3. My BIG mistake. Bindi ran straight (normally the only choice) and I was going to run left on the road. Firstly, a run in with deer threw my concentration a little, and then I made the silly error of misreading the map and interpreted a path as a road, thus running higher than planned. Additionally I then made a parallel error when I thought the area above the (nr) 16, was the area to the SW of it. To top it all, when I had discovered the error, instead of just turning around and running the intended route, I ran my mistake out and round the fence to control 3. No more comments here *sleepish grin*
4. We decided on more or less the same route and that threw us. I stayed low until I hit the last but one green (and here I must add to my defence that the map was not quite right - the green/white was badly mapped), saw the depression in green (which I mistakenly thought was the pit in white), thus believing that I was more or less at the correct height and ran over on the contour. Bindi thought that I was more or less correct and he ran after me, and past. I was able to relocate on the open area / steep dip combo and ran back to the control. Bindi did not have so much luck, and spent another 2 minutes looking for the control.
5. With a struggle we figured out two route choices here, one over the top, one round the hill right. Bindi got the correct one, and I the one that was normally not a choice. Added to this was the fact that the map was not great in this area, and that they had set the control on the wrong charcoal burning site, meant I was a lot longer looking for the control than Bindi and only found it when I saw him standing high above me.
6. Again we struggled to find two viable routes and eventually decided on straight line (me) and right over the road (Bindi). Straight line is normally faster and if it wasn't for the fact that I'm so slow on the hills at the moment, so it would have been this time. I was barely able to keep up with Karin and Thea. One lesson learned though, running at an angle over a hang can be very quick and you can make some HM easily in Hungary, especially when the ground is so stony.
7. Here we couldn't find an option and ran together to the control.
I ran back then over the road and let Bindi run on for a few more controls at his own pace. My pace is so slow. Aisha and I came upon a deer, and although she was not on the lead she behaved impeccably and didn't even think about chasing it. She was just as buggered as I was.
All in all a good training with many high meters and a few lessons learned. A quick word to the map. Generally speaking it was not bad in the scale 1:15000, but there were some areas that caused us both a few problems and certainly they were not of EYOC standard. I am sure that the maps will be better for these competitions although Thomas Krejci mentioned that this is normal standard in Hungary.
Thursday, April 12, 2007
The one with the blisters...
Sunday morning dawned bright and early. Every thing was going well, all the kids had taken to Aisha, my headache was gone :) I still had blisters however. I taped myself up nicely before breakfast to protect my ankles as I knew that in Hungary the ground is very stony, and it would be no different today.
The planned training was a 9 km race which formed part of the Eger cup. I was planning on taking it easy. On arriving we were hit by the fairly cool temps and so it was quickly into our kit and off to the start. Once there (and I was the first) it was off immediately and here I picked up on an error that occurred fairly often while in Hungary. I wasn't concentrated enough when I left and as a result made a mistake straight away to the first control. Bugger. Here the rest of the analysis:
S-1: lack of concentration leading to incorrect route choice and I was unsure where I was.
2-3: Could have stayed on the road longer.
7-8: Dropped to much and had to come back up to control
8-9: Control circle problems - no real attackpoint
11-12: drifted right on a bearing
12-13: Incorrect route choice - round the hill right and path was substantially faster
14-15: Map a bit dicey, but mainly lack of concentration close to control
15-16: My blister have blisters - no concentration and tired. Bearing from road was not accurate enough and wasn't able to reallocate. Wandered, no purpose.
16-17: After the mine, followed two others on a different course and drifted off my own bearing.
I took 2 things away with me, one was that the ground was going to be difficult to run over and the other was that sometimes the map needs some interpretation on it's own.
Lunch was had down in a small valley and was really good, and the rest of the mid morning, early afternoon we just relaxed and got ready for the second training.
Oh yes, and did I mention that my blisters had blisters?
The planned training was a 9 km race which formed part of the Eger cup. I was planning on taking it easy. On arriving we were hit by the fairly cool temps and so it was quickly into our kit and off to the start. Once there (and I was the first) it was off immediately and here I picked up on an error that occurred fairly often while in Hungary. I wasn't concentrated enough when I left and as a result made a mistake straight away to the first control. Bugger. Here the rest of the analysis:S-1: lack of concentration leading to incorrect route choice and I was unsure where I was.
2-3: Could have stayed on the road longer.
7-8: Dropped to much and had to come back up to control
8-9: Control circle problems - no real attackpoint
11-12: drifted right on a bearing
12-13: Incorrect route choice - round the hill right and path was substantially faster
14-15: Map a bit dicey, but mainly lack of concentration close to control
15-16: My blister have blisters - no concentration and tired. Bearing from road was not accurate enough and wasn't able to reallocate. Wandered, no purpose.
16-17: After the mine, followed two others on a different course and drifted off my own bearing.
I took 2 things away with me, one was that the ground was going to be difficult to run over and the other was that sometimes the map needs some interpretation on it's own.
Lunch was had down in a small valley and was really good, and the rest of the mid morning, early afternoon we just relaxed and got ready for the second training.
Oh yes, and did I mention that my blisters had blisters?
The one with the Headache...
Well, I have just returned from an extended stay in Hungary and I wanted to put down some fingers to keyboard and hold my memories fresh. This will be the area for the EYOC 07 and the WOC 09 and so it was really good preparation for those two events. I will put my maps and thoughts here, feel free to comment!
As I am the Austrian Team Manager, I got to go on this training camp as a official (the one with the money) and obviously I was able to do some of the trainings as well. I left Henndorf (with Aisha) at 6 am on Saturday morning the 31st of March with the intention of meeting some team members in Vienna at 8:30. Perfect planning saw me arrive at exactly 8:30 and once we had stopped for some medicine and "padkos" we were on our way. Getting over the border was no problem and one small traffic problem was all the hold up we had until we got to our accommodation - which we couldn't find due to having the incorrect address.
I arrived fairly buggered, 8 hrs in the bus is hard work, and very dehydrated and this caused the usual heavy headache - but I struggled through. The afternoon training was on a map not too far from our accommodation, but the quality of the map wasn't so good. I didn't have any problems, except between 10 and 11 where the map was not clear anyway, and various gully's were missing and so I was looking in the wrong one. I took it fairly easy and enjoyed the run where I could (headache) - however young Aisha had a great time.
I was happy - this was looking like it was going to be a good week. My only concern were the high meters, and a few blisters picked up while running in OL shoes that haven't been used all winter!
The evening saw us try out our local "restaurant" and I must admit they were good through out our stay in Hungary. Generally speaking the food was good albeit heavy - far too much meat was on offer (every meal incl. breakfast) but we were well catered for, only vegetarians need to worry about Hungary.
As usual you can find my training here on Attackpoint!
As I am the Austrian Team Manager, I got to go on this training camp as a official (the one with the money) and obviously I was able to do some of the trainings as well. I left Henndorf (with Aisha) at 6 am on Saturday morning the 31st of March with the intention of meeting some team members in Vienna at 8:30. Perfect planning saw me arrive at exactly 8:30 and once we had stopped for some medicine and "padkos" we were on our way. Getting over the border was no problem and one small traffic problem was all the hold up we had until we got to our accommodation - which we couldn't find due to having the incorrect address.
I arrived fairly buggered, 8 hrs in the bus is hard work, and very dehydrated and this caused the usual heavy headache - but I struggled through. The afternoon training was on a map not too far from our accommodation, but the quality of the map wasn't so good. I didn't have any problems, except between 10 and 11 where the map was not clear anyway, and various gully's were missing and so I was looking in the wrong one. I took it fairly easy and enjoyed the run where I could (headache) - however young Aisha had a great time.I was happy - this was looking like it was going to be a good week. My only concern were the high meters, and a few blisters picked up while running in OL shoes that haven't been used all winter!
The evening saw us try out our local "restaurant" and I must admit they were good through out our stay in Hungary. Generally speaking the food was good albeit heavy - far too much meat was on offer (every meal incl. breakfast) but we were well catered for, only vegetarians need to worry about Hungary.
As usual you can find my training here on Attackpoint!
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