6. Austria-Cup, Sprint, WRE & ÖSTM, H21E (04.09.2016)

8th place (31 starters), 1'03'' behind winner Roberto Merlo.

Chose to start in mens elite-class to compare myself with the best austrian runners and gain some world-ranking-points.

My main goal was to have a plan at each and every control and be aware of the coming route-choices. I managed that quite well and therefore had a quite good technical performance.

Beside the time-losses caused by my slower running-speed I had some troubles at following controls:

#1 Overlooked the first gate 20m west of control #4.
#2 Too busy to read the control-description (CD-fail), thought that the stairs should be the control-object.
#4 Because I couldn't see the control up the wall next to the house, I decided to run down. (CD-fail) That was right.
#10 CD-fail. It would be faster to run around the house to the right. I had to run up and then climb down the stairs again.
#14 Next to the control I was unsure if its allowed to cross the hedge. Thats why I stopped and checked the map with the loop.
#15 I had a blackout next to the control in the courtyard, as there were a lot of cars parking there, the meadow east of the control was a construction site and I saw another control which turned out to be the wrong one. Here I lost ca. 15''.

On the one hand I can be satisfied, as I have nearly always chosen the shorter routechoices (controls 3, 5, 9, 15, 18), but on the other hand I lost 1' to Robi and 28'' to the other runners ahead just because of missing speed.

H20E had the same course, I would have had the fastest time there.