Owls Count

This year I went to Switzerland for my holiday and took part in the Swiss Orienteering Week.

Travel
We set off on Wednesday and our route included a ferry, from Dover to Calais, and then driving through France and into Switzerland. Wednesday night was spent at Epernay, where my tent picked up a foot long gash thanks to the local thieves. I was fortunate – I had nothing obviously valuable in the tent, but many others on the campsite had valuables stolen. We mended my tent with some tape and it held up to the wet weather that followed later in the holiday. On Thursday we made it down to Mullhouse, where the campsite came complete with a pizza catering outlet, and Friday we made the short final part of the journey into Switzerland to the event campsite.

The return journey was the same route, but we stopped at Saint-Quentin instead of Epernay. At Mullhouse we unpacked quite a bit of stuff and used the better weather to dry out the tents. We arrived a couple of hours early for the return ferry and were promptly moved to an earlier crossing. The ferry company showed good use of technology – number plate recognition to help with the check in procedure.

By choice we used the toll roads for most of the time and found them to be a good option. Regular service stations, little traffic to hold us up, and easy navigation. Yes, they are reasonably costly but worth paying for.

Sunday: Schwyz (Sprint)
It rained and then thundered. I had a fairly good run. My splits show that I was consistent throughout the course, maybe a little slow after the spectator control, but that I did not have any bad controls. I finished 25/108, which was to be my best result of the week.

Monday: Schwialppass
Much, much more rain. I had a poor run – messing up controls 2, 5, 7, 8, 9, and 12. The massive downhill chunk on mud was difficult. I finished 87/104.
By this time the campsite was a swamp – though the section we were in was not as bad as some other areas. We survived, but others were evacuated from flooded tents.

Tuesday: Glattalp
The courses from start 3 were cancelled – the forest they were to use had several river crossings that had become dangerous due to the heavy rain of the previous days. However, on this day the sun was shining.
There was a 4.5km with 750m climb to get to the assembly area for this stage (and the reverse back). I left with plenty of time and had a decent amount of food on arriving at the top, which was around 2000m up. The courses were good and apart from losing five minutes at #7, in the limestone pavement, I had a good time. I finished 66/88, which was reasonably low due to how tired my legs felt.

Wednesday: Rest Day
Others went off and did energetic activities. I followed the instructions and rested. In the evening we watched the local team play a football match. The campsite we were on, which was really a field, was next to the football ground. I would guess that this was the largest crowd they had ever had.

Thursday: Chinzig-Seenalp
This should have been the last day, but the organisers were forced to change the plans. The road to the original area had become blocked by a landslide.
To get to the start we had a ride in the military transport and I got to ride up front with the driver who handily pointed out that he would be dropping us at around 1850m up and that we then had another 100m to go up. On checking we noticed that the finish area was at 1250m. A course with around 800m descent and it had stunning views the whole way down, even if I was too busy to appreciate them! This was so very nearly a good run – I lost 16 minutes between two controls – #4 and #9 – by running too fast and not taking enough notice of the map. I finished 67/106, but I should have been in the top 30. More pleasing was to be the fastest on the run in for my course!
By this stage the sun had been out so long that the river through the finish area had dried from a slow tickle when I started to nothing by the time I finished.

Friday: Gibel (Middle)
A DNF/98. The fastest of the elite managed just under 10 min/km on this area. I never found the first control and gave up after 20 minutes of searching. My mind was not right and so I went for a path run back in to the finish. I was amongst a lot of DNFs on this day.

Saturday: Gibel (Middle)
The weather problems from earlier in the week meant that we were not able to run on Lidernen, the original area for day 4. Instead the organisers managed to plan and arrange a second day on Gibel – such joy! After over ten minutes looking for the first control I was beginning to think that I would be DNFing for a second day – however something then clicked and I had a good race from there – mainly by taking long routes round and sticking to the paths rather than trying to go direct. I finished 40/76 and I believe that this was my slowest min/km on any orienteering race. A shame really that the courses were later voided.

General Thoughts on the Orienteering
– Schwyz, Glattalp, and Chinzig-Seenalp were really good. I am unconvinced about Schwialppass, due to the heavy rain turning it into a mud slide. Gibel was not that good.
– The organisers did a very good job. Yes, there were some problems with the transport – particularly on the second day when a group were left at the top for nearly two hours in the rain, but for the most part the event ran smoothly.
– If I do a similar event again then I need to do some hill training to learn to run up and down hills more quickly.

Other Thoughts
– Swiss-German is remarkably different from German. It is possible to notice the links, but it then goes off where my, admittedly poor, German cannot follow.
– The bakery in Muotathal was very good. We had bread and cakes from them most days.
– We celebrated Swiss National day by watching the fireworks. There were some fantastic displays going off locally and the mountains down the valley provided a good echo chamber for the noise.