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Posted by Grant on 8. March 2009 21:37
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The predicted weather looked awful: freezing rain and wind. When I finished my bike ride putting the orienteering flags out early on Saturday morning, however, the sun was shining and the only thing falling from the sky was clumps of snow as they melted from the tree branches. There was still plenty of deep powder snow on the course, waist high in places, but with sunshine and mild Spring temperatures the day couldn't have gotten better for our
1-day orienteering event in Switzerland.
We didn't promote the event very broadly, being focussed on our
bigger events in Switzerland and the
United States, and constrained by space available at the
host brewery, but we still had a dozen people tackle the long orienteering course we had set. Typical "long" o-courses in Switzerland are around 8k in distance, so our 35k course made for an unusually challenging distance to Swiss orienteers. It was rogaine format, so all the points were optional and participants had up to 5 hours to visit as many checkpoints as possible. The course climbed high to a ridge overlooking lake Zurich and the Alps to the South; the clear day made for wonderful views, and the 1300 meters of eleveation gain along the way would ensure that the participants earned those views!
I've posted a copy of the map, if you're curious.
After all the runners were back from the course, we enjoyed an hour or two of great beer from
Spiffing Ales, fine pizza,
and fun socializing. Every person who does an event like this has an interesting story or two, and it was great to meet some new people. Some are endurance nuts, and others just enjoy an excuse to go run around in the woods! With 7 countries represented, we were a veritable United Nations of Orienteering!
Regardless, it was fun to relax a little afterwards and get to know everyone. It's one of the fun elements to the
Swiss event in April, too: by having a stage format where you regroup at the end of each day and start fresh the next morning, you have a chance to hang out and get to know the people. At a more traditional adventure race (if such a term is even appropriate?), it's intense from the race check-in all the way through to the end.
Our Swiss events are developing a great social aspect which makes it very fun and we're excited for April. Speaking of April, while we have the stages selected, there is still a lot of testing, avalanche investigating, and general snow monitoring on the agenda for the next several weeks. Sounds fun, right?!
Check out the
wrap-up page for our March Swiss event here to see the official results; we should have some photos posted in the next couple days.