I spent the past two and a half weeks in Austria and Switzerland, orienteering and touring with my dad and Holly and Sue Kuestner. In Austria (more specifically Wiener Neustadt, a small town about 50 km south of Vienna), we went to the World Masters Orienteering Championship (WMOC), though since I’m younger than 35, I was competing in the AWD cup. There were around 4,500 people there, 358 of which were in the AWD cup; it was by far the largest meet I had ever been too. Thinking of the only A meet I’ve gone to other than the Interscholastics (and hearing about other A meets from Holly), there aren’t many people in the youth categories, so it was a nice change to have even around 11 people in the W18 category. Since my birthday is near the end of 1989, I was too old to be in the 16 and under category even though I’m currently 16, so I had to run W18.
One of the first things I learned about meets in Europe is that they have long walks to the start. I have seen this a little in the US (at least the second day in North Carolina last year), but being used to WIOL and other local meets where the start, finish, and registration are all within a few hundred yards of each other, a 2-3 km walk to the start seems pretty far.
The WMOC was more of an international meet so, thankfully, most the people spoke English and the clear and check controls were in English. At the first meet I went to in Switzerland, “clear” and “check” were written in German, so even though it was fairly easy to figure out which was which by the way they were positioned, I was still afraid I was going to mess it up. The maps and control descriptions are the same everywhere in the world, so it was really nice to see something familiar which I didn’t have to try and decipher.
I’m not sure if it was just the meets themselves or the way they do orienteering meets in Europe, but especially in Switzerland, the starts were a little different than here. They still had the three-minute intervals before you start (just like at all A meets), but at some meets they allowed you to look at either your own map or just a general map of the area while you were waiting in those three minutes. At all the Swiss meets, they had a copy of the map without any controls on it in each of the areas prior to your start, so you could figure out where you were and look at the terrain. It saved a few seconds in orienting your map, though it wasn’t overly helpful. It may have just been the tour I was on, but for a couple of the meets, they gave us our maps a minute before we started, and we were allowed to look at the map and plan routes. The first time, I spent that entire minute trying to find someone who spoke English who I could ask if looking at maps before your actual start time was allowed, and the second time, it just felt weird to look at the map before I started, so I didn’t. None of the courses in Austria had start controls (they relied on start times), which threw me off at first, but that was probably just the meet itself, not a regional difference. One other thing with starts was that the three minute-long stages before you start were all in one place. In the US, normally after the first minute, you move off 100 yards or so down a trail, and then after that you move off another 100 yards or so, so you’re out of sight. At the meets I went to, the three were right next to each other, but you had to run about a hundred yards into the forest before you got to the start control, so people wouldn’t see which direction you were going. These were just some minor differences that made the meets different.
The courses in general were similar to A meets here in the US, though the ones in Austria were a little longer than the courses I’m used to running (brown) and the ones in Switzerland were technically more difficult. The A meets here (I’ve only been to Interscholastics twice and the Western States Championship in Cle Elum last year) helped prepare me for these meets more than the WIOL courses did, though WIOL meets helped too. The best way to improve is just getting more experience, whether it’s in a forest or in a city park like the WIOL meets, so everything helps. For anyone considering going to orienteer in Europe, I would definitely suggest going to some A meets here in the US first, or at least orienteering in the forest some instead of just city parks. Parks like St. Edwards are really good practice though. There was one meet in a city park in Lausanne, which was similar to the WIOL meets, and the parts of the two street orienteering events I did which were in parks were similar to WIOL meets too.
Part of orienteering is the social aspect, and that was especially true with the bigger meets in Europe. Through people I already knew, I met many adults from the US in Austria, and I ended up spending time with them later on the trip as well, especially in Switzerland. Although the people I got to know the best on the trip were adults, there were a few teenagers I met too. On my course one day, a girl from Bulgaria came up to me as I was heading in the general direction of my point (I had taken a compass bearing and was heading to the trail just past my point). She came up to me and asked which control I was going to. I know you’re not supposed to collaborate in orienteering, and as a rule for myself, whenever someone approaches me asking about a point, unless they look like they’re completely clueless about orienteering, I try to politely avoid telling them where they are or collaborating in any way, spending as little time as possible so I can continue on my way. In this instance, however, I had already had a 19 minute second control and hadn’t been doing too well, so I figured since this was an international event, I might as well get to know this girl from Bulgaria since it seemed she wasn’t one of the top competitors either. Getting to know people from other countries was what orienteering in Europe was all about, right? So we wandered in the general direction of the next control together, talking as we went. As soon as we saw a water station and knew where we were, I took off towards the control. After checking her map, she headed towards the control too. After that, we had different route choices, though we did see each other a few more times on the course, just smiling at each other and saying hi as we passed. The next day before we started, I went over to her and said hi. I didn’t see her again, since at a meet with around 4,500 people, it’s hard to find someone if you don’t have a planned meeting space. She was the only junior I got to know a little, though Holly did introduce me to this Swiss girl who she had met in Colorado before.
Here’s a very brief recap of all the courses I ran and what I learned from each of them:
The first course I ran was the warm-up (as the name implies, it was a warm up, or training). People were able to sign up for whatever course they wanted for this, so I was running against people my age, plus other men and women of various ages. It was a fairly short course (3 km) with relatively little climb (though the climb was bunched together in one leg where I decided the quickest route was up and then down a big steep spur). There were plenty of handrails, catching features, and attack points, so I felt I did fairly well on this with only minor errors.
The next course was called a “park race”, though really it was urban orienteering, running around the streets of Wiener Neustadt. Besides a minor error at the beginning with orienting my map wrong, I didn’t really make any mistakes since it was fairly straightforward. It was like the street scrambles here, just without the score-o aspect. Comparing my results to the other W18 contestants, I was right in the middle of the 11 orienteers. Looking at the times, I deduced that these European orienteers must be really fast and make none (or no noticeable) mistakes, a conjecture that appeared to be true while looking at my competitor’s scores for all the other courses I ran.
After that, I had the first course that counted that was in the forest (the “park race” also counted towards the final meet score). It was interesting to see how the terrain was both similar and different to here at home. There were lots of coniferous trees with many ferns on the ground, though it was a lot more runnable than at home. Most of the map was white with very little of the darkest green, so unlike in Seattle where there are lots of blackberry bushes that are impossible to get through, there was very little vegetation on the entire trip that I completely avoided. There were also a couple legs where you had to go up a very steep hill, followed by a really long leg (about 1.5 km). That’s another thing I noticed about many of these courses: although they were fairly long (this one was 5.4 km, another was around 5.9), a big part of that was taken up by one or two really long legs, with lots of really short legs grouped together in-between. I was happy with my time of 75 minutes on this course, though the winning time was around 50 minutes. That enforces the idea that Europeans are really fast, in-shape, and make very few mistakes.
The next day, I made a few stupid mistakes and then spent a little while talking to/ running with the girl from Bulgaria, so I didn’t do too well. One of my problems (the same thing happened the day before as well) was that with 4,500 people orienteering, many of whom have some controls in common, there were elephant trails throughout the forest. By elephant trails, I mean trampled grass and plants that by the afternoon, when the kids were running, looked like a trail almost as much as the actual trails did. That was nice sometimes, so I didn’t have to fight my way through undergrowth, but when I was counting the number of trails I ran past, it provided some difficulties. This would probably happen at any meet where there are so many people.
The last day of the AWD cup was pretty similar to the other two. There were still some points where you had to use the tiny contour lines that I normally ignore. Or, maybe it would have been a better idea to stick to the trail, and not cut straight through the only green in the area and then get lost in the multitude of tiny hills, but that sounded like a good idea at the time. Even though I was happy with my race (except for 2 problematic controls and one period of stupidity where I missed seeing that there was a third trail at the junction and ran down it a little ways) I was still around 20 minutes behind the person with the best time. I did manage to beat a couple people this race though.
The first run in Switzerland was a warm-up, score-o in the town. It was similar to the “park race” in Wiener Neustadt, except for the fact that it was a score-o. As I had never done a score-o (except for street scrambles when you have time to pick your route before you start), I didn’t have any high expectations, though it turned out to be fairly simple to navigate around the buildings. It was a 1:4000 map, so distances appeared longer than they were, but since there were buildings to use to figure out where I was, the different scale didn’t cause any problems.
The first Swiss orienteering meet was definitely the hardest course I’ve ever run. Also the only one I haven’t finished. It was a Swiss national meet, so there were many really good orienteers there of all ages. And I’m not the only person to complain about this course, it seems like everyone I heard who spoke English was saying how hard this course was too. (Warning: long story about my missed point follows. If you don’t want to hear about me wandering around for an hour, skip to the next paragraph.) When I started, I took the map, oriented it, saw a big grey area that must be a slab of rock on the ground just like in Cle Elum that I wouldn’t be able to miss, and took a compass bearing in the general direction and ran. I kept going, and still never saw a slab of rock on the ground. Looking at the map, there was a boulder field (at least I think that’s what it was, it was mapped with lots of tiny black dots) past the grey area, and also a trail which may or may not have been easy to see (I definitely didn’t see it). I was looking for a boulder in the grey area, which as I soon found out, turned out to be an area with lots of boulders. Very helpful. So, I was looking for a boulder, in an area with boulders, in front of another area with boulders. Looking around, there were boulders everywhere, many of which were large, so which were big enough to be mapped as separate boulders? And, there were lots of little hills and depressions too small to be mapped, but large enough to be very noticeable. By the time I had kind of figured out the map (at least realized that the grey wasn’t some huge slab on the ground that I was going to run into), I had found three other controls which weren’t mine. One piece of advise I remember learning is that if there’s a control, there must be a feature on the map that it is on. So I looked on the map for a boulder, a depression at the edge of a field, and another depression, all in the correct orientation to each other. I found what I thought could be the right spot in the general area where I knew I was. I assumed that was right, and headed in the direction of where my point should be, but I still couldn’t find it. At that point, I did what I should have done earlier, and decided to relocate. The problem (and the reason I hadn’t earlier) was that there wasn’t a good place to relocate to. There was the railroad way down a huge hill that I really didn’t want to have to climb back up. There was a road several hundred meters away at the top of the huge hill that I didn’t want climb up. There was a trail, which I think I had already passed without realizing (I hate those mapped indistinguishable trails). There was a boulder field, which to me was indistinguishable from the other boulder field. There was also the start. As much as I didn’t want to go all the way back to the start, that seemed my best option. I found it easily enough, and tried a second time to find my point, this time being more precise with my compass bearing, and trying to line up each hill I saw with the contours on the map. I found the controls I had found earlier, but I still couldn’t find my own control. I then relocated to the start again, this time choosing a different route, one that gave me an attack point a little closer to my control. Still no luck. So after over an hour of wandering around, not being able to find my point, I decided I had two options: I could keep searching, maybe try to think of something I hadn’t thought of before, or I could go on to the second control, and at least enjoy the rest of the course. Even though it didn’t look that tough on the map, I just couldn’t match all the tiny hills, depressions, and boulders surrounding me to the map, so I decided to go to the second control. I felt really bad about it, but I didn’t want to spend my 2.5 hour limit searching in vain for one point; I wanted to at least have something to show (the rest of the course) for my time spent.
One other thing I learned on that course was that a lot of Europeans are really good at running down very steep hills. On the way to the second control, after going up a steep hill, you had to go down a really steep hill, and I was pretty much walking down, since I knew if I went any faster I’d end up somersaulting down the entire thing. While I was going slowly, trying to get good footing, lots of orienteers were just running by me, straight down the hill. The hill where I went down was in-between two out-of-bounds areas, probably off-limits because they were even steeper than the hill I went down.
After the previous meet, pretty much anything would be an improvement. The next course was down a mountainside with the start a ways up the road from the finish. It was in a gorgeous spot with a view of the Eiger (the mountain). One of my problems on this course was that I tended to gravitate downhill, which caused problems when I found myself having to hike back up to get to my point when I should have just been able to contour around. I probably more than doubled the climb listed on the control description. My other problem was with the boulders (again). Huge boulders are just little black outlines of them, not filled in. Those were very helpful once I figured them out, because only the really huge boulders were mapped that way, the boulders there was no way you could miss. Unlike all the other maps I’ve ever run, most of this was bright yellow/orange, for open field. Although it looked really runnable, it was sometimes difficult to run because of the random holes in the ground, and the huge amount of rocks in the way.
The last course I did was in a city park in Lausanne. It was similar to the WIOL meets (though maybe a little easier because there were so many roads in the park). The most difficult part (though still really easy) was the control placed in the midst of old Roman ruins, but I don’t think we’d have that problem here in Seattle. It was an easy course that didn’t provide any real difficulties, and it was kind of nice after all the recent hard courses.
This was definitely an amazing trip, and one I would do over again many times if I had the chance. Not only was the orienteering really fun (and good practice), but I also met many people who I’ll hopefully see again at A meets in the US, and I was able to go sightseeing in the area around the meets (I skipped orienteering a couple days to take day trips to Budapest and Zermatt). If any other junior orienteer, or adult, has the chance to go orienteer in Europe, I’d definitely suggest they do it.
My advice for anyone taking a trip like this: