Whitsun means staying in Seefeld. At least for the last couple of years thurgorienta held their training weekends there. This year was no exception. Although the weather wasn’t that good we could do most of our trainings without standing in the rain.

On monday we started for a team orienteering near the Mösernsee. As always I had my GPS on (Garmin FR 210) and could watch my recorded route afterwards.

Occasionally I do bike-orienteering too, this is particularly true since me knee doesn’t allow for more than two trainings a week. In Frauenfeld a sprint-bike-orienteering event was held that weekend.

And as an exception to the Swiss rules in bike-o it was partly allowed to leave the tracks and roads and drive cross country. Bike-O is fun and a sprint even more, everything is twice as fast as in foot orienteering at least. I still can improve my skills as the results are showing.

broken arrow5 to be exactly ..
Arrow5 is the name of the compass model I am using for my orienteering runs.
This years NOM (swiss championship in night orienteering) turned out really bad. Not only because I broke my compass. This happened at the 10th control. Trouble began earlier somewhere in middle of the competition when I missed two controls and did a wrong route choice. Within four controls I lost almost 10 minutes to my usual time which actually isn’t fast.

But hey, I finished this competition. My battery worked well, I had a bright light until the end of the run. And I didn’t hurt which is not a matter of course nowadays. Photos from Sam.
Next year there will be another try.

it’s wintertime and the days get shorter. Or the other way round, the nights are getting longer. Today this seasons NOSOL training starts once again and soon the first night-o training is scheduled.

Last week I have prepared my night-o equipment. This year I will start with a Lupine Tesla with a special Li-Io battery pack. I am already using it during my trainings at night.

the so called long distance Swiss championship on orienteering was held in Saluf near Savognin in the Grisons. Personally I don’t like this name. I would prefer standard or classic because when I started orienteering many years ago there was just one distance and it was like that.

The map „God Grond“ has its history too. In 1987 the Swiss championship had to be cancelled due to several objections. Still not totally recovered from my knee operation I absolutely had to start at this event.

This years Swiss Relay Championship in orienteering was held in the Jura. We have been there the last time in 1994 for a five day o-event. Doing orienteering in this region is demanding in both aspects: map-reading and running. But this is exactly what I am enjoying.

The competition center was at the Village de Vacances de Lamoura shown on the far left side in this photo. I have taken a few more photos.

We have spend Whitsun holidays in Seefeld Tirol. Again we could enjoy a very comfortable stay at the Schönruh hotel.
And as for trainings (photos), well the region there looks similar to the Scandinavian terrain, so it is always a pleasure to do orienteering in these forests.

Together with Martina and Corsin we set the first training on Saturday.

swiss championship in night-orienteering, this year with a different modus: mass start!

and again with my brother Sam taking a few photos. I was glad to finally start at this competition too. There was a big traffic jam caused by an accident that more than doubles my driving time to the competition center. And since I didn’t know where the accident happened I was in doubt to arrive in time.

in the march issue of the swiss-orienteering magazine the cover story is about night orienteering.

Nothing special you might think at first but ..
.. the photos of the front cover and most of the ones in the story have been taken by my brother Sam who is specialized on this kind of photography. And there is also an interview of him and me regarding our passion photography and orienteering.

While Alain and me enjoyed our trip around the Weinland Marianne was running the halfmarathon from Wil to Frauenfeld. She did this with a new personal best time in less than 1h 30min. In fact she gets faster from year to year

And by the way, this years color was blue. The members of the NWK-NOS always color their hair for that race.

on Sunday 25. October I was going for a bike-o competition in Wil (SG). The OL-Regio Wil was offering two orienteering events at one day (bike and foot).
I had a good start until control 8. Then I wasn’t concentrated for one short moment resulting in a fall.

On my route to control 9 I did one last check and get a fright on driving to control 6. Therefore I read the map in detail to find out that everything is ok; I had to pass control 6 again. But this double checking took two or three seconds more than expected. Too much!
I was driving straight away from the road into a small channel and ending at a big tree 10 meters away (more details).
Since nothing happened to my bike and I didn’t feel bad I continued my competition as good as possible. But I couldn’t sleep during the next two nights and when I went to the doctor he diagnoses two broken ribs at my back.

Spring time is a wonderful time to go out for a bike ride. Last week Marianne and me were biking to the Hörnli and yesterday it was the turn of the Schnebelhorn (highest point of the canton Zurich, 1292 müM).

Together with four colleagues we started in Winterthur. Winterthur - Turbenthal - Steg was a good road and from Steg the real biking begins. I've recorded this part (Steg - Wolfsgrueb - Hand - Schindelberg - Tierhag - Grossegg - Steg) with my GPS and uploaded it to my Garmin Connect account.

There are a few more photos on an album on my Flickr account.

after more than one year of absence I get back in orienteering this weekend. In Erlinsbach, near Aarau the Swiss championship in night orienteering toke place.

Again Sämi, my brother, was taking photos of this event. It is amazing to see how he captured the special scene of a night orienteering event (more photos on his website).
After a few trainings I knew that I could run for about one hour without having problems with my knee. Therefore I decided to start in the class men short "HAK".

remember this song from Dr. Feelgood? Sometimes I listen to it when preparing for a competiton. But this time it's kind of a comeback or let's say I am trying to find out how good the recovery from my injuiry is. Doing night-orienteering I like most, so it's no surprise that I'll start with this kind of orienteering first.

(photo by Sam Hebeisen)
Well on this Friday night it was quite busy in the Ochsenfurt near Weiningen because the NWK-NOS started their training weekend with a night-o training too. My brother Sam took a couple of photos from the night-o training on 20. February 2009.

The general meeting (Mitgliederversammlung) of thurgorienta was held in Hüttwilen. The same place as last years Seebachtal weekend with two big orienteering competitions. As usual the club-OL preceds the general meeting. This year we have a strong winter time and that Saturday makes no exception. It was heavy snowing during the whole afternoon.
But hey, that's winter as we know it!

Marianne and Nadine did start at the cross championship of the canton Thurgau on Saturday in Aadorf. That's not far from Hagenbuch the little village where Marianne grew up. Nadine had a good race and became 2nd.

It's here! I was thinking of a GPS for my sport activities long time ago (around 2006 I bought a book about GPS) but now Garmin sells the Edge 705.
The Garmin Edge 605 and 705 are GPS with sensors dedicated to bikes (street- and mountain-bikes) and this latest generation can display maps too.

Using GPS to record training data and having a map that shows your course is somewhat different to a GPS in your car. I still have to learn a lot.

after about 6 week of medical checks it turns out that I have to undergo a surgical operation on my right knee (meniscus and more).
This is a photo I got from the doctor after the operation. It show the two bones and between the red lines the damaged meniscus. Unfortunately the cartilage (Knorpel) on the upper bone is also affected.
Now I am doing exercises to recover as soon as possible. When writing this entry (it is now two weeks since the operation) I can do cycling on a trainer. At the moment there is no statement possible about my future sporting activites but I hope for the best (as always)

after more than one year of prepartion the long awaited event in Hüttwilen and its neighborhood toke place this weekend. Together with Marianne I was working in the team that was responsible for the courses and controls on both days. We started our work already on friday afternoon and it ends late on sunday.

Adi and me relaxing in the forrest watching the runners short after the start
Only during the competition time we had the chance to slow down a little bit being ready to replace a control in case of failure. This photo was taken by Sämi as an offical photographer of this event.

today we went for another NOSOL training to Staubhausen near Uzwil. I haven't been there since ever and now and then I am being surprised what parts in our neighborhood are still undiscovered



NOSOL training on the map Hohrain, first runners arriving

NOSOL trainings are dedicated trainings to improve your orienteering skills. I don't know exactly what NOSOL stands for but that doesn't matter. This years trainings are coordinated by Beat Hubmann aka "Bidi" (his nickname in the NWK NOS squad) and todays training was planned by his brother Dani a well known orienteer worldwide.

the sporting activities are going on. Now it is Alain's turn. Every year the Tössstaffette a relay for school classes around Winterthur takes place in June.


Alain short after his leg (2.9 kilometers)

Even though this event is for school kids only it comes up with a professional organisation. There is even an online result list on the Internet. The team from the 5th class at Schachen (Mittelstufe) became 34th.