5. etp - Thomas Hodel (2009-06-17)

I took a safe route to the first control to get in the competition. From 4 to 5, the route on the track to the left side (see Björns route) looks very good. But here I wanted to test the runner/competitor path on the straight line. I don’t know if Björns route is much faster but I lose some time near the control nr. 5: several control stops. Nowbody of the runners with GPS attacked this control from the east side (from the marsh). Why?

I came together with other 5th-leg-runners towards the 7th control but nobody took my route to the right. But I met them again at the 8th and realized that’s good to go around on roads.

To the 10th I stayed to long on the “path made by runners” and so I came in ugly green area and had also not a good attack point. It’d be better in the last part of this leg to go over the hill or even run more north. At the 12th control - what a surprise - I met again the runners from before but I lost them in the end of the race because of a mistake just before and after the 13th. So in the end I didn’t have some runners to fight with but I pushed as hard as I could. And in total I didn’t had a perfect run but I kept always calm, also after the 20-30 sec mistakes I did.