sandrazürcher

SOW 2009 took place in the Muotatal this year, a beautiful valley above the town of Schwyz. I decided to take part in the first 3 events, in order to get some good racing in before WOC. Too bad that didn't work out as well as planned.

These 3 days did not go the way I expected them. The weather took a turn for the worse after several weeks of beautiful, sunny, dry days in Switzerland. The rain started on Sunday morning didn't let up for 48 hours. This didn't really cause problems for the Sprint in Schwyz on Sunday, but it made for some problems for the race up at 1800 meters on Monday. Mostly because the courses were very muddy and it was hard to run at all on the steep slippery slopes. Certain categories on Day 3 even got cancelled because of flooding, they were using a different map and it seems that several streams were too high to be crossed safely. Really too bad for them.

My races didn't go well for me and I felt frustrated after both bad results. I just keep making mistakes that I really don't need to be making and recovering from them badly as well. I hope that I can learn something from these races and perform better at WOC. It can only getting better from here:-)

Unfortunately, I did not run the 3rd day. You see on the 2nd Day I had a late start time and trying to get home on the military buses proved to be difficult. Some sort of misunderstanding occurred and my brother and I ended up waiting with about 200 other runners for 2 hours for transport home. It seems most of the buses went home and there was only 1 caravan left to transport us off the mountain. It was raining cats and dogs and very cold, so I froze my butt off. Since I have problems with my sinuses, I knew that these two hours would cause some inflammation. I was right and woke up on Tuesday with a sinus headache and a sore throat. I decided to skip the race, especially since there was an 2 hour hike to the start (5km and 700 meters of climb) and I knew with a little rest I wouldn't get sick. Two weeks before WOC is no time to take risks. Too bad though, the terrain looked awesome. Would have been fun.

Here are the maps:
Day 1: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_93aH6irRG74/SnmX_N3JxCI/AAAAAAAAAGM/5qir5Yo0s9k/s1600-h/Sprint_Schwyz_SOW1.jpg
Day 2: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_93aH6irRG74/SnmZVhIS1xI/AAAAAAAAAGU/JiFA8DLC3oM/s1600-h/SOW2_Schwialppass.jpg
Note: On Day 2 we got to wear OCAD GPS units, they are very small and the arm band was very comfortable. OCAD printed our individual routes on maps for us and that is what I scanned in. Pretty cool!
Day 3: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_93aH6irRG74/SnmcoS8rPzI/AAAAAAAAAGc/2gVH6SbDU6s/s1600-h/SOW3_Glattalp.jpg
Note: I did not run this, but my friend Samantha Saeger did so I scanned her map.

your welcome Dani:-)