After farewelling Ljubljana, we took a 6 hour bus ride across northern Slovakia and southern Austria, mentally switching to German as we crossed our umpteenth border.  We duly checked in to our final apartment, visited the local supermarkets, washed a ton of grotty clothes, and tried to rest up before Race 1 of the Vienna Orienteering Challenge on Friday evening.  It was finally time to dig down to the bottom of our suitcases and extract our DROC tops, compasses and SI sticks.  It’s been almost 8 weeks since we competed at an orienteering event, but we reckon we’ve done an awful lot of navigating during that time!

The Vienna Orienteering Challenge is a 3 race Sprint, with one race per day.  Race 1 was held in a suburb almost at the south end of the U6 metro line.  The map was called In Der Wiesen, which translates to “In the Meadow”.  The arena was a largish play area next to a medium rise residential estate – think Kensington or Newmarket – lots of blocks of apartments with small gardens, playgrounds, paths and fences, so quite a bit of detail to read on the map.

We were worried about running in the heat, but by 6.30pm the shadows were lengthening, and it felt like a regular Melbourne summer evening in February.  There were 300 participants from a range of countries, including a couple of other Australians.  We met up with Pete and Ilze’s Viennese friends, Christa and Rudi; their English is certainly better than our non-existent German!

Both our courses started off simple but got progressively trickier. We both had one error; mine was an overshoot between controls 3 and 4; as a result I went one building too far, found myself in an open area with a circular path where no such path should exist, requiring a headscratch and a backtrack.  Perhaps one or two suboptimal route choices but otherwise clean. 

Ian almost went to his no 9 before his no 8, and had to correct, but otherwise was happy with his time, and his 6^th placing.

Today’s Race 2 was a first – permission was granted to hold it in the Inner Stadte (city), on a Saturday morning.  Kudos to the organisers for pulling this off.  The arena was a small grassed square surrounded by typically elegant Viennese inner city buildings.  When you’re in the suburbs, its easy to forget how gorgeous the city is.  This was pure City Racing; the busier streets were mapped in brown so that we’d know where to look out for tourists.  We ducked and weaved down narrow lanes, under ornate archways, and into tiny passages that looked like restaurant doorways, but turned into little cobbled streets no more than a stride across.  At one stage I skirted Stephansdom, the famous church (between my no 5 and 6), but I didn’t have time to look up, as I was pre-occupied with finding the tiniest exit point from the Platz.

I missed reading a black line on my approach to no 9, which required me to detour north and ruined what I thought was a good route choice.  Otherwise another clean run.  Both of us agree that the maps are beautifully clear and legible.

Ian made an error by going to no 7 before no 6, which cost him almost a minute, and several places in what is a tight contest in M60.  He is still 6^th overall but has 5 minutes ground to make up for a podium finish.

The final race tomorrow takes place in Kurpark Oberlaa, home of the famous Oberlaa Konditorei, where I imagine 300 orienteers will gather to celebrate and/or commiserate over several large portions of sacher torte.