Why?

The last years

Totally I’ve been within the army training system for 1886 days. The life as a “pro” had a lot of nice aspects. The support that the army gives in infrastructural and financial aspects is really great, especially for a sport like orienteering. Basically it’s one of the rare options in Austria to conduct orienteering at a more professional level. Especially I want to mention the infrastructure that was is available in Seebenstein: Gym hall, whirlpool, sauna, steam-bath, massage and underwater-massage are an excellent environment for training and regeneration and in addition there is a yearly package of sports clothes, running shoes and orienteering shoes.
Still that’s not everything.
Within the last years my personal performance curve went from a (in my mind clear) second rank in the “internal club ranking” (Bindi, Kerschi, Markus and me) to a (in my mind again clear) fourth position.
You have to be a pretty nice person in order to cheer for the success of the others while you see yourself losing ground. I think I managed that pretty well but on the other hand orienteering is still a sport where you are standing alone at the start line and the time in the finish judges your own performance – nothing else.
The whole time (especially the first four years) I’ve been one of the runners who took the training schedule nearly as a law, which was definitely my fault. Now I know that I should have simply taken “my right” to change things according to my actual situation but well I wasn’t able to see that then – and nobody else gave me that hint.
Basically I consider things like this as a downside of the group training system that’s used in Seebenstein.
There were some injuries as well in these last year’s mainly not regarding the musculoskeletal system but rather my upper respiratory passages including two operations where I consider at least one of them as not really necessary. But well – it didn’t harm that much as well...
From the beginning of the last season on I was training individually with my own coach but it wasn’t also working out as I hoped it would. Even if it was told us to do organize our own coach in first place after some weeks it wasn’t considered that good from the authorities any more. Still I kept my coach facing some obstacles. Suddenly I recognized that the army system was not the right place for me anymore and finally I dropped out of the army after a really great “goodbye party” with a lot of friends on those people who were there for me even in the last very tough year. What’s now still on my mind is the question whose responsibility the decisions were that made me move out of the army but I guess I’ll never really figure that out...

I want to thank my former commander second Lieutenant Höritzauer, all my orienteering-sportsmen-colleges, Günter Kaiser and basically everybody from Seebenstein for the experience I gained there in the last years. Thanks!!!

My main conclusion is that even the highest developed and most sophisticated training system is useless unless you really fit in. And the older I become the more I see the importance of the environment as a main impact on my performance.

The next year(s)

During the last season my motivation was pretty low at some times. One factor was the low performance I was able to achieve and another factor was that it wasn’t that easy sometimes in the army. Feeling the wind of freedom beneath my “wings” in the last weeks and days in Seebenstein my motivation finally came back and I set some goals for the next year as well.
Still I’ll focus a little more on my studies as well and I really enjoying being at the university and listening to the lectures. Now my training is again “holiday-season and weekend” based which reminds me of the good old time when I was still back in school.
Actually I’m really happy with my live in Vienna. Christmas time is coming. The traditional Christmas markets are great and I finished three exams in the last two weeks.
Live is really great - especially when you feel the wind of freedom makes you fly and you don’t plan to land any time soon...J

Posted on: 09.12.2007 18:48
Last edit: 09.12.2007 18:48

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