Sabine Hauswirth is actually an orienteering runner. Yet at the beginning of September, the relay World Champion proved she is a multisport talent when she won the Powerman Zofingen Short Distance by a considerable margin.

Orienteering and duathlons are different types of sports. How did you find the competition? 

It was primarily a new challenge for me to participate in a different type of sport for once and to see what I am able to achieve. The main difference between orienteering lies in the fact that with a duathlon, you can already study the routes in detail and view them beforehand, whereas with orienteering, each run follows a different track and you are consistently running in different terrain.

In orienteering, we each start individually at start intervals of 1-3 minutes, and only the relay competitions have a mass start like in a duathlon. The “feeling” at the Powerman was therefore comparable with an orienteering relay start, the only difference being that we all followed the same route. I deliberately held back somewhat at the beginning as I wanted to observe how the race was progressing. Moreover, I am not used to competitions that last longer than two and a half hours and respected the fact that my energy would run out towards the end. This was fortunately not the case ;-)

I thought the transition would be more difficult, but maybe that was because in the second run we only needed to cover 5 kilometres. If anything, I had difficulty putting on and taking off my cycling shoes in the transition zone, due to them each having three straps ...

What was your main focus when preparing for Zofingen? 

Zofingen was a challenge after the Orienteering World Championship in Estonia (30.06.-07.07.). I only first started consciously preparing for the duathlon after the World Championship, which means I completed around 15 bike training units in just under 2 months. Two specific coupling training units (cycling directly followed by running) as well as participating in the duathlon in St. Moritz at the beginning of August were probably my key training. During this preparatory competition, I was especially able to test my transition technique and discovered that I still had potential in the transition zone.

You do a lot of multi-sports. Can you explain your training philosophy

The main part of my training consists of running and orienteering training, this means doing at least one of them daily. However, because I also really enjoy training on the road bike, my endurance training in winter occasionally sees me replace my running training with cycling or cross-country skiing. 

My training plan includes strength training and running school training at least 2 times a week. Because I also like to climb, I occasionally supplement my strength training with a climbing unit in the hall or outside on the cliffs. After competitions or hard interval training units, which sometimes make even my muscles ache, I take to the water and do aqua jogging.

You have been participating in international orienteering competitions for 10 years. How has the sport and the requirements placed on the runners developed?

When I was a junior, we sometimes had to travel long distances by VW buses or overnight train to get to the training camps and competitions. Today, flying is normal. The orienteering sport has generally developed to become more professional and many elite runners are full or semi-professionals. Whereas I previously spent 4-5 weeks of the year travelling, today I spend about half of the year abroad doing specific training in the many different types of terrain.

Do you have a secret tip you would be willing to share with us? With regards to key training, nutrition or technique, for example?

Running school and core strength training are an absolute must for me when training!

Foto: ZVG