Category Archives: Sport

Orienteering 8-21.5.2013

2013_05_08_ar_reuna
8.5.2013 Reuna.
#4 veered off course and came close to #9. Should have taken the route shown as the blue line.
#5 too high up the hill close to the control
#12 running along the highest point of the hill would probably have been better

2013_05_14_fl_salmi
14.5.2013 Firmaliiga, Salmi
#1 when initially lost, should have continued to the road, re-located on map, and would have found control much quicker.
#6 approaching the control from above would have been better.

2013_05_21_firmaliiga_laakso
21.5.2013 Firmaliiga, Laakso
#6 the organizers had placed this control incorrectly - more than half of the field did not find it.
#9 only major orienteering mistake here - looking for the control on the wrong hill for about 3 minutes before re-locating using the road.
#12 someone had stolen the control flag! By itself the small EMIT-control taped to a tree was hard to find.
#13 should have approached control from above, not below.

Orienteering 1-6.5.2013

Some orienteering maps I haven't had time to post before now.

2013_05_01_myrbacka
1.5.2013 Myrbacka. Overall very good orienteering on a fairly easy course.
#3 lost a few seconds looking for the control at a big stone when in fact it was a hill
#9 should have found a quicker/better route on top of the hill at #5
#11 slow out of #10 since I did not find the path immediately

2013_05_02_olars
2.5.2013 Olars. Again quite good! Maybe slightly harder course.
#1 maybe a bit too careful at the start
#3 very slow close to the control - went for the wrong feature inside the control-circle
#7 did not have very good control/feel for the distance along the #6-#7 path. should have kept up speed better along the path.
#10 amazingly, the huge detour right around the hill resulted in the best leg on this course! Fast running on the road/path, then very carefully into the control which looked hard to find on the map.

2013_05_04_salmenkallio
4.5.2013 Salmenkallio. Ugh - many mistakes (five out of twelve legs) - and they were out of maps so had to use a hand-drawn map.
#3 circling around as I was looking for the control on top of a ridge or at a saddle, when in fact it was much lower down. Wrong interpretation of height contours..
#5 BIG problems. It should have been easy to run along the path and look for the right cliff features on the right and find the control 50m from the path. I managed to climb the hill much too soon and circle around on top of it. Dead last in the split-times! :)
#6 veering off compass course to the right, which resulted in unnecessary distance. Blue line shows a better direction.
#11 somehow I was afraid of the green area and decided to run around it, but made a much bigger loop than necessary. Should have run right through(blue line) the green thick area!

2013_05_06_pirttibacka
6.5.2013, Pirttibacka. This should have been a familiar map... but made bigger mistakes on three out of twelve legs. (numbers refer to the control-codes on the map)
#30 Aaargh! How is it possible to start towards the first control at 90-degrees to the right direction??
#6 wanted to run along the path and find the less steep opening in the hill (blue-line). Didn't run far enough and instead circled around #19
#14 my route is direct but the second half is slow going through an area with many details. The blue line probably shows a route which is easier and more fool-proof to implement.

Iltarastit, Luk

#15-#16 a long pause to read the map on top of the first hill
#16-#17 a small correction to the south just before the control
#18 had a reasonable plan and executed it OK.
#19 again a long pause to read the map
#20 found the swamp instead of the lake :(   didn't have a good plan when leaving #19
#21 again poor planning running up/down hills instead of around them.

2013_04_29_luk

Itärastit, Degerö

2013_04_20_degero_qr_splits

A fairly easy course with lots of running along roads and paths.
Right at the beginning on #2 I searched for it on the wrong hill - on the wrong side of the road/path ?!?
#3-#4-#5-#6-#7 nothing to report. Running speed is enough for top-10 placings :)
#8 the GPS-path looks ok but speed was slow.
#9 right after #8 the compass seemed to just rotate around and I wasn't confident enough to run by the map alone. Very slow and shaky going to #9.
#10-#11-#12 more fitness required to keep up speed in the forest and uphills
#13 again an easier control and better speed
#14 lost concentration and headed in the wrong direction. Lots of open areas with freshly cut trees (compare to 2012 map)- hard to tell how well the map corresponded to reality here.

Iltarastit, Tali

2013_04_08_tali_qr_splits

Still lots of snow on the ground, and a temperature just barely above freezing this evening.

The first red (slow) bit between #19 and #20 could not be avoided - just too much snow for running. A bigger mistake on the #11-#12 leg where clearly the better choice after the bridge would have been to run up the hill. Instead I continued north along the stream looking for the small and steep trail up to the control - which was of course completely covered in snow and invisible. Having not learnt much from this I then sort of repeated the same mistake on #25-#24 where my route is direct, but very slow because of snow up to knee-level or above. A small U-turn on #23-#15, but it probably did not cost much in terms of time lost.

My timing-receipt from the EMIT-system shows strange split-times. We'll see if those are corrected in the final results.

Sprint orienteering, Ågeli

2013_04_01_ogeli_qr_splits

Orienteering again! All of the snow isn't really gone yet, but the orienteering season kicks in anyway.

This was a 3km easy sprint course where the opportunity for making large errors was quite small. In sprint-O keeping out of the prohibited areas (e.g. back-yards, in green on the map) of the map is a challenge - there are lots of DQs for this in competitions.

I'm not sure how bad going off the map is considered. At the top of the map between #9 and #10 there was an open path where I, and everyone else, ran, but according to the GPS-trace it might be just outside the printed map.

2012 Exercise statistics

2010 2011 2012
Running (km) 1133 1053 1132
- Half-marathons 3 (2:12, 1:57, 1:50) 1 (1:53) 1 (1:42)
- Marathons 1 (4:42) 1 (4:13) 1 (4:00)
- Orienteering (events) 0 7 30
0-km weeks (no running at all) 12 8 11
Cycling (km) ~100? 2924 1853

The running kilometres include orienteering. Some goals for 2013:

  • 1:3x half-marathon.
  • 3:4x full marathon.
  • >3000km cycling. A 200km brevet ride would be nice.

See also: 2011 statistics