in the . For me, 14 km with 260 m EG. Ive gotten used to the tiny map scale, I now realize that its much harder to focus on the essentials when using detailed O maps. Several times I had to cover 1 km+ through hilly, swampy thickets, and the control was waiting for me at the right distance, just 10 m off my bearing! But in the swampy sections, I really didnt feel like running. Post-race analysis, Waldviertel-style: Youre a wimp.
Orienteringen p behver jobba p sin kartgrafik nr det gller stadssprint.
Dag 171 / Day 171Skogen r banan. / The forest is the course.
It is far, far too hot to be in Canterbury, so that's what I'm doing, of course. 4 races over 3 days during an amber weather warning.
Came across an older checkpoint from a school on my run. It seems to be abandoned. The marker to stamp your card to proof you have been there is broken.
Indoor in the local IKEA shop. It was fun
Two favourite controls I hung on Tuesday for a local evening league event. Shallow reentrant, and while the other looks like a single distinctive tree, it's actually an indistinct vegetation boundary on a very inconsistent map.
I was pretty happy with my run today! There were few landmarks to help navigate properly. The map wasnt up-to-date, nor was it an O map, just a basic hiking map on a tiny 1:25,000 scale. More than before, I followed the bearing consistently, no matter how steep or impassable the terrain was. And I counted my steps the whole time. You wont get far here any other way. For me, thats a whole new level of confidence!
Of all competitors of M50 at the 2026 Sprint Orienteeering Championships in
To the 8th control, one athlete (Niggli) runs in 31 seconds. The second (Plattner) in 37, the third in 50, the tenth in 55, the 20th 68 seconds.
It thus looks like only 2! of 39 were able to find the by far best solution.
IMO a clear indication of an irregular task presentation...
A new training reality + Peak Raid Eyam
I have new training zones and they scare me.My first run last week with the new zones was an hour in z2. Previously this translates to about 5mins/km - 4:50mins/k but now I had to discover what the new paces would be. This meant starting out at what seemed to be an uncomfortable pace at the start and it took about a k and a half for me to hit the zone. Eventually I seemed to settled into it, but it felt much more like what I felt like a tempo pace was. The end felt hard, but soon I ticked
Well, the Swiss Champs in Sprint Orienteering yesterday in were fun.
A bit too short for my taste :-P, and also a bit too tricky. I like it when route choices are complex, but I dont like it when simply understanding the task becomes the main challenge because of overly complex and illegible mapping. Check out the attached samples.
Link to the H50 course:
Next Sunday, the Swiss Champs in Sprint Orienteering are held in Lausanne.
Usually I don't prepare for orienteering, but I somehow stumbled into this one.
The old town of Lausanne with its complex relief, stairs and tunnels invites to a very complex challenge. To mitigate that, I took ten minutes to wrap my head around the topography of the venue.
Looks like fun ahead...
I'm quite happy with how this compass exercise turned out, rather than making the exercise easier and leave a few areas visible before the controls I decided to add them behind the controls to allow people to fail and correct themselves quickly.
Correcting misstankes before they become large ones is such an important skill.
Dag 142 / Day 142Nsta kontroll. / Next checkpoint.
Tomorrow's one of those events whereat I'll look at the map just after starting and wonder what the point is. It's a grim area, and i only have a few races left before my knees actually stop working. Still, if you want this cheery fellow to help you park neatly, I'll be there at stupid o'clock in a hi vis...
with the Austrian Army today. 10 km with 480 m EG. A very difficult course the unanimous opinion was: championship level! We had just a small-scale 1:25,000 hiking map, without the many clues found on a typical O map. A large number of trails arent even marked, which was more distracting today than usual. I shouldnt have just estimated the distances, but should have consistently tracked the minutes and steps Now chilling in the sun!
Rangers, instructors share navigational skills during training in Wekweti, N.W.T.
Instructors with the Canadian Rangers visited the N.W.T. community to offer training in first aid and orienteering to members and learned some new navigation skills themselves.
Kartan och skogen. / The map and the forest
My first orienteering event: I had a blast.
It was a mix of different types of exercises. Scored 17/24 checkpoints. Twice I made a big mistake while drawing on the map to solve an exercise, which made me do extra kilometers.
Sprint in Hasselt, where last year EOC took place. It was fun again, like usual. I did found everything from the first time
pro tip: start in open classes to be able to choose who you want to overtake (you). Works only if they share courses with competition classes. Or just walk up to the start and feel like a VIP jumping the queue. Return to competition centre unlimited times for forgotten equipment without any extra stress.
Elibank and Traquair. Event was in 1981 but map older. Extract from a large sheet.
Gullane Dunes and Archerfield Estate 1979. Much of the area - the wooded bit to the east has been lost to golf and the big southern open area is the famous Muirfield course. Dunes are still used and hosted the Scottish Championships.
Dalswinton 1981, Harvey's Map Service. Once again an area that was mostly felled after use. It was excellent terrain at the time. Usual Harveys clarity. The forest, now mainly Sitka is just north of Dumfries.
Waterhouses 1981. Near Durham and used for BUSF (the universities championships of the time) individual. The course was on two maps.
4th orienteering race completed! An easy one, 11 km, 280 m elevation gain. It paid off that Id trained in the area twice beforehand. I got a good sense of the terrain, identified some interesting routes, and got used to reading smaller-scale maps. Unfortunately, a dumbbell fell on my toe 48 hours earlier. The dumbbell was fine, though...
Whilst being the chairman of West Anglian Club means I need to prepare and deliver a talk at the AGM, the upside is I get to give out all the trophies celebrating our club's successes over the last year
5 additional sports have been added to strava. To much surprise orienteering was not one of them! But is one of them replacing sim card in iPhone
Did my first trailrun this morning. It was such great fun that I forgot to take pictures.
3rd orienteering race completed! 13 checkpoints, 16 km, 420 m EG. If you're used to psychedelic O maps with a luxurious scale of 1:10,000, then switching to military maps with a scale of 1:25,000 is difficult: there isn't much information, and I constantly underestimated the distances. But I mastered the challenging terrain all by myself! Rumor has it that it was some kind of record time maybe that's why there was no one else in the finish area
Eeek - Hilly!
Always afraid in places like that of dropping too low and having to haul my way back up to a control. Lovely and white though.
Insights from my 2nd orienteering race:
- 13 checkpoints are easy. 20 are a mental challenge!
- Sometimes a compass is not very helpful it's better to count every blade of grass.
- After 50 minutes, it's easy to lose focus.
- Old runners make less mistakes. But sometimes even they can't see the forest for the trees.
- If you have the impression that youve visited 2 checkpoints in the wrong order, listen to the pros: Don't always be so honest!
I just registered for my first ever orienteering event.
6hrs of running around trying to find my way to checkpoints. I don't really know what to expect, but I am curious and willing to try.
The recent Training for Orienteering Mapping beginners triggered some reflection process, how my own setup looked like if I would actually work with the OCAD app (and solely used OCAD Desktop to build the Field Set). Check out the descrption.
Lets sort things out the old fashioned way and enjoy every minute while working on it! (Preferably with an axe or a sword.)
Also do not forget to try new things especially if the old got broken. That is why I am here. Let's see where it goes...
Orienteering is such a perfect British* sport: you run around in the mud getting lost in the woods
*I know its not from Britain
Ok. Round four for the annual Swiss Orienteering Mappers Beginner training in .
My room got upgraded this year, such as I got this direct view on the training area (Haselwarten Wald).
Rare occasion for mapping from bed.
I decided to register for an orienteering race. So some practice could do no harm
Premiere: My very first orienteering race was great fun! It was a long-distance race on a military training ground. For the first kilometer, I was very focused on mastering the start phase and finding the first control point. You only get the map at the start, which makes it particularly exciting. But I quickly got used to always thinking one step ahead. Still, I have a lot of experience to gain!
Strangely nowadays I'm almost proud that is not .