Category: Orienteering

Espoorastit, Uusmäki

Not a good start as I ran too much east when looking for #1.
Then mostly OK until#7 where I climbed to the top of the hill and had to return half-way down to find the control.
From #10 to #11 the idea was to go directly in the direction of #11, but the execution of that didn't go too well and I ended up walking a while here until I found the control.
5.7km course in 64 minutes.

Itärastit, Latokartano

Saturday orienteering again.
#2 a short but steep hill to climb from #1. Better fitness would not hurt 🙂
#3 and #4 not much to report
#5 biggest mistake of the day as I ran too far to a bigger road, not finding the small path that would have led directly to the control. Maybe 2-3min lost here.
#6 and #7 ok.
#8 again up that steep hill, resulting in not-so-great running speed once on top of the hill towards #8
#9 through #12 and finish were easy. Could have possibly saved time on #12 by running on the road instead of through the woods.
Time 51 min 19 s.

Iltarastit, Stensböle

They have been running the "evening" orienteering events on Sunday midday for a while now, since it is quite dark after 17-18 or so. This is the last event for Iltarastit, but there are a few other clubs organizing these for a couple of weeks still this season.

Nothing too dramatic on #1, #2, and #3. Then a lot of deep "canyons" and other steep places around #4 which caused some confusion - probably cost me about 5 minutes here. No problems at #5 but a bit of searching for #6 (not too much lost here, max 1 minute). Then I chose to run not straight, but along paths and roads to #7 - we shall see if that paid off when all the results are up on the web. Again a longer route along a path to #8. From #10 it would probably have been slightly faster to run in-between the houses to the road more directly. Nothing special at #11 and #12. Then #13 was drawn close to a fence, but I didn't really know on which side of the fence the control was - luckily there were others running to/from the control so I just followed them.

This took me about 57 minutes. If I could have avoided the big mistake at #4 and some smaller mistakes the time approaches 50minutes, which is OKish for amateur/fitness orienteering on a 5km course (for me anyway!).

Retki Rogaining

I participated in the 8-hour rogaining "Retki-rogaining" event near Viitapohja, Tampere, yesterday.

  • 85: along roads very close to the control, just a small hill to climb to find the flag. It was nice to get an easy start on the course and get familiar with the 1:40000 map (the normal orienteering maps are all much more detailed at 1:10000 scale)
  • 76: more roads to within 1k of the control, then through the woods on compass course to the road and lake close to the control.
  • 41: north from the last control to a road. Ran about 100m in the wrong direction along the road, since we thought we'd found the road at the other side of an intersection. Close to the control we then searched for the correct hill slightly to the west of the right place. The only real orienteering mistake of the day here, costing maybe 10-15 min of time.
  • 14: Along paths south to this water-control.
  • 80: along a lakeside path.
  • 54: south along paths and roads. Another small orienteering mistake as the plan was to take a straight path but we ended up on a more undulating and curving road (not much time lost however).
  • 90: Very nice lakeside path to the control which was a small island with possibility for swimming, sauna, and grilling.
  • 66: More paths along the lakeside, trying to use public roads and not to stumble onto other people's back-yards and homes. A lot of summer-houses and lakeside saunas here. By this control we had already used a lot of time and had around 2 hours left. It was clear that we would have to make our way more or less directly to the finish to get there in time.
  • 48: Right after the control a mistake of maybe 100m when trying to find a path/road southward. An un-marked tractor-path then took us almost directly to the control. Some swamps with cloudberry ("lakka") here!
  • Finish: a fairly long bit along smaller roads at first and a bigger road later back to the finish. We punched-in at the finish with about 9 minutes to spare. The penalty for being late is -1 point for each minute of over-time, so it's important to be back at the finish within the time limit.

My biggest problem was the heat. Most of the summer has been cold and rainy so I haven't done any long runs in warm weather. The graph below shows the temperature for Viitapohja, Tampere, with the 8h event taking place during the big peak with a maximum over +25C from 12:00 to 20:00. The wind and occasional splash of water from a lake provided some relief from the heat, but the graph still shows a sustained +23C or warmer for the whole event. From about half way through the event exhaustion from the heat meant walking, not running, up most hills. Towards the end I also walked quite a lot of flat bits.

Here's the GPX data: