2019 orienteering season opened.
Not too warm around +5-6 C - with a bit of snow/sleet in the afternoon - welcome to Finland in May 😉
#3-#4 leg looks like a big detour - otherwise mostly no big problems - but a fairly easy pace today...
Itärastit fall-season opening - more to follow until early October.
More paths and less forest both to #4 and #5 might have been faster. Lower, rather than higher, route to #11 looks better. Not much else going on orienteering-wise.
Next is firmaliiga 2/3.
Autumn-season 2017 opening for Itärastit. Choosing where to go up or down the steep hill to hit the control is always hard, here problems at #6, #7, and #13. The edges of the map both around #10 in the south and around #15 in the north are fairly simply drawn and in need of an update. Warm +22 C and humid.
T-shirt weather (warm for this spring!) and a course that avoids the boring fields on the left half of the map. A bit wrong down the hill to #4, then past #5 to the road and back.
On #2 I blame the poor map...
This was the last itärastit event for this year. See you next year in April again!
#2: wrong direction and slow pace out of #1 is probably the cause of the bad split.
#4: completely lost it when almost inside the control circle. Through to the big road and even ran along the road in the wrong direction for a bit...
#11 down the hill too much to the north, then looked for the control in the wrong place before I found the bend in the road,
#15 tried to look for the path marked with a thick dashed line, but there are many paths and it's not clear which one to follow. Might have been faster to simplify the plan and run to the big road behind #10 first.
An easy course where the challenge was keeping up speed and planning well ahead so that there were no walking breaks or stops. 4th out of 40 runners is pretty good although the level isn't that high on these Saturday events 🙂
Slow but no major mistakes.
9->10 might have been faster/clearer to run higher up the hill, past the clearly visible big stones.
10->11 maybe straight down the hill to the path from #10 would have been better.
12->13 I wasn't using a compass, which resulted in the wrong direction out of #12.
A lot of running along roads, but some orienteering required on controls #5 - #12 also.
On #8 should have followed the straight line via the rocks.
#9-#10-#11 are either on top of a hill or on a steep downslope. It's hard to say how far up or down they are. From #11 I went south and came down the steep and slow slope. Straight west out of the control down a more gentle slope might have been faster.
Then this at #9. Less than 20m from the control I decide it must be more north and do a 4 minute loop.
Nice going on 1-4, then a little slower to #5.
Towards #6 I first had the wrong direction and found the road close to #7 instead. Then again the wrong direction from the road towards #6??
7-9 OKish. Big problems on #10 - should learn to recognize these harder legs and play it very safe. Many paths that were not marked on the map lead to all kinds of confusion..