Welcome to my digital orienteering map archive!

Decided to run even though my body was wasted from last night and a prevous stomach bug. I am actually very satisfied with my orienteering with the exception of #12 where I got too tired/lazy to do it properly, I.e. I should have aimed right to the path, then the path/ditch junction and then the end like I did it, except at that point I would have been much more secure and not stopped a few meters from the control boulder without spotting it behind some bushes, it seems like I lost 1.5 minutes here. Without this time loss I might have beaten my good friends Einar Jensen and Egil Wickstrand Iversen, but we were all 5+ minutes behind the winner Arild Kirkerud.

I am mostly happy with my orienteering here, with one very glaring exception, a 15-min miss on #4:

Mass start Night-O event, I had been in bed several days with a stomach bug this week so my intention was to simply jog around the course, but that plan didn't survive first contant with the enemy, i.e. all the other people starting at the same time. :-)

OK to #1 & #2, mostly OK to #3 except for dropping maybe 15 seconds in the path junction in the saddle: My compass was consistently off by 90 degree for at least 5-10 of those seconds, so I turned around and tried to check if I should be picking one of the perpendicular paths! I also failed to spot the flag/marker itself, lost another 5-10 seconds.

To #4 my plan was good: Go straight to the path, follow that to the junction, then a compass bearing over the top of the hill and down towards the largest cliff shown on the map, before diving into the green stuff. Starting off, I obviously managed to set my (plate) compass course wrong, off by 10-15 degrees. While passing the top of the hill the rain/fog hid (at least from me) the fact that we were not at the actual top, and when we dropped into the green, I found several smaller unmapped cliffs, each time thinking it had to be one of the other ones nearby. When I hit the open area which I later followed to #5, it had obvious tracks from logging so I assumed it had to be the big track shown and tried to take bearing from the bend.
I then gave up on this, ran east over several strems & ditches and finally found the real track, but even after going back to the actual bend and taking the same bearing, I could not find it.
Eventually, Karl Asmund Erøy who had been with me most of the race spotted it from a spot we had visited previously, just behind us, inside dense green foliage in a more or less flat area. Total time loss was around 15 minutes!

From this point I did a full reset and attacked the rest of the course, with good routes and very good execution. At the very end I just waved Karl ahead since my running energy level was extremely close to zero.

Still no running speed but the only way to get better is to train!

This was my first Night-O with headcam, I did mostly OK by always having a compass course and often trying to find trails going in mostly the right direction. My plan to #1 was to run about 40m further along the path and then aim for the huge boulder but I left too soon and when I spotted a cliff I first thought it was the one I expected to see to my right. When I checked my compass I realized my error and recovered quickly.

To #2 I mostly just contoured along the hillside, at the end the boundary between the white and green was very indistinct so I used the contours to stay just above the flatter area to my right.

Nice flow to #3, 4, 5 & 6.

I stopped too soon towards #7, expecting to see the elongated knoll leading to the control. Lost almost a minute here.

OK, to #8, when I hit the final path I knew from the direction it was going that I was south of the bend so I ran along it for a little while before going on. When I saw the ditch in front of me to the left I knew exactly where I was.

No issues with the final controls.

Youtube video https://youtu.be/6ZOEfJ7GD_g

The terrain had changed a bit over the previous 11.5 years, the first surprise was when the path/staris down past #3 has been abandoned and the entrance from above was almost invisible. I realized my mistake when the stairs was leading down in the wrong direction.

Between #7 and #8 the floating bridge had been removed so I had to run around "Pollen", the innermost harbor area. Down to #10 I read the map very carefully, verifying that I could skip part of the road around but by now this entire area has been split into multiple levels with no external paths between them! I suspect this is a kindergarten where the separate age groups are segregated vertically when outdoors. Instead of going back up I climbed over and down, then I almost got stuck in new construction and/or refurbishment around the control.

I think my route to #12 was OK, but I lost a few seconds when I missed the narrow passage west of the church where I had run in the opposite direction from 8 to 9.

#14 was my worst miss, ran into the wrong alley and decided to turn around.

Due to the missing bridge I skipped the last control (#16) since I had already run around the harbor once before.

I was extremely rusty tonight, this was my first run of any kind in almost two months, since I broke a rib in the beginning of January. It still hurt a bit but I could at least jog around this course.
It was a mass start with simulated relay forking, I immediately messed up by almost stepping on my first control (the NE one) without seeing it, when I then stumbled into the NW control I saw that it was in a reentrant and thought it had to be the one with the SW control, so I took a bearing from there and ended back on the track. I lost almost 4 minutes on this one control but then I could enjoy myself without anyone else around for most of the rest of the course.

Pretty good orienteering from this point even though I had to walk up most of the hillsides when the breakable snow crust made it too hard for me to run.

We found a few new path segments by the cabins in the south end, and then a new path going back SSW along the valley. This one is marked with white paint blazes but was still hard to follow in a few places, as can be seen from our track. This is almost certainly a dog walking round created by the locals.