Welcome to my digital orienteering map archive!

When we here for Day 2 to it was 30°C and sunny, today 9°C and torrential rain. This made me take even more care on the rocky terrain but I felt I was naving better with solid plans.Maybe a little too safe but only a couple of errors. Everyone else seemed to do well today as well so no scalps for me.

Well planned and surprisingly technical for a small town. Not really raining by the time I started. Mark had started one minute ahead and kept on seeing him so I knew I was within a minute but never caught him cos I was making sloppy errors

I've never been to an event before where I've got a ski left up to the arena. Steep alpine terrain but fairly runnable. General plan was to pick route choices to maximize path running and avoid climbs but missed the best one to 10 as was too busy trying to stay on the heels of a kiwi. Thunderstorm from half way round was warmly received as was hot beforehand. Finish at the highest point on the course was a slog when tired at the end. Better overall performance than yesterday.

Struggled more today as it was more grotty and was making more errors. Time losses on 1, 3, 9, 11, 13, 14, 16. Terrible route choice on the long leg to 6 as well

Landed in Helsinki then straight off to Rasti-Vihti local evening event at Tervalampi. 5.9 km course. Went very steady. Biggest mistake was number 1 where I didn't have a good attack point

Middle today. Felt fairly confident I could keep it together like I did for the 1st half of yesterday. As it turned out, there wasn't that many overly tricky controls as you could find a very close attack point. That didn't stop me making a handful of sloppy errors but nothing as bad as yesterday.

Time losses (3:10):
#4 60s - failed to follow the ridge and followed the direction of a lone hill by accident, relocated of fence
#11 50s - Approached it from the top but got stuck on the wrong side of thick undergrowth
#15 ~40s - Terrible exit out of 14 meant i wasn't on the path that took you all the way to the control. Rather than running back to it i tried to cut the corner on terrain which was slow.
#21 25s - Got distracted by the earlier control on the line of hills which was on a vague track
#24 15s Hesitation not going far enough

Tale of 2 halves. 1st 11 went well only not spiking 8 binning 70s - looking at it I was in the Lead!!!!. After 11 and the fence crossing though my ability to find flags diminished and didn't spike 13 of the next 19 and binned maybe around 14 mins. When Will caught me on 27 i thought that was about right but turned out he missed out the butterfly loop.

Time losses (15:05):
#8 70s - parallel error but the map was fairly vague as well
#12 90s - Misinterpreted map/vegetation and didn't realise I has entered a big yellow depression which would have helped
#13 30s - No real plan or bearing and ended up too far east relocating off big path
#14 30s - Misinterpreted map again thinking point was on spur rather than in reentrant
#17 20s - Hesistation stopping too early which i didn't need to do as there was a massive catching feature
#18 30s - Hesitation and poor initial bearing
#21 2:25 Was absolutely fine but when i came across an unmapped path i lost all confidence and spent time relocating
#22 ~6 mins exited north rather than West and proceeded to clearly never look at compass, running up the wrong hill anf everything making no sense. Bit embarrasing it took me so long to relocate having to stand on the highest hill and making everything fit 250m away on a 100m leg.
#25 ~30s got pushed wide by the veg when i should have gone round the path
#27 70s started off trying to contour when it was quicker along the flat, then was too low and did a little loop

Started this without much of a plan or urgency as map looked very straight forward. Caught Richard C at 7 and proceeded to make sloppy mistakes but didn't really care

Time losses (2:20):
#7 10s checking wrong tree
#11 55s ran past it - should have checked descriptions
#12 20s poor exit from 11
#13 15s Failed to spot footpath behind road works.
#14 20s Went in too early and had to fight through grot
#15 20s checking wrong trees

Good plan and cleared them all but big time losses on 61 and 48 cost me the win. Legs ripped to shreds as well by the brambles. Mind also not in the zone, keep thinking about my car wing mirror which I will have to replace for the second time in three weeks but this time it was the pavement side mirror.

Time losses (5:32):
Exiting #41 31s investigating the green deciding it to too thick to run though
#61 ~ 60s ended up on the wrong path exiting 60 so hunted on the a spur to high for a bit
#53 40s being to high up
#48 3:33 Control was too high up the ditch away from the road, actually placed on the edge of the circle. Slightly off bearing meant i didn't spike it and hit road as catching feature running parallel to hit didn't find it. Even hit ditch, had a look up and down but didn't see it so wasted 3 mins having to relocate.

Event was always going to be good as map is nice and technical with depressions, pits and gullies. To make things 10x harder though, fog descended on the area. Keeping on bearings was hard let along trying to navigate through the technical sections. After i binned 97s on 10, I found the the trick was to take slower but safer routes with handrails. Didn't matter that I was late as 22/24 were too. Really enjoyed this. Had I been clean and concentrating i should have got an extra 30 points but can't complain.

Time losses (4:05) - could have been a lot worse!:
#25 48s Bearing from 11 was spot on but unmapped pits threw me and had to relocate off the depression with crags to the east
#26 97s Bearing was slightly off so ended up in bushes rather than finding the fence as a catching feature and relocated off fence corner. Should have played it safe and used the north fence as a handrail like Ifor did.
#29 100s Faffing trying to go straight from 17 before I accepted I was lost and bailed South to use the fence as a handrail

Really wish it was a flatter area after the XC 3 hours earlier. Had no desire to race around so a nice cruise. Poor route choice and a 2:30 min mistake between 2 and 23 meant i had no chance of scooping any of the higher points at the south of the map.