Confident Orienteering

  Book 2 Nears the Finish Line Editors Ross Barnett and Clive Allen are now in the final stage of polishing Confident Orienteering Book 2: Planning Reliable Routes . Ross has already done two full read-throughs, which put me on an emotional high – and it’s still going! Clive has started the final proofread before layout. My wife, Svetlana (the book designer), and I are wrapping up the explanatory graphics for the illustrations. The test readers have also finished reading all the chapters. I’ll share their feedback once we start the layout phase. If all goes well, in about two weeks we’ll begin laying out Book 2. The goal is to release it in late September or early October. Fingers crossed everything runs smoothly in these last weeks. Work on Book 3 (Routes executing) is also moving fast. Only two chapters are left – and then the whole Practical Guide  'Confident Orienteering: A Systematic Approach to Minimising Errors' will be complete.  Editing is already underway on...

Bearing Sections: More Than Just a Line Lately, I haven’t had much free time to analyse courses and legs in detail. I’ve been fully immersed in finishing  Confident Orienteering  Book 2 , the continuation of the Practical Guide "Confident Orienteering" , and I want to make sure it’s done to a high standard and on schedule (October 2025). But I’m sure there will be more in-depth analyses here once I wrap up work on the Practical Guide  "Confident Orienteering" project. Right now, I’m in the middle of making adjustments based on feedback from test readers. At the very start of Chapter 5 (one of 9 chapters in this book), “Planning Bearing Sections” , I received a comment from Klas Karlsson: “This is a good chapter, I like it! Good examples as well. Not many comments from my side :)” My response? “I’m really happy about it.” Why? Because bearing sections can be approached in very different ways, and in this chapter I’ve tried to explain how I see these options. I’v...

  Two new o-books are coming this fall! Confident Orienteering: A Systematic Approach to Minimising Errors Book 1: Fundamentals was released in October 2023 and has already been translated into 7 languages , alongside the original English version. It had 8 chapters and 140 pages , and I’m still amazed at how warmly it was received by orienteers all over the world. 🌍 As we continued working on the next part of this complete practical guide , it became clear the project had grown into something massive — not least because of the huge number of examples and illustrations included throughout (they are about 250). At this stage, we’re leaning towards splitting the material into two logical volumes to make it easier for readers to absorb step by step. This isn’t a final decision yet, and even the titles below are working titles – but right now, this feels like the most reader-friendly approach: 📖 Book 2 (working title): Planning Reliable Routes – how to design routes that accoun...

 Pick of the week #17/2025 I liked the courses of the event Uppsala Mote Lang (Sweden. 4/21/2025). This leg 2-3  was from the M16 course.   It surprised me a bit because both this leg and the entire course are quite technically challenging. This leg in particular doesn’t have any significant leading lines toward the control point, nor are there any obvious catching features. It's a super technical course. I would have loved to run something like this at 16 and test my skills. Usually, in Sweden (and I analyze a lot of courses), the typical trend is that the course for 16-year-olds is simply an extended version of the 14-year-old course (which itself is an extended version of the 12-year-old course). Meanwhile, the course for 18-year-olds is a shortened version of the 20-year-old course, which is itself a shortened elite course. In this case, however, the course for 16-year-olds is actually a reduced version of the 18-year-old course, and it is significantly more challengi...

  O-Puzzle Series #9 Find the 10 differences. Difficulty level: Hard . Map No. 2 is oriented in the opposite direction to Map No. 1. This increases the challenge. An additional challenging question: One of the maps contains an error in the depiction of a map symbol. Identify this error. The answers are provided below. O-Puzzle Answers: Answers, the second vertion (the maps oriented in the same direction) answer to the additional question: symbol "409 Vegetation: walk, good visibility" must be orientated to the north https://omapwiki.orienteering.sport/symbols/409-vegetation-walk-good-visibility/ Visit our Facebook group  Orienteering Technical Training Also, see my O-Book for advanced runners, which is available in 8 languages. Aleksandr Alekseyonok, March 3, 2025

 How the Book Examples Are Created for "Confident Orienteering. Book 2: Route Planning and Execution" from sketch to finished map Eight people are working to make the examples in the book exceptional. Author: Aleksandr Alekseyonok Editors of the original text: Dmitry Davidovich and Sergey Pisarchik Editor of the cartographic material: Aleksei Alekseyonok Graphic editor: Svetlana Alekseyonok Translator: Andrei Yakovlev English translation editors: Clive Allen and Ross Barnett The picture illustrates the process of transforming an idea into a finalized image for the book. However, image number 4 is still not the final version. You’ll see the completed version in Book 2 , which will feature around 300 such examples. Stay tuned—just a few more months of hard work, and    Confident Orienteering   Book 2 will be ready for readers! My huge thanks to the whole team for your expertise and your work and for being with me on this journey! If you haven't read Confident O...