Confident Orienteering

  MOM 2026, Leg 1 Analysis – Women’s Elite, Long Distance (Day 1) Let’s take a closer look at Leg 1 of the women’s elite course in the Long Distance race on Day 1 of the Maximus Orienteering Meeting 2026. At first glance, this is a long and visually intimidating leg. Right from the start, the course planner confronts us with complex relief and rocky terrain. Most likely, this leg was designed to make athletes hesitate. The immediate impression is that of a major climb, which may push competitors to look for “safer” route choices along the roads. In fact, some runners did exactly that, choosing longer but seemingly more comfortable options. However, if we analyse the leg more carefully, the picture changes. The direct option is clearly runnable. Despite the dense contour detail, there is actually very little climb. For most of the leg, we are moving downhill. The only real ascent is a short climb onto a large ridge — just 3–4 contour lines. After rounding it slightly, we remain...

 Following or Independent Racing? Share in the comments below how you feel when you catch up with a competitor who started before you — and then they follow you for the entire long distance, effectively relying on your navigation, even when you make a mistake. Based on the GPS tracking data, we can conclude that a similar situation occurred at MOM 2026 during the Long Distance race on Day 1. Pia Young Vik caught Eef Van Dongen before the first control, even though Eef had started three minutes earlier. From that point on, Eef appeared to run behind Pia for almost the entire race. Even during the five-minute mistake at Control 17, Eef followed Pia. Only near the very end of the course did she run independently.

  Today, we’ll go through the exercise from January 19, 2026. Task for January 19, 2026 Arrange the control points by elevation, from the lowest to the highest. Difficulty Level :  Hard  The task is to rank the control points by their elevation on the terrain, starting from the lowest one. To do this, as usual, we’ll highlight the index contours using different colors. The terrain here is extremely complex, with numerous depressions located on various elevation levels — a highly intricate relief structure. We’ll begin by marking a large, narrow depression, which we’ll show in light blue . Then we’ll highlight all other smaller depression of the same level.. The next elevation level will be marked in blue . And finally, we have the highest level — the top of the hill — which we’ll mark in red . Now the analysis becomes easier. We can clearly see that only one control point — Control 9 — is located below the lowest index contour, below the light blue contour...

  AFTERWORD by Klas Karlsson Lohja, Finland, June 18th 1986. Gårdsby IK, my mother club, was on the road a few days after Jukola. After a training, we happened to end up in a sauna with Hiidenkiertäjät and their reigning World Champion Kari Sallinen. While chatting, a friend (no, it was not me) asked Kari for some advice: “What do I do wrong? I usually run well but always end up missing one control with like ten minutes.” Kari smiled and answered: “You are just lucky on the other controls!” That’s how the Afterword begins — a powerful closing reflection written by Klas Karlsson , one of the test readers for Book 2 of Confident Orienteering . In reality, his contribution went far beyond a typical test read. His review was so thorough and insightful that he essentially acted as an editor. As a result of his feedback, we made several important improvements to both the main text and the practical examples throughout the book. And on top of that, Klas wrote a brilliant piece — part...

Control Elevation Analysis  The task was to arrange the controls from the lowest to the highest. First, we draw the index contours of each level using different colors. The lowest index contour on the map is marked in blue , and the next one above it in light blue . See Figure with mark "1". In this task, it is easier to start determining the control elevations by identifying the highest controls first, because the top of the slope is easier to recognize on the map. We can see that controls 3 and 2 are the highest, with control 3 higher than control 2 . Next, we distribute the remaining controls between the blue and light-blue index contours. The lowest among them is control 9 , as it is located just above the blue index contour . Next comes control 4 , and then  control 1 , followed by control 5 , which is the highest of this group because it lies only one contour below the light-blue index contour . The most challenging part of the task turned out to be the remaini...

  The Road to JWOC 2026, #2 (Long Distance) Short  Leg 1: what to do In the previous post in this series, we identified—based on the terrain characteristics and extensive experience from many previous competitions in this area—that a short first leg with complex navigation is highly likely. In this post, we focus on what exactly to do in such a situation. Let us begin by explaining why we are specifically discussing short first legs . If the first leg is longer , it will most likely intersect paths , as this terrain is full of paths of different types . In that case, an athlete has several safety options : – choosing a detour along paths; – or navigating less precisely on a bearing , deliberately aiming off early to hit a path and then restoring exact position while running along it. https://www.livelox.com/Viewer/JVM-test-lang/D20?classId=392774&live=false&tab=player In such scenarios, the initial nervousness and uncertainty at the beginning of the co...