Left, Right or Straight (30.09.25)

Today we will look at a Leg 7-8 from the Long Distance race at the regional championships on September 21st in Östergötland (H21 class), Sweden. Organiser Motala AIF OL.

It seems that the runnability in the forest was quite difficult. Even on this leg, the route to the right, via the road, was competitive. Few athletes chose it, since on such a long leg it usually doesn’t pay off to make such a detour. But everything depends on the speed you can maintain in the forest.

Let’s look at the routes of the leg winner Olof Ljunggren (4:21 for 660 meters — about 7:00 min/km) and John Kinnander, 4th on the leg (4:49 for 940 meters — 5:08 min/km).

John eventually finished 7th overall, and 4th place on this leg was one of his best splits of the race.

Yes, he lost 27 seconds. But his way to the road was not ideal either — I think it was possible to reach the big road junction faster.

Overall, John’s total time loss to the race leader was 15 minutes, as he was slower than the leaders on almost every leg. So even if he had taken the straight route on this one, he most likely would have lost a similar amount of time as he did with the road option

A similar situation was seen in the H50 class. Here, the course leader Kristian Algers ran straight, but he was significantly faster than the others on this course ( - 12:24 to the second place)

Second place on the leg went to Per Magnusson, who was 4th overall (also one of his best legs of the course).

In H50 class more athletes chose the roundabout option compared to the M21 class. Also, among those who chose the road route, there were fewer mistakes when attacking the control.

Sourse: https://www.livelox.com/Events/Show/169127/DM-lang-Ostergotland

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Aleksandr Alekseyonok, September 30, 2025.

Read the O-book Confident Orienteering — for advanced orienteers.

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