Hi. Let me try something new and show you my route choice analysis from Lim Bay Challenge, an adventure run (or trekking race) where you are free to choose your own path between the Check points (CPs). You’ll see a basemap (that is rather old but has some new features manually drawn by organizer), our route choice (in red), route choices of some other competitors and some satellite photos… I ran (or walked) the whole race with Monika Kovaljesko. We were both orienteering, but it didn’t go that well, as you’ll see… 😊

First CP was close and it was an obvious route choice how to get there so our tracks are almost identical. Our route is shown in red. P.S. There are some races where there are multiple route choices to first CP so we start running in opposite direction. 😊

From CP1 to CP2 we had to notice that there’s a bridge over fast road (which was under a fence). You can see how the fast road is manually drawn on basemap and that it’s a bit off to right, but that wasn’t a problem.

After CP2 we decided to take our chance and try to navigate over open meadows (white on map) and get to CP3. You can see that this CP was not that easy to find, a lot of different route choices, mistakes, dead ends and coming to CP from both directions. 😊 Our track is still red.

The problem was that we tried to navigate based on vegetation which is not possible on such old map. Satellite photos show completely different setup of vegetation. We were pretty much lost and just wondering in west direction, hoping to find something that we’ll recognize from map.

15min mistake – not that bad after all.

It would be great that our mistakes stopped there, but they didn’t. It wasn’t a good day for orienteering. 😊 On map a route choice looked pretty straight-forward. Attack point was a small pond just east of control (we’ve never found a pond).

Again, trying to navigate based on vegetation, but the reality was nothing as a map. We found a good path that is not on a map and made false assumptions. Lost, wondering around, getting back, finding a stone quarry in the middle of nothing and then our CP. Uff…

30min mistake

Already demotivated with our progress (or lack of it) we continued towards CP5. Very nice trail and easy navigation (Yaay) and we are at our next CP and refreshment point. Great. It took us almost 2 hours for 10km of the course.

Oh, we were not done with mistakes for that day. The description of the CP said it was a tree near the lake on a NE side. We decided to approach the CP from that side but got blocked with dense vegetation with thorns. Ah well, what’s few minutes when you have hours to spare…

Finally, one good decision and approach to CP7. Although we decided to took longer route (and walk on road a bit) it proved to be easier approach with less navigation dilemmas than for the rest of the runners. And we climbed the right hill from first try! 😉

We wanted to approach CP8 directly from north, over a meadow (white on map) but it turned out to be dense forest (dark green on satellite photo) so we continued and took longer and safer route. No problems there.

P.S. At this point of the race, we are mostly walking…

When you walk, you have more time to read a map, look at terrain and make decisions, so we had no problem finding CP9. We had luck deciding to approach it from east, because the CP was placed more in that direction than marked on the map.

We continued our walk to CP10. No brainers there.

Although I didn’t like Monika’s idea to approach next CP from farther SE side, it turned out to be just fine. The idea was to avoid dotted trails and small fields as much as we can! 😊

A direct line to finish 😊 All in all, I had fun.

It was a true adventure run. I was a bit upset about the map, but the map is same for everyone. We should have concluded earlier not to navigate based on vegetation and to take safer/recommended route choices and we would have been sooner in the finish line. 😊

Nevertheless, we still had time to jump in sea and enjoy the rest of the day drinking coffee, beer, eating ice-cream, all that summer stuff… 😊