Anatomy of a world orienteering race, by Alan Cherry

Analysis from elite orienteer Alan Cherry on his Long race at the World Orienteering Championships

The World Orienteering Championships 2017 took place in Estonia, from 30th June to 6th July.

Alan Cherry is a Scottish orienteer, previously with AYROC and OUOC but now based between Scotland and Norway. His analysis of his Long race is below.

I was looking forward to this, a real jungle assault in these thick proper forests.

1-2: Pleased with my routechoice and execution, was a bit scared before the control as this area was very flat.

2-3: My direction was a bit dodgy out of 2, but hit the path luckily.

3-4: Poor execution of first part, ended up in some green and big ditches. I then ran hard out of the field without checking compass and ended up in deep marsh.

7-8: Had caught Micahel Olenik at 4 and ended up following him out of 7. Having previously planned to go straight I really wish I had gone straight now. Didn’t find the ride before the marshes and made a parallel error on the marsh. This routechoice and mistake is probably my biggest time loss.

8-19: Really pleased with solid orienteering and hit every control. Got some TV coverage on way to 19 as well which felt good. The first part of routechoice to 14 was poor, I should have just gone to the path, or I should have done what the best did and run straight, but I was getting extremely tired and the hills seemed to be getting bigger and bigger.

21-22: I thought in my knackered state that I saw a nice route along the lake. After crossing the marsh I noticed that it was OOB and climbed. I began getting cramp here but not too bad.

22-End: Feeling burnt out now and was a gruelling way to finish off an amazing race. I managed to get around these controls without losing too much time.

In the end I was 25th place which is a big improvement on last year, and I ran almost entirely alone off a fairly early start. I am very pleased with the race and the result.

You can look at Alan’s GPS track