Who is the greatest orienteer of all time? I can’t decide, but I’ve just published a visualization on the subject. Thanks to Iron Quest for the motivation. Click on the link at the bottom (or here) to go to the interactive page. https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/dan.chissick/viz/TheGreatestOrienteersofallTime/GreatestOrienteers ..read more

No, not our national team, but the organisers. I was following the GPS tracking of the Sprint Qualification this morning, and wondering why all the runners in Men C (where our top orienteer Nitsan Yasur was starting) were running round the fence after the first control, and then returning: At first I thought the control description was incorrect, and the control had been placed on the eastern side of the fence instead of the west, but after an exchange of WhatsApp messages with Itay Manor (on-site at WOC and planned to run Middle and Relay) I understood that they had all been unable to see th ..read more

Our orienteering season ended a couple of weeks ago, after a series of sprint races. It’s too hot now for competitive orienteering here, but good luck to our team at WOC! Usually I don’t care for sprint races, even league events that count for the rankings, but after my back problem I needed a test run, so I went to the event at Ein HaHoresh, a week before our club relay. Nothing much to write to the world about – a very easy map and course, an almost perfect run, but very slow by my standards (and still 5th in H40). This only reinforced my indignation at the rule that says you can’t switch ca ..read more

I’m back from a back problem, just in time for the end of the orienteering season and the start of high summer. What happened to my back? Nobody knows, of course. It started gradually over a few days, and then I was barely able to move without acute pain. After taking anti-inflammatory pills for a while I got better and I could get back to work, and then slowly back to running. Two months ago I could hardly walk, a month ago I managed a 3 km jog through the pain, and now I’m totally pain-free and running single-tracks again. All the doctors asked if I had any severe stress, so maybe they’re ri ..read more

Last weekend was the highlight of the season – The Israeli Championship. Already a bit late in the year, with the undergrowth growing a bit tall, but we had very good weather and two great new maps of well-known areas, making up for a very compressed schedule for the organizers. Both areas were also quite close to home, so we could manage the kids easily and Alon was able to finish the children’s course alone on both days. The first day was in Alon Hagalil – steep but fast pine forest, so a very physical race with very few tricky controls. Our course (H40, D21A and others) had 7.3 km with 370m ..read more

The season has started (very late, of course, because of COVID-19), and the first two national events are behind us, with the Israeli Championship already looming on the horizon – next weekend. But this time the landscape has changed. Usually the various age categories, excluding the juniors, have more or less the same people as last year, and the same results. Once in a while someone goes up to an older age group and slots in amongst the leaders, but there’s no massive change. Lots of older orienteers stay in a longer course and age group even as they grow older (just like myself, running H40 ..read more

The 2020-2021 orienteering season has just started. After the “training” events of December we had another month of total lockdown, and another month of training, but now competitions are allowed and they’re trying to cram the whole season in before the summer. So in the next couple of months we have 6 national events (including the Israeli championship), 2 rogaines, and lots of other interesting events. I’ve run some training courses, the best being one of the five set out by our club as “permanent” courses for the past month, in Zippori (map below) – makeshift controls, register online and p ..read more

Despite COVID-19, we’re allowed to hold “training” events – which are basically the same as regular events, except that there’s no registration on the day (so no contact), no official assembly area, no drinks controls, and no results (but you can still use SI and get your split times). As far as I know, competitive events are planned to start in January, unless there is a third lockdown. The season is going to be compressed into a few months, and hopefully we’ll be having a lot of forest time over the winter and spring. Today we went to a training event at Ma’anit, on a partially new map (of a ..read more

Lockdown no. 2 came just after the first few events of the season, and lasted until a week ago. We actually managed to hold a club training camp just before, which was great fun despite the (still) hot conditions, and then all activities closed down: not a 100 meter limit like in April, but 500 meters (increased at some point to 1 km), and any individual athletic activity provided you start from your home. So I ran around home quite a lot, getting acquainted with new routes, but the conditions were still hot throughout and I managed to orienteer only on the last weekend, when it cooled down a ..read more

After a summer of early morning sprints, we’re back in the forest at last. I was out and about last weekend as well, marking controls for a club training camp, but yesterday was the first real event of the season – in the midst of an unprecedented heatwave. My club was organizing, but I wasn’t involved this time. Despite the heat and humidity, the decision to go ahead – with shortened courses and very early start times – was made, and the event was successful. It was really humid: Strava says 83%, but it felt like 200%, and I was soaked in sweat after the first few controls, despite being accl ..read more