This is my second rogaining in Finland and I have never participated in Louna-Roga before. I am just starting to get involved in local competitions. Of the rivals here, I don’t know any of the rivals and their level yet, so I had no expectations before the start.

The time for planning was just enough. It took some time to choose an optimal route, but I was satisfied with the final plan. I decided to run along the map perimeter in a counter-clockwise direction, so that I leave a dense bunch of checkpoints on the west to the ending. Such planning allows flexibility and possibility to cut if I run out of time. It must be kept in mind that some checkpoints were quite far from the roads and required careful orienteering on a 1:25000 scale map – I reserved some time for mistakes. In fact, I made two mistakes – at controls 80 and 40.

The race did almost go according to the plan. I only had to drop two points in the very ending – 60 and 75. I planned to take all the checkpoints in that area, but closer to the finish, I decided that running to 60 is a bit risky due to the long run out of the roads. Unfortunately, I also had to drop 75 because of an orienteering mistake. I went straight from 42 to 40 and couldn’t understand my location at some point. Suddenly I found myself on the wide gravel road far to the left of the checkpoint. I decided then to go straight to 90 and then on the way back to the finish to try the second approach to 40, if the time allowed. I managed that (and these 4 points actually saved my victory), but I didn’t have the time for 75 anymore. All the rest of the route went perfectly and exactly as planned.

There were not many surprises, but I was impressed by the big swamp on the east, at controls 39-97-85. A very beautiful open panoramic swamp, but that was the most challenging part of the race, pretty hard even to walk. However, I still see that was the most optimal route.

In retrospect, I would still choose the same plan. The only possible difference is to move 80 from the very beginning to some place to the ending. But this is not for sure, at least in my planning I could run to this checkpoint using the roads. So I’m pretty satisfied with the plan.

In total I did 49 km in 6 hours. I attach the files with my route and the gps-track.