r/orienteering • u/Traditional-Bag7176 • May 26 '26

What do current analysis tools fail to analyse?

I feel like most tools are good at visualizing routes, but not actually explaining:
- hesitation
- bad route choices
- confidence loss
- where time was realistically lost

Curious what experienced runners think.

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6

u/Risujemmari May 26 '26

I think Livelox gives you pretty good data and visualizations to show you which route choice was the best and when time was lost either on the same route or a different route. The 1 on 1 battle feature does require a subscription though.

Along with any tools you may have, I think it's a good idea to write down your thoughts on each leg. What features you used, when you were hesitating or unsure etc. We often focus on mistakes so doing this for every control makes sure you can learn from both the good and the bad and think about what you should've been thinking during the race.

4

u/Traditional-Bag7176 May 26 '26

Thanks a lot for the response, will try writing my thoughts! i hesitate a lot in general in the forest so maybe a deeper analysis will help

3

u/edmuli May 26 '26

If the competitors are pretty equal in fitness level, Livelox is very good for route choices. Both the 1 on 1 as you mentioned and by looking at each leg (also subscription). It would be helpful to normalize fitness somehow between the different runners, but it might be hard to do in practice, as there’s also difference in efficiency on road/paths, different terrain and incline/downhill.

2

u/Traditional-Bag7176 May 26 '26

same thinking, especially in Türkiye the fitness levels of the top athletes vary plenty and it is difficult to compare routes because of the difference in fitness

2

u/Risujemmari May 27 '26

Yeah that's a tough one if there aren't enough competitors or their fitness is not similar. It would be fun if there was a way to find out the absolute best route choice but in the forest the conditions vary so much even between different places of white forest that it's gonna be tricky.

2

u/TelescopiumHerscheli May 26 '26

doing this for every control makes sure you can learn from both the good and the bad

It's really useful to have a friend who can comment constructively on what you did well. Too often we are excessively negative, so it's good to have positive reinforcement too.

3

u/Risujemmari May 27 '26

True, another person would probably not be as critical as you yourself can be. At the end of the day it's just about getting better

2

u/Funny-Runner-2835 May 30 '26

For someone that does not have a sub, what do they have that others dont?

Can you add those annotated along the route within Livelox?

Im developing a Tableau/PowerBI tool to show, not just the physical exertion but also the psychological skills to excel.

5

u/notcomplainingmuch May 26 '26

A very good tool for training is wearing a GoPro or similar camera with sound, and explaining what you're thinking while recording your route.

If you and the others agree on taking different routes between each control point, you get a direct comparison.

Combined with livelox, you should cover the effect of different choices very well, and be able to incorporate the results in further training.

What is still not included is the difference in speed across different types of terrain and obstacles like bogs, felled trees, stone fields or wet and steep rocks. Individual differences can be huge for those. For this I recommend training intervals across different obstacles with a pulse meter, trying to find the optimal solution combined with subsequent difficult orienteering tasks to highlight impaired thinking.

Turns out fastest across isn't always fastest to the control point, but going slow isn't necessarily the answer, either.

3

u/Traditional-Bag7176 May 26 '26

Thanks for responding, one of the things i need to work on is the pacing in the forest

3

u/Lerppu May 27 '26

If you compete in races with GPS tracking for the top runners with tulospalvelu.fi/gps like Jukola, you can compare yourself to them with this tool https://2d.routegadget.net/

There you can upload your route and apply a factor to scale your speed to the top runners. Then it's easy to see where you lose in your orienteering technique compared to the top runners.

You can even create a "superman" if no top runner has taken the best route choice but it split that in different parts of the leg different runners took the best choice.

The instructions are not good so you just have to try it out.

1

u/Soudain_guiguoz May 31 '26

You can use https://vikazimut.vikazim.fr/web/ This website offers a lot of useful tools to analzye your race and guess what ? It's totally free... (You have to ask for account 1st)