Read the map
Detailed orienteering maps reveal terrain, vegetation and paths—never your live position.
Downhill, yes. But pointing a bike up a climb for its own sake has never appealed to me. Give me a reason to be out there — something to solve on the way — and I’ll go all day.
When I was a teenager I won an orienteering race. Not because I was the fastest runner in the field; I wasn’t. I won because I knew that hill. I knew which side of the spur held the good ground, and which line looked shorter on the map and wasn’t.
That is the part that stays with you. The fitness is the entry price. The interesting bit is the decision you make at every control, and the fact that it is yours.
I want my kids to find that out — that the tactical side and the physical side are the same game, and that being clever about a hill counts for as much as being fast up it.
And I know myself well enough: I would run far more often if every run were an attempt at a different route to take a KOM.