Discussion: Do you regularly use route analysis apps like 3drerun/routegadget?

I would love to know what kind of post-race/training routines you have. If you don't have any, you can also share why not :)

Personally, I use 3drerun from time to time, although I find a bit annoying the whole process of scanning, uploading and calibrating the map.

I know some people use QuickRoute too, any advantages/cons about that tool?

Mostly I use a red pen, preferably now a Sharpie fine point.
I know it is popular now to just slap your track onto a map a la Quick Route/ Route Gadget/ Livelox etc however there is a lot to be gained by getting yourself to go back over the map and reconstruct your route. "where did I leave the trail?", "was I to the left or right of that marsh" are typical reconstructs.
Then compare it to a gps route if you wish.
I wish I could convince the JROTC leaders here in Florida to get their cadets to bring red pens to the events so they could immediately reconstruct their routes and compare with others.

Orange felt-tip pen for me. Though I pretty much stopped doing that a while back.

Interesting! I wonder if there is any app that lets you do that in a nice way. I really don't like to draw over the original map, just in case I want to go back to the area at some point.
Do you compare the gps route after doing that? If so, what app do you prefer to use?

Why did you stop doing that @jjcote ?

You could always take a photo of the map with your phone and just annotate it directly on the phone.

I still draw my route on my map occasionally and always do a Livelox upload if available. Drawing on the map has the advantage of also being able to make other notes. I can circle the features I was looking for or used, or make note of something that confused me. At one point I had a notebook where I would note those kinds of things down so that I could look back and see what I needed to work on, or what things were going well for me.

I used to always draw on my maps, but now it's usually just RG.

I have been making Samantha draw her Orange course routes with a red pen for the reasons gordhun mentioned. It tends to force her to actually remember stuff. Then we can look at the GPS on RG afterwards if there are any remaining mysteries or other interesting route comparisons.

A few times I have used a highlighter to mark all the features used. This can be pretty interesting especially when comparing to someone else's features.

I enjoy watching the club's route-gadget page, and seeing how other people chose to run certain legs of the race. Even for races I did not run, the multiple routes show me possibilities I may not have visualized.

That's a good point on the difference between drawing and GPSing: the shared route apps are good for seeing other route choices and getting a visualization of where your route or execution was slower than other people, whereas drawing with a pen is good for analysis of your own without comparison to others.

I see... So you don't mind drawing over the map...
And do you miss any feature in RouteGadget?
I feel like 3Drerun has more tools to compare routes, but RouteGadget is nicer because clubs are the ones that usually upload the high-quality image of the map.

Mostly just RouteGadget. It is available for the vast majority of events I attend, and I enjoy being able to compare routes with others. I also like being able to look at the other courses, or the course I would have run at an event that I missed. In that case sometimes I figure out what I would have done and compare it to what people really did. Sometimes if Routegadget is not available I will use QuickRoute, but I normally do that only if I had a big mistake or other mystery to solve. I don't like to draw on my maps so I've never been big on the hand-drawing of routes, though I can also see the advantages.

I always check LiveLox if it's available to see what clever route I missed. I wish it had a normalized pace option; seeing a route that's faster but was run by someone a lot faster isn't the most helpful unless you know the person and can account for it.

I also check it to see where people made mistakes, so I can use the same tricks when I make my next course.

I mostly use map.routegadget.net
(It has comparison tool with sort of normalized pace option to compare tracks and route choices with someone faster/slower)

I like Cristina suggestion: take a photo of the map with your phone and just annotate it directly on the phone.
Because I don’t like to draw/write on my map but the photo-edit options on my phone are pretty good.

Gord and others who like to draw their course: For those using Routegadget you may not be aware that you can draw your course and then also add your GPS route. I often suggest this as a great way to try to remember where you went and then see where you actually went. If drawing here are a couple of notes: When RG first comes up there is a "Touch Mode" option showing in the description area - click this if you want to draw using the mouse (drag rather than click spots). This cannot be changed after you start to do something in the RG form. Also, right click deletes the last click (not obvious as no indication that this is how to undo). There is a small checkbox to turn "snap" on/off. If on, you need to end up right in the middle of a control circle before link to the next control is enabled. As long as you don't hit save then you can just start again.

I´ve always been very bad at drawing my route on the map after a race. After getting my first GPS-watch 15 years ago I completely stopped.
I´ve used a lot of different digital tools - I started using DOMA but lately it´s mostly been Livelox. I wouldn´t say that I actually analyze my race (implying that I would do it to get better) but instead just for the fun of it compare routes with other orienteers on my course.

Why did I stop? I think I started drawing my routes in 1987. By the end of 2012 I'd drawn 1200+ routes, and maybe that was enough. At that point I had a GPS watch, so the routes for the 300+ races since then are preserved on Attackpoint in case I want to go back and look at them. I do still go over the routes mentally, even though I don't do the exercise of drawing the line unless for some reason the GPS didn't work. I don't use any tools to put the track on the map myself, although I will upload my track to RouteGadget if available, and then put a link to it on my log.

Since the advent of RG, and then Livelox, I've been surprised - and frustrated - that people don't use these excellent tools. In Australia, barely 5% of orienteers upload their route, despite most having gps watches. It seems that this is a worldwide problem, with RG/LL links from major events having very few routes, and almost never those of the faster orienteers. Are people a) lazy, b) secretive, or c) uninterested?

Great question simmo! I have definitely noticed that problem too. Personally, I think my answer is that I'm just too lazy to do all the process of uploading and calibrating the map.
I wonder what other people think about this issue. I'm really curious!

But with RG and Livelox the organizer has already done the work of uploading and calibrating the map. With Livelox I could have my route on the map before I'd even left the event. I'm more surprised that more organizers don't set this up for participants since it's a nice way to have people thinking about your event and talking about it after it's over.

Race ain't over until my route is on Routegadget. Missed it when I was in Tasmania and had to set up a Doma account and use Quickroute. But that's a solitary pursuit and the training value of RG is comparing routes and splits, and determining where you lost or gained time.

Maybe a disruptive technology is almost upon us.
1. My running watch automatically uploads to its app as well as to Strava (call it a third party app). Could our GPS watches auto upload to RouteGadget and the like?
2. Orienteering apps such as MapRun can be used and it adds your track to its embedded RouteGadget. I need to have my phone with MapRun with me while orienteering but there is a MapRun G that runs on a Garmin watch.

1. Yes, Livelox can grab your run from Strava (or Garmin Connect) and add it to an event without you having to do anything. This is what makes it easy to have a route already up before even leaving an event. This has been possible for several years now but I guess not that common in the US.

simmo> ... Are people a) lazy, b) secretive, or c) uninterested?

Speaking only for myself, it's definitely not secretive or uninterested. So I guess that makes me lazy. But seriously, posting to Livelox or RouteGadget simply falls through the cracks, especially after a major event where it is most interesting, because it gets neglected or forgotten the the busyness of a late long drive home and, well, life.

And there is negative reinforcement since when I do bother to post my track, my competitors usually don't.

It's hard for me to imagine this cycle being broken as long as we rely on each individual participant to take some action. Even a simple action. I think it would take somehow routes being posted automatically. In the same way that participants are not expected to "do something" to get their results posted. It just happens. (Of course I am not meaning to demean the great efforts of meet crews and software developers to do all the work to make it magically happen.)

Cristina> ... Livelox can grab your run from Strava (or Garmin Connect) ...

This is a great step in the right direction. But of no use to those of us using neither Garmin nor Strava.

Well, if you want this to happen, you have to set up your GPS device to communicate with something...

imagine if orienteering required people to carry a GPS tracker (built into SI?) that was a required part of the race download. It would serve the purpose of making sure participants were staying out of out of bounds areas and as a way to allow all to compare routes.

Strava is approaching universal exchange point status for routes. Garmin and Suunto's proprietary sites will push to Strava for you. Or maybe it's that Strava pulls from them, I forget. But I think your watch is a Polar if I remember correctly, Steve, so you'd need to check if theirs does as well. If so Strava could be worth the extra effort to set up.

You don't set up LiveLox after the event, you set it up before and it's time locked for everyone but admins from viewing until a time you specify, like course closing. Then it's easy for people w/out watches can use their phones, although LiveLox could stand to do a little better filtering on their tracker since phone users, for us anyway, get too many spurious points and you end up turning them off if you want to watch the animated replays. And people with other means can do so as soon as they think of it.

If you have final courses and maps and a little practice, it's on the order of minutes, like under 10 and more like 5, to deploy on LiveLox.

Quickroute --> For exact analysis on true route and pace. Makes it really clear where you can pick up time and what pieces of terrain are your strengths and weaknesses

2DRerun --> For sprints when checking route distance and then cross referencing with splits

Hand drawn route --> Best for muscle memory (like brain muscle) learning. Jeff Teutsch has offered me some interesting commentary on instead cirling what you checked off/saw along the way. Makes for a deeper reflection of your own performance and highlights pieces you missed

Control by control written analysis --> Best for actively reflecting on your strengths and weaknesses and identifying areas to improve. Complimented well with hand drawn route. On each control I write what I did, what I did well, or what I should do next time. All negative things are instead turned into "next time" statements which is more constructive and helps you map out skills you start to notice would really help

Additional analysis[a] --> if you're focusing on one skill during that training write :-), :-| or :-) for each control. Goal is to see higher percents of smiles as the season goes on

Additional analysis[b] --> logging 'did well' and 'next time' skills into a spreadsheet to start to better understand your strengths and weaknesses and idenfity the most impacful points of improvement

The more analysis the more quickly you'll improve and the longer your improvements will last more. It takes a lot of time and energy though and sometimes you have to settle for less. When you have a true goal in mind though, these methods will greatly help you reach it.

Just my 2 cents :-)

I got disinterested with Livelox when it changed to requiring a paid account to see more than one route at a time. I'd be all for paying for an account if there was a larger usage here in Aus but at the moment it's not worth it.

I have some AP friends who often run same courses, makes it handy to compare seconds lost here and there with press of a button, or a link like this:

Usually I dont bother adding O map backround in, not needed really when paper map is at hand, epacially when there is MapAnt backround map available.

This is really insightful, thank you all!
I think the issue in my country is that clubs aren't really encouraged to upload & calibrate map(s) after their competitions. And that discourages people from uploading their routes because it requires "a lot" of effort.
As some of you mentioned, it's like a ripple effect. If clubs don't upload their maps, runners are too lazy to upload their routes. If there are not many routes to compare against, other runners don't see the the value of uploading their tracks.

I wonder why clubs are so diligent on using tools like Livelox in Sweden (for example). Is it something cultural? Or do they have some incentive I'm not aware of? I would love to replicate that kind of culture in my country.

I can tell you why Livelox works in Florida - two words - Blaik Mathews. he is the tech genius who sets Livelox up for all our events - Florida Orienteering and Suncoast Orienteering. Blaik has prepared instructional videos on how to set up Livelox and has reminders each event on how to get it going. This year the events are just for pre-registered JROTC teams ( a high school program stressing citizenship and service based on a military example) and they use the Livelox for two reasons 1) tracking and increased safety and 2) replay for training and review.
Our last event had 30% participation in Livelox , much higher by the experienced teams. That is a good rate considering it started at less than 10% and the students need to have a smart phone they are allowed to take in the woods for it to work. Some just don't have that luxury.
When I upload to Livelox it is from a gps watch after the fact.

@Gordhun, which subscription model do you use for Livelox?

FYI, O-maps and others, the Polar watch app will auto connect to Strava, similar to other GPS watches such as Garmin, Suunto, etc.

I scan my maps and plot the GPS tracks using ExpertGPS. My post-race autopsies are pretty humous, especially in solo adventure races.

I really like RG but not every race posts to it, so it's nice to have a backup. DVOA has been very good recently in posting to RG, though.

@maprunner we have a club subscription through Florida Orienteering. Each individual pays a bit to FLO and they take care of it. Dirt cheap.