Zoë has compiled a breakdown of lengths and climb for more than a dozen options for 1.8k leg thst she included in the Brown and Blue courses today at Ballyward.
I intend to upload it to here tomorrow. In meantime here is the leg.

THIS is what we always need more of in the Irish branch of orienteering. There was a lot of good direction change and distance variation in the legs. Most notably being a real \"long leg\". A real and true long leg. 

And then after the long leg there were a succession of short legs in light green forest. Then a medium/long leg again for number 10. It\'s the sign of a good planner here. I\'m looking forward to the next day out that Zoe plans.

You can tell that the long leg was considered firstly by sitting back and looking at all the possibiilities the terrain and map presented for it, and then secondly, building a course around that. Not every terrain/map in Irish nature lends itself to it but this one does. Well done Setanta! 

David is correct to say that the courses were planned around the long leg. Also getting the getting the long leg early in the course was prioritised so runners didn\'t get much time to consider the options. Originally the leg was to run from south to north as the non technical courses were to be in the southern part of the area. Zoë did not find a satisfactory start and end point to the leg no matter what she tried. Unfortunately significant areas of the woods were felled after the initial planning and we had to look elsewhere for the junior courses. These moved to the northern part of the map and the long leg changed direction to run north to south.

Suddenly the long leg worked!! And Zoë concentrated on fine tuning the start and end points. She was very happy to present the end result to competitors on the blue and brown courses.

Zoë has presented various options in this image

There are a number of road options and also opportunities to take straighter lines through the woods for the more daring. There are 3 options for beginning of leg. Head south on the track east of control or head north or south on road west of control. Actually a 4^th option is continue west and take a straighter option through the woods.

Also there were 2 options for both approaches at the end of the leg.

Perhaps most surprising is the shortest road option is to go north around the top road loop. I think when we are considering the options, its the first half of the leg has a bigger bearing on our decisions, but in this case going round the loop at the southern end is longer and involves more climb.
There is an in between road route, 2520m long which many may not consider is shorter and has less climb than the 2590m route.  

Taking straighter off road routes can significantly reduce the distance. The 2205m route cuts 300m give or take off the first part of the leg. Other short cuts present themselves if taking the southern direction along the road, the shortest route going through the recently felled area. I had advise to avoid the recently felled areas due to the amount of brashings, but some areas were not as bad as I thought.

The final approach to the control could be from above from the east or below from the west. The latter option was likely to be easier to navigate but added about 100m and some climb, a not insignificant amount during the latter part of the leg.

Thanks to Zoe for the great course and thanks for posting this Angus. I think this shows really well the possibilities for long legs that exist on Irish maps and the number of choices that can be made available. It really makes the course more interesing when you have to make a decision and you don\'t know if it was correct until later. What it does show too is that execution and sticking to your strengths matters. Kevin O\'Boyle took the 2550m purple route on the track while I took the straighter blue 2250m route through the forest and we were only 4s apart on the leg!