Discussion: you are adopting

Finnish standard route choice ideology. There is only two choices: straight and mistake.

That's how I tend to think but until I learn how to execute, it's like mistake and mistake.

Yeah, I tried some saving time with a deviation in the b finaali and lost 30-40s just like that.

Fastest safe route, chinghua. You just have to work out how straight is safe.

But it seems like, for me, the fastest safe route is too often taking the trails and I don't see how I'm going to learn how to go straighter if I keep taking the trails.

Switch to a harder course. Then you won't have a 'safe' option, until you learn to make 'straight' safe.

It does take a while to learn to match contours to 3d shapes, and to know what is an obvious feature (and the converse, what is a feature so obvious that if you don't see it, then you know you aren't by it). If you post your map and route from last week...