Occassional thoughts about orienteering
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| okansas.blogspot.com Occassional thoughts about orienteering |
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Wednesday, April 24, 2002 Hanne and Fritz and the "Embarassment Factor"Fritz talks about the "embarrassment factor" (EF). The EF is when you see someone in the woods or are seen by someone and start thinking about how you are doing. You think about how you look to other people. You worry about being embarrassed.Hanne Staff wrote about something like the EF when she described a race last weekend. Here is my translation of what Hanne wrote: On the way to the 14th control, I saw Birgitte on her way out of the control. She started 6 minutes ahead of me. I started to think about how far ahead of her I must be. That resulted in three bad legs in a row and about 1:30 of time lost to Birgitte. Most of us have been disturbed by other runners. When I saw Birgitte, I lost focus and was thinking about something other than orienteering. It is important to have a plan for this sort of situation. Whether you catch someone or get caught, you need to have a way to get your thoughts back on what you are doing -- orienteering. One way to do that is to read the map a bit extra on the way to the next control [whenever you see a competitor in the woods]. That will help you from thinking about other things. It forces you to think about orienteering. Hanne goes a step beyond Fritz. She recognizes the EF and the problem it causes (just like Fritz does), but Hanne has a strategy for dealing with it. As soon as she recognizes the possibility of the EF, it triggers a reaction -- doing some extra map reading. That reaction gets her mind back on what she is doing. (Although she doesn't seem to have done so well in the specific race she's talking about since she lost 1:30 once she saw Birgitte!). It doesn't have anything to do with the EF, but it is interesting to see how Hanne's time on the course last weekend compared to Johan Ivarsson. Johan is one of the absolute top elite Swedish runners (I believe he won M21 at last year's Swedish 5-days and he's won numerous Swedish champs). Johan also ran the same course as Hanne last weekend (Johan ran M35). Johan ran the 8.3 km course in 55 minutes. Hanne ran the same course in 62 minutes. If she hadn't suffered from the EF, Hanne might have been closer to 60 minutes. Hanne is losing very little time to one of the top elite men. If you finished the same percent behind Ivarsson at last year's Swedish 5-days, you'd have finished about 43rd of the elite men. You'd have finished just behind Arto Rautianen (who's been on Sweden's World Champs team). You'd have finished just ahead of Marc Lauenstien (a Swiss guy who spent a year or so in the US and dominated events he ran here). posted by Michael | 7:04 PM 
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