Occassional thoughts about orienteering
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| okansas.blogspot.com Occassional thoughts about orienteering |
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Tuesday, June 25, 2002 Rostrup on specializationJorgen Rostrup wrote about specialization in Orienteering:There were relatively many people who criticized me for not running in the Norwegian Sprint Champs. They ought to ask themselves why Marius Bakken [a world class Norwegian runner] doesn't run the 400 meters. He has chosen to specialize in the longer distances. That is the sort of specialization we are seeing more and more in orienteering. Believe it or not, to run 400 meter races is not the same as to run 5000 meters. To run a sprint O' course is not the same as to run a classic O' course. I'm not going to agree or disagree with Jorgen. But, I think it is interesting to see how people use analogies to think about issues and to try to make their case. You see this sort of thinking all the time ("another Vietnam" or "the next Lance Armstrong"). It is a powerful way of making a case. It can be a useful way of thinking. But, it is also easy to get sloppy. It seems to me that the key to thinking critically about Jorgen's discussion, is to ask a couple of questions: 1. How is running races on the track like running orienteering? 2. How is running races on the track dislike running orienteering? You can make a huge list of answers to each question. For example, most nations have runners while a relatively few nations have orienteers; so the depth of competition is probably lower. Another example, the shortest races in orienteering take a good 10-15 minutes while the shortest races on a track take under 10 seconds. A final example, runners and orienteers both spend a lot of their training time running. You can go on and on. posted by Michael | 1:05 PM 
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