okansas.blogspot.com Occassional thoughts about orienteering
Sunday, July 21, 2002
Interview with Pasi
Right now Pasi Ikonen from Finland is the top orienteer in the world. He's leading this year's world cup after taking a gold and silver at last year's world champs. Pasi is well-known for orienteering without a compass. He's only 22 years old.
Expressen published an interview with Pasi today as part of the Swedish paper's coverage of the Swedish 5-days. I translated a bit of the interview.
"I made a lot of mistakes when I was 18 years old. I noticed that I couldn't concentrate on the orienteering. So, I decided to change the pattern. I figured that orienteering without a compass would force me to read the map more and better."
Pasi Ikonen earned a spot on Finland's national team. But, running without a compass hasn't always worked. During a world cup race two years ago, he made a classic mistake and ran 180-degrees off. The national team's coach, Totte Smedslund was...
"Not happy. He told me that I might want to have a compass at the World Champs and important relays."
Are many juniors trying to run without a compass, like you do?
"Yes, maybe too many. You have to be mentally prepared for it."
Pasi runs his own web page (in English) and it is worth a look. Click on the "training" link to take a look at how Pasi trains. For the most part, Pasi's English is decent. You can get a sense of what he is doing. For a lot of his sessions, Pasi's loaded his heart rate data, too.
posted by Michael |
2:52 PM
