Occassional thoughts about orienteering
|
|
| okansas.blogspot.com Occassional thoughts about orienteering |
|
|
Monday, July 01, 2002 Nice course settingWhen I popped open the map from today's men's World Cup race in Norway, I thought, "nice course."Why do I think it is a good course? Mostly, the course setter has done a good job of putting a lot of variety into the course. There are a good 11 direction changes, where you leave a control on a sharp angle from how you arrived. Take a look at the second leg. You have to make a 90 degree turn as you leave the first control. Direction changes make for some interesting variety. There are a lot of different leg lengths. I looked for legs that were either <= half the length of the prior leg or >= double the length of the prior leg. There were 14 legs with length changes. Length changes make for some variety. Leg changes reward runners who can change tempo and technique. There are also several long legs. Seven legs are longer than 1 km. One leg is more than 2 km. There are controls that you'd attack from above, below or along the side of the hill. A quick look at the course suggests that you'd attack six controls from above or below and eight from along the side of the hill. About seven of the legs would be attacked from a more-or-less flat approach. Again, the course setter has given the runners a lot of variety. Finally, the course setter made use of several different types of terrain on the same map. The first five legs are in a generally flat area with some low knolls and lots of marsh. For these legs, it looks like you'd do a lot of straight line routes. The next seven legs are in a part of the map with big hills and long hillsides. These legs feature some legs with route choice options that go far off the straight line. For legs 13 through 17, you're going along a hillside. There isn't so much route choice, but you'd need to be careful to stay at the proper contour level to avoid extra climb (and to keep track of where you were). Finally, the last legs are in a type of terrain similar to the beginning of the course. I like courses with the variety you see in the World Cup course. It isn't something you see a lot of in the U.S. To some extent, that is because we don't have so many different types of terrain in a single area (and we don't usually run courses that are so long). But, I think it also reflects the common way course setters in the U.S. think about course. I believe a lot of course setters focus on legs and controls rather than the entire course. If you spend all your course setting energy trying to make each leg interesting, you can easily forget to look at the course as a whole. The easiest way to put some variety in courses is to vary the length and direction of legs. I think a lot of local O' courses would be more interesting if the course setter tried to set one long leg with a couple of routes, and then set a few short legs to get you from the start to the beginning of the long leg and then from the end of the long leg back to the finish. Gene seems to use this sort of course setting model and his courses are among the very best you'll see around this part of the country. posted by Michael | 8:44 PM 
Comments:
Post a Comment
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
||||
|
|||||
