okansas.blogspot.com Occassional thoughts about orienteering
Tuesday, August 27, 2002
Some pre-relay champs map study
I need to spend some time before the relay champs looking at maps -- armchair map reading.
At H.A.R.T. camp I was orienteering relatively well but I was struggling with a couple of things: running too fast into the control circle and not catching errors in the middle of legs.
In Colorado, I wasn't really slowing down as I approached the controls. The terrain in Colorado is forgiving of orienteers who run fast in the circle. But, I don't think the terrain in Vermont will be as forgiving. So, I've got to spend some time looking at maps and recognizing where to slow down.
In Colorado I had a couple of booms when I got a bit off track on the middle of the leg and just kept running and hoping for the best. That works once in a while. But, over the long run (even over the short run) it is a bad strategy. When I'm orienteering well, I catch errors quickly. In Colorado, I didn't catch all the errors quickly. In a few cases I began to feel uncertain. I knew something was wrongmm but I didn't do anything about it. I just kept running and hoped things would begin to make sense. That won't work in Vermont (in fact, it didn't work in Colorado). I need to spend some time looking at maps and looking for places where an error could occur.
