Occassional thoughts about orienteering
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| okansas.blogspot.com Occassional thoughts about orienteering |
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Wednesday, September 18, 2002 Looking at another mapThe map I posted earlier today shows a part of a very good race. Here are a couple of legs from a bad race.In 1991, I ran the second leg at Tiomila. The second leg was a 12.5 km night leg. I was psyched to be running a night leg. It was the last time I ran Tiomila and the first time I'd earned a night leg. I blew my chance. I made some classic relay errors. The map below shows my second leg (from 92 to 82). The first leg was about 1.5 km and not especially demanding. At the first control, I caught sight of a couple of runners from other teams. I let the other runners draw me off course. As I left control 92 on my way to control 82, I tried to keep up with the runners ahead of me. It turns out they were on a different fork -- going from 90 to 85 and then 95. To keep the others in sight, I ran faster than I should have. I couldn't keep up with the map reading. I noticed I wasn't going quite right and tried to correct by looking at my compass and heading in the right direction. I wasn't exactly sure where I was until I bumped into a marsh (the marsh just east of control 82). When I bumped into that marsh, I knew where I was...except I was wrong. When I came to the marsh, I thought I was at the marsh directly south of my control. Boom. I lost a good three minutes. 
My mistake at the second control was a wake up call. I needed to be careful and sharp. I began to orienteer well. I was taking safe routes and pushing hard. I ran well for the next six legs (maybe 5 km). Then I caught another pack of runners. The map below shows the leg where I caught up to a group. 
As I came in to 153, a string of maybe a dozen runners were leaving the control. I jumped on the train. We were going fast. Way too fast for me to read the map. The forest was thick and I was working hard just to keep up. We ran through dense forest, through some wet stuff and crossed a trail. We went another 150 meters or so and then the forest opened up. Then the train stopped. None of us knew where we were. I couldn't believe it. Nobody had been reading the map, we'd all just been running. Everyone stood around for a bit. Everyone kept an eye on everyone else. Clearly standing around and watching everyone else wasn't going to work. A few people ran back east toward the trail. A few headed north. Nobody went west. I went south. South turned out to be the right decision and I quickly found the control, but not before losing a good three minutes. I ran well the rest of the course. But, running well for all but two legs isn't good enough. It felt bad to run poorly -- well below my potential -- at a relay. posted by Michael | 3:10 PM 
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