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 mapsI took another day off work today. I stayed at home resting and spent some time looking at maps from old races.This map is the first part of an M21A night course I ran a long time ago - 1991. It was a very good race for me. 
For me, one of the keys to the race was how I ran to the second control. Just after I passed the powerline, I felt a bit unsure. At night, when you feel unsure, you need to do something right away. Trying to relocate is difficult. Wandering around can be a waste of time. As soon as I felt unsure, I headed a bit north. Instead of slowing down and going straight, trying to make the map fit what I was seeing, I bailed out. I then took a very safe route to the control. If you look at the map, you might wonder why I didn't just go straight and relocate on the small trail just before the control circle. That's a good idea, except the small trails in Sweden can be difficult to see (especially at night). Also, relocating on the trail would be a bit risky. It'd be easy to make a little parallel error and then boom the control. Feeling uncertain and nearly booming at two probably helped me have a good race. It gave me a warning -- be careful. Without costing me much time. I'm sure I lost a bit of time compared to going straight and spiking the control. But, I didn't really lose much time. My route to five is another place where I gave up some time compared to the straight route. If you didn't boom, going straight would be faster. But, my route was very safe. I gave up a bit of time for a safe route. I also gave up a bit of time to have a chance to run on trails and roads instead of through the forest. I didn't scan the rest of the map, but the terrain changed a bit after the 5th control. The forest was a bit more open and the orienteering was a bit easier. I continued to run around on trails and make the controls as easy as possible. I continued giving up a bit of time compared to a well executed straight route. I made one small boom -- probably 15-20 seconds -- when I didn't see the control from within the circle. It was a very good race; certainly one of my best ever. The course was 10.2 km and I ran it in 78 minutes (in a cold mix of rain and sleet). I won by over four minutes. posted by Michael | 2:29 PM 
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