Occassional thoughts about orienteering
|
|
| okansas.blogspot.com Occassional thoughts about orienteering |
|
|
Saturday, September 07, 2002 More route choice stuffThe map shows a leg I ran in Sweden. I suspect the route I took was a route the course setter didn't anticipate. I also think few (if any) of the others on the course ran it. I think it was the best route.
I see three alternatives on the leg. You could go straight. You could take the trail in the beginning of the route for about 500 meters, then go straight, get on the big trail and follow it to about the first aid station, then go straight to the control. Or you could do what I did, go around on trails and attack the control from behind. The race was a long time ago, so I'm not absolutely sure what I was thinking (though I have a lot of memories of the race). If I remember correctly, I picked the route for two reasons. It gave me a good attack for a control that looked risky and it gave me a chance to save my legs for later in the course. The terrain had a fair amount of strength-sapping blueberry. I was a very early starter (I think I was either the first or second runner on my course) and knew that I'd need a clean run. The race was at the Swedish 5-days, where an late start time can mean you run most of the time on elephant paths. Elephant paths can, if you use them right, save you energy and help with finding the controls. If you start early at the 5-days AND boom, you can really hurt your overall result. I think my route was good, not so much because it was fast as because it was safe. The area around the control was tough. The visibility was a bit low and the contours aren't so distinct that it'd be easy to read all the way into the control (let alone relocate). When I finished, I got a shower and then went to the result board to see how I did. At the time I was first. But, as I was an early starter, I knew that my result would move down the board as later starters, following elephant tracks through he blueberries to the controls, would run faster. Turns out I only dropped one place. I finished 2nd for the day (in M21-A-short). I've never had a better place at the 5-days. I think the route choice on the leg above illustrates my normal route choice strategies: picking routes that make the navigation simple and saving my energy for later in the course. I'm usually willing to give up some time to make a control easy. I'm boom averse. I'm also not a very strong runner. Running on a trail or road is a lot easier than running in the forest. As a relatively weak runner, I need to look for chances to save some energy by running on trails. posted by Michael | 5:16 PM 
Comments:
Post a Comment
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
||||
|
|||||
