okansas.blogspot.com

okansas.blogspot.com
Occassional thoughts about orienteering

Tuesday, October 29, 2002

Wrong way Spike

Antti's problem at Smalandskavlen reminded me of my own wrong way race at a race in Finland in 1988 (I think).

Here is the map with my routes.

As you can see, I orienteered from the start almost to the third control before I realized what was up. Once I realized my mistake, I got back on track and had a reasonable run (small boom at 6). But the damage was done and I lost a lot of time.

The race was the second part of a short distance race near Turku in Finland. The first part of the race had individual starts and covered 1.9 km. The second part of the race was a chase start over a 2.1 km course.

I was pretty happy with my race for the first 1.9 km. I finished in 10:43, about two minutes back. Now, a minutes per kilometer behind doesn't sound good, but the field was very strong. The top three after the first course were Oyvin Thon, Oystein Haalo and Rolf Vestre (all Norwegian team members at the time). A minute per km behind those guys wasn't anything I was ashamed of.

In the chase start I ran hard. Unfortunately, I obviously ran too hard to actually read the map and realize the first control was not the one I was heading to.

As I approached the third control (thinking it was the first), I saw the three Norwegians approaching the same control from west.

Wow, Oyvin Thon missed and I caught them!

It didn't take more than a second or two to realize I probably hadn't caught the three Norwegians. I took a quick look, realized what was up and headed back toward one.

I'm sure I learned a lesson that day.

The race was really a lot of fun, despite my foolishness. Back in 1988, top level orienteering had only two types of races -- relays and what is now called "long distance" (aka classic). The chance to run a short race that was designed for spectators was really special. I just wish I'd taken it a few seconds slower in the first 100 meters.

posted by Michael | 12:58 PM

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