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Occassional thoughts about orienteering


Wednesday, November 13, 2002

More about "relevance"

 

If you're a regular reader, you'll know that I'm interested in how to prepare for O' races and the whole idea of "relevance." There's been some discussion on the US Team's egroup about relevant training camps. Reading the discussion got me to thinking some more about relevance.

Most of the discussions about relevance focus on:

What does the terrain look like?
What do the maps look like?
What will the courses look like?
What techniques will be important?
What are the physical demands?

Those are all important questions. But, I think there are also some other important questions to think about when you're preparing for a big race. If I was preparing for the WOC in Switzerland, I'd also think about things like:

What are the interpersonal dynamics that I can expect and how will I handle them?
What are my travel plans?
How will I plan to deal with the time difference?
What non-O' distractions will I face?
How will I handle team mates who get on my nerves?

If you wanted to set up a relevant camp for a WOC, you could try to address some of these sort of questions. Should you? In my opinion, you probably wouldn't want to try to simulate these sorts of things at a training camp. But, if you were serious about the WOC, you'd want to think about them carefully. You'd want to minimize surprises (even though you are guaranteed to be surprised by something at the WOC). You'd want to think through what you might encounter and how you'll react to it.

Before the WOC in Finland, I spent a lot of time thinking about the type of legs I might see and the type of controls that would be especially difficult. How would I react? How would I recognize a control that I expected to be tricky? In the week or so before the WOC, I spent a lot of time making notes to myself about things I expected to be difficult and how I expected to handle them. I also spent some time thinking about how I'd deal with all the distractions and annoyances that are part of a WOC.

posted by Michael | 1:09 PM

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