okansas.blogspot.com Occassional thoughts about orienteering
Thursday, September 18, 2003
Counting controls
A few years ago I started counting controls. I kept track of how many controls I found during races and training during the O' season.
I was inspired to count controls when I'd heard that Bjornar Valstad had found some enormous number of controls (sorry, I don't remember the number) while preparing for the World Champs in Scotland.
When I got hurt two years ago, I stopped counting controls. I've started again. So far I'm up to 38 for the season.
I like counting controls as a measure of training. The number of controls you find is a good measure of how much O' training you do. I've also noticed some patterns -- my orienteering improves after I've found a certain number of controls over a period of about a month.
A book I'm reading notes that the mathematician/astronomy Karl Friedrich Gauss thought that whenever possible one should count. Apparently Guass counted everything he could. If Gauss had been an orienteer, he'd have counted controls. I wonder what else he would have counted...
posted by Michael |
1:05 PM
