okansas.blogspot.com Occassional thoughts about orienteering
Sunday, September 28, 2003
Studying maps
How much time do orienteers spend studying orienteering maps?
I have no idea.
I know a lot about how top orienteers train physically. I know a bit less -- but still a lot -- about how they train technique.
But, I don't have any idea how much top orienteers (or any orienteers for that matter) spend looking at O' maps.
When we were running today, I asked Snorkel if he spent much time reading maps when he was most serious about orienteering. He said, "of course." But he wasn't sure how much time he was devoting to it.
My experience
When I've been most serious about orienteering, I'd spend about 20 minutes a day looking at O' maps. Recently, I've been spending much less. I still look at maps, but I don't make time every day to look at maps.
I think looking at maps helped me. It seemed like I could get the information from the map with a very short glance. That made it a lot easier to read the map on the run.
An experiment
I'm going to spend 30 minutes looking at O' maps every day between now and the Great Lakes O' Festival (October 11-13). I'll see if I think it helps.
A question for readers
You can use the comment function to answer:
1. How much time do you spend just sitting and looking at O' maps?
2. How much time do you think top elite orienteers spend sitting and looking at O' maps?
posted by Michael |
6:08 PM
