okansas.blogspot.com Occassional thoughts about orienteering
Friday, November 07, 2003
Sprint race last weekend
I wasn't at the DVOA meet last weekend, but one of the highlights looks to have been the 1 km sprint race on Saturday afternoon. The event was a fund raiser for the U.S. Team.
When I look at the course a couple of things strike me:
My eye doesn't do a very good job of seeing the second control. I could imagine running to one, then heading off to three. Clearly one of the challenges of sprint orienteering is running to the right control in the right order (a lesson exposed at the world champs last summer, too).
Even though the field was small, it looks like a small boom would cost you a lot. Mihai, for example, missed the first control and dropped maybe a minute or so. Over a distance of just one kilometer, that's a huge portion of your total race time. If Mihai lost a minute (which seems reasonable looking at the times), he would have run about 5:30 for the kilometer. If you figure a regular blue course takes 75 minutes, an equivalent boom would be almost 14 minutes!
Peter's comment about the race was, "Turned out to be both fun and an intense workout, and also proof of the old saying that even an easy course can be hard if you just run a little faster."
