Occassional thoughts about orienteering
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| okansas.blogspot.com Occassional thoughts about orienteering |
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Saturday, March 06, 2004 "You are bike rider"Fritz likes to do an impersonation of a Polish cycling coach he met at some sort of training camp years ago. Fritz makes an attempt at a east European accent and loudly declares "you are bike rider."The coach he's imitating is a guy named Eddie Borysewicz. Eddie B. came to the U.S. in the late 1970s. At the time, cycling in the U.S. seems to have been a lot like orienteering is now -- not many people doing the sport, not much knowledge about the sport, little in the way of coaching and poor international results. But the cyclists weren't hopeless and Eddie B. started coaching in the U.S. Here is something he wrote about his first work with U.S. cyclists: When I rode with those Americans I could see right away they needed a lot of information. It was fun for me to work with them....The riders were not good but they were very nice, they had enthusiasm for learning, and they loved to ride a bike. Their attitude was so different from the one I was used to in Poland, where cycling was a commercial production. Over there if you weren't good, goodbye. Nobody would pay attention to you. This afternoon I began reading bits of a book Eddie B. wrote on cycling. I'm not especially interested in training for cycling, but the book seems interesting. I haven't read very far, but I suspect some of the ideas are a bit dated (the book was written in 1985). Some of the ideas look quite interesting (and the book is, so far, amusing). Here is Eddie B. on what he looks for when he's looking at the potential of a cyclist: These are the three qualities that are important to me: 1. Very fast recovery, what I call good physiology. 2. A love for the sport, what I call being crazy for cycling. 3. A desire to work extremely hard. Substitute "orienteering" for "cycling" and you'd have a good list of qualities that might predict the potential of an orienteer. posted by Michael | 7:42 PM 
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