Occassional thoughts about orienteering
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| okansas.blogspot.com Occassional thoughts about orienteering |
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Thursday, May 13, 2004 Learning from the pastI came across a report of the Swedish national team's recent WOC training camp and noticed that they're trying to make use of the experiences of some former top Swedish runners.The camp began on Saturday evening with a lecture by the guy who won the 1979 Swedish Championships in the same sort of terrain as the WOC will go. Goran Andersson (but not the same Goran Andersson as the national team's coach) gave his thoughts on orienteering in Vastmanland and how he prepared for the 1979 Swedish Champs. The camp also included technique training set up by Johan Ivarsson. Ivarsson is past his international O' career (though his results are still extremely good at the highest levels of competition). Ivarsson shadowed Modig. Last week I wrote about comparing O' in the US in 2004 with the "old days": One of the biggest changes since the early 1980s is what I'd call the "O' infrastructure." We've got a lot more good maps now. We've also got many more orienteers who know a lot about orienteering. Back in the early 1980s, if you wanted to learn about orienteering you might find a few people with 5-10 years of experience. But now you've got people with a lot of experience. Collectively there is a lot of knowledge about orienteering, competing and training. That just wasn't around in the early 1980s. It looks like Sweden is making an effort to make use of experienced old-timers. I wonder how much other nations do that? I think it is common for national team coaches to be former elite runners. But, I wonder how nations make systematic use of the experience that is sitting around waiting to be exploited? The camp also had a lot of the sort of training where they simulated WOC conditions (like what I wrote about a few days ago). If you can read Swedish, check out Modig's article. posted by Michael | 12:45 PM 
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