Occassional thoughts about orienteering
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| okansas.blogspot.com Occassional thoughts about orienteering |
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Tuesday, June 15, 2004 Like the rest of us?I like looking at routes from top orienteers. Some very good orienteers put some of their maps on the internet.Today I was looking at Bjornar Valstad's routes from a test race the Norwegian team used to help pick their European Champs team. As I looked at Valstad's routes I thought, "wow, he's orienteering like the rest of us!" Check out his map and route. Start to 1 and 2: Valstad seems to start fine. His routes are straight and it looks like he must be picking up some details as he approaches the controls. At the second control his time is 2:42 -- a few seconds ahead of Holger Hott Johansen, who ended up the top Norwegian. To 3, 4 and 5: Whoa! On each of these legs Valstad gets off line. He missed the controls at 3 and 4. Look at the route to 5. It reminds me of the mistake I made years ago and wrote about days ago. By the 5th control, Valstad was 1:04 behind Hott Johansen and 1:24 behind Bjorn Eriksen, the leader at that point. Actually, Valstad isn't as far behind as I'd have guessed by looking at his routes. That suggests that he was moving fast. Was he running too fast? Was that what caused the mistakes? To 6 and 7: Valstad's routes look fine. But you can see that he drew his route to 7, then crossed it out and drew it again. The corrected route is quite different from the x-ed out route. That's the sort of thing that I do now and then. When I'm drawing my route after a good run, it is easy. I don't make mistakes in drawing the route. But if my concentration was way off, then I might make a mistake as I draw the route. Pure speculation here...maybe Valstad's concentration was off so much that he's unsure at first glance how he ran... Now jump up to that last, from control 12 through 19: It looks like Valstad is taking extra-careful routes. He's running to very distinct attack points (14, 16 and 17 are good examples). His routes are far from the straight line. I wonder if he took those routes to avoid thick terrain with lots of stinging nettles. Maybe. Or maybe he revised his strategy -- emphasizing caution to recover a good rhythm to his race. I don't know. By the finish, Valstad was only 1:55 behind Hott Johansen. Just looking at the routes I'd have thought he'd lost a good bit more time than that. Certainly if I'd have run the routes Valstad drew I'd have lost a lot of time (not just because I'm running a lot slower). Sometimes it is fun to see a great orienteer with routes that look like the rest of us. I suppose it is a bit like watching Tiger Woods miss a putt! posted by Michael | 8:19 PM 
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