okansas.blogspot.com Occassional thoughts about orienteering
Sunday, August 15, 2004
Stephen's shadow
I shadowed Stephen Koehler while I was in Wyoming. Stephen ran M10 and I followed along on the fourth day. Stephen is 7 years old (or as he pointed out "I turned 7 and a half, two days ago.").
It was fun.
Stephen had some good legs and a couple of small mistakes.
When he ran best, he did just what any orienteer would do. He had a clear plan, oriented his map, and looked ahead for the control.
Stephen's biggest error probably cost him 40-50 seconds. As we went along a fence, heading toward a fence corner that was near the control, Stephen let his mind wander. He looked at the barbed wire fence and told me that he'd torn a pair of O' pants on a fence like that. Then when we got to the fence corner, Stephen stopped. He wasn't sure what to do. I guess he'd forgotten he was looking for a lone tree about 50 meters away from the fence corner.
Stephen studied the map for a few seconds. So I asked him, "what is the control on?" He looked at the map and the IOF description and looked a bit puzzled, but the white course also had English descriptions. He looked at the English description, "ah a tree." He looked up and sprinted over to the tree.
Even on a white course and at age 7 and a half...and two days...orienteering is about having a plan, orienting your map, running to the controls and paying attention.
posted by Michael |
8:29 PM
