okansas.blogspot.com Occassional thoughts about orienteering
Tuesday, September 28, 2004
Some old and some new advice
The first bit of orienteering advice I remember was to "be a that's where I'm going orienteer not a that's where I am orienteer." The advice was from Oyvin Thon who was interviewed for Orienteering USA (the precursor to ONA) in 1982. Thon had just won his second individual world championship.
At the time I wasn't exactly sure what Thon was talking about, but the phrase stuck in my mind.
A few years later I began to understand. A guy named Lars Lindquist spent a week helping Dan and I train at Silvermine in New York (in 1985?). Lars was in the U.S. working with another Swede (Mats Carlsson?) to make some maps. He spent a week with Dan and I running around Silvermine and trying to teach us how to orienteer. Lars had us running a very simple exercise that taught us how to be a "that's where I'm going orienteer" and demonstrated how much faster it was.
I was reminded of Thon's quote when I read the interview with Thierry Gueorgiou in the latest O-Sport magazine. Gueorgiou said:
I would say that in 2001 I was an orienteer who knew all the time exactly where he was. At present, I'm an orienteer who knows where he will be in the next 100 meters.
Gueorgiou's style sounds just like Thon's. But, I think I like Gueorgiou's phrase more. His description is more concrete, more descriptive.
posted by Michael |
8:09 PM
