Occassional thoughts about orienteering
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| okansas.blogspot.com Occassional thoughts about orienteering |
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Monday, April 04, 2005 Friday's sprint raceI haven't done many sprint races. I didn't do any physical training specifically to prepare myself for a sprint. But, I spent some time in the two weeks before the race looking at maps, many of those maps for sprint races.The day before I went to the race, I wrote a few notes: Look for buildings. A lot of sprint courses seem to give you the chance to navigate by buildings and ignore all other detail. Make sure you go to the next control. Lots of sprint courses criss-cross themselves and finding the start triangle can be tricky. Look for chances to use doglegs. Lots of sprint courses give you options where the choices look equal, but one option gives you a dogleg. Take a look at the sprint course (with Peter Gagarin's routes). It turned out that all of the notes I wrote applied to Friday's race. On most of the legs you could use a building to help you find the control or to get you headed in the right direction toward the next control. The course criss-crossed itself and the course printing wasn't so easy to read. Figuring out where the triangle was and where the next control was mattered. Sergei Zhyk was disqualified because he didn't go to ten. He didn't see it on the map. Jeff Watson was disqualified for skipping 7, 8 and 9 for the same reason. Tim Good lost time trying to find the start triangle. I had no trouble finding the next control or the start triangle. I don't think it is because of any specific skill or ability, I just was worried about it before the race. I also looked at an old map of the area the organizers posted and had a good idea of where to start looking for the triangle as soon as I turned the map over. I had lots of opportunities to use doglegs. I don't know if it helped or not. I don't know if I picked any bad routes because of doglegs. But, it gave me a chance to see the runners starting ahead of me and behind me. On the way to the third control I saw Ted Good, who started a minute ahead of me, and had an idea that I was gaining on him (the splits show I'd made up 23 seconds by the third control. On the way to four, I saw Syd Reader on his way to three and saw that I'd gained on him (the splits show I'd gained 46 seconds by the third control). Getting some quick feedback on how I was doing probably helped. It felt good to know I was gaining. Ted ended up beating me. He connected with a small pack of runners and they all picked up the pace (relative to me) a bit. I saw the pack on the doglegs, but never managed to catch sight of them from behind. I wish I could have caught their backs, I think that would have helped me push a bit harder. Overall, I was pretty happy with my race, though I finished pretty far back. And, of course, it is always good to beat Tom Carr. posted by Michael | 6:36 PM 
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