Occassional thoughts about orienteering
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| okansas.blogspot.com Occassional thoughts about orienteering |
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Sunday, April 24, 2005 Some Tio Mila thoughtsI spent a lot of time sitting in front of the computer following Tio Mila. A few thoughts:Map reading frequency. If you had loads of video of orienteers in action you could get a good idea of how often orienteers look at the map and how long they look at it. You could get a sense of this while watching Tio Mila. Some orienteers -- Thierry Guergiou being a prime example -- look at the map by taking a lot of quick looks. Others take long looks, then run for a while without looking again. GPS coverage. Some of the top runners carried GPS devices that let those of us at home follow their progress. The technology seemed to work well. A little dot moving across the map with a couple of little dots chasing it showed us Anders Nordberg pulling away on the "Long Night." I liked being able to see that Nordberg was taking different routes than his chasers. Nordberg generally ran straighter while the chasers took trail routes. The organizers gave runners the choice of whether or not to wear the GPS. Unfortunately, a lot of the runners decided not to carry the GPS. Too bad. Law of Competitive Balance. The "Law of Competitive Balance" gives you a few teams to watch for next year. Kristiansands OK was DQd (for taking the wrong map at an exchange near the end of the race). They've got to be disappointed and looking forward to next year. Halden SK had won the last six Tio Mila races. They finished second this year. You can bet they'll be training a bit harder next winter. Kalevan Rasti chased well, but came up third. Glasses?. Meaningless data -- only 2 of the top ten women on the last leg wore glasses while running. But, those two finished 1st and 2nd. Craziness on the run in. I don't think the problems on the run in on the last leg decided the result (Losman from Sodertalje passed Sandvik from Halden on the run in when Sandvik began running down the wrong finish chute). Even if Sandvik had run in the right lane I think Losman would have gone by him. But, I guess you never know. The Halden newspaper quoted Peter Thoresen, "The run in should have been marked better. That wasn't a good way to decide a relay." I was reminded of a Tio Mila back in the late 1980s or early 1990s. Melker Karlsson and Jarmo Raimen were together at the last control. Karlsson was a couple of steps ahead. But Karlsson didn't follow the marked route to the finish chute. If I remember correctly he ran through an out of bounds area. He wasn't disqualified because the tapes marking the area out of bounds were already broken down. Karlsson probably lost time as the out of bounds area was quite rough. Raimen won the sprint. That same Tio Mila one of the teams from my club was disqualified for taking the wrong map (just like KOK this year). There are some lessons from history....carefully check out the run in and be very careful at the exchange to make sure you get the right map. posted by Michael | 6:02 PM 
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