Occassional thoughts about orienteering
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| okansas.blogspot.com Occassional thoughts about orienteering |
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Wednesday, August 24, 2005 a couple of thoughts about micro O'I spent a bit of time today thinking about micro O'.How fast do you think the top runners at the Nordic Champs ran during the micro O' section of the race? When I watched the video, it looked like people did a lot of standing and didn't move fast. But, when I looked at the times for the micro O' section, it looks like people were moving pretty well. For the micro O' at the Nordic Champs, the men did 8 controls over 810 meters. The average min/km time for the top ten men was 7:17 min/km. While that isn't moving flat out, that is moving pretty well (remember they are having to find controls). The women did 8 controls over 730 meters. The average min/km for the top ten women was 8:52 min/km. Again, that isn't moving fast, but it is moving reasonably well. The difference between the paces of the men and the women seems, to me, pretty big. The women may have been being more cautious. Though when I look at the number of controls missed, I don't see any difference (I figured that if the women were being a bit more cautious, that might show up in fewer missed controls). Compromises for spectators and TV Micro O' is clearly a compromise to make the sport more interesting for spectators and TV. And, the idea of including micro O' in the WOC seems to be getting a lot of criticism because it is a compromise. Micro O' isn't real orienteering and it just doesn't feel right to be making a compromise in a World Champs. If it were up to me, I wouldn't include micro O' in the WOC. As I thought about it, I wondered why the compromises we already make for spectators and TV don't seem to bother me (and certainly don't seem to be getting much, if any, criticism)? I looked at the relay courses from Japan and looked at how much dead running was put in the course to make it easier to watch. You can see the relay course here. It looks like the event is set up so the orienteers begin with a couple hundred meters of dead running (i.e. no navigation) to get to the start triangle. Then the courses loop back through the start/finish/spectator area and cover a good 800 meters with essentially no navigation (one control that would be quite simple to find). It looks like the relay courses included a good 1 km with almost no orienteering value to make the race easier to watch. I'm not complaining about the relay courses and how they were designed. In fact, I like when courses are set up to have some chance to watch the orienteers during the race. What I find interesting is that my knee jerk reaction to micro O' is negative and I don't have that reaction to setting up normal courses for spectators. posted by Michael | 9:23 PM 
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