Occassional thoughts about orienteering
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| okansas.blogspot.com Occassional thoughts about orienteering |
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Monday, August 15, 2005 More notes on the U.S. at the middle qualifying raceContinuing from where I left off yesterday...Erin, Samantha and Pavlina Erin qualified for the final. That's really good. I think it is fair to say that every U.S. runner who runs a WOC has qualifying for a final as a goal. It looks to me like Erin had a decent race and made her way around the course alone. LapCombat estimates she made almost 4 minutes of mistakes, but none of the mistakes are especially big (the two biggest are 46 and 44 seconds). While Erin qualified, she was very close to not qualifying. Three seconds slower -- just slipping and falling once, for example -- and Annabel Vellador beats Erin. The lesson is obvious; fight for every second. Erin is fairly young;just 24, I think. It'll be fun to see her get better. Samantha just missed qualifying. She finished 16th (top 15 made the final). While Samantha's place was just one from qualifying, she was 1:32 from qualifying. In a race of just over 30 minutes, that is pretty far back. Based on LapCombat's analysis, Samantha started slowly. On the first four controls, she lost 28, 30, 33 and 57 seconds. She also lost 1:56 on six. Losing a little time on each of the first four controls could mean she just started out a bit slowly, taking it careful. But, the mistake at six is odd. Check the map and look at control 6. It doesn't look difficult. Most of the route to the control is on a trail, and you can enlarge the control feature to a spur about 100 meters wide. So, what happened at the 6th control? I've got no idea. I can speculate that because the leg looked so simple, Samantha let up with her concentration. Further, because the leg invovles a lot of trail running, she may have picked up the pace. Maybe she started thinking about running? When that happens, it is not hard to make a mistake. Samantha is just 23 years old, I think, and clearly has the capacity to have better results in the coming years. While Erin and Samantha are young, Pavlina isn't. She's 44 (even older than me!). The splits show Pavlina having a steady run. LapCombat shows just a bit over two minutes of mistake time. Her mistake ratio is better than Minna Kauppi's (Minna won the qualifying race). But, being old matters and Pavlina didn't run fast enough. I don't know if she'd be satisfied with her run, but to me it looks like a reasonable race. Pam James from Canada was just four seconds behind Pavlina. Pam's race was quite different and I've got to think Pam would be disappointed. Pam dropped 1:52 on one control. Which one? Number 6, just like Samantha. What was it about that control? Pavlina and Pam ran the "C" qualifying course. So, did Anne Margrethe Hausken of Norway. Hausken was one of the big surprises of the middle races. She was a clear medal candidate. But, she didn't qualify for the final. Hausken had a huge mistake on one control. At 10, she lost 6 minutes. Ouch. Ten is a relatively tricky looking control (the same area when Dan lost so much time). Here is a quick translation of some of what Hausken wrote about it: I'd looked at the short leg to 10 earlier in the race and I knew that 9 and 10 are on the same contour. Go through some green, cross a stream and I'd be there....I make a n adjustment in my direction, but I'm not sure exactly where I am....I catch sight of a control on a boulder and go there, but I can't get the map and terrain to fit. Now I get stressed....90 percent of my thoughts are negative. I'm using the 10 percent that is left to find my way to the control... Hauken's description goes on a bit more, but you get the idea. She got a bit off, lost map contact, started feeling stressed, and couldn't keep it together. It is a tough sport. posted by Michael | 5:58 PM 
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