Occassional thoughts about orienteering
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| okansas.blogspot.com Occassional thoughts about orienteering |
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Thursday, September 22, 2005 More on first controlsJohn wrote a comment about yesteday's post that raised some interesting questions.Do you think that this has something to do with the fact that the top Orienteers are winning most of the controls anyway. It would be interesting to see how the top Orienteers results on the first control compared with their results on the other controls. I looked at how the winners placed on each leg for 8 different races (2005 Swedish long and middle champs and 2004 WOC long and middle races). That's a small sample, but it looks like the winners tend to do relatively well on the first control compared to other controls. For the 8 races I looked at I saw two types of patterns. The first was steady, but with a couple of bad legs that seemed to crop up at random. The second was a fast finish (i.e. last 1/3rd of the course being run better). The fast finish races were from the 2004 WOC long races. That makes some intuitive sense. In the later stages of races some of the competitors might slow down because they are not strong enough or because they've boomed enough that they ease off a bit. At the same time, the really strong competitors (the ones who are both fit and having good races) will have a better chance of winning legs. I think you might find that the first control is actually no different from any of the other controls. The first control is different. Some years ago I spent a lot of time looking at boom rates. I looked to see if there were any patterns. I saw two patterns: a slight tendency to have more booms in the last quarter of the course; and a clear tendency to have fewer booms on the first control. The first control is different (though there are, of course, some races where this won't be the case and I suspect there are some specific orienteers who tend to boom the first control regularly). I don't think that this indicates that good performance on the first control will result in a good performance on the rest of the course. But, I think a good performing orienteer will usually have a good performance on the first control. It isn't that a good first leg causes a good result. It is more the other way around -- a good orienteer will cause a good first leg. Keep in mind that I've only looked at a small slice of history. 56 races isn't really many. And I've only looked at all of the legs for 8 races. Drawing any conclusions from so little data is risky. I've looked at quite a few races where I've checked the boom rate on the first control (not sure how many but it'd be well over 100), and I'm fairly confident that first controls have, compared to other controls, a lower boom rate. Anthony also raised an interesting comment. He's pointing out that as a strategy, starting slow and safe is better than going out fast and taking a risk. I tend to agree. It reminds me of how Kent Olsson talks about starting races. He tells himself to walk to the first control. If he does that he runs slowly. If he tells himself to run slowly to the first control, he runs fast. If he runs fast, he is likely to miss the control. Olsson likens missing the first control to running the course with a heavy backpack. Finally, if you've read this far...well, that shows some real endurance. I can't imagine anyone being such an O' geek that they've read this much about race splits! posted by Michael | 7:32 PM 
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