okansas.blogspot.com

okansas.blogspot.com
Occassional thoughts about orienteering

Monday, October 31, 2005

Lowegren's rant

Fredrik Lowegren has a bit of a rant about course lengths. If you can read Swedish, take a look at what he wrote.

I don't have time to translate the article, but basically Lowegren's points are:

1. Sweden's recent WOC, world cup and Euromeeting results suggest that Sweden is falling behind as an O' nation.

2. M21 courses in Sweden are getting shorter. There are relatively few really long, tough M21 courses.

3. Points 1 and 2 are connected. "...Swedish orienteering no longer has the depth it once did. I think our too wimply "normal" competitions are the cause."

I'm not sure what to think of what Lowegren wrote. It seems possible, but I'm a bit skeptical.

It'd be interesting to see how Sweden compares to other nations. Have course lengths declined in Norway, Finland, Switzerland? I suspect (and if I get around to it I'll check) that course lengths (i.e. winning times) have gotten shorter all over the world.

A more difficult -- and more intersting -- question to look at is the relationship between how people train and course lengths. It seems obvious that when winning times are longer, people will train more. But, I'm not sure that is the case. Unfortunately, figuring out the relationship between course lengths and how people train isn't so easy.

My own experience (which is a very weak proxy for how top elite orienteers train!) is that my training depends more on how motivated I feel and how much time I have than on the length of the events I'm preparing for. Thre is some relationship, but not so much.

posted by Michael | 8:09 PM

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