Occassional thoughts about orienteering
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| okansas.blogspot.com Occassional thoughts about orienteering |
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Saturday, October 08, 2005 Thoughts from an easy distance run How would you describe a leg like this? Not how would you do the leg, but how would you describe it in just a few words?That's what I was thinking about during part of today's run. I was jogging up and down hills at Wyandotte -- not so hard that it took a lot of effort and attention. To keep my mind occupied I thought about how to describe the leg. The leg was to the sixth control of last weekend's race at Cuivre River. It was a bit over half way around the course. So maybe the first thing to describe the leg would be: Middle part of the course The leg was about 750 meters long. So maybe the second thing to describe the leg would be: Middle length leg (not long or short) The main orienteering difficulty on this leg wasn't navigation or dealing with any extremes of terrain or vegetation, it was making a simple route choice decision. Would you take the trail or go straight? Maybe the third thing to describe the leg would be: Simple route choice Once you've made a route choice, the leg is straightforwad. The control location is not tricky (you can make it quite big by treating it as the large east/west running reentrant rather than the little side reentrant the control sits in. The main navigational difficulty is just keeping rough direction and distance. Maybe the fourth thing to describe the leg would be: Rough direction and distance judgement The way to gain time on this leg is to run faster than everyone else. To do that, you'd need to move well through the terrain. Even if you take the trail route, you're only on the trail for about half of the leg, so an ability to move well through the terrain would be key. Maybe the fifth thing to describe the leg would be: Emphasis on terrain running So, I've got a simple description: In the middle part of the course, we had a mid-length leg that offerred a simple route choice problem, finding the control invovled rough distance and direction judgement, and the leg emphasized terrain running. So what? Yes, so what? Well, that's the kind of thing that floats around in your brain when you're doing an easy distance run. But I also think that a good system for simple descriptions of legs could be useful. If you built up a good collection of legs, you could begin to see what sort of legs give you trouble. You could begin to see what sort of problems you face most often. You could begin to see different course setting styles. You might just learn something. posted by Michael | 12:48 PM 
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