Occassional thoughts about orienteering
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| okansas.blogspot.com Occassional thoughts about orienteering |
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Wednesday, July 05, 2006 Why not count your steps?Some discussion over at Attackpoint about pace counting got me thinking -- why not count your steps?I am among those orienteers who doesn't count steps. I have no idea, none at all, of how many steps I take in 100 meters. Long, long ago, I knew my pace. But, I almost never needed to pace, so I lost the tool. And, I don't miss it. I can only recall wanting to count steps once in the last few years. I didn't know how many steps it took per 100 meters. But, it didn't matter. When I looked at the map, I saw that pace counting would be useful on the leg. So, as I approached the control, I counted my steps in an early part of the leg (say from a trail junction to the bottom of a reentrant) and then just used that number of steps on the part of the leg where I thought I needed to count steps. It worked fine. But, in 20+ years of orienteering, I've rarely wanted to count steps. So, it doesn't seem like an especially useful tool. To my way of thinking, counting steps isn't important. But being able to judge distance is important. The question becomes: is pace counting a good way to judge distance? I prefer judging distance by looking (or by "feel" if it is at night). When I was just starting to orienteer, I realized that the block where I grew up was 200 meters x 100 meters. I used that to help me judge distances. If I looked at the map and saw that I needed to go 100 meters, I knew that was the distance from my front steps to the front steps of Bill's house, just down the street. The technique is a little rough, but so is counting steps. The advantage to judging distance by look/feel is that you can use it to, for example, estimate the distance between you and a feature off to your side. Pace counting won't help with that. I imagine other orienteers judge distances the same way I do, that is by relating them to a known, familiar distance. But, I haven't seen people teaching others to use that technique. At the Texas Junior O' Camp, for example, I've seen lots of exercises about pace counting, but I've never seen an exercise on judging distance by look/feel. Yet, it is a very simple technique to use and to practice. All it takes is finding some places you are familiar with (like distance around where you live or work) and becoming aware of how those distances look/feel. Gmaps Pedometer is a great tool for doing that. So if you were familiar with the Ames Monument (snapshot below), you might guess that walking a lap around the monument would cover about 100 meters. Gmaps Pedometer puts that distance of a lap around the monument at 106 meters. Then, if you're orienteering and need to cover 100 meters, you'd know that it would be "like" taking a lap around the Ames Monument -- no need to count your steps. 
posted by Michael |
9:26 PM
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