Occassional thoughts about orienteering
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| okansas.blogspot.com Occassional thoughts about orienteering |
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Friday, September 29, 2006 Relays - the last selectionI spent more time reading the Bowerman biography by Kenny Moore. I'm learning some running history. One thing I hadn't known was that Oregon put together a very good 4 x 1 mile relay team in the early 1960s. They held the world record. That team went to New Zealand to compete against a strong team that included Peter Snell. Reading about the races got me thinking about relays...which, of course, got me thinking about orienteering.It must have been something to be the 4th runner on either the Oregon or New Zealand team. Imagine how motivated you'd feel (and perhaps how stressed you'd feel) knowing that you were the worst runner on a team that either (a) held the world record, or (b) had the world's best runner, Peter Snell, to lead the team. I bet you'd get an immediate boost in your training. You'd train better than you've trained before. You'd focus. Or maybe you'd stress, over train and fall apart. My guess is that most people in that position would rise to the occassion and perform at their best. I think the same thing happens in orienteering relays. I think the people fighting for the last spot on a Jukola team, for example, start to focus and train well. And once you've been picked for that last spot on the Jukola team, you've got strong motivation to focus, sharpen and perform at your best. Or maybe you stress, over train and fall apart. An speaking of orienteering relays, Simon has added WOC relays to his WOC database. It is definitely worth spending some time poking around the relay results. You might find out, for example, that the five best U.S. relay results (in percent behind the winner) were the men in 1983, 1989, 1987, 1981 and 1993. I find it especially satisfying, but also disappointing, that I was on three of those teams. Satisfying because it is fun to be able to look back to days when I wasn't so old; disappointing because the U.S. really ought to be getting better and better. posted by Michael | 8:03 PM 
Comments:
Boy, I was sure tonight's entry was going to be about the fact that Mongolia is sending a team to the World Cup finals next week in France.
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