okansas.blogspot.com Occassional thoughts about orienteering
Sunday, September 30, 2007
"Bad dream" terrain?
This is my home terrain:
The map is an area called "Woodridge" - typical north east Kansas terrain. The open areas are old farm fields. The forest is thick, but not impossibly thick. There are a few shallow reentrants. If the map was a bit better, you'd see a few small outcrops and (maybe) a little more vegetation detail in the forest areas (some small clearings and small areas of dark green).
Today, the yellow areas were slow because the grass was high (a good 5 feet = 1.5 meters).
I'm not sure how to make orienteering in this sort of terrain interesting. As a course setter, you look for ways to force route choice. In this kind of terrain, a long leg usually gives a couple of options. But the difference between the options is usually so small that the decision isn't very important. The course setter can try to test the orienteer with direction and tempo changes (sort of like sprint O'). Probably the biggest challenge in this type of terrain is keeping a good pace through the slow forest. But, that just isn't much fun.
