okansas.blogspot.com Occassional thoughts about orienteering
Saturday, November 17, 2007
1 km test course
One of the courses from today's local training camp. Everyone ran this course as a race. Then, I flagged the best route. Everyone ran the course again, following the flags. The idea was to compare the times and get a sense of how much time is going to navigating.
The first time I did this type of training was at a camp in St Louis organized by "famous Swiss orienteering racer" Martin Oppliger.
About a dozen people did the test (I didn't) and the best were about 1:30 faster when they followed the marked route. If I remember right, most were about 4 minutes faster. Most of the participants in the camp are adventure racers, rather than "pure" orienteers.
We did a similar test two weeks ago, except we did not mark the route with flags, but rather run the same course twice, and use the fact that you mostly know where to go the second time. You can see statistics and description here, http://hok.worldofo.com/2007/11/11/o-teknisk-test-1110-analyse/ (sorry, no course).
Most were youth - and not the very best. The ones on a quite good level typically were 6-10% faster the second time. We'll do these tests every autumn and spring and look for development...
