okansas.blogspot.com

okansas.blogspot.com
Occassional thoughts about orienteering

Friday, June 12, 2009

Practicing not skipping controls

One of my sprint orienteering tips is to "practice not skipping controls (which is remarkably common in sprint races)."

A respondent brought up a good question, "how exactly does one practice not doing something?"

A flippant answer is "the same way you practice not making parallel errors." That's flippant, but actually true.

So, how would I practice not skipping controls?

I'd spend a lot of time looking at sprint courses and thinking about which controls would be easiest to skip. I haven't studied it systematically, but it seems like controls that tend to get skipped are:

1. When a straight line connects three controls;
2. When there are several short legs with sharp angles; and
3. Within a couple of legs of the end of the course.

I'd also run sprint training courses and work on my routine for taking a control and heading to the next control. Ideally, do the training with some added stress (like mass starts with three or four runners going head to head for a few legs with some forked controls).

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posted by Michael | 8:30 PM

3 comments

Comments:

I've got to think that reading your descriptions ahead has got to help your odds. If you know your next control is a tree, for instance, and you don't see one in the control circle you are running to, then something must be wrong.

Not 100% effective, but it helps.

Clem

# posted by

Anonymous : 8:55 PM

How about training with a map that doesn't have lines between the controlcircles? That should make you read the controlnumbers more carefully...

# posted by

Unknown : 3:52 AM

how about the new electronic controls..you cant skip them or do them out of sequece....

# posted by

Anonymous : 11:05 PM

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