okansas.blogspot.com
Occassional thoughts about orienteering


Friday, June 18, 2010

Some notes on map reading frequency

 

Samantha did some technique training yesterday that included some experimenting with different frequencies of looking at the map. Here's what she wrote:

Ross set up a course at Franklin Park. The first park you tried not to look at your map much, and the second part you looked at it constantly. I found the first to be easier than the second, but I approached each exercise differently. When I had to count how many times I looked at the map, I stopped at the beginning of each leg and planned it and memorized it as best i could before heading out. Then I had to look at it between 1 and 3 times when running the leg. Trying to look at it every 5 seconds caused me to look at it quickly each time, but not really get any information from it. I also felt like I wasn't spending enough time with my head up, looking around the woods.

I've learned a lot about my own orienteering by experimenting with my map reading frequency. I'm always interested to see other people experimenting.

It also inspired me to dig up a couple of things I've written about looks at the map.

The video of Patrick G. on a sprint course with, as best I can tell, 6 quick looks at the map in 20 seconds of video.

One of several experiments I've done with map reading frequency.

(Some of the comments on the last two posts are worth a look).



A translation of something Johan Ivarsson wrote about map reading frequency.


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posted by Michael | 7:37 PM

2 comments


Comments:
I'm also very interested in map reading frequency, and have started making a small Android application (should be just as easy on the Iphone, but I haven't got one) to help logging it online. The plan is to hold the phone under the map, and the phone will register the angle you hold the map (and thus if you are looking on the map)every second and log it to a file. You may then combine it with the GPS-track, and see how often/when a runner looks at the map, and combine it with analysis of mistakes etc. I am aware that others have done similar experiments using a headcam, but logging automatically will make it much easier. Making the app should be very straightforward, finding the time for it is the problem as always:)
 
Jan, that sounds great. It would be nice to have some real data acquired during races to see what it shows.

Michael
 
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