okansas.blogspot.com Occassional thoughts about orienteering
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Heads up training
Marianne Andersen wrote about keeping your head up while orienteering and described some training exercises for working on the skill. The article is at Kontrol (and is in Norwegian).
The map above is an example of a way that I train to keep my head up and look far ahead in the terrain. I design a course and then run it, but instead of actually going to the control, I just go to a spot where I can see the control (or the feature if there aren't markers put out). The example - which is hypothetical - shows my route as a dashed line. The small circles are the points where I'd be sure I'd seen the feature.
I think it is a useful exercise. It is also a nice way to make use of a map that you're familiar with.