Occassional thoughts about orienteering
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| okansas.blogspot.com Occassional thoughts about orienteering |
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Friday, December 09, 2005 Orienteering and auto racingNow and then I get some grief from orienteers who seem to be disturbed that I like to watch auto racing.I was pleased to come across Martin Gregor's comments about three subjects I'm interested in: auto racing, track and field, orienteering and economics! Take a look at: Formula One versus World Rally Champs I Formula One versus World Rally Champs II If only Gregor had included basketball. Now, how would basketball fit? Probably something like this: F1 -- WRC Track and field -- Orienteering Macroeconomics -- Microeconomics Football (American) -- Basketball posted by Michael | 8:02 PM 
Friday, August 26, 2005 Watching car racing and looking at an O' mapI'm skipping this weekend's U.S. Champs in Oregon. Instead, I'm staying home. I mowed the lawn tonight and now I'm cooking dinner. After dinner, I'll sit on the sofa, glance at an O' map, and watch the NASCAR race on TV.Car racing and orienteering reminds me of a web page I came across a few days ago. I like reading web pages written by orienteers. Usually, I find them when someone posts an announcement on Alternativet or OPN. But, a few days ago I found one that, as far as I can tell, is nearly unknown. Ingun Fristad is a Norwegian who has run one WOC (2001). She lives in Finland and has a web page. The page isn't full of stuff, but when I first came across it I was surprised to see an entry about auto racing! Fristad wrote a bit about her summer training, including that she is aiming for next year's WOC, and described a visit to watch Finland's World Rally Champs race. Fristad's page is a bit light -- a few stories, some photos, no maps. Most of the page is in Norwegian, but a bit is in English. If you're a fanatic orienteer, it is worth a look at Ingunn Fristad's web page. posted by Michael | 7:26 PM
Thursday, December 12, 2002 5 sport booksThe latest Sports Illustrated magazine has a list of the top 100 sports books. These books aren't necessarily among the top 100, but here are a few sports books I enjoyed reading:Long Distance by Bill McKibben. McKibben is a writer who at the age of 30-something decided to see what it was like to live the life of an elite athlete for a year. His sport of choice is cross-country skiing. It makes for an interesting story and McKibben is a professional writer (not a professional athlete), so the writing is decent. While McKibben is working on his skiing, his father is dying of cancer -- so you get a bit of human drama thrown in for good measure. The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract James is a Lawrence resident and KU econ grad who has made a living writing about baseball. I find his approach to looking at sports interesting -- he thinks and does research like an economist. Its Not About the Bike by Lance Armstrong and Sally Jenkins. If you participate in any endurance sport, you've got to be impressed by Armstrong. The book is not especially good or bad -- but Armstong is amazing. Endless Winter by Luke Bodensteiner. Bodensteiner wrote about his life as an elite cross-country skier. The parallels between cross-country skiing in the US and orienteering in the US are obvious (both are Scandinavian "suffering sports" with few participants in the US). The first line of the book is, "I am an American competing in a European sport." The book is written as a diary, following his training and racing for about a year up to the 1994 Olympics. Think to Win by Don Alexander. Alexander writes about how to drive a race car. While there aren't a lot of obvious reasons an orienteer would want to read about auto racing, there are some interesting similarities. Both O' and racing take a lot of concentration and are about going the right speed at the right time. An orienteer has to run fast when the terrain and navigation allow it, then slow down as needed. A race driver needs to go fast, but not so fast that they lose traction and control. posted by Michael | 8:36 PM
Wednesday, August 05, 2009 Famous Canadian Orienteering ThinkerAdrian Z - famous Canadian orienteering thinker - wrote:On the mental side, again based on personal observation, I would say hardly anyone is smart enough, or mentally tough enough to accept being beaten by old slow guys who out-think and out-navigate them. You can feel "stupid" pretty easily in this sport. And in my opinion, other than motor racing, there is no sport that requires such intense uninterrupted concentration - it is absolutely mentally exhausting. He's hit on one of the problems the sport has with recruiting, especially with recruiting good runners. They have to be comfortable getting beaten - often by quite a lot - by people who look like they've got no business beating them. Adrian also touched on one of my favorite sports - auto racing. A subject of several previous posts, and a link to some observations from Martin Gregor. Back to okansas.blogspot.com. posted by Michael | 8:35 PM
Friday, June 20, 2003 Baseball and orienteering?I was watching a baseball game on TV tonight when Mary suggested I could write about whether there was anything in common between baseball and orienteering. I wasn't having any luck coming up with a topic today, so I'll write a few words about baseball and orienteering.Are baseball and O' alike? The short answer is "no." The biggest and most obvious differences are: baseball is a team sport, O' is individual; baseball isn't an endurance sport, O' is; and baseball is a hugely popular spectator sport, O' is a minor sport that isn't much to watch. But, I can think of at least one similarity. In baseball the pitcher tends to start out well and then get tired. As the pitcher gets tired, he is more likely to make a bad pitch, to make a mistake. Orienteering is a bit like that. Costly mistakes - big booms - are more likely when you get tired. (Actually, I'm not certain that is true. I think it is. It makes intuitive sense. I've seen some evidence that it is true. But, I haven't really studied a bunch of splits to see if it is true). There are probably some other similarities, but none come to mind immediately. As an orienteer, there probably isn't much to learn from baseball. It'd be much more useful to spend your time thinking about golf or auto racing! posted by Michael | 8:54 PM
Saturday, February 15, 2003 Some advice when planning your raceA few words of advice when planning a race...You must finish to win. The race is won in the last kilometers, not the first. Patience pays. Consistency is more important than absolute speed. It is more important to be fast at the end of the course than at the beginning. Those bits of advice are all worth thinking about. I bumped into them in a book about auto racing and adapted them a bit to fit orienteering. The basic ideas -- patience, consistency and the importance of the later parts of a race -- all seem sound. posted by Michael | 8:08 PM
Wednesday, August 07, 2002 Orienteering and basketball?One of my "hobbies" is trying to apply ideas from other disciplines (everything from auto racing to corporate governance) to orienteering. I bumped into an interesting discussion of basketball and orienteering on John Frerickson's training lot at Attackpoint. Here is what John wrote:I played in a basketball game for an hour to fill in for a friend who couldn't make. I played hard and got a great workout. I have realized that basketball is great cross-training since it requires a lot of short bursts of energy as well as endurance. In that regards it is similar to Orienteering: endurance, but not at a continues pace. It also requires a certain amount of mental discipline, as towards the end of the game, you can see where you need to hustle, but to actually make the split decision to execute it, you need to override your mental urge to rest. Since you are constantly resting and bursting during a basketball game, when you are tired, your brain just doesn't make that split decision in time, even though it knows it should. The physical relationship between basketball and orienteering is obvious. But, Fredrickson found a mental relationship. That takes a bit of creativity. posted by Michael | 7:41 PM
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