Occassional thoughts about orienteering
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| okansas.blogspot.com Occassional thoughts about orienteering |
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Friday, June 18, 2010 Some notes on map reading frequencySamantha 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. Back to okansas.blogspot.com. posted by Michael | 7:37 PM 
Saturday, February 24, 2007 Frequency of looking at the map I ran at SMP today, which gave me a chance to test the experiment I wrote about a few days ago. I ran the leg, looking at the map at each X. It took about 3:30 - reading the map once every 40 seconds. Then I re-ran the leg, taking much more frequent looks at the map. The second time I looked at the map 22 times - reading the map once every 10 seconds.I ran a couple of other legs, counting the number of looks at the map. What (if anything) did I learn? The short answer is "nothing." Checking the map reading frequency on just 3 legs isn't enough to learn anything. But, I got a sense of my normal map reading frequency and the pattern to my looks at the map. I also got a feeling that this might be a useful training exercise. It feels like the inverse of "map memory" training. I wish I could figure out a way to count my looks at the map without paying attention. Back to okansas.blogspot.com. posted by Michael | 7:09 PM
Wednesday, January 19, 2011 Swimming coach on using video to review bad performancesA Canadian swimming coach designed a way to work with video of swimmers who are watching races where they made some sort of mistake. The coach has the athletes do three things as they watch a failed performance on video:1. Express the feelings they had when they watch the failed race; 2. Think about what went went wrong; and 3. Imagine performance changes for the next race. These three steps reduced the negative emotions and prepared the swimmers for action and improvement. The Canadian swimmers review bad performances "poolside" and think about how they would fix the problems. That same approach might work for an orienteer reviewing a headcam video of a race. Thiery Gueorgiou has used a headcam. In an article at O-training.net he's quoted as saying: The first things I learned was that my map reading frequency decreased during the race, which is obviously a sign of tiredness for me. You wonder if Gueorgiou then imagined a way to correct that - maybe a way of training to maintain a high map reading frequency even when he was tired. By the way, the info about the Canadian swimming coach is from Sian Beilock's book Choke. Back to okansas.blogspot.com. posted by Michael | 8:21 PM
Sunday, November 08, 2009 Map reading frequencyA rough translation of something Johan Ivarsson wrote:Both Pasi [Ikonen] and Jörgen [Rostrup] must have an amazing ability to read the map and to read the map at full speed in the forest. I think they can do that because they take many looks at the map each leg. At a training camp with the Norwegian team before the 1999 WOC, they did a simple study of the number of times each runner looked at a map on a leg. The best men in the world that year -- Petter Thoresen and Bjørnar Valstad -- read the map more than 20 times on a 400 meter leg. Hanne Staff, who has been the best woman the last few years, read the map 15 times, while the worst of the women in the test read the map just 5 times. Jörgen and Pasi probably take a lot of looks at the map. They get it. Read the map a lot and you won't miss much. And they're able to read the map at full speed! You've got to get out and train and, as Bjørnar says, "it will pay off!" I found this in the archives and thought it was worth a repeat. Back to okansas.blogspot.com. posted by Michael | 6:11 PM
Tuesday, December 03, 2002 Read the map, don't boomA short translation from Staff-Vlastad.com:Those who read the map the most, boom the least An unofficial study at a national team camp in 1999 showed that those who felt they boomed the least were also those who have the highest map reading frequency. This is logical. Orienteers who read the map frequently have a better chance of making corrections before they lose time. Staff-Valstad doesn't explain what this study was. It sounds like it might involve comparing how often orienteers say they look at their map and how much time they think they lose. It'd be more interesting (and a lot more work) to see how often different orienteers actually look at their maps and compare those measures to split times (to identify booms). I'm not sure how often I look at my map. Thinking back to my training at Wyandotte last Saturday, I'd guess I was looking at the map at least once very 100 meters (probably more than once). Those looks were usually very short -- just a quick glance. But, I'm not really sure how often I look at my map. Maybe I could do an experiment -- set my watch to beep every 30 seconds, then see if I usually look at my map once every 30 seconds, more frequently, or less frequently. posted by Michael | 6:44 PM
Sunday, April 24, 2005 Some Tio Mila thoughtsI spent a lot of time sitting in front of the computer following Tio Mila. A few thoughts:Map reading frequency. If you had loads of video of orienteers in action you could get a good idea of how often orienteers look at the map and how long they look at it. You could get a sense of this while watching Tio Mila. Some orienteers -- Thierry Guergiou being a prime example -- look at the map by taking a lot of quick looks. Others take long looks, then run for a while without looking again. GPS coverage. Some of the top runners carried GPS devices that let those of us at home follow their progress. The technology seemed to work well. A little dot moving across the map with a couple of little dots chasing it showed us Anders Nordberg pulling away on the "Long Night." I liked being able to see that Nordberg was taking different routes than his chasers. Nordberg generally ran straighter while the chasers took trail routes. The organizers gave runners the choice of whether or not to wear the GPS. Unfortunately, a lot of the runners decided not to carry the GPS. Too bad. Law of Competitive Balance. The "Law of Competitive Balance" gives you a few teams to watch for next year. Kristiansands OK was DQd (for taking the wrong map at an exchange near the end of the race). They've got to be disappointed and looking forward to next year. Halden SK had won the last six Tio Mila races. They finished second this year. You can bet they'll be training a bit harder next winter. Kalevan Rasti chased well, but came up third. Glasses?. Meaningless data -- only 2 of the top ten women on the last leg wore glasses while running. But, those two finished 1st and 2nd. Craziness on the run in. I don't think the problems on the run in on the last leg decided the result (Losman from Sodertalje passed Sandvik from Halden on the run in when Sandvik began running down the wrong finish chute). Even if Sandvik had run in the right lane I think Losman would have gone by him. But, I guess you never know. The Halden newspaper quoted Peter Thoresen, "The run in should have been marked better. That wasn't a good way to decide a relay." I was reminded of a Tio Mila back in the late 1980s or early 1990s. Melker Karlsson and Jarmo Raimen were together at the last control. Karlsson was a couple of steps ahead. But Karlsson didn't follow the marked route to the finish chute. If I remember correctly he ran through an out of bounds area. He wasn't disqualified because the tapes marking the area out of bounds were already broken down. Karlsson probably lost time as the out of bounds area was quite rough. Raimen won the sprint. That same Tio Mila one of the teams from my club was disqualified for taking the wrong map (just like KOK this year). There are some lessons from history....carefully check out the run in and be very careful at the exchange to make sure you get the right map. posted by Michael | 6:02 PM
Sunday, December 12, 2010 Head cam notesA few notes on orienteering head cam videos...Watching a head cam video lets you count how many times an orienteer looks at the map. Map reading frequency is something I've been interested in for a while. The camera I've been using - GoPro Hero HD 960 - does a great job of picking up the voice of the person wearing the camera. You could run a course and narrate what you're doing. It wouldn't be quite the same as a regular run (unless you talk to yourself out loud all the time), but it would be interesting. I think it could be a useful way to help relatively inexperienced orienteers understand what a more experienced orienteer is doing. Chris Evans is wearing a GoPro in this video (he starts his run at 4:00 in the video and you can see a clip from his head cam at about 4:15): Back to okansas.blogspot.com. posted by Michael | 5:46 PM
Tuesday, March 09, 2004 What were Staff and Valstad up to?Hanne Staff and Bjornar Valstad have been at a training camp and some races in Sweden. Here is a quick translation:The goal for this period of our training has been to work on the fundamental thought patterns that are the base for good O' technique at high speed. Therefore we've done some long session of classic-character at a low/moderate speed; control picking to force a high map reading frequency; and some threshold-speed sessions where both physical capacity and O' technique go together.... Well, that's a pretty rough translation. But, it gives you an idea of how they're training and how they think about different types of technique training. posted by Michael | 8:26 PM
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