Occassional thoughts about orienteering
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| okansas.blogspot.com Occassional thoughts about orienteering |
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Sunday, July 20, 2003 Nascar and the TDFI watched about half an hour of yesterday's Nascar Busch Race on TV. After a pit stop one of the drivers suddenly started losing time. From being near the front, he was losing two seconds each 30 second lap. (I think the driver was Riggs; Mook's "favorite Nascar driver").Turns out the problem was the tires. During the pit stop, they put the left front tire on the right front wheel. The car didn't handle well and the driver had to slow down to keep control. When mistakes like that happen; I ask myself "why?" Nascar teams have lots of controls to prevent just that mistake. There is a specific person who has the job of putting the tire on. The tires are labeled -- "LF" for "left front." But, controls don't keep mistakes from happening, they just make them less likely. What about Lance in the time trial? If you're to believe the news reports, Lance Armstong was seriously dehydrated before and during the time trial where he lost over a minute to Ullrich. I've heard that at the end of the race his weight was over 5 kilos down. I wonder what happened? What was the mistake? Here are a few possibilities for what happened: 1. He was sick. 2. He didn't drink enough before the event. Professional teams must have some controls in place to make sure riders get food and drinks after each day. Maybe some of the controls broke down. 3. He didn't plan properly how to drink during the time trial. Maybe he expected to be able to get more water on the course and for some reason couldn't. Professional teams must have some controls to make sure the riders are ready for the conditions on the day. Maybe several things went wrong at once. Maybe the controls were all in place, but something got screwed up -- some person made a mistake -- just like the Nascar race. I suppose the lesson in both of these situations is to plan (i.e. put the controls in place) but not to be surprised when the controls don't work. Controls help. Controls reduce the chance of mistakes. Controls make it easier to figure out what went wrong. But, controls aren't perfect. * I suppose I should define what I mean by "control." I mean something that you've designed to reduce the likelihood of making a mistake. For a professional bike racer controls to prevent dehydration might include a list of drinks to have waiting at the finish and a coach who asks the rider "have you had enough to drink?" posted by Michael | 6:21 PM 
Monday, May 28, 2012 Showing orienteering speed on TVIf you've seen orienteering on TV one of the things you might have noticed is that it is hard to show how fast orienteers are running through the forest. It isn't unusual to see video of orienteers that look like they're just jogging along. The European Orienteering Champs TV coverage from Swedish TV did a good job of showing orienteers looking like they were moving fast.If you watch a lot of sports on TV, you'll notice the common ways to show how fast a sport is. 1. When the speed is easily defined and the viewers know how fast sports are moving, it is pretty easy. You know that a 4-minute mile is fast. In baseball, the TV coverage regularly shows the speed of a pitch in miles per hour. An annoucer can just say, "that was a 95 mph fastball." 2. When the speed is harder to comprehend, you'll get a sense of the speed by having the action go by a stationary camera. NASCAR does a good job of this. 3. Announcers can help. Announcers can add some context by comparing the sport to some sort of benchmark, like a world record. An announcer might tell you that a runner is on pace for a world record. That doesn't tell the viewer how fast the athletes are moving, but it gives you an idea that it is relatively fast. 4. The camera follows the athlete in a way that gives the viewer a sense of just how fast things are happening. This is essentially the opposite of 2. In 2, the camera stands still and the athletes go by. In 4 the camera moves and the surrounds move by. You'll see this on the downhills in the mountains in the Tour de France. In the Swedish TV coverage of the European Champs, the coverage did a good job of giving the viewer a sense of the speed by using 3 of the 4 common techniques: They had a camera near a spectator control on the ski hill. The runners passed by the camera on the way down to the control and then back by the camera on the way to the next control. It wasn't as dramatic as the NASCAR approach, but it was the same basic idea. Because of the camera angle, you also got a sense of the steepness of the hill and the strength of the orienteers going up the hill. The announcers made a few comments about how the orienteers were strong runners. Rikard Ekman - the regular sports announcer - noted that the orienteers chasing Simone Niggli looked like they were moving much slower than Simone and wondered if she was really that good. Anders Garderud, the expert commentator, explained that Simone really is one of the best athletes in the world. That added some context, especially given Garderud's expertise as an orienteer and a world class runner. The coverage featured a camera chasing an orienteer through the forest. It was staged - they filmed the videos well before the races and put them in during the live coverage. You can see a bunch of these EOC videos on Vimeo. These are a bit like the motorcycle cameras chasing cyclists down the mountains in the Tour de France. You can find the Swedish TV coverage online at SVTPlay. The videos will only be available until about mid June, so take advantage of it and watch some of the coverage. If you look at the coverage of the women's relay you can see examples of how Swedish TV shows the speed of orienteers. At about the 18 minute mark you'll see the orienteering version of the NASCAR camera. Check out the Vimeo link above for some of the camera-chasing-through-the-terrain video. Think of that as the orienteering version of a TDF downhill. If you can understand Swedish, listen to some of the commentary to get an idea of how the announcers help explain the speed. There's some discussion that begins at about the 29 minute mark. Back to okansas.blogspot.com. posted by Michael | 6:22 PM
Friday, November 10, 2006 Next update planned for Monday, November 13My next planned update is on Monday. Thought, there's always a chance I'll make a short phone post or 2 from the races in New Jersey.Worth a look is the Worldofo.com story about using CatchingFeatures to prepare for JWOC. It reminds me of stories about Dale Earnhardt Jr. using video games to get ready for Nascar races (yet another similarity between orienteering and Nascar!). I guess it won't be long before WOC organizers will provide CatchingFeatures maps for training use. That seems like a great idea. posted by Michael | 7:38 AM
Monday, February 21, 2005 First report from TexasI'll probably post some clips of the map a bit later today. For now, here is my first quick report:1. Yuck. The terrain in Texas is thorny. The course setters didn't seem to cut us any slack -- if the trade off was technical difficulty versus pleasant, they picked technical difficulty. 2. Good pizza. We ate at the Hideaway Pizza in Tulsa on the way to Texas and the Hideway Pizza in Oklahoma City on the way home. I like the place. Good pizza. 3. Pre-running. The start list for Blue was short (maybe 12 people of so), and widely spaced (ten minutes between starts). My start on day two was near 11 a.m. Given that the first start was 9 a.m. and we had a good 8+ hours to drive home, we asked for earlier start times. "No changes, no exceptions." Well, Tom helped us out and arranged that we could run as pre-runners about 7:30 a.m. Thanks, Tom. That really helped us out. 4. DNF. On the first day I did not finish. I stopped after about 3/4 of the course. I wasn't have a great race. It wasn't terrible either. But, I wasn't having fun. As I approached the 16th control, I looked at the map and wondered, "why did they pick that spot for a control?" It was a very low broad spur in solid green forest. "I don't want to go there." So, I didn't. I stopped and jogged back to the finish. I felt a little bad to give up. But, I wasn't having fun. The second day was better. I had a decent race and a lot more fun. 5. NASCAR. I assumed that we'd be able to listen to the radio coverage of the Daytona 500 on the drive home. Driving through Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas, you'd have no trouble finding NASCAR on the radio, right? Wrong. I didn't find any radio coverage until the last 7 laps of the race. Bummer. posted by Michael | 10:28 AM
Wednesday, March 30, 2011 Thoughts on the sprint relay at the Ski WOCI thought this comment from a few days ago was worth highlighting.Hi! I was one of the athletes skiing the sprint relay and I just want to say that the sprint relay is the most funny of all the distances, also for the athletes! It's a first man to finish race, which means a lot of close man-man fights and there is always happening something. It's also a relay so you're skiing for your nation and another person and you are also allowed to do "3 races" which you're getting the fun 3 times! Back to okansas.blogspot.com. posted by Michael | 7:11 AM
Sunday, March 27, 2011 Watching some Ski WOC TVI've spent a bit of time watching the video from the Ski Orienteering WOC and been interested to see a couple of new (to me) ideas in action: the mixed sprint relay event and the use of the live headcam video. It has also been fun to see some strong performances from the US team.Here's the sprint video: I'm not sure what the competitors think of the mixed sprint relay format, but for TV it has potential. The teams were just 2 people, each skiing 3 legs. The total winning time was about 65 minutes. I don't know enough about ski orienteering to have any opinion about the technical demands of the format. When I look at the maps, it looks like a typical ski orienteering courses. The sprint relay format has some nice features for TV coverage. It is easy to see who is in the lead. Of course, a team can be ahead at an exchange because they had the short fork (so they really aren't necessarily ahead in the race). But, as long as the forking isn't absurd, for the TV viewer I don't think it really matters. You can think of it as being like a NASCAR race where the car in the lead has older tires than the other cars, so it is in the lead on the track but won't be able to stay in the lead. It doesn't confuse the viewer. It gives the commentators something to talk about. The WOC coverage featured live coverage from the course by having a good skier with a headcam who would ski behind some of the competitors. There were some technical problems (and better weather would have made the images easier to see), but the concept seems really good. It gives you a sense of the speed of the skiers and an interesting view to contrast with the fixed cameras with skiers going by). I don't know how the details of the live headcam views. I guess they may have used a mobile phone network to send the images back. But, I really don't have any idea. The sprint relay format lends itself to during-the-race interviews with competitors between legs. I think there's some real potential for those interviews to engage the viewers and make the event more alive. Short interviews also have the potential to fill time that might otherwise be filled with pictures of the empty ski tracks waiting for skiers to arrive. The clip below is from the US team's blog. I think it gives you an idea of how during-the-race interviews could work: Sprint Relay @ Ski WOC '11 from Cristina Luis on Vimeo. Some athletes might balk at having an interview during the race, but I think most would be ok with it. Certainly it would help improve the TV coverage and that's a goal that orienteering athletes ought to support. As an aside, I was glad to see frequent updates on the US team blog. OUSA has a (very modest) goal of having the blog updated twice a month. In the six months leading up to March 2011, the blog was only updated 5 times. Going forward, I hope they meet (or even exceed) the goal of two updates a month. Back to okansas.blogspot.com. posted by Michael | 10:50 AM
Thursday, May 29, 2008 Racing or orienteering?The NY Times ran an article a few days ago about spotting talent in race car drivers. Here are a few quotes that struck me as having some relevance to orienteering:...how a driver reacts to errors is also important. “Racecar drivers consistently make mistakes,” Mr. Barber said. “How quickly do they correct?” A practice session or even a qualifying lap can be revealing. Still, it’s how a driver stacks up against the competition that matters most. Racing is about winning, after all,... Mike Dillon, a former Nascar driver who is vice president for competition with Richard Childress Racing, looks for versatility in a young racer. “If someone can run in different series and still win, that’s an eye opener,” he says. “If he goes to 10 or 11 different tracks and still wins, then he’s done something.” Mr. Dillon was intrigued by Mr. Gifford’s control on the one-third-mile dirt track and the fact that he wasn’t nervous during the unplanned tryout. After monitoring Mr. Gifford’s progress throughout the 2007 season, Mr. Dillon offered him a place this year in the Richard Childress Racing development program,... ...perseverance might qualify as its own kind of talent. Anders Krohn, 20, a first-year driver for Andersen Racing in the Formula 2000 series, spent years developing his own team of sponsors to help pay his way from Norway to the United States. But determination, it turns out, is yet another thing that can be spotted at a young age. “By the time they get to 16,” Mr. Bailey said, “you can tell the ones who are racing because they want to be racers, versus the ones whose dads want them to be there.” If you put all of this together, you get a pretty good list of attributes that might signal success as an orienteer: quickly correct errors; competition matters most; handles different different terrains; doesn't get too nervous; perseveres; and driven by their own determination. Back to okansas.blogspot.com. posted by Michael | 9:12 PM
Thursday, March 29, 2007 Orienteering videosIf you haven't done it yet, check out the woO-TV online O' videos. The basic idea is simple. Get as many O' videos as possible put in one place. Encourage people to produce content. See what happens.Jan Kobach, the guy who runs World Of O, sent me a press release a few days ago and dropped me a line suggesting I write about woO-TV. Since I'm a huge fan of World of O', I'll gladly do what I can to publicize woO-TV. Jan is hoping to get video content from around the world. Some of the best stuff on woO-TV right now are the Tero Follow Me videos at woO-TV2 - very cool stuff. One of the most interesting ideas is: As a part of the way towards a more spectacular TV future for orienteering, woO-TV has got an agreement with Greg Walker, the man behind the computer game Catching Features, to develop software for 3D route choice visualization for orienteering races based on the Catching Features engine and the OCAD converter built into Catching Features. If you've been watching Nascar races this year, you'll be familiar with the idea. Each car in the race has a GPS system that sends location information into a video-game like simulation of the race. What makes it useful for TV coverage is that they can use the simulation to replay events that might not have been captured by the TV cameras. If two cars in the middle of the pack bump, the simulation can show what happened even if the TV cameras were focused on the front of the race. The high-tech, high production value stuff is interesting, but I think the most interesting videos on woO-TV might turn out the be the amateur videos. If you've got a video camera, why not take it with you to a meet, interview the winner or walk around in the terrain. Load the video up to woO-TV and share with the world. Or create your own Follow Me video. It is very quick and easy to put together something rough, like this video from last year's sprint race in Lawrence. Back to okansas.blogspot.com. posted by Michael | 6:23 PM
Sunday, February 18, 2007 No complaints...almostI had a nice day today. No complaints. I ran an interesting course in Georgia (Andreas Haldi set the course) at a well organized event (Thanks, GAOC). I made it home without any problems. The flight was on time. The luggage all made it. No complaints....except, I missed watching the Daytona 500 on TV.Many readers know that I like watching car races and, in particular, Nascar races. The racing is interesting and I like to watch and think about how it relates to orienteering. And I'm not alone in seeing the parallels between car racing and orienteering. Here is what Sandy Hott Johansen wrote the other day: Watching other athletes from other sports on TV is actually a valuable learning experience. I was, for instance, surprised to learn how much Rally and slalom have in common with orienteering. Although I know nothing about rally and alpine skiing, speed adjustment, control and concentration seem to be central factors also for these sports… an over-aggressive attack or lack of concentration will more often than not land you in the ditch or outside the gate. Going all-out after a mistake in an effort to “make up time” also seems like a sure-fire way to end up in the ditch. You can read all of Sandy's post here. Back to okansas.blogspot.com. posted by Michael | 7:46 PM
Sunday, September 03, 2006 Golf = orienteering = stock car racing?Some people have claimed that golf and orienteering are the same sport. I don't know, but I've nearly finished reading my first golf book.A month or so ago I heard a radio interview with an author named Tom Coyne who just released Paper Tiger: An Obsessed Golfer's Quest to Play with the Pros. Coyne was a good, but not great, golfer who decided to spend a year as a full time golfer, trying to qualify for the professional tour. He moves to Florida, trains all the time, works with coaches, and competes. Reading the book makes you (or me, maybe) think about how fun it'd be to spend a year focusing purely on orienteering. As I've read the book, I begin to understand some of those parallels that lead people to believe that golf = orienteering. A golf course is a bit like an O' course, with legs to make your way through and booms to deal with. Both are concentration sports. Coyne describes a lot of the mental fights he goes through to try to hold his concentration, to learn how to keep his mind in the moment - to think about what he is doing instead of how he is doing. There are, of course, huge differences between the sports (but that's a subject for another day). You can get a sense of the book and the author by listening to the interview with Coyne from the NPR show Only a Game. Go to the June 24 show, click on the link to listen and go to about the 38 minute mark of the show. I'd write more, but the Nascar race is on TV and I've got to go sit in front of the TV. You know, car racing is really the same sport as orienteering...or something like that. posted by Michael | 8:09 PM
Friday, October 14, 2005 Some quick notesI'll just write a few quick notes before I get back to sitting in front of the TV watching tonight's Nascar race.Good questions Patrick asked a couple of good questions in a comment to yesterday's post: What other places in the U.S. do you think need an orienteering club? And how does that place go about getting an orienteering club? I haven't thought carefully about these questions. It seems to me like the ideal places for O' clubs are towns/cities like Lawrence (or a bit larger), where you've got a fairly active population and a university (it'd be nice if Lawrence had some better terrain). Columbia, Missouri, fits the bill. I suspect there are lots of Lawrence-like towns in the upper midwest (Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, Michigan, Illinois, etc) that would be good places for clubs. Carbondale, IL, used to have a club and is a great place for one. They've got plenty of good terrain just outside of town. I don't know how places go about getting clubs. Norwegian page in English? One of my favorite O' pages is Oystein Kvaal Osterbo's. He posts lots of maps and photos. He's Norwegian and writes his page in Norwegian. But, when I looked today, I saw that today's two entries are both written in English. I don't know if that he plans to keep the page in English or not. English or Norwegian, his page is worth visiting. posted by Michael | 8:22 PM
Wednesday, September 28, 2005 Sharing notesI listened to an interview with a Nascar driver on the radio a couple of days ago. The driver was talking about how teams work and how he learned from the other car on his team. He talked about watching tapes from the other driver on different tracks and getting notes about how the car was set up. It got me thinking about orienteering.How can orienteers share their knowledge to help their team? If an Orienteer Kansas runner has a chance to train in an area, how best can they share what they learn with other OKers? Or if a few members of the U.S. team train in Denmark, how can they share what they learn with the rest of the team? Some things are obvious -- like sharing maps with routes and split times. But, there must be ways to get more out of it. I'll have to give this some more careful thought, but here are a few initial ideas: Keep and share lots of written notes. Focus on sharing the sort of information that you can't get from just looking at a map. A lot of that info will be about the vegetation, visibility and runnability. Tie each bit of info to a specific individual. For example, "Boris felt that the runnability in the white forest was very good." Include objective measures as much as possible. "Boris felt the runnability in the white forest was very good, he could run at 5 minutes/km; compared to about 4:30/km on the single track trails." Think about the strategy implications of the info. "Since the white forest was so fast, you can stick close to the straightline without losing much time." Think about how the information can affect how you prepare. "Since the white forest was so fast, you need train to hold a high pace and to read the map at a high pace." Beware of traps. "The white was very fast, but the race will be at a different time of year and the locals say the flat areas fill up with stinging nettles." Take lots of notes, but also take some photos and videos. "Here is a video of Boris running through the white forest." Remember to expect the unexpected. Even on a single map the terrain can vary tremendously. You have to be ready for something you hadn't prepared for. Maybe the white forest in the competition area turns out to have more stony ground. I'll have to give this some more thought. posted by Michael | 6:48 PM
Tuesday, September 27, 2005 Lots of mapsI've got something to write (inspired by an interview I heard on the radio with a Nascar driver), but I'm a bit short of time. So, I'll just post a link to a bunch of maps with GPS tracks. Most of the maps are around Stockholm. Seeing the maps makes me miss the city. posted by Michael | 8:40 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
Monday, November 29, 2004 New contracts for Swedish coachesThe Swedish O' Federation extended the contracts (or maybe entered into new contracts) with Goran Andersson and Marita Skogum. Andersson and Skogum have been national team coaches for three years. The reports I've read about the new contracts note how successful the Swedish teams have been at this year's WOC.I started thinking -- how would you know if you've got a good national team coach? Is looking at results the best way to judge them? How much worse could Sweden's results have been last summer for the Swedish Federation not to want to keep Andersson and Skogum? I don't know anything about the contracts for Andersson and Skogum, so I don't presume to be able to say anything about how they've done or how the Swedish Federation decided to extend their contracts. That's not what I'm interested in. But I am interested in the idea of how you measure coaching success. It seems to me that holding coaches accountable for results alone is dumb. How coaches get results -- the process -- matters, too. My sense is that process matters more than results. I'm convinced a coach can have a good process and the team can get bad results. A coach can also have a bad process and get good results. But over the long run, the good process will tend to get good results and the bad process will tend to get bad results. If that's true, a federation would want to "buy" the process not the results. The same would be true for an owner of an NFL team or the athletic director of a university or the owner of a NASCAR team. Getting back to orienteering...how do you know if you've got a good process? The first step would be to figure out how to measure the process. How do you describe the different approaches to leading a national team? What are the key decisions a national team leader makes? I could probably go on like this for pages, writing questions I'd like to answer but can't. But, it is almost time for the Jayhawks basketball game to come on TV, so I'll stop. posted by Michael | 7:24 PM
Monday, July 26, 2004 Fast clothingThe Swedish team's new O' suits are, according to the company that makes them:...made for the least possible air resistance. Less air resistance leads to higher speed.... Aerodynamic orienteering clothes!? I'm no engineer. But I'm sure that aerodynamic clothing isn't going to make much difference to an orienteer.* Orienteering ain't NASCAR. You can read a report on the new O' clothes at the Swedish Federation's web page. * I Googled "aerodynamic running" and found an article that reported: ...the air resistance one encounters while running can also be minimized by grooming oneself to be as aerodynamic as possible. Kyle's careful wind-tunnel experiments showed that, among other things, loose, wrinkled clothing, long, thick cotton socks, and long hair are significant sources of wind drag. Since these items are unlikely to affect marathon performance by more than 5 to 15 seconds... posted by Michael | 7:49 PM
Friday, February 27, 2004 Not financially viableThe IOF's elite events commission surveyed runners and coaches about international O' events. They asked about different events -- WOC, world cups, Junior WOC, European Champs, and so on. One of the main ideas that came from the runners and coaches was:Today's programme is not financially viable for the majority of runners and coaches. If a runner or coach wanted to go to the big international events (World Cups, World Champs and a regional championship), you'd have to spend a lot of time and money. It wasn't that many years ago when a runner or coach could get to all of the year's big events with a lot less travel (WOC's took place every other year and World Cups were in non-WOC years). I don't really know what to make of the changing international schedule. Is it better now than it was ten years ago? The new international schedules make it more expensive for nations like the U.S. to participate. But the schedule also might make it easier for an individual runner to spend a couple of years scraping by and being a "full-time" orienteer. It seems to me that more frequent races might make it easier for an individual to round up some personal sponsors to help foot the bill for a year or two. Today's programme is not financially viable for the majority of runners and coaches...I bet if you did a survey ten years ago, or ten years from now, you'd get the same answer. It seems to be human nature that whatever situation you face feels tough. Even in big-money sports you'll hear the same sort of complaint. I saw an interview on TV with a NASCAR team owner complaining about how expensive the sport had become and how tough it was to get a new sponsor (in a sport where multi-million dollar sponsorship is common). posted by Michael | 8:32 PM
Friday, September 26, 2003 A few notesFrom Nascar.comI'm always interested in learning about how people practice their sports away from the playing field. Here is a bit from an article about Dale Earnhardt, Jr.: "I'm sure his dad was the best guy at Daytona and Talladega as far as working the draft," said veteran Todd Parrott, crew chief for Elliott Sadler. "I've know Dale Jr. as long as he's been racing, and I know he's sat and watched in-car camera tapes and did a lot of studying on what his dad did and how he worked the draft. I'm sure his dad talked to him a lot about the draft. I guess a driver watching video is a bit like an orienteer studying a map. From Kondis.no Meanwhile, an article from Norway reports that cross-country skiers drink the least alcohol of Norwegian athletes (the study included 4000+ athletes in 20 sports). In general, endurance athletes drank less than non-endurance athletes. I wonder why they did the study? From mapsurfer.com Randy has been writing about quality of events on his o-log (take a look at his September 25 and 26 entries). Today, Randy points out that the "USOF quality control process is dysfunctional." I wrote something a few months ago about quality control for orienteering based on an auditing model. I think it might be relevant for the discussions about quality of events in the U.S. You can read it here. posted by Michael | 1:06 PM
Friday, August 29, 2003 "I don't believe in astronomy"My latest casual interest is astronomy. It hasn't passed NASCAR racing, but given some time I'm sure I'll be able to relate astronomy to orienteering.I should say that I know almost nothing about astronomy. Never took a class in high school or college. Never read a book (until recently, that is). At last year's High Altitude Relay Training camp in Colorado, Mook gave me a short lecture on astronomy while we looked at stars with binoculars. There it is -- a way to relate orienteering and astronomy. Looking at the stars is a good way to relax at a training camp. I suppose an obvious parallel between looking at stars and orienteering is that both can involve maps. Star maps look a bit like O' maps with no contours, just boulders. Apparently you can find your way around by recognizing constelations (something like patterns of boulders). A quick search for "star atlas" finds some interesting web pages: Linda Hall Library in Kansas City has an exhibit of old star maps. Here is a star map from 1972 that looks a little bit like a sprint orienteering map from the 1980s. Here is a web page that lets you make a custom star map for your location. Another way to relate astronomy to orienteering is that there are relatively many astronomers among American orienteers. Certainly there are many more astronomers than performance auditors among the U.S. O' Federation. posted by Michael | 8:49 PM
Saturday, September 28, 2002 Learning by watchingI read an article in the KC Star this week about Nascar cup drivers watching Busch races to help prepare themselves for races.In a lot of sports you can learn something by watching top performers. Skiers watch videos of Olympic skiers to help develop good technique. Golfers do the same (thought it seems like golfers will do just about anything to try to improve as long as it costs something). People also watch themselves to try to improve techniques. Golfers video their swing and then study the tape trying to figure out how to improve. I wonder if you could improve your orienteering by watching good orienteers? If you could see Bjornar Valstad running through the woods, would you learn anything? There are, of course, all kinds of practical problems with watching orienteering. If you sit out in the forest and watch, you only see a short bit of the race. If you try to follow from the event center, you don't see much either. At most races all you see is the run in. As I've run races, I've seen some very good orienteers and I've run with them for a bit. But, I've never tried to watch what they are doing with an idea of picking up some ideas. I suppose that watching a top orienteer might be useful. You could get a sense of how they move through the forest, how often they look at their map and how they look around the terrain. Maybe you'd learn something. Maybe not. posted by Michael | 8:36 PM
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