Discussion: Sandra's trip to Sweden (part 2)

The rest of the week was spend either by orienteering in the morning, and a gym workout in the evening, or vise versa. I am going to do my best to scan the maps I ran on sometime this week and attach them in attachpoint, and get them on the US Team page. But I do not have this done yet! Here are a few points I took home with me from the training.

1) Being stable in your direction using the compass is very important!!! There will often be good run-ability but low visibility, therefore, it is easy to drift in the terrain and accommodate the terrain to where you "think" you are! Also, for long legs, sometimes it's most important to get through an area quickly to a major feature without going into detail of where you are, but staying on compass and picking off major features. It's also easy to drift in area's that don't have a lot of features (yes, Sweden has those too!). This was than the opposite, good visibility but slow run-ability. I found myself using the old, pick a tree ahead of you that’s on your compass line, and go to it trick! Otherwise, as I was fighting the clumpy, uneven undergrowth, I would drift off just slightly enough to loose time overall.

2) Route choice! In a competition we need to look for the simplest
(fastest) way to get to the control. Often because it is very intricate terrain we try to read everything and go straight. I found that taking a route choice a little out of the way that’s easier (ie. trail, road,
swamps) is much faster. Just like in continental terrain, if you can blaze through a section of the leg without having to look into the detail, you will be much faster!

3) Okay so now you blaze around on a road, to a swamp, and come to a incline, where your control will be in a detail contour region just above the swamp corner, one small rentrant out of many, ATTACK-POINT!! I almost forgot how important attach-points are until I flung myself into a detailed rocky area and had no chance to find the control smoothly. Your attach-point may have to be a little farther way than normal, but at that point you slow from your green light pace, to the red light pace and use your fine orienteering skills!

As I review my maps again this week, I may come up with more tips I learned while I was there, so I may write more on this. I would also like to hear from those of you who have spend more time in Sweden than I have, Mikell, Peter, Pavlina, Karen, James, and anyone else I am missing!

Here is what my training week (10 days) looked like in detail!

Thr. March 11- Run with Karen and Marc in Gothenborg 56 min. Fr. March 12- am Oing at IKP club house map, line O + few controls 54min
Pm Gym, elliptical, bike, stepper 77min + weights
Sat. March 13- amRun around Gothenborg in a blizzard! 58 min
(cont.)Gym, bike 35 min + plyometrics
Sun. March 14- NightO training on IKHP club map 61 min.

Week total (plus NH training Mon-Wed) 8h 39 min

Mon March 15- am. Gym, bike, stepper, rower. 68 min
Pm. O-training with Klaus, difficulties. 64 min
Tue March 16- am. Intervals on road 4X 5min w/ 90sec rest. 67 min
Achilles pain, no second training.
Wed March 17- am. Aquajogging 3X 9 min push (Achilles pain, no running
on land)67 min
(cont.) gym biking, rowing 66 min
Thr March 18- am. Biking and ellipical 64 min + strength
Pm. O training, I finally got the flow. Achielles
feeling better. 62 min
Fri March 19- am. O training, 1hr north, classic event terrain (fun!) 82 min
Pm. Aquajogging, intervals 2X 9min push. 53 min
Sat March 20- am. O training (the best I felt all week) 54 min
Pm. Biking and rowing. 67 min
Sun March 21- am. IKHP course (men's training race)66 min.
Pm. Run with Karen in Gothenburg. 42 min

Week total
13h 35 min
10 day total 19h 40
min

When I post the maps, I will put on them what day of the week it was!

Okay, well I hope that wasn't too detailed and boring. I would love to answer any questions and see some discussion develop about Swedish terrain. I think we can all succeed there, it just takes knowing what your getting into (ie. knowing the terrain, how to run in it, and what the strategy is). There is a wealth of knowledge between us, some have spent extended amounts of time in Sweden, we can all learn from each other. I think this years WOC team can set some goals to qualify for the A finals! Anyone who wants to go to Sweden should be putting a minimum of 6 hours of training in a week! Right?!? What do the others think. How do some of you conduct your weekly training, do you plan ahead? I will share my training planning on another email soon!

Happy training, and I will see some of you soon in Conn.
Take care,
Sandra Zurcher

Interesting to see Sandra's 3 tips to better O'ing.
Although she was in Swedish terrain, these 3 tips are the most important for ANY successful and error free, O race.
I have been trying to get this across at the Jr training camps.
In order of use:
Attackpoint
Simple route
Compass

I would add a fourth point which has helped me a lot lately - it's to always "have a plan", ie not only subconsciously use the techniques mentioned, but clearly know what you are planning to do on this leg. In my view large errors happen only when you don't have a plan and just "randomly" start running west, or along a track or whatever. When you have a plan you'll notice the alarm bells much faster and while you may not entirely avoid 1-min mistakes, there should be a lot fewer 5-min ones.

I go as far as saying the plan "out loud" in my mind, and have lately been positively surprised to find that when I got lazy and didn't have a plan, alarm bells immediately started to ring and got me back in line

I can only support mahrm's point of "having a plan". I started with that several years ago and I'm still doing it, less in Switzerland but always in technical demanding terrains.

On every control, I say to myself the following 4 key words which should bring me more easily, safer (and hopefully faster) to the next control:

- STOP (means that I should not immediately run away but take some time for the next step:)
- CONCEPT/PLAN/STRATEGY: Which route do I take? What do I want so see? Attackpoint?
-DIRECTION: In which exact direction should I ran away from the control?
-GO: No hesitations after the decision, increasing the speed.

Of course, everyone needs to have its own 3-5 steps, those were just the ones which help(ed) me.

Try it out in a training, it might help you too?!

I do the same thing! Not same words ;-), but I even stop at the control for a moment, plan what I am doing for the next leg to the control (half out load) and then start going. The stopping doesn't take more than 10-20 sec. at most, and then throughout the whole leg I try to follow my plan.

If during the leg I start to think about something else, then I mentally say, STOP what is your plan, in it brings me back into the next step to get to the control.

I also stopped trying to plan ahead, meaning looking at the next leg while going to a control. I found that when I do this, I make a mistake on the control I am going to. I think its good to have a general idea of the course, no surprises, but I only plan the next leg, when I am at the control. (Of course with a long road run on your way to the control I may look ahead in more detail).

"I also stopped trying to plan ahead"

I think that a good plan really should have this item in it. Couple of weeks ago during practice, Alexey made us to do a specific exercise that takes care exaclty of this "planing ahead" technique.

While running a regular O course, we also carried a second completely diffirent map with a course on it. So when you get to each control on your regular O course, you should've already memorized the conrol number on the other map + if that control is higher or lower than the previous one + the route choice (left, straight, right)

This particular exercise really makes you look where on your current leg, you could look at the other map and memorize all that stuff.

This is pretty much the same as "planing ahead" so when after practicing this, you will notice that you don't need to spend 10-20 sec on each bag just to plan ahead bacause you've alrady done so, or at least you should know the direction that you should be leaving. And if practiced enough this will become authomatic, or simply a part of the plan.

Is that 10-20 seconds on each control, or on the whole course? If it's for each instance, then it sounds to me like an awful lot.

One way to deal with planning ahead is to look at the next leg as soon as you've spotted the control you're looking for. Once you've got the flag in your sights, you don't really need to worry about making an error, and sprinting the last few meters isn't all that useful. In that time you can at least establish in which direction you should leave the control.

For my "plan", it takes not more than 3-5 sec on each control, seconds which are well invested in difficult terrain.
I've hardly managed to plan ahead in Scandinavia since routes on paths are rather seldom and routes demand often high concentration on the whole leg, so no time for planning ahead.

jjcote: On a good course one should first see the feature and then the flag which might give you not the time to plan ahead.