Discussion: world record

154 controls in 2h04 today by Fabrice Vannier in the forest of Fontainebleau. I only managed 153 forgetting to punch the 125th, a drinks control, concentrating too hard on rehydrating. It was a great race, shame I wasn't fit enough... will send a link to a website tomorrow perhaps.

here's the map :

wonderful orienteering...

Looks like J-J better go for 1000.

Whatever it takes, whatever it takes. And my feelings haven't changed, this entire preposterous exercise is supremely goofy. What has changed is my guess as to how things will go afterwards. Although my intent was to push the mark out far enough that people would say, "Okay, enough of this nonsense", I now suspect that it will be a matter of weeks before some other course pops up with more controls than the one at Pawtuckaway.

What was the course length at Fontainebleau? (Or what was the map scale, i.e. how far apart are the north lines, so that I can measure it?)

What shouldn't be lost in this extreme number of controls madness is what TG originally designed it as: a really good training exercise. Earlier this year Sudden and I did 65 checkpoints and I noticed that Salal did a training exericise of 75 in a park earlier this week. It requires immense concentration for an extended period of time. Given that most mistakes people make is when they lose concentration I plan to do more of these training sessions. This is an exercise people should try to do often but it requires a lot of work to set up. But if the controls are too close together I suspect that concentration requirement will drop because it will become a precision compass exercise and require less map reading. I look forward to JJ's exercise in supreme goofiness.

It is a really good training exercise, but to get the most out of it (as a somewhat regular exercise) one has to be fit - or do less controls. It is good to orienteer past the tiredness stage. The first sixty controls fleww by, afterwards things got tough. Do it without a compass (and without flags?) for added interest.

scale was 1:10, N lines 500m

Playing Catching Features late at night and/or while keeping a conversation with someone is pretty good concentration practice too.