Discussion: basic kind of question

I enjoy snooping around in the training logs section and notice many of the more serious O types will do some sort of O training during the week. I was curious what this looks like. Do people use established permanent courses and try to find smarter ways to get from control to control?

As an aside, I find the logs pretty inspiring. I was going to see if I could find a treadmill to use today as it was super windy and cold, but I figured some high schooler in Finland was out today in worse, so out I went...

There are many types of training that can be done but I suspect most of them do not rely on permanent courses. Sometimes they may get someone else to design a training exercise or it may be something they do themselves just by taking a map, circling some control locations and than going out and navigating to them. If you aren't real confident in your own abilities to do this, I suggest you pick some pretty solid distinct features for your control locations (i.e. don't pick a boulder in the middle of a hillside filled with boulders). Also, you can have your "contol" and than another "check control" close by. The thinking being that if they are both there, than you are probably where you think you are.

that's brilliant. I am lucky to have good maps of 5 local parks from our O club in Buffalo NY so I have lots of possibilities. Thanks for your insight, this seems like a fun sport

Jon, I didn't realize that you were in Buffalo. Email me: at sbu-dot-edu, and we can talk more specifically about good things to do in those particular parks.

Another thing you can do if you don't have people to train with during the week is to invest in a GPS watch. You can set up a training exercise for yourself (or run an old course) and then check how well you did by checking your track against the map. An easy training to do like this that is adaptable to your skill level is a line-o or corridor-o. You don't have to worry about stopping to check if you're really at the control location, but afterwards you can see just how good you were and why you were off where you were off.

Sorry to resurrect an old thread, but was wondering if anyone (@Cristina?) can explain how to set up a training exercise with a GPS watch? I clicked on the link above, but it just took me to o-training.net.

I've got a GPS watch that I use for my marathon swims (910xt), so I'm set up as far as that goes, but how do I turn that into a training exercise?

Sorry, I know this is probably a stupid question, but I am new at O.

I'm guessing she means to set up a training course on a map, and run the course with a GPS. Then, afterwards,download the track, and overlay it on the map (using something like QuickRoute) to see if you actually navigated to the desired points.

OK, now I get it. Thanks @cedarcreek.