At low key ('old' colour-coded) events I like running Brown/Black as a training run.
If you want to get in some decent orienteering/technical training over a significant distance, for most there seem to be two main options at the moment:
- organise it yourself
- turn up to a 'competition' and run it as training
Technical training, and the associated coaching opportunities seem to be few and far between. Why is orienteering like that? If I belonged to a football/cricket/rugby/athletics club we'd have organised practice/training/coaching sessions - opportunities to improve - rather than have to do all of our training at the weekend event.
How does that feel, to the complete beginner, knowing they will be in a competitive results list having never tried the sport before? Could put a fair few off...
So what is stopping clubs putting on 'training events'? Something along the lines of:
- Put some controls out on a decent-sized area - something that could support at least a brown course.
- Have some suggested exercises and courses, and all-controls maps so people can do what they want.
- Electronic timing if the runner wants to use it for feedback, but no published results.
- Coaches at the finish to discuss/suggest route choice options/technique, give feedback, analyse areas for improvement.
You then have opportunity to practice technique, do a course as a training run, do training in pairs/groups - route choice exercises/trains/map memory. You can go back and re-run a leg to see where it went wrong, without any time pressures. Even to run a short course twice to see how much time your navigation is costing you.
Why aren't there more opportunities like this available for the standard orienteer?
