HISTORICAL WOC RESULTS?

[Big Jon]

Carsten Jorgensen .... was never the best Danish orienteer of his time and in most races was relatively low down the results.

Is that a different Carsten Jorgensen from the one who took WOC bronze in 1995, and was 4th in 1997 & 2003 (and won a relay gold in 1997) ?

Same guy - but these were exceptional results for him, mostly he was lurking round the 20s or even 30s (battling with me on some occasions!).

[AAH]

It's obvious Thierry is very fast...

Although I'm a great believer that orienteering is only about running to a certain extent, it was notable this year from the GPS tracking that, in both the men's and woman's long race, after 300 meters along a path, the eventual winner was already first...

I suspect people can get so far by being a good runner, good technically or good specifically at running on terrain, but the best are of course world class at all three...

[Taybank]

Is there any chance that the terrain in France - especially for the long course - was too complex to be fair?
Could it be that not only was it difficult for the competitors to interpret the map but the terrain was also too difficult for the mapper to interpret properly?

[fish]

I also noticed the speed of Thierry on the track on the first leg in the long, and was impressed (and perhaps a touch surprised). His start in the relay also suggested that he would try and blow the others away going to the first control, 'knowing' that if he got that gap, in that terrain, he was the fastest orienteer when on his own.
The gps throughout the week made interesting viewing, and it certainly looks like both speed of thought and speed of legs that is working. But, I guess this is somewhat of a no-brainer, given that is what orienteering is all about.

I dont think i've ever seen these sort of post-mortems ever come up with a single answer, and again this probably reflects the reality that the challenges are different for different people.

One of the alternative ways of looking at it is to take the event that went most right (e.g the exceptional results in the mens sprint), look at what is behind these results (not just the hard work), and see if there are aspects of this that can be better translated to the other disciplines. I say 'better translated', as I think it would be insulting to all of our athletes to suggest they are not trying their damndest to get it right already.

[Scott]

Is there any chance that the terrain in France - especially for the long course - was too complex to be fair?
Could it be that not only was it difficult for the competitors to interpret the map but the terrain was also too difficult for the mapper to interpret properly?

Thierry doesn't seem to have had much trouble interpreting it. Speaking from the comfort of my armchair a few hundred miles away, it certainly seems that if you knew how to navigate well in that terrain then was possible to do so. Not so much unfair as just extremely difficult.

Admittedly it seem as if familiarity with that type of terrain certainly helped with getting it right, but that's true of all sorts of terrain - since this was particularly unusual terrain, more people struggled through unfamiliarity than might do so normally. Variety is all part of the game: if WOC is on sand dunes and somebody has a nightmare run because they haven't run on sand dunes much before, that's not unfair either.

[housewife]

I think thierry being used to this terrain helped him to be able to interpret so much info so quickly. Not only was the terrain tricky it was also bushy so was very hard to see the shapes of the ground around you.

As for how to improve, as a working mother of two living nowhere near complex terrain i concentrate on getting faster and fitter. It is the one area i can really work on. I'll worry about the map reading as the season nears by going on training weekends. And flat track speed is always crucial. I always do intervals on asphalt or track. Until you xan run fast on the flat you'll never be fast enoght in the terrain or up hills.

[andypat]

I think thierry being used to this terrain helped him to be able to interpret so much info so quickly. Not only was the terrain tricky it was also bushy so was very hard to see the shapes of the ground around you.

As for how to improve, as a working mother of two living nowhere near complex terrain i concentrate on getting faster and fitter. It is the one area i can really work on. I'll worry about the map reading as the season nears by going on training weekends. And flat track speed is always crucial. I always do intervals on asphalt or track. Until you xan run fast on the flat you'll never be fast enoght in the terrain or up hills.

While your comment makes sense to me, it seems to contradict the suggestion (or possibly the legend) the Thierry never trains without a map. I wonder if this is really true or just mostly true? in particular - is it possible to develop your flat speed to be as fast as he is with a map in your hand?

[epocian]

Carsten Jorgensen .... was never the best Danish orienteer of his time and in most races was relatively low down the results.

Is that a different Carsten Jorgensen from the one who took WOC bronze in 1995, and was 4th in 1997 & 2003 (and won a relay gold in 1997) ?

Same guy - but these were exceptional results for him, mostly he was lurking round the 20s or even 30s (battling with me on some occasions!).

But obviously good enough to make the Danish team in at least 4 WOCs

[Big Jon]

Carsten was a good orienteer - he was faster than almost any other orienteer in the world but he wasn't the top Danish orienteer of his time and certainly not the World's top orienteer. His speed was immense, but he couldn't use it while orienteering, others who were slower could use more of their speed and so were better orienteers than him (ie got higher placed results). SPEED WITHOUT CONTROL IS NOTHING.

[229]

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[madmike]

I use the downhill skiing analogy in this debate, i.e. you need to be going as close to loss of control as you can without losing control and crashing - pushing the envelope to the max without exceeding it. This "edge" you are pushing can change as fitness levels differs, your mental state and lots of other factors.... but key is to remain in control just - I'm in Big Jon's gang on this one.

Believe me I know all about control with no speed having spent 18 months jog/walking round courses and trust me control with no speed is easy

[harry]

The same could be said for control without speed.

Gotta agree to disagree on this one 229 (o fountain of all wisdom.. )

Example from the WOC 2011 Long distance final.
Control without speed* = Heidi Østlid Bagstevold = 5th place = something
Speed without control = Minna Kauppi = DSQ/RTD = nothing

Both will win future WOC medals and they'll do it their own way.

Lack of early, hard training was definitely not the problem for me. Won my first xc race & joined athletics club aged 11, the girls I trained with got to World XC Champs while I lost my way and ended up in hospital three times 2000, 2001, 2005 after too much stress and too little recovery.

After 12 years of running World Champs at different levels (4*JWOC, 4*WUOC, 4*WOC) I've learned a LOT of hard lessons. And I know for a fact that while working towards a sub 34 min 10K (female equivalent of sub 30 min 10K) might take me higher up the results, ultimately it's going to be much less important than a whole lot of other orienteering related hard work that I need to do in order to emulate either of the above two women.

Big Jon is probably the only woc medallist to have contributed on this thread - and also happens to be my coach so I usually have to agree with him (eventually) : "speed without control is nothing".

*any girl in the 2011 British WOC team could have run behind Heidi but none of us managed to orienteer at that speed ourselves.

[harry]

Inspiration!
http://heidibagstevold.blogspot.com/201 ... te-vm.html

Heidi's 3K time from last Winter = 10:44
10K equivalent = 38:42

Minna's approx 10K equiv = 35 min

[awk]

[quote="harry"and ended up in hospital three times 2000, 2001, 2005 after too much stress and too little recovery.[/quote]

I've always felt this is a really important issue that is all too often glossed over by those who emphasise more physical training for juniors. Time after time we see promising juniors having to take long breaks from training and/or the sport* altogether because they've done too much too soon. Far more important as a junior is to be able to train consistently, laying down the foundations for the hard work that needs to be done as an adult. Of course there's a balance - it's all too easy to not train enough, but I would rather seen a junior slightly undertrain than slightly overtrain.

*although that mightn't necessarily be a bad thing if able to train/compete in another sport (eg cycling, swimming, rowing) - as long as they come back to orienteering!

[harry]

Having read a lot about this over the last few years especially since 2005 I have to add that overtraining is actually very rare. It is actually pretty difficult to overtrain. 90% of the people who say they got overtrained were not actually suffering from overtraining syndrome. Your body will actually adapt to a hell of a lot of stress if you give it enough recovery!!! It's quite amazing!

Most of the time when people get into these bad situations it's actually what Norwegians call too much "totalbelastning" total load which usually means too much total life load ie too little recovery.

In '05 for me it was a case of just continuing to do the same amount of training I had been doing in Sweden (when I had almost no job) while starting to work 100% at a PhD in a new city with a lot of travel and new things.

The problem of too little competition can be a big issue here. In 00/01 if I had been Norwegian I would have taken time out from the sport and recovered fully. But in UK I still qualified for and was allowed to compete in JWOC when I should have been recovering. That's partly why it took me til 2004 to get back on track except I never fully understood the whole issue of recovery and just repeated the same mistakes over and over until Spring 2009 when I finally read a big pile of books (and then begged Big Jon to coach me)