HISTORICAL WOC RESULTS?

[Becks]

Which is why if your numbers are smaller, you have to concentrate them geographically, a la Sheffield and Edinburgh.

[andy]

Running speed is less than half the battle. It's an easy indication of whether you're good enough to even consider yourself the top level (i.e. my ~40min 10k isn't going to compete with anyone at the world level) but as you get closer to 30mins/10k it's more about the balance between maintaining pace and staying accurate. A 30sec error is a small one to me but they add up! a bad route choice, a few secs, a miss in the circle, a few secs, they all add up.

It's obvious Thierry is very fast, I remember Scotia telling me he was worried he might have to drop off the back of the pack in the woc2010 relay that Thierry was pulling round the course... And we all know how fast Scott is. What makes Thierry such a quality orienteer is his ability to not make (m?)any mistakes! He focuses on not making any mistakes and running fast in the terrain that he needs to run fast in. Sounds like a good idea to me...

[229]

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[madmike]

The 3K time trial times of the best Norwegian men (8:45-9:15) are only equivalent to 10K performances of around 31-33 min.

Not much difference between 29.59 and 31.00 imho.

Orienteering performances and therefore results actually seem to be determined mainly by the speed one is able to orienteer around an orienteering course.

Now that's the most pertinent point so far -d'accordo with that

[DIDSCO]

Jesus what a load of rubbish on this thread, after a world championshiop like this one and people in the UK are crying out for our best athletes to be fitter!! Go luck at the gps again and compare with Thierry or Peter Öberg, and there you'll see where the area for improvement needs to be.

[Big Jon]

A little ramble down memory lane - Carsten Jorgensen ran in 3 European XC champs, 4th, 1st and 5th. Yet he was never the best Danish orienteer of his time and in most races was relatively low down the results. Reason - probably because he could not run at his top speed and read the map/process information at the same time. What Thierry has done is increase his "orienteering" ability to such an extent that he can run flat out AND read the map. The way to do this is to spend a lot of time in terrain with map - some racing, some running, some walking (mapping?). This all helps develop a confidence in being able to interpret the map and terrain thus allowing running closer to maximum speed. It also increases the ability to run fast but smoothly in terrain. In preparation for WOC '95 in Germany the Norwegians had a training camp in a local town (forget the name) where some good Kenyan runners were based. The current World Junior XC champ followed Petter Thoresen round a training course and couldn't keep up - no map reading, nothing to do with speed, he just couldn't handle the terrain running.
More time in terrain on more maps might be a good motto to have.

[madmike]

Jesus what a load of rubbish on this thread, after a world championshiop like this one and people in the UK are crying out for our best athletes to be fitter!! Go luck at the gps again and compare with Thierry or Peter Öberg, and there you'll see where the area for improvement needs to be.

just to be crystal clear here this is not where I am coming from in any way- my earlier comments are not aimed at any of our elite athletes and their performance at WOC - I know how hard they train and how little support they receive and the sacrifices they make to achieve the best results they can.

[madmike]

World Junior XC champ followed Petter Thoresen round a training course and couldn't keep up - no map reading, nothing to do with speed, he just couldn't handle the terrain running.
More time in terrain on more maps might be a good motto to have.

Jon didn't the XC runner come in with the 4 minute or 6 minute man or was that a different occassion?

[Gross]

Fitness, technique & mind.... get all 3 in the correct balance & you will perform the best you can... and that's all an individual can do

But the system can provide back up & support to allow an individual to get the balance correct... is this being offered in the present set up wothin British orienteering? Can anyone answer that?

[Gross]

Jon didn't the XC runner come in with the 4 minute or 6 minute man or was that a different occassion?

Was on a training excercise near Detmold... terrain was steep hills with almost nothing on the ground except beech leaves....

There have been occassions that some Kenyan's / Africans have been at the Oringen academies and despite being fit & fast could not handle the terrain... and one summer Jens Kopland had a series of Africans at the Modum camp & again they couldn't handle the terrain.... (mind you it was difficult for the likes of DIDSCO also... getting beaten by fat hairy Scotsman:) )

[greywolf]

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) ?

But basically, worrying about 5k times or whatever is barking up the wrong tree. Of course being fitter & faster would help, but it's not, as Harry said, the main issue...

[DIDSCO]

Gross > haha if only there was a world champs for fastest to the 1st control, you'd be the champ!
Actually drove past Modum a couple of weeks ago after going on a 100km detour due to the Utöya disaster. If the wife and kids weren't with me I'd have dropped by Jen's and got him to open up his drinks cabinet again, good man, good times!

[awk]

229

Your postings suggest that our teams aren't fit enough, and that is due to a failure to train early and hard. Personally, I don't know enough about the current international scene to argue for or against whether the former is the case, although to me the time being lost by those at WOC looked more down to technical (and possibly mental?) issues than physical, and that harry and Didsco etc are closer to puttign their collective fingers on what needs to be learned. So, where's the evidence, please?

BTW - what an amazing WOC to watch (in spite of the limitations of some of the French TV production). There were some great British performances too.

[DIDSCO]

The best way to illustrate the need for all-round technical excellence in the British team is to click on the gps tracking for Thierry and Gristwood for the middle distance race and play them starting at the same time. Gristwood runs a tecnically very impressive race, especially considering the type of terrain, but all the time in the tracking you see that Thierry is much smoother in his running, less stop-start, finding better lines in the forest, and more confident in his technique. Thierry's pushed the boundaries at a technical level, we have to push ours as well.

[AndyO]

It has been referenced in these pages before, but the story of how Thierry developed his technique is always worth revisiting:

http://news.worldofo.com/2007/12/10/gue ... y-part-ii/