From: Mon 6:21 PM Subject: Proactive vs. reactiveTo: Randy Hall You wrote: >I see myself as a reactive orienteer. I see terrain during a race and look >for it on the map. I wonder if most people are like this, or are they >proactive -- looking for terrain that they see on the map. I wonder if its >better to be proactive. My sense is that it is, because as I've gotten >better, I've gotten more proactive. But my technique is a mix, and >probably a mix is the right answer, but I'd still say my mix is primarily >reactive Most people don't have a clue. Of those who do have a clue, most people are actually trying to be proactive, because they were taught so or because they have a concept that proactive is superior. Here's an exchange James and I had on the BAOC net. Maybe you've seen this already. To: baoc@yahoogroups.com From: stevegregg@aol.com Date: Mon, 04 Nov 2002 17:35:05 -0500 Subject: BAOC: US Champs report?? So I thought by now that I'd be reading a report from the US Champs by someone. Judging by the major errors made by a large number of very good orienteers on Day 1 in particular (James Scarborough and Mikell Platt the most noticable, but there were many others), there must have been some interesting things going on. So what caused all the errors? Was it: (1) Very thick and/or difficult terrain? (2) A bad map? (3) Bingo controls? (4) Some combination of the above? Inquiring minds want to know! (Evan, perhaps, should not respond to this, as it looks as though he had almost perfect runs both days. Congratulations!) Steve Gregg To: baoc@yahoogroups.com From: Vladimir Gusiatnikov Date: Mon, 04 Nov 2002 15:21:34 -0800 Subject: Re: BAOC: US Champs report?? No on (1) through (4) and yes on (1) through (4). I won't be writing a report this time---it's someone else's turn, my 2002 O-season is over and I need to focus on real work. I'll post my maps on AttackPoint when I get to it (tomorrow or so). But in short, the terrain was markedly simple. The courses were planned for about 90% coarse navigation and 10% fine navigation, and no route choice whatsoever. The woods were kind of slow and the terrain was kind of physical, but none was extreme in either way. The control features were usually really large and prominent, even by the Bay Area standards. But there were few trails and handrails. Regular map contact was required, but not frequent map contact, if you understand what I'm trying to say. There was one bingo control on Blue on Day 1, in a pit in the green, described as at the edge of the pit but put well inside it. But it was not very bingo---once they missed it the first time, most people had no trouble going back and finding it, and few lost more than 4 minutes, and almost everyone lost at least 2. The map was acceptable but the 1992 fieldwork was showing through the 2002 additions. There was a lot of variation in how "white" the "white" was, but it seemed to average out. There was a problem scanning the map into OCAD, and as a result, the bearings were off on a part of the map, but not by much. The courses' planning was good but unremarkable. There was a lot of sloppiness in the control descriptions, but it did not seem to introduce unfairness. So, why did James have a bad Day 1, and Platt, an even worse one? I don't know. James, however, seemed to have hit his pattern of a great run following an average one yet again (see 1995 Short, 1997 Classic, 2001 Classic Champs). Wyatt and I had very good runs on both days, compared to the others and to what our rankings would suggest. Eric Bone came through when he needed to. The most remarkable story was Mike Waddington running with a broken shoulder bone and leaving the rest of the Canadians in the dust. Vladimir To: stevegregg@aol.com Cc: BayOnet From: James Scarborough Date: Mon, 4 Nov 2002 19:26:07 -0700 (Mountain Standard Time) Subject: Re: BAOC: US Champs report?? Hi Steve, I thought the woods and terrain were beautiful. The terrain was rolling and a little vague. Yes, there were some vines and logs, but if you knew where you were going they would kindly move out of the way. Really the only thing slowing you down was the map. I found it impossible to visualize the terrain from the map. And I wasn't prepared mentally to revert back to "map and compass navigation." That is, one could try and interpret the features and take bearings to get from point to point; but I had been training for more of a flow through the forest. The rumor is their professional mapper bailed on them. But they decided to go ahead with "volunteer" club labor. The thing is, however, with vague terrain you need particularly skilled orienteering field checking to move contours, select point features and otherwise create a more artistic yet consistent description of the terrain. For high speed orienteering (say < 6.5 min/k) one needs a near pre-cognitive knowledge of the forest. By absorbing the map, noting the compass, and choosing a good route and attack point, one builds a picture of what should "happen to you." Then when you are running and turning left, turning right you have been there before. Not only does this allow you to find the controls accurately, it lets the speed come out. On Day 1 I not only couldn't predict what I was going to see (and therefore running a couple min/k off), I was just straight up lost (ie making mistakes and bailing out to roads etc.). What *was* different between the two *days* was the course setter. Day 1 Blue relied heavily on fine skills... the so called "challenging" legs. This meant close contact with the map (which I, for one, did not have). Day 2 Blue was (from what I heard) designed to be more of a route choice course and had fewer controls. And sure enough, legs therefor could be completed with more general navigation using "basemap" features. Then you only had to decipher the field checking from a closer attack point on in (slow down + luck). Or I would go way around on line features / aiming off to get a closer attack from the side or back. Well that's my take on the matter. It was actually kind of eerie being out there and either suddenly or slowly loosing contact... to the point where I am standing in the open woods, can see 50+m in every direction but still can't locate myself on the map. I'm still not sure I completely understand what was going on. --James To: BayOnet From: Vladimir Gusiatnikov Date: Tue, 05 Nov 2002 08:58:39 -0800 Subject: Re: BAOC: US Champs report?? It is quite amazing how different the impressions of the US Champs terrain can be based on someone's style of orienteering. As a matter of fact, I would disagree with most of James's evaluations of the map and the courses (and I'd note that Evan's report mostly disagrees with mine, too). But I can see where James is coming from. I rely heavily on what James would most likely imply by the "map and compass navigation". I.e., I tend to take extensive, detailed, and continuous looks at the terrain around, make a mental map of it (the "map navigation" part), and go ahead as fast as I can. I take short and intense looks at the paper map and keep the images in my head. I then work on minimizing the error between the two 2-d maps, working out corrections to my direction of motion based on the error signal (the "compass navigation" part). If I feel that no corrections are necessary, I don't read the map. This style has numerous drawbacks, and I'm well aware of some of them. First of all, there is no working-ahead inherent to this framework unless I force myself to do it (which I'm not very good at). As Tapio pointed out once, this technique yields not much foresight; it's mostly based on post-processing of what happens to you, rather than trying to have you make things happen. Thus I am really bad at non-trivial route choice. I also tend to run into obstacles such as thickets, impassable cliffs, slopes that are too steep, etc. The technique also does not place demands on working with pace and intensity/structuring of map contact throughout a leg; it promotes a uniform pace, sometimes leading to oversight of important stuff. However, the task of map reading and the amount of map contact are greatly minimized with this technique. The underlying reason is that I work on a 2-d problem, not a 3-d problem, which James would face with visualizing the map and matching the visual to the terrain. Thus it is possible in my case to apply a good physical effort, going in many places well beyond the anaerobic threshold; I have no fear of going too fast if the magnitude of the error signal is not too large. Secondly, there are no demands on visibility or runnability. I do not rely on lines of sight. Most importantly, my technique does not ask much of the mapping. It seems to me that the elegance of James's style puts quite high demands on the mapping quality. There is a certain amount of distorting a professional mapper has to do with "real" contours in order to make them jump out at you and make a clear impression of the land form in your mind. Some of the mappers we have in the States never bother to do that, and there is an almost complete lack of awareness of this issue in Canada. My technique works great in most European continental terrains; US examples would be the Piedmont, most of the Midwest, and MI/WI/MN. But I'm not trying to say it is a good or proper technique, or that anyone should take care to learn or use it. Moreover, I attribute the small amount of progress I made in my navigation over the past couple of years to intense sessions of map visualizing (using 2--5-yr old A-meet maps), which was intended to develop the complementary technique. It seems to me that the bulk of the world's elite embrace James's style, although there are some stark examples of the opposite. I have seen coaching manuals devoted to the other technique but not much on mine. This leads me to think that an excellent elite orienteer would be a master of both styles, and apply one or the other, or some combination thereof, as the conditions demanded, and also add a touch of some stuff that James or I may not be even aware of. This also explains why I don't think I'll ever be more than a mediocre one. And by the way, I did not use almost any fine-orienteering skills over the two days of the Champs. The features were mostly over 50 m in lateral extent, which does not trigger fine-O in my rulebook. Vladimir