An interesting article from Norway

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I found an interesting article written by a Norwegian O' trainer who spent a lot of time looking at splits from a bunch of races. I've done a quick translation of some of the article (Warning! My Swedish is fine, but I'm making a few guesses about the Norwegian. Any errors are strictly my responsibility). The article is from the Norwegian O' Trainers' web page.
Split Times

by Ved Dag Amundsen

... I have gone through times from 74 O' races and found that the "ideal time" (the sum of the best times on each leg) average 7.7 percent better than the real winning time. ...

We shouldn't get too caught up in the best time on a leg. Often the winner of a leg won because of some sort of special circumstance. Maybe they took a chance or got help from other runners. We can't forget that a leg is just a part of a complete race. Often it can, for example, be a good tactic to spend some of the time on a leg planning latter legs. I think most of us will be better off taking a bit of extra time to be safer and avoid mistakes -- maybe taking a compass bearing or taking an extra look or two at the map. ...

There have been studies to find out how much time is spent on the so called "orienteering moments." For women this time was found to be 15.3 percent, and for men 11.0 percent of the time (for an O' race without mistakes). These numbers are not absolute and will vary...(The studies were done with good Norwegian orienteers in difficult terrain). ...

We know that the sum of the 10th best time on each leg gives a much better place than 10th in a race and that winners run even races -- this is the reason that orienteers who seldom get through a course without losing time on one or more legs or controls should slow down a bit and take more time for orienteering. ...

You need to think about how you act. I think the statistics show that we have time to think twice during an O' race. It is better to take an extra five seconds for orienteering technique than to lose a minute by taking a chance. Or to put it another way, it is a good return on ivnestment to "win" 55 seconds by investing 5 seconds.

The original article is at: www.halden-skiklubb.no/otreneren/99_1/strekktider.htm

-- Spike (meglin@juno.com), November 28, 1999

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