A common bit of advice for orienteers is to be careful with the first control. Go slowly. Give yourself time to "get into the map." The idea is that it is especially difficult to find the first control. So it is especially important to find it without making a mistake. It makes some sense. You are likely to be a bit nervous at the beginning of a race. You haven't yet had a chance to "get into the map." You aren't yet tired, so you might run too fast.

I wondered -- how often do people make mistakes on the first control?

I decided I would take a quick look at some split times from several races and see if I could see a pattern. Do people make a lot of mistakes on the first control?

I looked at the split times from ten races. I looked at several different categories (from F16 to world cup men). All of the races were in Europe. I counted the number of errors on each of the first five legs. I then calculated the percent of runners who made errors on each leg (the percent who missed each control is shown at the end of this message).

It looks like there is no tendency to have more errors on the first control. If anything, it looks like there is a tendency to have relatively few errors on the first control. On the average, 17 percent of the runners made a mistake on the first control. The average for the second through fifth controls varied from 16 to 34 percent.

I haven't looked at enough results to be sure of my result. I didn't try to make the selection random and I didn't test for statistical significance (it is not like I'm an actuary or PhD in astronomy). But, I thought the result was interesting. It was not what I expected. I expected to see a clear tendency for a lot of people to miss the first control.

Even if runners don't miss the first control often, it may still make a lot of sense to have a strategy of trying to take the first control slowly and carefully.

percent of runners who made a mistake

First control:5,10,6,33,23,13,26,19,18,17.

Second control:17,10,13,33,15,3,26,2,0,39.

Third control:32,29,4,20,0,8,31,8,36,44.

Fourth control:2,20,31,16,23,18,31,32,36,28.

Fifth control:6,49,50,22,8,44,31,3,45,78.

-- Michael (meglin@juno.com), August 09, 2000

Answers

I wonder if the lower-than-expected mistakes on the first leg are due to one of two factors: 1) people are being careful as they approach the first control; or 2) course setters are setting "easier" legs to allow competitors time to get in to the map.

I also wonder if the results would be different for US races. I imagine there are fewer US orienteers who know how to "walk to the first control". It would be interesting to look at the times and mistakes of a competitive group, such as M45 or M50, who may just run like hell to the first control.

-- Mary (maprunner@juno.com), August 10, 2000.

I took a quick look at the results from three A-meet days at the convention (BAOC) where e-punching was used. I looked at the Red courses.

The boom rates (i.e. percent of runners making a mistake) for the first control were 29, 40 and 27. Those are all high rates of booms (compared to the European data). But, they are unusually high rates of booms compared to the second through fifth controls. The first control was never the "most boomed." But, on two of the days the first control was the next-to-most-boomed control.

Boom rates by control

First control: 29, 40, 27.

Second control: 33, 60, 7.

Third control: 51, 22, 14.

Fourth control: 36, 26, 52.

Fifth control: 56, 14, 7.

I think what really stands out is how many people had booms. I looked at just 15 controls and there were three where more than half the runners boomed!

-- Michael (mike_eglinski@kcmo.org), August 10, 2000.