I seem to have been bitten hard by the Orienteering bug over the past few months. Actually, it was a DVOA event at Ridley Creek State Park in Dec 2010, with courses set by my dad, that started me on a wave of fitness resulting in a weight loss of about 30lbs.
I’ve lost 30 lbs since I started orienteering in Dec ’10
Since that race, I’ve logged many hours walking and hiking, hoping I could be better at Orienteering – hoping I could stop worrying about getting lost in the woods, or what would happen to me if I had a heart attack in the woods – all the lovely thoughts that one has with Panic Disorder (from which I am making a very good recovery thanks to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and lots of exercise. See my Page on Panic.)
I’ve “competed” in 9 Yellow courses (beginner level,) and one Relay Event in the past 19 months in both the Philly and Boston area. And now, I’m hooked. It feels so good, because now I can actually jog a little! And…I want more.
But because there are no actual Orienteering events for a few weeks, and because I want to move up from Yellow to Orange, (people are saying “it’s time,”) I’ve been trying to “train” in my own fashion. My dad was nice enough to shadow me on a previously competed Brown Course at Ridley Creek State Park on 6/27, which was very confidence-building in terms of getting off the trails and into the woods. Apparently “trail running is not orienteering; real orienteering takes place only in the woods,” according to a NEOC article. And to prepare for Orange, I must take those scary baby steps off the trails! Because you never know what you might find in the woods!
Pink Lady Slipper Orchid – May ’12 at Breakheart Res in MA
So: what’s an Orange level course all about? It’s considered Intermediate level and is 3.5 to 5.5kmlong.
From a NEOC article: Orange is the beginning of real orienteering, because controls are not visible from the trail and you must enter the woods. Controls are located on obvious terrain features, and the marker itself, at waist height, is clearly visible when approaching through the woods from a logical direction. Primary skills include understanding of the importance of an attack point: an obvious terrain feature within 100-200 meters of the control. The experienced orienteer always looks for an attack point first and not the control itself. Another orange-level skill is the ability to use the contour lines to distinguish between spurs (land that juts out from a hillside) and re-entrants (the little valleys between spurs). And it will be useful to take a compass bearing, often from the attack point to the control.
I’ve been taking old courses and trying to “run” them as if in a competition (I jog a little and mostly walk,) and because there are no controls, I’m learning to try and navigate to a feature, which is what you should be looking for in the first place (on the beginning courses you get instant gratification by being able to see controls right from the trails, etc.) So, this is good. But because I am still basically a beginner, and I screw up, sometimes it would be nice to have a control to know I got it right! I think it’s probably not good to practice making mistakes…
On 6/28 I trained on a previous Ridley Yellow course that I knew well, in order to work on speed…FYI Ridley in the summer is a bitch!
And then coming back to the MA area, on 7/3 I trained on an old Orange course at Horn Pond from last year, and did okay.
I was reading an inspiring article off of the DVOA page, talking about training, that made me want to re-think what I’ve been doing: “Training should isolate and improving specific skills, rather than repeat the competitive activity.” And since “Running, Navigating and Route selection are the three main skills that determine orienteering success,” I decided that for my next training activity I would take Running out of the picture entirely. Take the clock away.
So today, I went out to Prospect Hill Park, in Waltham, MA, for a jaunt that lasted almost 2 hours, trying to complete a training course that Ross Smith of CSU (who now lives in Sweden, the birthplace of Orienteering) created for me in Jan ’11 that was too hard for me then. The idea today would be to keep contact as much as possible. “Contact” is the O-term for the relationship in your mind between what you see on the map and what you experience in the natural world around you. I felt very solid with this today, and being forced to slow down, I really did notice a lot more. I didn’t really run except for maybe once or twice when I got bored with a long trail. I found every feature, but got frustrated with my nemesis, the Re-Entrant. All in all, it was a successful training mission.
Each time I orienteer (successfully) I have a feeling of great satisfaction. In the beginning, I was fighting Panic more than anything. Just going into the woods alone was enough of a challenge. But now, I’m not even thinking about the “what ifs” of Panic, I’m just focused on the task at hand: getting from one point to another using a map and compass. I’m even starting to have moments of real joy at the feeling of being in a forest, off a trail, alone, finding things. It’s very empowering.
I want to continue to have fun and train until the next event, which is a DVOA Springton Manor on 7/22.
anniemac attack: in the woods 