Pre Race Preparation (Compass Sport Cup)

Final details and control descriptions are now available for the Compass Sport Cup here. Here's a few lines on pre-race preparation.

I remember hearing Dave Peel talk about the GB Squad's preparation for a major championship race and a good proportion of the work done before the event was called geeking. This means finding out as much about the course you are going to run as you can before arriving at the start. The kinds of things you can do are to look at and train on similar maps, try to work out where the start/finish are and, even where the course goes.

If you have a copy of the map, there are a few things that you can do to get familiar with it:

• Try to think of what the tricky legs might be - the best way to do this is to try to plan your course
• Leave the map lying around in the bathroom or on the kitchen table so you pick it up quite often
• Get a feel for the shape of the area - a good way to do this is to highlight all of the index contours on the map
• Identify good features for navigation - this might be a big tower or could be a long wall or fence. By looking at the map you might also spot things that aren't good to navigate by, e.g. be wary of using ditches if there are hundreds mapped in each forest block - you'll never know that you're on the right one.

Now that the control descriptions are up on the web, download them and the details and print them out. Check that you know what all of the descriptions mean and check that there is nothing unusual mentioned in the details.

Good luck for Sunday!

Christine