Basic Technique Training

Although the spring season seems to be well underway, with regional events most weekends, it isn't too late to get some basic technique training under your belt before the really big races of the year: the JK and the British Championships.

I'm going to talk about compass and pacing work here. In the New Forest, it's easy to get lazy and not take compass bearings or pace into controls. The forest is usually open enough to get away with running to the right general area and then looking around for the control. In other places, it's vital to have these techniques well honed and ready for action. For example, some of the intricate contour detail of Pwll Ddu, where the British Championships will be held in May will call for very fine navigation, especially if the mist's down.

Pacing
Views are mixed on whether pacing is a useful technique or not. Some people have an inherent feel for how far they have gone and don't feel that pacing adds anything to their orienteering. I think there are situations where it is very useful and it can always work as a sense check alongside your map reading.

Most orienteers count double paces, i.e. how many times your right foot touches the ground, and will have a good idea of their pace count for 100m on an even track. I do about 40 double paces to 100m when I'm running at race pace. This needs to be adapted in the terrain and so it's good to also know your pace count when walking 100m. Mine is about 70 double paces to 100m. Your pace count through terrain is likely to fall between your running and walking pace counts. Judging where on the scale can be a bit of an art!

Compass
Many southern orienteers will just use rough bearings to navigate round their courses (i.e. line up the red needle with the north lines and the lines on the compass with the direction you want to go. This is usually good enough but there are situations where actually taking a bearing will improve your accuracy considerably and consequently save you time. I'm not going to describe how to take a bearing here as most orienteers know how to do it but I would advocate doing it more often, especially in technical terrain such as at the British Championships (here's a link to the terrain description and a map covered with brown wiggly things).

So, where can you practice these skills?

1. At events
Not all events are important, some can be used for training. For example, there's a training event coming up at Ocknell (see the website for more details) that would be ideal for a training session, especially if you're out in the dark. Practising compass and pacing is easy, you just need to do it lots of times. When I'm aiming to work on these techniques, I take a bearing for at least part of every leg and pace everything, trying to remember whether my pacing usually leads me to undershoot or overshoot the control.

2. Round a local park.
Draw a course that forms a closed loop on a piece of A4 paper, or even use a course that you have done recently. Take a bearing between each control point and pace the distance. You should end up back where you started. The first time you do this, you might want to take it quite slowly. The next time, you could speed it up until you find a pace that you are comfortable with.

Keep up the training!
Christine