All told, those of us
Team HRAdventurers
who are doing the Georgia 30-hour race Feb. 11th weekend (Mike, Pam,
and I) spent 18 hours together over Saturday and Sunday. It
wasn't a single overnight training outing or anything quite so
dramatic. Instead, we paddled the canoe and biked on Saturday and
then drove up to Great Falls Virginia (3 hours one-way really pads the
"total time together" figure) for the
Quantico Orienteering
meet on Sunday. We didn't realize it, but the orienteering meet
was the official Virginia State Championships so we picked a good day
to make the trip; the longest course, the Blue course, was a great
opportunity to exercise our orienteering skills. Pam and Mike ran
the Blue course together, giving Pam a chance to observe and learn from
Mike; I ran the Blue course solo.
I'll post later about the orienteering course details and my specific
route choices, etc, but for the moment I want to emphasize what great
training an orienteering meet is . . . there is no better way to cram
so much navigation into so short a time. In a real adventure
race, the checkpoints may be an hour apart or further and the true
navigation choices are separated by long stretches of biking, trekking,
or paddling. If an adventure race has 15 checkpoints, it's safe
to bet that at least 5 of them will be at significant roads, boat
landings, or trail junctions and there won't be
big
navigational calculus involved in getting there; it's all about your
pace for those 5 checkpoints. For another 5 CPs, you may
have to make a few route decisions such as which trail to follow at an
intersection or where to cut through some dense vegetation, but they
aren't challenging your orienteering skills in a major fashion.
For the final 5 CPs in my hypothetical adventure race, you may have to
use more "real" orienteering skills where you're studying terrain and
deciding on which gully, hillside, elevation line, or rock outcropping
to attack. Of course, accomplished orienteerers will claim that
there is orienteering involved in getting to all 15 CPS, but I'm
generalizing and saying that only 5 will be really challenging in an
orienteering sense. If this hypothetical race is 12 hours long,
then you have 5 "tough" CPs spread over 12 hours; that's an average of
one "tough" nav scenario every 2 and half hours (approximately).
Now, consider the Blue course for the orienteering meet
yesterday. There were 21 controls and I took about 135 minutes to
complete it (how's this for humbling: some of the real pros did the
course in 1 hour less than me!). I'll say there were 6 controls
that were gimmes, I think borrowed from a few of the shorter courses,
but that still leaves 15 really solid controls. With a time of 2
hours and 15 minutes that makes for an average of one "tough" nav
scenario every 9 minutes. The orienteering event offers 16 times
more navigation challenge (just based on frequency). In a
nutshell, I experienced the equivalent of 3 12-hour adventure races
worth of "tough" orienteering in one 135 minute orienteering run.
That can't be beat for training efficiency and when one considers that
navigation factors as the most significant skill to adventure racing
success (unless the race is more of a track meet such as the defunct
Balance Bar Sprints), the orienteering meets should be crowded with
adventure racers.
We made the most of the orienteering as a
training event by
running it with backpacks on etc. Any serious "pure" orienteer
would never bother with the extra weight, but we approach the event as
a training day and aren't concerned with the final standings. I
know several adventure racers that build long training days around the
o-meet; for example, several AR folks were mountain biking after
running the orienteering course. We decided not to bother
bringing the bikes up to Northern Virginia, but it's a smart way to
make the most of your training time so good for them!
I don't like driving 3 hours to an O-meet all that often, but once in a
while it's really worth it and for those closer to where the
Quantico Orienteering Club
operates, it's really worth your effort. They're welcoming
to novices and will walk you through the protocol for
getting started . . . once you leave the start area, it's just you and your
compass and your map! A great navigation workout is well worth the $5
or $10.