Haven’t written anything for a while, but today I was really pissed off in the orienteering race at Riga’s zoo, so should put down some thoughts about it and the start of the season 2010..
Let me start with expectations for this race. I haven’t done a lot of training for this season.. well OK, I haven’t train a lot in the last 4 or 5 years, except those short and rare MTB or adventure race training periods when you should make some effort just for not to be the slowest in the team (or not to kill yourself with an extra high heart rate on the race). Anyway I did roughly 4 running (usually jogging, sometimes indoor football) trainings a week and this year I decided not to do any MTB trainings till the Jukolan viesti in the June - so more running less biking should help me to get fit for the big relays.
When I looked at the start list for today’s race, there were some 15 guys who (as I know) are training really hard, but when it comes to orienteering sprint in a challenging terrain then everything is possible (after all terrain wasn’t so challenging ..).
So my expectations – to get in the top 10 would be good, top 8 - excellent.
I wouldn’t be so optimistic if this was my first race of the season but I did quite a good race on Monday – taking the 1st place in the Riga’s center sprint (in the 2nd strongest men’s class). Map is
here (clean race - couldn’t find more than 10 seconds in mistakes).

In the morning when you go to the orienteering race it’s too late to get more trained – to get faster legs on the course, but it’s never too late to set up your mind for the race. Athletes from sports like bobsleigh know every single meter of the track, hurdles sprinters know every their step to make. We in orienteering every time have different terrain, different course, everything is new, that’s why it’s so interesting and that’s why we should prepare mentally twice as much.
So my thinking before today’s race:
• concentrate only on the course - 90% of my orienteering mistakes is because of distractions, it could be anything – some music in the head, other runners – “have I caught him? where is he running? ..”, thinking of how good race I had so far.. Whenever I catch myself with such a thoughts, I must immediately get back to the map or terrain reading or if everything is really 100% clear I can say myself “work with your legs Martin, speed on.. ”;
• plan ahead – whenever it’s possible plan ahead at least 1 controlpoint, when I approach a controlpoint I should already know where it should be 30 meters before it and also should know where to move 30 meters after the punch to the next one;
• save meters – I should choose the shortest route despite it’s often more difficult for orienteering, that’s where the course planner wants to trick you with easy, fast, but longer route;
• plan the route to control backwards - known thing, but still so often you have to make extra meters because you did not check that the control is not reachable from your route;
• make clear map exchange before 2nd loop – when running to map exchange controlpoint drop out 1st loop control description, punch in the control, put 2nd loop control description, take 2nd loop map, check on the map that it’s your class map, find start symbol, find 1st control, choose route;
With all this in my mind I start the race, I don’t need to know who is running before or after me, that will only distract me off the course. So first 5 controls more or less works fine for me. Then comes the 6th where the map exchange is also placed. When I already begin to think of map exchange procedure, evil zoo lady forbids me to run on one of the roads towards the control saying that animals have got crazy, well, I have to choose around way. That’s where I know realize I was not mentally ready for such a happening. Although I did not make any big mistake afterwards, I couldn’t get 100% on the course anymore – it started when I couldn’t find start symbol on the 2nd map, didn’t plan ahead anymore.
Funny thing - next time I am running that animal road (after exactly 4 minutes) no one is anymore there, and I can freely run, WTF is happening, no more motivation for me in this race..
Couldn’t expect something like this, but still it shouldn’t distract me, I had to drop it out of the mind. Also event organizer couldn’t expect deer to go crazy, so no blame on them.
1st loop map is
here2nd loop map is
hereMy next race is planned after 2 weeks in quite interesting terrain near Riga, till that a lot of working and studying should be done, also it would be good to make a few trainings because 10Mila is already after 3 weeks.