Discussion: Four

I went out on the intermediate course a few hours after you were there, introducing someone to orienteering. We had that control at the "end" of the wall/valley bottom and I pointed out that the streamer wasn't where it seemed to be marked on the map. He felt like it was close enough and has responded, "Lol orienteering people have high expectations" when I shared your comment with him just now. We DO have high expectations! That's how it's supposed to be!

That's actually pretty interesting. I've never really thought about control placement in the eyes of a beginner, it's always just been "it needs to be in the exact right spot according to the circle and descriptions" but I suppose it makes sense that it wouldn't bother beginners as much. I suppose it's something to do with us wanting to be fast and beginners not caring as much? Or perhaps just that beginners don't read the map and control descriptions carefully enough to recognize where the controls should be? I don't know... :)

Yeah, I think the extent of his visualization of where the streamer was going to be was "that way, on a wall", as opposed to "that way, at the end of the wall and in the bottom of the reentrant." I was bothered by the fact that it was very much not at the bottom/flat but this was his sixth control ever in his life and I think he was still just tickled at the fact that he was using a map to find these little streamers hanging in otherwise random spots in the woods.

Thinking back to my white and yellow course days, it totally makes sense - you go to find the control, not necessarily the feature if that makes sense. Especially for a beginner I'm not surprised that the location in relation to the reentrant was not something he thought about. It's always interesting to see how the way experienced orienteers think about things compared to beginners/non-orienteers. We're weird I guess ;)