WOC 2009 Men's Middle Distance Qualifier, Heat B
Had a 'typical' result today - not an awful result like last year - so that's an improvement. Finished 30th this year, vs. 34th last year, so that's an improvement. And had only one esp. bad mistake this year.
Lost about 3:15 on # 6, a vague attack diagonal downhill trying to go about 400m on compass with 2 subtle errors contributing to 8 distinct partial attacks, with the last few being 'trying follow that guy to somewhere new'. Should've taken a slightly safer route, using a bit more trail, bouncing off a few more platforms along the way..? It was tough for me to nail - although 14 of 15 qualfiers did nail this. Perhaps adding some pace count, and more precision on the compass could've more clearly helped me hit the stone/pit 'line'.
After that one, I had two ~30-second misses, and some 5-10's.
It's obviously a great competitive field to compare oneself to. I imagine if I retired (now) and did primarily orienteering training, in Europe, I could get my navigation more consistent, where I could more reliably expect to lose only about 1 minute on a course like this. And I could probably get a bit faster. Both of which would be needed to make the finals at the World Championships.
Much less disruptively, I could probably train a bit more, and (barring injury) continue to get a bit faster, perhaps going under 5min/mile someday, although I'd have to reach down to 4:40 to begin having a reasonable shot at the finals - not sure if that will happen w/o substantial further investment. I could probably invest a bit more time (mostly overhead) in training-in-terrain (O'shoes, tape and such, even in VF park), so that my speed off-trail was maximized as a % of speed on-trail/road. I think that may already be pretty close though, at least for non-green, non-wet terrain.
One big thing that could help non-trivially is traveling more for orienteering. After Clem had been a DVOAer for 15+ years, I think he phrased it well in saying that he did a lot of 'pseudo-orienteering'. When the maps are getting pretty familiar, and the technique-set is relatively narrow, as it is when you've been in the same terrain/club for a long time, it's harder to keep the full arsenal of orienteering skills at the ready. New-to-me-map orienteering and several days in a row are key, I think. Travelling to a summer-week of orienteering in the US will likely be possible every summer starting next year as the kids will be 7 & 9, but it may be a few more years until the kids can easily travel with us to European events, at which point I'll be slowing more, esp. for the shorter distances... Perhaps a few more A-meets, combined with 1-day sight-seeing to keep it interesting for all, would be helpful too?
Hopefully I can swing something like this to continue to improve.