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Route Choice in Orienteering
Navigation in orienteering can be reduced to two factors:
- Choosing one of the many possible routes to the control
- Finding your way along that route
Once you have learned some basic techniques and rules of navigation,
it should always be possible to find the control - given that the map
is accurate. Therefore, much of the variation among individuals'
times may come from their choice of routes. This is particularly true
when speed through the terrain varies dramatically in different
places, which can occur for any number of reasons:
- A path is faster than the woods
- Vegetation mapped as green may be very slow-going
- Going uphill and then down may be slower than going the long way
around
- A potentially faster route may offer no navigational aids, while
a longer/slower route may provide a navigationally easier approach
to the control site
Another factor is that each individual may have particular strengths;
one may run very fast on a track, but slow down dramatically in the
forest; another may have no great turn of speed, but chug away steadily
uphill; still another may have no confidence in her ability to follow
a compass bearing, but may be able to read contours very well. Hence
the choice of a route on a given leg between controls may have
many possible "best" solutions. This also means that the best
route for a beginner may not be the best route for an advanced orienteer.
As an example, the map shown here gives the route choices and
variations taken by the top orienteers at the Swedish National
Championships some years ago (recall that there are about as many
Swedish orienteers as all other countries combined!). Each orienteer's
route is shown as a single red line and, at places where several
individuals went the same way, red numbers show how many orienteers
followed that portion of the route. Some fields (yellow) were out
of bounds because crops were growing and are marked with red
cross-hatching.
Although this is perhaps an extreme example, it does show the variety
of routes (and combinations of subsets of routes) that may be possible
on a single leg!
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These pages were last updated during May 2000 by Conor Creedon.
Comments and suggestions to conorcreedon@bigfoot.com.
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