Race Preparation

By Luke Bennett

Race preparation in orienteering is quite often referred to by top athletes as geeking. They will outline 1 to 3 priority races that they want to perform best in and focus on preparing for those races. If the thought of preparing for important races in the hope to perform better interests you, then have a look at the following tips to mastering race preparation!

You would be surprised to hear how often this gets ignored. When details are released, make sure you know where the assembly is going to be, how far it is from assembly to the start, how long your course is, and roughly where finish is. From this information, you can try and plan your course and the rough route it will follow.

Map geeking is the term used when looking back at old maps of the area and getting a feel for the way the map looks and what techniques could be useful in different bits of the map. Another important thing to do is highlighting any areas on the map that could be potential traps. In Urban areas, this could be areas with a multi-level, or intricate passageways. In forested areas, this could be intricate contours or vegetation. Maybe use Routegadget to see if people have struggled in particular areas in the past

Once you have established the area, you can take the ’Google Man’ for a walk. This is much easier for an urban area but In some forests or moorlands, there are a few 360 degree view pictures. You can get a feel for the terrain with these! For an urban race, you could even plan your own course there and ‘run’ it using google earth street view. If there are any tricky areas, then highlight them on your old map or online map of the area.

In forest/moorland races, it is very important to know the shape of the area so that you know what is up and what is down, where you would be better taking the straight route or where you would be better off contouring around a hill. This is my simplified map of Buckmore park that I drew in preparation of the KOL event there in January. I found this very useful and these were the only features I needed to get me around the map!

This is possibly one of the most important aspects of race preparation. Take Shooters Hill for example, there would be no point using an indistinct path as an attack point there as there are so many little paths, it just wouldn't be a safe attack point. However, if you were in an area with very few paths, a large track could be used as a reliable collecting, catching or attack point feature. In a contour heavy area with scattered trees, using clearing probably wouldn't be reliable, but using large re-entrants or spurs would be. It is all about noticing what will stand out and be a safe feature to use during your run.