EFFICIENT MAP READING

Orienteering Australia recently appointed Grant Bluett (ACT) to the national position of Head Coach. Grant has been one of Australia’s most successful orienteers in recent years at most forms of foot Orienteering on the international stage. It is legend that he won the inaugural World Games Men’s title in Japan in 2001. Grant now takes on a new role in high performance Orienteering and no doubt intends to pass on much of his experience to our up and coming Orienteering athletes. The Australian Orienteer welcomes Grant as a regular correspondent for the magazine.

Map generalising

More efficient map reading

Grant Bluett

YOU are running through the bush at full speed; you clear every obstacle effortlessly; you’re running strong and with purpose. You have a clear plan for where you are going, you have a clear picture of what each section of the terrain looks like before you reach it. You are reading the map relentlessly, knowing that reading each detail is saving you time, and knowing that reading the map isn’t affecting your running speed. Each decision you make is made automatically, you have come across every problem the course setter throws at you in training, and you instantly know the fastest way to the control.

The previous paragraph is a picture of my dream Orienteering state. This is the goal that I believe elite orienteers should strive to meet. Some parts of this picture are quite obvious - that you want to run as fast as you can through the terrain. I don’t think anyone will argue with that. Others are a little less obvious, and I will spend a bit of time talking about them in the rest of this article.

How often should I read the map?

The fastest orienteers read the map through a detailed section of Orienteering more often than the slower ones. They read the map on the run, and with frequent, short glances at the map. The slower orienteer will spend less total time looking at the map, will read the map less frequently, but when they do read the map they will read it for a longer period, and have to slow their running speed to focus on the map. If you add to this that faster orienteers understand what they are looking at on the map quicker than do the slower ones, you can see that they are spending much more time with a clear picture of what the terrain ahead of them looks like.

Think of an Orienteering map as being like a newspaper. A newspaper is full of headlines that give you a vague understanding of what an article is about, the opening paragraphs give you a little more information, then the article itself is full of text that gives you the full details. You can read a newspaper by flicking through the headlines, reading a couple of opening paragraphs of articles in which you have an interest to get a feeling for the article, then you continue reading the entire text of those articles which are important to you.

It is the same with reading an Orienteering map. You scan it by reading the ‘headlines’ and gaining a general picture of what is important to you, then read more information in the sections of the map that will help you get to the control as fast as possible. The challenge here is to know what sections of the map you need to read in more detail. The best way to know this is through experience, spending lots of time orienteering in different terrains, and analysing your races. Studying maps and visualising what the terrain will look like will also help you get a faster and more accurate mental picture of the terrain in race situations.

Decision making

When we make conscious decisions they are affected by stress to a far greater extent than an automatic response. Think of when you learned to drive a car - you had to consciously think about when to change gears, what pressure to put on the clutch, when to start breaking, when to start turning into a corner, and so on. It was quite stressful and you often made mistakes. Now when you can drive a car confidently it all comes automatically, you don’t make mistakes, and it’s all pretty relaxing. Try to think of getting to the same state when you are orienteering.

When you read the map you instinctively know how to run the leg, what parts of the map you have to read detail, and which route choice is fastest. The more time you spend orienteering and thinking about orienteering the greater part of the orienteering process will become automatic, and the lesser part will be spent on making decisions that you aren’t confident about, and that you are more likely to make mistakes over.

As a course setter I think, “I’m going to make these people make as many decisions as possible”, as an orienteer I think “I’m going to train so that I have to make as few decisions as possible”.

My aim with this article has been to give people a better understanding of what you have to train towards to be a better orienteer, now it’s over to you to get out there and do the training!