Saturday 3 March 2007, Faskally Woods, Pitlochry
This coaching day was very well attended, with enthusiastic orienteers of all ages attending from a wide area. Faskally is a delightful area for orienteering, with varied terrain and features all within a compact area of forest, readily accessible from the main road, so it was an ideal choice for a coaching area.
As a starting point, the coaches had laid out a measured 100m where we were encouraged to test out our pacing and get a ‘feel’ for what 100m looks like in a wood. Then there were three coaching exercises available – a cross country course, a contour course and a ‘window’ course.
We were advised to start off with the cross country course to get acclimatised to the terrain. A fellow member of TAY and I went round as a pair on all three courses. We found this useful as we could choose to stay together for some parts of the course, or, where there was a route choice between two controls, split up and test out the different options.
Despite being reasonably familiar with Faskally, we both misjudged the first ‘easy’ control. We found out later, in talking to coach Lynne Walker, that the choice of control location had been a deliberate ploy on her part, aimed at making us far more wary on our approach to the first control of a course.
The contour course was more challenging, with many features and ‘clutter’ removed from the map, leaving only contours and hazards such as lochs and dangerous cliffs to use as defining points. The aim of this exercise was to get a feel for the ground and improve awareness of shapes and slopes. We took this exercise quite slowly, on occasion going back between controls to understand why we had veered off course. We were not alone in having a problem finding a pit amongst brashings in a very flat area! The window exercise was aimed at building confidence to move faster between controls without having constant map contact, and at making us look at the map in detail around the control site. We located the first four controls without major difficulty as they were no more than 200m apart, but the next control was 450m away. Here we had a choice – to go straight on a compass bearing, through a very rough area, or to veer off course slightly and use what we thought would be a parallel path - not shown on the map – which would provide an easier and faster route. We chose the latter, and felt duly pleased with ourselves when we located the control. Unfortunately, by then we discovered we had run out of both time and mental energy and had to forego the remaining controls.
This was a very worthwhile day and I felt I had gained a greater appreciation of the ‘signals’ to pick up from the map and improved confidence in running between controls. One of the most useful aspects of the day was to have enthusiastic, experienced coaches on hand to provide guidance, discuss route choice and identify the reasons for mistakes. A big ‘thank you’ must go to Lynne and Ross for such a well planned and efficiently organised event and to everyone else who contributed to the day. If you missed this one, be sure to sign up for the next Personal Performance Day.
by Moira Laws
Although Faskally is only a small area, it’s surprisingly complex and provides plenty of challenges. It was good to have the chance to practice various techniques without the pressure of competition, and our family all made use of the measured 100m to check how many paces we take, walking or running, on rough ground. We did the TD5 exercises - there were 3 of these. We started by individually running round the cross-country course, a conventional orienteering course in a figure of eight, which was fun. After that, my husband and son followed the contour-only course, and enjoyed having a completely different view of the terrain, without the distraction of vegetation and paths. Meanwhile, my daughter and I did the windows exercise, taking it in turns to lead a leg. The map consisted of just a small window of detail around each control, which looked a bit daunting at first, but it turned out to be more straightforward than we had feared. The longer legs were the best, as we had to faithfully follow a bearing and then relocate. It was encouraging to find that we could do it. With hindsight, it would have been better for me to miss out the cross-country course, and do the contour-only exercise followed by the windows one, because the cross-country course took some of the challenge out of the other exercise I did, and we only had limited time. We enjoyed the afternoon - thanks to everyone involved in setting it up.
by Sally Lindsay
At Faskally, I did two courses - the cross country and the windows. The cross country was good because I got to have a scout round the area and see what it was like, although doing it meant that I couldn’t do the contour-only exercise, which I would have liked to do as well. I did the windows course with my mum because otherwise it would have been too hard! I found it fun and it was good as I got to practise bearings and pacing, it was very good practice. I would like to try doing a windows course again. I think that overall the training day was very worthwhile and I would go again if there was another one on; I really enjoyed it.
by Rona Lindsay
Posted by on 03rd Mar 07 Filed under: Coaching/Training