It’s taken a little while to put pen to paper, but I think I have a valuable story that I didn’t want my readers to miss out on. In October I travelled to Australia for Oceania Orienteering Championships as a member of the NZ Pinestars team and as the coach of the NZ Secondary Schools team. This was a great opportunity to race in challenging terrain and I was fairly nervous going into the competition because I have typically struggled on terrain with large slopes as my height judgement is certainly the weak link in my navigation skill set.
I want to focus just on the Oceania Long, not because it was my best result of the trip, but because I can make all 3 points I want to make just from this one race. It’s important to understand the build up to this race, and how I understood the situation from my own perspective. This year, I treated September and October as the off season and my fitness had been steadily fading since WOC, unable to be propped up on 3-4 hours of running per week. I was also sick with an airway infection for the 5 days prior to this race and spent a lot of time in bed. So I was in no fit state to be labelled a favourite for this race, even as defending champion, and I expected to place around 6th or 7th as per the races of the previous weekend.
The first point I want to make is that you must know your fitness level before a long race like this. I mean know your fitness level as your pacing, heart rate or lap times show it to be, not as you would like it to be, and not even as you subjectively sense it to be. The numbers don’t lie. We often start a race as if our fitness is at an all time high, and regularly suffer the consequences in the later part of the race. I know the link between my heart rate and my pace on a flat road very well, and so I was under no illusion that my fitness better than what it was in reality. I practise running at specific intensities on a weekly basis to keep in tune with the feeling of running at these different intensities, and monitor heart rate during this process. Come race day, this takes desire and denial out of the equation. On this occasion, I knew what the race intensity should feel like. I started at this intensity and I finished the race just holding onto the same intensity that I started with.
Looking at the splits or GPS tracking you can see, despite not making any significant errors early on, I was well off the starting pace of my competitors for the first half, but all of them lost time to me in the last half of the race due to a decrease in running speed. I started realistically and sustainably. Some paid a heavy price for starting too fast.
The second point I want to make is that you must work with the conditions. It was hot on race day, around 30 degrees. Combined with the length of the race, this was always going to be a challenge to overcome. I’m very good with hydration, making sure I have adequate salt in my diet the previous day and balancing that with water. I find that just drinking to thirst leaves me with slightly too little water on board so I make a conscious effort to take on water after dinner and first thing in the morning. I aim to pee clear urine at least an hour before I race. You don’t need to go beyond that point, in fact, going well beyond this point by drinking a very large amount of water is counter productive as your body may have trouble maintaining salt levels.
Also on this day, I walked to the start. This is the first time ever I have not at least jogged a warm up. I walked slowly and in the shade as much as possible. I drenched myself in water at the start and made sure my shirt and pants were soaked. I started slightly chilled and didn’t break a noticeable sweat until the big climb part way to 4. The walking and the water probably kept 20 minutes worth of sweat in my body for later in the race. I was also disciplined at drinks controls, and stopped at them all, especially the spectator control where I took the time to suck down half a 750 mL bottle.
The third point is on the navigation strategy that I will always employ in types of terrain that I’m unfamiliar with. The strategy is to reduce risk and aim for consistency by selecting safe routes. Of course it always makes sense to take a safer route if all other factors are equal, but the key to success here is to be disciplined enough to invest the time to plan the route choices ahead of time. Telling yourself to take safe routes as you stand on the start line is not worth anything. What you actually need to do is come to grips with intentionally sacrificing a little bit of running speed every now and again to look at critical legs later on in the course. Alternatively, make it your intention to stop at a control until you have completely planned the next route choice. Either way, the barrier to success here is not the intention to stay safe, it is overcoming the sense of urgency to keep pushing hard at every single moment when the clock is ticking.
Counter to the strategy of maximising safety, there will always be a point when prioritising safety gets taken too far and you end up covering too much distance on a track or road to be competitive. This considered, I still believe that most of us should prioritise the safer option over what looks to be the fastest option. This is because most of us have a bias towards choosing the route with the potential to be the fastest. It’s as if we are trying to get the fastest split on every leg, but what ends up happening is that mistakes end up overshadowing the small gains. Furthermore, these mistakes have the secondary effect of reducing confidence and then concentration suffers. Prioritising safety just a little more that you feel you should delivers the best results for more of us. Said another way, leaning towards the safe option is a strategy to reverse the inherent bias we have to take the straightest route.
By emphasising these 3 points on race day, I managed to maintain a good speed longer than most, stay cooler and more hydrated than most, and reduce risk more than most and came away with a surprise 2nd place in very unfamiliar terrain against a strong field.
