There's no crying in orienteering!

I'm not going to lie. I'm neither smart nor creative enough to be able to just about any article and make it interesting or relevant to orienteering. I'm sure its do-able, but.... not by me. So, my article I just read about implicit skill learning by experts in netball? Well, it'll have to wait while I give it more thought. If you have any suggestions on what sort of orienteering skills could be developed using implicit learning (particularly for the high-performance audience), then I'm all ears.

For now, I'm going with an easy one. Specificity.

"Comparison of base running in baseball players and track-and-field athletes", Kazuyoshi Miyaguchi, Shinich Demura, Kazuya Nagai, Yu Uchida, Health, Issue 3, 2011

Sometimes, scholarly articles may be... "scholarly" but not exactly mind-blowing. This is one of those articles. But, I think it just illustrates an important point that sometimes is forgotten by many mid-level athletes. The study compared sprint ability of baseball players and track athletes, specifically sprinters, jumpers, and some decathlon guys. Essentially, track athletes who tend to run in straight lines only. The subjects were tested running the bases from home plate to second, and rounding the bases. These are equivalent to straight line distances of 54.8 metres, and 109.6 metres. Running those distances in a straight line were also tested, so that there was data for both sets of subjects while running the bases and running in a straight line. Aside from the time it took to run the distance, they also measured running distance around the bases, to identify differences in efficiency.

I don't think anyone would find the results all that surprising. The track athletes were generally faster over the straight line distance, being almost a second faster over the 109.6m sprint. However, the baseball players were just slightly faster while rounding the bases. The average change of speed between straight and base running was higher in the track & field athletes, meaning that their performance suffered greater from having to turn. Further, the baseball players cumulatively ran a shorter distance while rounding the bases, meaning they were more efficient with their turning technique, being able to run a tighter line through the corners.

Here's a simple summary from the authors: "It is inferred that the T&F athletes cannot exert sprint ability with poorly-trained base running skills whereas baseball players go through a base smoothly and can maintain maximum speed".

So, how can we translate this to orienteering?

As I said in the introduction, this post is about specificity. The baseball study showed us that if you want to be good at base running, you can't just be a fast sprinter. You have to be good at running bases. If we want to make a direct relation to orienteering, you could compare smooth-ness of base running to smooth-ness of orienteering. The fastest guy doesn't always win, the guy with the best flow will win. But, we all know that one.

Orienteering is a running sport that requires more than just running fitness, it also requires a lot of running skills. If you look at what your weaknesses are while orienteering, the most obvious thing to do is to do those things, a lot. I encounter this a lot when talking to people about the Canadian Death Race. They went out and tried to do it solo, while training around town for all summer. Then they get to the mountains and realize that their knees have been absolutely shattered because they just spent an hour and a half descending. There are no 90 minute downhills on the prairies. The only way to train yourself to handle that physical stress is to do it. A lot. Similarly, from what I understand, one of the reasons many European orienteers are so fast through the woods is that that's what they grew up doing. Orienteering or otherwise, they've had the opportunity to do a lot of, and implicitly or explicitly have become skilled at running efficiently through that kind of terrain. They too, might be able to outrun track and field athletes in their chosen field.

Which brings me to my favorite rant about North American orienteers. Many of us (myself excluded) do a pretty good job of coming up with some good technical training to practice their navigation skills. But we all need to run way, way more. We need to run longer, run faster, be more efficient in rough terrain, climb hills faster, and etc. I look at this sport as a running sport with navigation, not the other way around. And again, with the specificity, it doesn't count if its cycling to work, or playing indoor soccer, or jogging around hanging controls. Being a good runner means focusing on running.

For orienteers, this can also include learning to run in less than ideal circumstances. Try doing intervals straight through the woods, find some reasonably technical downhills to go overspeed on. Do sidehill intervals (if you're a masochist). Or alternatively, isolate muscle performance that impact those skills. Balance or agility, for instance. A guy I know who is a professor of exercise physiology actually quoted a Swedish orienteer (I can't remember which one), who said that he likes to do explosive stength exercises in the gym, because the explosive power enables him to lengthen the distance he gets with each stride, allowing him to run just that little bit faster or reducing his fatigue in softer terrain.

But, I'm getting off track a little. Point being, this simple base running study shows that specific physical skills are improved through training those specific skills. You can be an awesome runner, but if I can't turn, you'll get beaten by an okay runner with great turning skills. Likewise, orienteering is a skill running sport, and its great if you're fit and can run, but you need to be able to run with skill. And that simply requires practice. Repetition. Specificity.

Getting jacked up on the caff

And.... we're back! There was a forced brief hiatus there, my log-in for university library access ran out, so I had to find another. And then I did. And all was well.
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I've always thought it odd that in orienteering, a typically race weekend or multi-day event involves something grueling every day, if not twice a day. If this were skiing, few skiers would think its a good idea to race twice the day before doing a race that was expected to take 90 minutes the next morning - think a middle + sprint on Saturday and long on Sunday. That's like skiing a 15k, followed by a 5k, followed by a 30k the next morning. In the days before "mini-tours" were en vogue en skiing, I bet half the field would blow off at least one or both of the Saturday races to do the Sunday race or vice versa.

Yet, most orienteers would feel cheated if they didn't get to race that much in one weekend. And don't get me started on training! Every session seems to be blasting at top speed. So, since orienteers don't seem to be quick on change (as I think the state of fashion in our sport attests), I'm going to have to deal with this unusually high demand of racing in short periods of time. And it might be best if I learn some things about how to handle it just a bit better, with this study:

"The Effect of Adding Caffeine to Postexercise Carbohydrate Feeding on Subsequent High-Intensity Interval-Running Capacity Compared With Carbohydrate Alone" by Conor Taylor, Daniel Higham, Graeme L. Close, and James P. Morton, International Journal of Sport Nutition and Exercise Metabolism, 2011, 21, pp. 410-416. 


If I remember rightly from my phys ed degree, the idea behind ingesting caffeine pre-race is that it speeds the metabolism of fats. Fat, as opposed to carbohydrate, metabolizes slower, but provides more energy. So, if you  can burn fat faster, you'll get more energy gradually over a longer period of time, and probably get a sweet six-pack (okay, two out of three).

This study, however, looked at adding caffeine to one's post exercise re-fueling, in particular, after a high-intensity running session, and its effect on running capacity on another high-intensity session four hours later. The participants did the test protocol three seperate times, once consuming a liquid with just carbohydrate, once with carbs and caffeine, and once with flavoured water (Volvic, not tasty). They would do one test to volitional vatigue, then rest for four hours, consuming the drink four times during that period, at 5, 60, 120, and 180 minutes after. Then they did an exercise capactity test, the beep test, which, if you've never done, is a ton of fun. Seriously, a blast.

They measured several things, though I'd say only two measures had significant differences, as shown in this graph:

Charts make everything look more science-y.

The most important result is that there was clearly improved performance when consuming carbohydrates and caffeine against just carbs and just water. Like, the differences were huge. An average of 32 minutes to exhaustion versus 48? That's a 50% gain in exercise capacity. Clearly consuming some caffeine had an effect on exercise capacity. In the discussion, the authors refer to another study they say agrees with their findings with some more data: "Pedersen et al. used a feeding protocol similar to that adopted here ... At the end of the 4-hr recovery period, total glycogen resynthesis was therefore 80 mmol/kg greater in the CHO+CAF trial than in the CHO-only condition." Essentially, the body created more fuel during the recovery period with some caffeine.

The authors go into several other theories that could explain how, physiologically, caffeine impacts the body to cause this increase, which I won't go into here. I highly encourage anyone to read this paper for that discussion (its pretty brief, but interesting).

The other notable result related to the ingestion of caffeine was the rate of gastrointestinal discomfort, which,  does not paint a pretty picture for caffeine, or carbs, for that matter. As the chart showed, the discomfort was significantly higher as the test went on. This should be a huge red flag to those people who have sensitive stomach.

So, how can we apply this to orienteering?


Firstly, remember that this measure exercise capacity. So, if you're sprinting in the afternoon after a middle in the morning, it may not make you any faster. However, it could potentially make you slow down less. Or, it could make you feel less fatigued from the morning's effort as those last 5-10 minutes of the sprint wears on. This could stave off the feeling of being really stupid near the end of the race, something I think we've all experienced at some time.

I would also think that if you have a longer event in the afternoon, perhaps a relay, or even a middle or a chasing start, it could have a significant impact there. Simply being able to better recover from the morning's effort and sustain a level of effort for longer.

It would also apply to the training camp scenario. Given they seem to be 5-6 sessions in a day, consuming some caffeine after the first workout could very well make those afternoon workouts more productive.

Caffeine or not, though, its clear that even just consuming some carbs post-workout is very important.

How much caffeine????
Okay, sorry, this probably got you all excited. Huge exercise capacity gains? How can I lose? Well, in this study, the subjects consumed 8mg/kg body mass. For me, that'll mean 680mg of caffeine, which, quite frankly, is INSANE.

As a point of reference, a red bull has 320 mg per litre of caffeine. I'd have to drink over two litres of redbull. Alternatively, I could drink around 7 litres of Coke, take 7 caffeine tablets, consume 20 Gu Roctanes, eat 65 Hershey's chocolate bars, or have a third of a litre of espresso.

I don't understand why my map won't come into focus.

So, the gains found in this study are highly unfeasible. But, scale it down, and you may see some gains. Its always worth experimenting with during training. Don't try it for the first time before a race! Remember the gastrointestinal discomfort data? Don't be that guy throwing up all over the SI box at control three.

I hate to leave on such a non-cheery note, though, so watch this instead. I can promise you that I have heard almost all of these at one point: