Motivation

Saturday, 8 July 2017

When we turned up to a local orienteering event on Saturday afternoon a few weeks ago, the kids weren’t too keen on running the Medium course (the smaller events only offer Long, Medium and Short courses).  The medium actually wasn’t all that long (3.3k) but it was quite a hilly area which was putting them off.  The short course was only 2.2k but it looked a bit too easy to me- so I was trying to convince them to run the technically harder & longer medium course (which was the one I was going to do).   My reasoning was that since they beat me in a race the previous weekend, they we’re totally capable of running the same course as me. They weren’t convinced though.

Then I  had an idea: At the moment the kids and I are sort of competitive - They are faster on shorter easier legs but my navigation is a lot better which gives me the edge on the harder legs. This will only be the case for a few years as the courses I run are only going to get shorter and I’m only going to get slower. The kids are of course going to get faster, stronger & smarter. So we may as well enjoy this ‘crossover’ time as it won’t last very long !

My cunning plan involved offering the kids $1 for every individual leg that they beat me on if we run the same course. At this event the medium course had 13 controls which meant 14 opportunities for them to make money.  If they muck up one control they can still earn cash on the other legs, the overall time doesn’t matter.  (Orienteering’s electronic timing system makes it possible to see who was fastest on each leg - a fun way of dissecting where you went wrong! )

So before I’d even finished explaining my idea, the dollar signs lit up in their eyes and they’d both signed up for the medium course and were ready to go. 

Suddenly the kids were super motivated and so was I - I ran around that  3.3k course like someone with a lot to lose - $28 to be precise. I pushed myself up the hills, ran hard on the tracks and tried to follow my compass through the scrubby sections like Thierry Gueorgiou. There were lots of short tricky legs through the scrappy forest so I knew I had to be accurate to stay out of bankruptcy,.  36 minutes later I sprinted into the finish and then had a satisfying wait of about 25 minutes before the kids came in one after the other.  The kids had struggled a bit in the areas of low visibility and lost a bit of time but had some good legs as well.

And the final payout? Well I ended up owing Jett $2 - one dollar for a longish leg up a hill and although I pushed myself he beat me  (and everyone else on the course) by 20 or so seconds.  Hmmph. The 2nd payout was for the 2nd last control - he took a cross country route whilst I chose to stay on the track and run the slightly longer way around.   Zali ended up claiming  $1  - I sprinted as hard as I could to the finish control but she beat me by a couple of seconds anyway- double hmmph. 

Funnily enough I ended up winning the course by almost 11 minutes!  ha!  I suspect I would have won anyway but that extra motivation certainly helped. 

We’ve since had the opportunity to do the same thing on another course - this time a “cryptic” course at Rosny. The clue descriptions were just cryptic clues you had to solve, then you had to work out where the control actually was, as it wasn’t within the control circle. Unfortunately it too us a while to work that 2nd part out, so we all lost time.  Sadly for me I didn’t’ work out that there were also decoy controls so I mispunched 3 controls and ended up owing the kids $5 each. Ouch!  And expensive way to be reminded to check the control numbers!

Today they’ll have another chance to get some cash as we race around the Domain. I’m resting up in preparation.