Fans' Skiing Commentary and Analysis

Anders wrote:
On 8 touko, 10:48, Terje Mathisen
wrote:


I.e. world class orienteers maintain a higher percentage of their max
heart rate than marathon runners, and xc skiers would seem to be
similar. (The main difference being that xc skiers do get some rest
periods on the downhills, where orienteers stay close to max heart load
all the time.)

It takes from 1.40 to just under 2.00 hrs for a world class orinteer
to finish a long event, i.e. the duration is 15-25 min shorter than in
the marathon, but that isn't probably a big enough difference to make
the comparison pointless.

What would a comparison between orienteers in shorter events and
runners in shorter races show? Would cross country runners (in races
of the same duration) fall somewhere between the two?

FWIW I can easily accept (and, I think, comprehend) that xc skiers use
more major muscle groups than track or road runners do, but it would
instinctively seem to me that what orienteers do is, despite the often
enormous difference in terrain, nothing more than running, i.e. they
don't use their arms to push themselves or locomote themselves in any
non-running way. OTOH life itself has taught me not to trust my
instincts when it comes to the natural sciences, so I'm asking what
is(are) the major muscle group(s) that runners don't use but
orienteers do?

Pretty much every major muscle group except the arms: I.e. since an
orienteering event goes up & down all the time, both on the local micro
level (jumping over deadfall, stepping down into boggy marshes etc) and
across major hills & dales, you have to use at least all central body
muscles to pass through.

BTW, as you know the brain is by far the largest O2 user when you're at
rest, but when exercising we normally disregard this load, right?

When running an orienteering race I believe the mental load does cause a
significant/measurable increase in the total O2 amount needed.

One final point:

Many years ago the Swedish O federation had a half-year ban on all
competitions (they were afraid of a possible link between ticks
transmitting TWAR and sudden heart arrest among some elite orienteers),
so during this period Jörgen Mårtensson (individual world champion
around this time) started in Stockholm marathon to get at least one
competition during these months:

He did two road running passes during the last two weeks before the
marathon (which was also the Swedish national championship), but the
rest was pure terrain/off-road as usual:

This was sufficient to finish as #4 all over and the best Swede, so the
journalists wanted to know how tough a marathon was compared to
orienteering: Jörgen replied that he wasn't tired at all, nothing at all
compared to a proper long distance O competition which would leave him
tired all over.

Terje
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"almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"