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Ever wonder why you missed that strong trail coming in from the left, even though you had a good pace count going? Perplexed about running right by the 2-meter boulder because you were sure it was the nearer one, and you kept going, and going? Just didn’t notice passing over the ruined stone wall that was to have been a collecting feature?

Alex Stone, who wrote Fooling Houdini (Harper, 2012) understands. In a witty, well-written, somewhat uneven memoir about his personal obsession with magic, Mr. Stone presents much interesting information about the science and practice of fooling others and being fooled yourself. (Stone also wryly acknowledges social ineptitude: continually performing magic tricks, he notes, is a good way to meet women, and a good way to make them disappear.)

By Ali Crocker

Months before:

In the months leading up to WOC 2012, I was trying to just orienteer as much as possible, with the goal of 2000 controls since the previous WOC in Savoie, France. Throughout the spring, I attended lots of NEOC local meets to get good orienteering training in on the weekends. Over in Western Mass, we also had preparations for the Western Mass “5 day” A-meet, and some of this was really good training - test running a handful of courses and vetting all of the control sites for the A-meets at Earl's Trails, as well as setting and vetting my own courses over on Cemetery Hill.

by Peter Amram

Doctor John Watson, sidekick and chronicler of Sherlock Holmes, had been orienteering poorly for some time. The dialogue below is exerpted from A Scandal in Bohemia, a tale which appears to concern an indiscretion by some petty German king but is in reality crisp O-advice from Holmes, who is invariably first in his class (M155+ as of this year).

If you've never competed in an A-Meet before, this is your chance. Make the North American Orienteering Championships your first A-Meet and receive a rebate of up to $20 of your event fees.

The "NAOC" will be held Oct. 18-21 in Delaware Water Gap, PA. See this .pdf document for details.

Alex Jospé, courtesy of WorldOfO.com World Orienteering Championships
Lausanne, Switzerland
July 2012

by Alex Jospé
photo courtesy of WorldOfO.com

You know those days where it feels like your feet barely touch the ground as you run? Where the navigation comes so easily that every feature appears in front of you at exactly the right time? Those are good days. Unfortunately, it’s pretty rare that everything lines up exactly as it should, so those good days are few and far between. What can you do to affect when those days happen?

For me, the answer to reliable athletic performance lies in self-analysis and clear goals. I have always felt that having very specific, measurable, attainable goals is a key to success, and set both outcome and process goals to help get me there. Given the inevitable fluctuations in how fast a given finish place in a race ends up being, one of the more reliable measures of success is how far behind the winner’s time I end up being.