Discussion: improving

You're getting better, closer too. And it'll continue if you keep up your training and stay healthy.

But if you really want to feel like you're crap at orienteering, come hang out in Finland. The alternative viewpoint is that you're pretty damn good, but others are even better.

I'm sorry that you're discouraged, but happy that you are talking about more training! Hold in your mind that feeling from your best legs, when things are working and you have some flow and just having a blast running in the forest with navigational competence!

We are totally rooting for you!

You have been training well this year, and you are improving. Like Ross says, use your disappointment as fuel.

Ignoring the sprint, I think you did quite well. Even though you have trained better this year, you have still had problems getting the amount of training you wanted, so hoping for a better training season next year and you can make it.

My goal is to one day be half as good an orienteer as you. I am among the "we" that barb noted are rooting for you.

Dude, you are so immensely better than when I first met you a couple of years ago. You are getting better at every aspect of orienteering, and it is simply a matter of time before you are on the US Team if you stay healthy and keep training like you have been.

Ian,

What everyone else said. You picked up some bling this weekend and considering what you have been through in past years, that is a huge step forward as far as I can tell. I've congratulated you on this already, but I'll do it again: Your middle distance was an excellent run. It shows how far you have come and what you have the potential to do. Frame that goddamn medal and look at it every day. You did great.

However - and this probably have crossed your mind at one point or another, so forgive me if I'm just stating something obvious to you - if you really want to take this whole orienteering thing up a notch, I personally think you need to move to Scandinavia for whatever period is available to you. Don't know if it is at all possible, but with your commitment and enthusiasm for the sport, spending 6 months or a year with an active club in Sweden, Norway or Finland would make a huge difference for you. And as far as I can tell you already have the connections. Use them.

Off course, I don't know you well enough to make these sort of recommendations, so if I've just stuck my foot in my mouth, I apologize in advance. If not, well, then get on with it. The framing of the medal, that is. The European plans will take longer to work out, so I suggest you start on those tomorrow. :-)

Ian you were sooo close. I finally got a look at the scoring list and your were right in there and a bit faster on one of the days would have made all the difference. You have the potential and your results show that so don't be discouraged; you just ended up on the wrong side of the cluster.

I, too, have been studying the scoring list. Ian, you could improve your selection odds considerably merely by using your ninja computer skills to enlarge your name and results in the scoring table while leaving the names and results of others in the established teensy type style so that yours was the only one the selectors were able to actually read.

But I think it's going to take more than that. There is too much pavement where you live now, and the living is too easy, especially in summer. As some suggest, to complete your maturation as a orienteering warrior you are going to need to relocate. However your gaze should be cast not eastward towards Scandinavia, but in a more Horace Greeley inspired direction, thinking of the fleet feet of the roadrunner and their lizard prey, the protein enhanced flesh of the rattler, the spines of the ever-present prickly pear, and the hardened alkali waters so useful for warding off stress fractures. In a word (well, in two words): West Texas.

Somewhere around Ft. Davis should prove perfect. With high speed internet connections, maybe you could even keep your present employment.

There are awesome things going on in Edinburgh right now with a view to WOC 2015. Plenty of biotech style jobs too.

Bo is right, pretty much.

Thanks for the encouragement everyone. I still am disappointed, and I think it's not unreasonable. With every participant at the team trials, you could associate some probability of making the team. Someone like Eric, Boris, and Ross would have probabilities > 0.9; someone like me might be hanging out in the 0.1 - 0.5 range. A good measure for the consequences of training is how that probability changes, though obviously anything can happen on race day.

My probability of making the team was higher this year than it ever has been before - certainly aided by *actually* finishing all three races this time. It wasn't good enough to be decisive, and as has been said, there are many ways I can improve. I will certainly use this as motivation in the future, and I'm not done trying to get better. I really appreciate all the feedback and time you all take to be involved in my activities. Living in Scandiland would be fun; I'm not sure if it's currently practical, but it is something I have considered. The reality is that I'm old and slow; I'm never going to be a Matthias Kyburz. That doesn't mean that I can't accomplish much in orienteering, particularly since the US community is small, but I think it suggests a pragmatic approach. Fortunately, my satisfaction does not derive entirely from my results.