Having looked at your Quickroute I wonder if slightly different 'micro' route choice would help cut down the bobbles and hesitation? Don't know how visible the woods are at the moment, but there are a couple of routes from West Point and this training where a little change of line might give you a faster, more secure route utilising the features that are there.
An example - #8 on this course. You say "scary empty hillside" - but there are a few features there. My suggestion would be to climb higher sooner, aiming to contour in along the index contour and above the earlier boulder. More features to see - hopefully the boulder pair as a quick distance guide, the "early" boulder, but perhaps more importantly the reentrant before the control which should be more distinct higher up the slope. Shouldn't be any need to slow until you've gone through that first boulder/reentrant combo.
Perhaps more interesting/debatable are the first couple on the long at West Point. Maybe it's just my style of orienteering - trying to use big and unique features to minimise doubt/hesitation on as much of the leg as possible - which means I'd have tried to go more right of the line on both. #1 to pass the hill/crag into the big reentrant and approach S/SW from above; #2 to get to the west of the broad stony reentrant, and then use the hill to the west as a distance marker and the higher boulder as attackpoint. I don't know what the terrain is like though, so those could both be useless routes...
A training suggestion - a variation on the classic "draw your own map" simplification exercise. But take a digital version of the map, or the jpg, and white out/dim everything you wouldn't use - giving the advantage of correct scale, and features in the right places. Worth doing as an armchair exercise - e.g. go look at some of the 10mila maps from the weekend, plenty of long and mid route choices there. But even better if you can modify map and then go out and run the course! It's about finding that tricky balance between speed and navigational risk of route - Thierry's "full speed, no mistake" technique/analysis is worth a read if you haven't seen it already. More practice in finding those 'good' routes will hopefully make it easier to identify them in the heat of a race.
Sorry for the length, feel free to adapt suggestions/ignore above, just trying to give a bit of "food for thought."
Although on 7->8, the contours indicate that the feature-free bit is less steep, therefore more runnable... so I guess staying on the flatter bit for a while is good, depending on visibility.
I think that it is almost always a good idea if you make it a priority to choose a route (in the macro and the micro sense) that makes the navigation as easy as possible. Even if it means going a little out of your way, or climbing a little more.
On 7 to 8 at Mt. Ton, Ian is right on, getting higher sooner makes it easier because you will then not just have more mapped boulders to see, but mainly because there is a reentrant on the map, large enough to be distinct, that you may miss entirely if you are too low.
On #1 on Sunday, I had the same leg. I stayed high, climbed a little extra to do so, but then the big reentrant was obvious, and the little one where the control was was also obvious.
Keep working on routes, and tactics, that make the O' as easy as possible.
Here's
Thierry's WOC 2004 analysis if you haven't read it. It shows the "white out" stuff.
Thanks much Ian and others, totally good suggestions. Have heard phrase at least of "full speed, no mistake" but don't think I've read the article. Orienteering homework for tonight!
I need to realize that even shorter legs have route choice like you guys point out for 7->8 and 0->1, my default is still to just go as straight as possible. I definitely didn't consider anything else to 8, despite being scared.
So 1) need to actually plan shortish routes ahead of time, and 2) consider easily-executable versions. White-out practice sounds like it'd be good...
Another relevant article here:
http://news.worldofo.com/2007/12/10/gueorgious-sto...
There's also analysis of his WOC 2003 middle (Switzerland) and Leith Hill 2005 middle races online, the latter here:
http://www.ntoa.com/training/tero_worldcup05_GB.pd...