While we entered the TempO day with high hopes, once again Team USA did not make the finals. Mika had the best result of the day placing 31st of 38 in his qualifying heat (top 18 in each heat advance).
How did it go today? Did you have a favorite or worst control?
Mika: It was one of the hardest TempOs that I've done--even in World Championships. It is not the kind of terrain that comes easily and fast to me and maybe I was trying to be too accurate today. I feel like it might have been overall better if I had gone maybe 10 or 15 seconds per station faster. It wasn't my best performance, it wasn't my worst performance in TempO. I think slightly below what I was expecting.
For the most part, I liked the course and I liked the variety of different types of problems. Station five was really, really hard for me. I think I finally got a good idea of what the map was about after I answered the last question. I missed two on that station, but it was the one where I took the longest time. Station four I thought I was doing solidly, but something went wrong because I got three wrong on that one. I still don't quite understand what happened, maybe I misnamed the flags. It doesn't seem like the way I understood the terrain that I could have made those mistakes.
Clare: I was disappointed in my performance today. A few years ago I had really improved, but TempO takes more constant practice and I didn't put in the work I should have this year. I was quite a bit slower than I should have been and made more mistakes than I wanted to. I also mispunched one, which always frustrates me. At station one, the Alpha flag was very far away and the first map was Foxtrot. When I looked back to that side of the station, I apparently just ignored Alpha and was misnaming the controls. Luckily, this only affected one of my answers, since the other in that direction was a zero (but I missed it anyway).
I liked station three the best with a lot of huge boulders. I felt really good there, although it turns out I still missed a few. I did clean the next two stations, so maybe the good feeling from that one just spilled over.
Sharon: I took it careful and slow, but it was too slow and then I missed some. It was awfully fun to do. I know I cleaned at least one station. There was one toward the end where there was a little pond, and I said "That's the pond, there's no water in it." But I think I missed one of the rocks on that.
I think the one I missed the most was...you were in a saddle, a rock on the left, a rock on the right. It looked really good and I was sure I identified everything. I think that's the one where I said the same thing twice.
Clare: In front of you there was some rocky stuff, some of it was cliffs, but a lot of it was bare rock. That's the one where I also picked the same flag twice and neither one was right.
Daniel: It was a very long walk back from the last station, it was almost too much for me. Otherwise, no complaint. It was very challenging. My favorite was the third station with all the rocks. I didn't like the fourth one with all of the copses.
General thoughts about TempO and training for it:
Mika: I need to locate myself better on more complex maps. That's my take away from today. I have a good way of doing this if I find anchor points. but even that didn't help because there was so much detail on the map that I was constantly worried about picking the feature that's next to the one I wanted.
You have to go fast, and you have to train yourself to go fast. It's always this balancing act on accuracy and speed. If you can't go fast it doesn't matter how accurate you are. On the other hand, if you miss everything, it doesn't matter how fast you are. When I was in Finland, I was training being uncomfortably fast. Today was the first time that I've tried in the World Championships to slow down a little bit from what I normally do, with the idea that if I slow down a tiny bit, I will get more answers right. It didn't quite yet work that way. I think I will stick to being faster and learning to be faster on a more complex map.
Sharon: You do it, you stand up, you go to the next station, you're not sure how you did on the previous, you forget about it, you say focus on this one, you sit down. And I try to say "Where am I on the map?" I worked on that as I walked. If you know where you are you can anchor.
Choose one, be positive, and go on. If you could do this every week you'd be so much better about "When do you focus on where you are on the map? When do you focus on where the flags are? When do you focus on where the circle is? When do you focus on the description?"
Clare: Now I know just how much the training I had been doing helped. When I slacked off, my performance definitely deteriorated.
(Note: maps to be uploaded when I get home)
