We open up the fabled book of rogaining once again looking for more tips and tricks that may help you this year. Last time, we considered how to plan your route. This time, we'll take it a little further to get you thinking about how to approach controls. Very rarely, are you able to just follow a single feature or along a straight bearing from one control to another. Each leg normally requires multiple decisions to be made throughout to make sure you keep hitting controls. We are going to look at a couple of techniques you can use to keep you on track!
The first is the reference point or more commonly known as an attack point. Attack points are feature on the way to or near the control you are aiming for, that would be more obvious then the control point itself. They are normally always point features (knolls, junctions etc) rather than linear features (watercourses, spurs etc) because its easy to tell whether you are at the attack point or not. Consider the leg between 82 and 83 in the map extract below. Going from point to point would be pretty tough, but if you use an attack point such as the knoll indicated by the blue arrow, then you can know with certainty when you get to that point. From there, you can make the much easier leg to 83 (which is also a knoll in this case, but you get the idea).
The second is the catching feature, which are features that indicate you've gone to far. These are normally linear features running roughly perpendicular to the direction of travel and wide enough that you are highly unlikely to miss them. If you were approaching 95 from 83 and you hit the watercourse indicated by the blue arrow, then you would know you have gone to far i.e. the watercourse is your catching feature. This can also be used to keep track of where you are on the map, such as by counting the number of watercourses you know you need to cross before the control. In this case, its two, so if you crossed a third, you've gone to far.
Finally is the handrail. Handrails are linear features you can follow to get you to a particular point. They are meant to be obvious features that you wont to lose track of. If you were approaching 90 from 100, you could consider using the watercourse indicated by the blue arrow as the handrail. You might follow the watercourse on the north side down to the more major watercourse. From there you can then choose your next attack point towards control 90.
It takes time to be able to recognise good features, so don't stress if this sounds like alot. It's all about breaking down the problem into smaller easier problems. So next time you're planning your route, have a think about your approach to each control and look for attack points, catching features and handrails you can use to help you along the way!
