For all you procrastinators, the final day to pre-register for the U.S. Nationals is Sunday, August 25. It is possible to register day-of-event for competitive classes, but more costly. Open (non-competitive) courses are the same price regardless of whether you pre-register or register on the event day.
Also, the final day to order a U.S. Nationals shirt is Wednesday, August 21. So if you want a shirt, you should register by then.
There are more competitors registered for F35 than for F40. Where are all the F40s? Come join me!
If you missed the deadline, you can still enter at the event for a higher price.
Is there information available about course lengths, climb, and walks to the start? Thank you!
We are working on course-setters notes now. Courses for Middle and Long have been vetted and finalized. Not sure about the status of the Sprint courses. I'll ask for stats and publish here when I can get them.
Thanks Gary! I'm particularly interested in the climb figures, given past events at Big Basin. :)
Not to worry, Boris: as part of our remapping project, we had most of the hills bulldozed. It's a little known fact that redwoods go as far into the ground as they grow above it, so the 200-ft high trees that were on top of 60m high hills are now 400 ft high with their bases at the same level as the assembly area. All the courses will be flat and fast. (This is in my dreams, of course.)
For a mathematician, you have pretty strange arithmetic.
I once ran a marathon with a university math professor, who was in the habit of checking his watch at every mile marker and calculating his split for the preceding mile. After correcting him on a few of them I eventually quipped that for a math professor he wasn't all that great at math. His response: "I teach math, not arithmetic."
Wait, what am I missing? Is 60m not close enough to 200ft for an AP discussion thread?
I, too, was confused, similarly to Cristinah.
Stats for Sprint at Cabrillo College
Course 1
2.8 km 90m climb 27 controls F21E, F21, M20, M21E, M21, M35, M40, M45
Course 2
2.3 km 75m climb 21 controls F16, F18, F20, F35, F40, F45, F50, M16, M18, M50, M55, M60, Open 3, Open 4
Course 3
1.8 km 55m climb 15 controls F10, F12, F14, F55, F60, F65, F70, F75, F80+, M10, M12, M14, M65, M70, M75, M80+, Open 1, Open 2
Distance from assembly area to start:
Middle - 1.4km 30m climb
Long - 0.2km, 0m climb
There is no parking at the assembly area, so some time will also be needed to walk or get a ride.
Stats for Long at Big Basin State Park
Course White
2.5km 90m climb 9 controls F10, F12, M10, M12, Open 1
Course Yellow
2.9km 110m climb 10 controls F14, M14, Open 2
Course Coral
2.9km 170m climb 5 controls F16, Open 3
Course Orange
3.1km 230m climb 6 controls M16, Open 4
Course Beige
2.2km 120m climb 9 controls F65, F70, F75, F80+, M80+, Open 5
Course Brown
2.7km 170m climb 6 controls F18, F55, F60, M70, M75, Open 6
Course Olive
3.8km 240m climb 8 controls F45, F50, M60, M65
Course Green
4.5km 290m climb 12 controls F20, F35, F40, M18, M45, M50, M55, Open 7
Course Red
5.5km 390m climb 11 controls F21, M20, M21, M35, M40, open 8
Course F21E
6.9km 460m climb 16 controls
Course M21E
8.7km 560m climb 19 controls
Sorry, I do not have stats yet for the Middle. They do exist - I just need to get them.
Wait, what am I missing?
The fact that I'm not a careful enough reader.
(Though to be fair, switching between Freedom units and Communist units in mid-sentence is a dirty trick.)
Just realized that Freedom and Communist is perfect for temperatures. "The high temperature will be 90F and the low 18C."
I thought I learned that from you.
I think I got Freedom degrees from someone else. Degrees Sensible I got from Becks. Not sure I've used Communist degrees. I mean, I've used them, just not sure I've used that term.
Do Orienteering USA Rules of Competition allow for M45+ on Green? How can an M45+ get his-age ranking points for this event (other than running in M35+ or M40+)?
I see the same problem with M60+ and M65+ on “Olive”.
There’s also several M50’s (myself included) who entered M45+ on the assumption that we would be running Red.
Yep. I'm not saying what BAOC is doing is necessarily bad, inappropriate, or wrong; I did some version of this (not as blatant) back in 1996. But, it is against at least the expectations and the spirit of the Rules, if not their letter. If such a drastic change from normal practice were to be implemented, (a) ample notice should have been given and (b) a Rules waiver, sought and obtained. I do not see how BAOC can in good faith proceed with the above plan and stay within the Rules.
Indeed, M45 on Green is strange. Is it possible to change to M40 at this point?
I could come up with a twisted way to defend this, but I won't. There is a way to process the results for rankings that would work, but I won't explain that, either.
As far as I'm concerned, the simplest and best solution would be for everyone who wants to run Red to sign up for M35, but that's impractical when the meet is a week away.
Did this drastic deviation get approval from Sanctioning? Pretty weird to drop such a surprise this way.
Not sure this is any different than putting M45 on a red-y instead of a red-x. Though not desirable to separate M35 and M40 from M45, it’s allowed.
The Red Y happens to be Green, the verbatim course that older males run. This grouping violates multiple guidelines, common sense, and good taste.
I can be convinced that the proposed grouping is, to some metric, better than what the Rules prescribe. There are ways to get public acceptance for the approach and forcing it onto paid customers a week before the event is not one of them.
... but even having written the part about acceptance, come on! does BAOC have many? any? M45s running Green at its vaunted 7-course events? This should give an idea how beloved this proposal is going to be.
... last nail. Euro-multi-day course stats for M45+ Long would be between the above "Red" and "F21E", closer to the former. If the goal of the change was to harmonize with ROW with next year's Festival in mind, you are doing the exact opposite.
Interestingly, in
bulletin 1 for the event, it says that the winning time for M45+ (and other classes typically on Red) for the long will be 70-90 minutes, and for M50+ (and other classes typically on Green) it will be 50-65 minutes. This is the information we all had when we entered the event (and is still the only information about courses available on the event website), and implies (at least to me) that M45+ will be a longer course than M50+.
Interesting discussion, and not unexpected. We deliberately did not make any mention of standard USOF legacy White - Blue courses in either Bulletin 1 or the website or EventRegister. In fact, we are the first national event using the new version of EventRegister, which allows classes to be set up without referencing specific courses.
We did publish expected winning times for each class for a top orienteer. It is debatable how close these expected winning times will be met - we will certainly be looking at this after the US Nationals, and making adjustments as needed for our course setting next year for the California Orienteering Festival.
At this point, there will be no changes to the class-course mapping for the US Nationals. We are too close to the event. But robust discussion is welcome!
Stats for Middle at Big Basin State Park
Course White
1.7km 55m climb 12 controls F10, F12, M10, M12, Open 1
Course Yellow
2.1km 110m climb 13 controls F14, M14, Open 2
Course Coral
2.2km 130m climb 10 controls Open 3
Course Orange
2.9km 155m climb 13 controls F16, M16, Open 4
Course Beige
2.0km 125m climb 10 controls F65, F70, F75, F80+, M80+, Open 5
Course Brown
2.4km 160m climb 11 controls F18, F55, F60, M70, M75, Open 6
Course Olive
2.7km 160m climb 11 controls F45, F50, M60, M65
Course Green
2.9km 180m climb 12 controls F20, F35, F40, M18, M50, M55, Open 7
Course Red
3.4km 230m climb 16 controls F21, M20, M35, M40, M45, open 8
Course Blue
3.7km 260m climb 18 controls M21
Course F21E
3.6km 230m climb 15 controls
Course M21E
4.1km 260m climb 18 controls
Gary, what problem are you trying to solve by blatantly ignoring rules and guidelines on zero notice? Is there a clamor of North American M45s begging for shorter courses? Are overtimes by M45s on Red a chronic occurrence? Do M45s demand being compared with M55s across rankings, rather than M40s? Are the courses in North America generally too long for a particular—any—age group compared to the rest of the world?
Absent a yes on any of these, your effort to relegate governing Rules to "USOF legacy" comes across as a gotcha power trip. Orienteering has not a reputation for customer-friendliness; that is a tangible problem. Stop digging.
We deliberately did not make any mention of standard USOF legacy White - Blue courses in either Bulletin 1 or the website or EventRegister.
...and therefore, I bet the vast majority of us assumed you'd be offering the standard OUSA course / class structure, since nothing different was specified in your bulletin, on your website, or in EventRegister.
I'm sure I'll still enjoy the event, but this feels deceptive, like a bait-and-switch (on top of already feeling kinda disappointed that my "long" course is only 3.8 km; "is that even worth my plane fare?!" is the thought I keep having since first seeing the course stats -- although I'm admittedly not familiar with the area and its steepness).
And I have the same question as T/D -- why?!
I suspect this is mostly about 2019 Nationals being a dress rehearsal for NAOC 2020...
I remember some angst about this spring’s Brown Long courses at West Point being too short when the course info was published.
The consensus afterwards was that they were plenty long, which we expected because we’d based our calculations on per km times of highly-ranked runners from previous events. But you can’t tell anyone that until they get to experience it for themselves, and it was really tough as course consultant to watch everyone assume the cadets were making a huge mistake.
Based on that experience, I’m going to run F45 and save my feedback for later. There are a lot of great competitors in my class, and I look forward to running any course of any length with them. If I wanted something longer, I guess I’d ask skogrunner about changing classes, although a bunch of those requests at this point would probably make his life really difficult.
Before deciding to change classes because of short lengths, consider taking a look at the past results and times/km at Big Basin on BAOC.org.
http://baoc.org/wiki/Results/2017/Big_Basin
Sorry for the confusion, everyone. Think of all those "shaded" color courses as the "Y" versions of the normal color courses. All the classes for Middle are grouped as they usually when there is an X-Y structure; same is true for the Long with the one exception that M45 appears to be in the wrong place. I have alerted the ED and he is now working to correct this.
There are some additional comments above about the course lengths appearing to be too short. As Geoman has pointed out, Big Basin is gnarly; let's not judge whether the course lengths are too short until we've all experienced the courses.
Just out of curiosity what is the contour interval of the 2017 map in the RouteGadget link from the 2017 results in Geoman's link above? I only counted lines on one course but if I counted them correctly it appears to be 7.5m. Is that correct?
http://baoc.org/gadget/cgi/reitti.cgi?act=map&...
Think of all those "shaded" color courses as the "Y" versions of the normal color courses. All the classes for Middle are grouped as they usually when there is an X-Y structure; same is true for the Long with the one exception that M45 appears to be in the wrong place
You are also promoting M65+ (by Rules on Brown) to Olive, which in the above-speak is a Y-version of Green, not of Brown. I bet there will be very few people unhappy about this particular arrangement.
Regardless of the speed at Big Basin, at most one can be true: M55+ will hit 50 min to 65 min on Green, or M45+ will win with 70 min to 90 min on the exact same Green (standing in for Red Y in the above-speak). Or neither. My guess is neither. You'll likely get top-entered M45s running mid-60s, and M55s, low 70s. I don't know if the times in Bulletin 1 are the correct winning times to shoot for, either; they are usually less for M45+ in the rest of the world (properly prorated).
So, if you want to hit the Bulletin-published times, the best approximation is most likely M45+ on the same Red as everyone else. If you want it to be more like Europe then M45+ can be grouped with M50+ for something shorter than the published Red, but not as short as the Green; M55+ can stay as is or go shorter. Whatever you do, it's best to disclose the intentions in advance. I'd be happy to help getting these times nailed down for 2020 for non-Championship days.
with the one exception that M45 appears to be in the wrong place. I have alerted the ED and he is now working to correct this.
Fossil>>I think it's 20 feet.
We are making a change. For the Long event, M45 will run on the same course as M35 and M40. It is already this way for the Middle event. Thank you everyone for your feedback and our apologies for any confusion.
@Tundra/Desert: I'm not one of the organizers for this event. The course/class structure and the unfamiliar course names were news to me today, too. I'm just trying to help out, particularly as the people who are the organizers are not AP regulars. On first reading, I missed that M65 was also not in its usual grouping for both the Middle and the Long - thanks for pointing that out. I've now pointed that out to the organizers.
Folks,
M45 will run the same course as M40 and M35. Sorry about the confusion, and we certainly appreciate the rapid feedback so we can fix it. Will check the other classes, and of course additional feedback is also appreciated.
M45 will run the same course as M40 and M35.
That's good, since in reality M45 typically has a faster winning time than M35 or M40 when the competitors are Americans.
Nothing wrong with extra courses, the only issue was moving classes to be grouped with classes that they usually are not, and it sounds like that's being remedied. (I think we'd all be delighted if we had enough entries for every class to need its own course.)
Thank you for fixing this!
I have two other changes to announce, for both Middle and Long.
M65 willl run on the same course as M70
M75 will run on the same course as M80
That's it for changes! Start times hopefully will be published by end of day today and labels produced for packets and bibs.
Thank you to everyone involved in resolving this.
This discussion thread is closed.