Discussion: adventure racers discuss rogaine format

there is a huge discussion going on at a blog that is followed by adventure racers. It was triggered by a national finals race in Utah recently, in which a bunch of teams got bottlenecked and idled a bit, losing their lead. The discussion seemed to spill over to blaming the rogaine format for alot of unhappiness in the AR sport. The comments are passionate, and are good reading for the orienteering folks as well.

Hm. Those competitions could do with radio controls, where the control point reports the moment a team punches. Then viewers could watch the event map unfold in real time online, and watch each team's total score climb. Combined with SPOT (?) tracks, this could be fairly interesting.

Some ARDF events use radio controls.

Old guard: "This isn't true AR!"
Recent converts: "No, but it's fun!"

Gosh, where have I heard that discussion before.....oh, right. Orienteering. Rogaining. Every other sport that has evolved to meet a changing marketplace, and therefore attempt to raise its profile to the point where it can survive financially. I've even seen it in online gaming, and every time it's been a complete crock of *#$&.

To put the discussion in context, the criticism of the rogaine format within adventure races should not be construed as a criticism of rogaining as a stand-alone sport. Many adventure racers enjoy rogaining and have great respect for people who excel at it. I'm a huge fan.

Although the article talked a lot about spectators, one of the main concerns for the racers themselves is that they make different decisions on the race course depending on where their competitors are. Long adventure races are not time trials. In a multi-day race, things like pacing, efficiency of effort and sleep strategy are important. You can't go 100% all the time but if you see a team catching up or if you see a team ahead, then you push harder.

Teams rarely have access to detailed race standings and some event directors will not allow volunteers to provide racers with information about teams behind them. Most of the time, racers only know what they can see, e.g. they look for other teams in out-and-back sections or at bottlenecks. If the teams behind are too close, the racers may change their strategy for napping, eating and pacing.

In this low-information environment, all kinds of things can add to the confusion, particularly situations where lower-ranked teams end up travelling ahead of higher-ranked teams. Rogaine sections within an adventure race can cause this to happen: "Team A is 3 hours behind Team B but Team A got an extra checkpoint in the rogaine so they are actually leading."

Rogaine sections are not the only way lower-ranked teams can get ahead, e.g. a team might miss a time cut-off and have to skip a section of the course. A common situation is that the order of teams on the race course may not match their ranking sequence because of time credits, e.g. for delays in gear delivery.

It's problematic when lower-ranked teams arrive at a race bottleneck (often a ropes section) where they may hold back higher-ranked teams whose close competitors have already passed the bottleneck, thus affecting the final race results.

Aside from the way it can affect race strategy, the finish line of such a race can be anti-climactic. It's not always clear who the winners of the race are; sometimes final results aren't calculated for a few days, even at major championships. Spectators certainly can't figure it out by watching who crosses the finish line when, which kills some of the excitement.

Aside from the concern about finish line sequence, whenever a rogaine is included as one section of an adventure race, the race director needs to set some fake time equivalent for the rogaine checkpoints. If Team A gets all the rogaine checkpoints and Team B misses one rogaine checkpoint but finishes the race 24 hours ahead of Team A, which team is the winner? The answer depends on an arbitrary set of rules. In two different events, that answer could be different and that feels a little bogus.

Bottom line, adventure race purists tend to oppose the inclusion of rogaine sections within races and generally prefer to travel point-to-point in a race, making an expedition from one place to another and being ranked in the order in which they cross the finish line. There is some support for the rogaine discipline within adventure races but it is not widespread among those who do longer races.

All that aside, many adventure racers I know are talking about doing 24-hr rogaines in 2011. As a stand-alone sport, rogaining is popular in AR circles and highly complementary to AR.

Some ARDF events use radio controls

All ARDF events use radio controls. ;-D

There are alternatives, of course, like the "scramble" section used in some editions of the Highlander: get any m out of n controls (e.g. get any 4 out of 7). This can have the effect of scattering the teams temporarily, but at the end of the section, they would still be in time order. Such a section can be set with a combination of close, but technically difficult controls, and others that are easy but distant, thereby rewarding good navigators, but allowing everyone to get through successfully.

What shocks me about this discussion is why 'ccol AR' even uses the so totally uncool Rogaine term at all.

Checkpoint Tracker poll.... Rogaines in AR?
Yes - 52.5%
No - 17.5%
Maybe - 30%

The argument that it ruins online tracking is pretty pointless (pardon the pun) in my opinion. If technology is all that you're after in an event, perhaps you should become a gamer.

The only issue I have with rogaine style sections of ARs is when the organisers throw a ropes section in and you could theoretically get stuck behind other teams (as per the article). This is true on any AR though where, for instance, a team of fast paddlers smashes you then pussy foots around on the ropes. Some races I've been in offer time credits if you get stuck but others do not and that annoys me. They claim that it's "strategy" to get you to plan your route well but there's no strategy when you have no idea what teams plan to get there ahead of you.

Rogaines are fun.

The XRaid events used to allow your time to freeze if you had to wait for a ropes section (punch when you arrive, punch when you start the activity). Simple solution.

Re spectating etc, mountain out of a molehill, it seems to me many people watch on-line anyway and time credits are a fantastic way of increasing the "adventure" part of what all too often is turning into "multisport" racing over rough terrain. (it can be a nightmare for producing quick results though!).

All ARDF events use radio controls

Some ARDF events use radio reporting of visits to the controls, in addition to radio beacons.

The argument that it ruins online tracking is pretty pointless (pardon the pun) in my opinion. If technology is all that you're after in an event, perhaps you should become a gamer.

Although showing the sport online is important in an age where it is rarely televised anymore (TV's EcoChallenge drew many adventure racers to the sport), this is far from the strongest argument. What matters most is the way teams in the race are affected.

This is true on any AR though where, for instance, a team of fast paddlers smashes you then pussy foots around on the ropes.

This is different. Being caught behind someone who legitimately was faster than you up to that point is part of the sport - and also part of other sports like trail running. It becomes unfair when Team A gets trapped behind lower-ranked Team B. On paper, Team B is nowhere near Team A but in the real world, they are influencing the results. (Ideally, a good race course is designed with as few bottlenecks as possible, but...)

...time credits are a fantastic way of increasing the "adventure" part of what all too often is turning into "multisport" racing over rough terrain.

I like getting time credits but they are a double-edged sword. Like rogaine sections, time credits mean that teams on the course are not travelling in the order in which they are ranked, which affects strategy. When you see a team 10 minutes back on the road to the finish line, you might bike a little faster - but you'd be sprinting all out if you knew they had a 15-minute time credit. At that point, you may not even know which team it is, let alone whether they have a time credit. Position on the race course can matter for other reasons, e.g. dark zones on paddling sections or changing conditions.

There are time penalties in the mix too, e.g. for missing a piece of mandatory gear. In some races, time penalties are served at a checkpoint so that teams will continue on the course in the correct sequence.

As a section within an adventure race, rogaines contribute to the greater problem of teams travelling on the race course in a different order from their rankings - except if it's something like JJ suggested. (But that doesn't usually happen because rogaines are usually introduced into ARs on purpose to keep teams from spreading out too far.) In some cases (e.g. time credits or short coursing), the "out of sequence" problem is unavoidable.

The adventure racers who do not want rogaine sections within races are saying that they don't want the race director to deliberately add a discipline that exacerbates the "out of sequence" problem.

And yes, rogaines are fun!

As a member of the old guard adventure racing crowd I also have a string feeling echoed by Sean. This does pretty much sum it up

Old guard: "This isn't true AR!"
Recent converts: "No, but it's fun!"

I also agree with Bash that many adventure racers enjoy ROGAINES....just not as a part of an adventure race. I have really taken to the term "Multisport Rogaine" someone else came up with that commented on the blog. If you can separate the two, that's great and let the racers decide but don't confuse the 2.

I am a true fan of old school races, point to point, very few check points, lots of off trail travel and navigation. With XPD races it is about a journey, not completing loops while finding CPs that serve no real purpose.

When you look at adding rogaine sections, loops, time credits or penalties it just complicates things in several ways. Online tracking being one thing...I could barely watch the ARWC this year because you never know what was going on and who was in front of who. 2 years ago we saw the same thing and great controversy as a result of trying to work scores and optional sections into the race. When it's as simple as get form the start to finish as fast as you can you don't get this problem.

I've seen these sections pre-determine winners of 30horus races 18hours in. If one team misses a CP in an o-section and the lead team catches wind of this they can cruise to the finish because there is no was the team that missed a single cp can catch them. That's just wrong.

On big thing for me is the affect it has on the finish. When you aren't racing point to point you never know who is in the lead. Sometimes it is days after the race before the final results are known. Crossing the line loses it's glory when you cross and just don't know where you stand. In some events I've also seen the complete lack of a finishline.

In the qualifier for this years ARWC there was a rogaine section at the end of the race. We arrived at the finishline...but there wasn't one...then we headed out to try to get as many points as we could for time credits. Arriving back at the "finish" with very little sense of accomplishment. No one was paying attention and you had to get find race staff to let them know you'd finished. In the end the section didn't have any result in the overall standings. One team even arrived and headed out sitting on the ski hill, waiting to see if teams behind them were going to try to gain some credit. When no team did they simply walked back down.

Bash and I actually had a heated discussion about this that was caught on film. we were debating on getting another point, but if we arrived lat we lost all out time credit and our 4th place ranking. We manged to get the point and make the cut off, but after racing for 70hrs on a great course this was so anti-climatic and unnecessary.

Sorry for my scattered comments, but I think you get my point.

The dude who wrote this blog also wrote early today:

"for the purpose of this debate, “rogaine” in the American co-opted sense of the term refers to an orienteering version of adventure race, ie you do not race from points a to z in order to the finish line. "

Umm, since when were orienteering races not an a to z race? Does this guy even know what orienteering is?

Personally I'm growing tired of the "us vs them" attitudes (note us is in lower case and not upper case as in United States). This attitude is far too prevalent in O, AR, and Rogaine (and I've raced competitively in all three winning three Nor-AM O titles, top 3 in two Nor-Am Rogaine Champs and my AR team was ranked #4 in North America).

I personally lump all of these 'endurance navigation sports' together and feel they complement each other more than many people allow or give credit to.

The reason there are even different formats at all is that the "one size fits all" doesn't work for both race directors and athletes alike. I think it is a fair statement to say that orienteering is the original 'endurance navigation sport' being over 100 years old (though I realize sailing could fit this category too). While the only official WOC formats were long/classic and relay up to 20 years ago, a long tradition of night, street, score, MTB, canoe, big team relays, mass start, ultra long formats of the sport of orienteering developed over the years from the combination of interest, innovation and demand. Yet many will still say that long/classic is the ‘real’ format.

At the same time other 'forms' of orienteering developed like mountain marathon and rogaine. Now I say 'forms' of orienteering because the fundamental aspects of orienteering was 'navigation with map and compass'.

It is at this time you get people saying MM isn't O, O isn't MM, MM isn't rogaine and one even gets the development of an international rogaine federation to make that distinction clear. Fine. Is this bad or good? It is both. The marketing potential is split but the rules of one sport like O were too limiting for the development of another niche in the 'endurance navigation sports' World. Rogaine attracts more people to the loosely knit community of 'endurance navigation sports'.

In my opinion the international orienteering federation didn't adapt quickly enough to add more 'official formats'. The sport couldn't grow with a 'one size fits all'. So while I hate the name Rogaine, good on those people for developing it and for pushing the 'endurance' component even higher. (remember this is all happening at a time when 5k road races were the 'distance' races).

It is interesting though that the very difficult marketing name of orienteering got a sidekick sport with an even worse marketing name in Rogaine. So thanks to those that developed O and Rogaine but your collective marketing vision sucked. Congrats to those that developed the term ‘mountain marathon’.

In an Ontario context it is interesting to note that the only 24 hour rogaine to be hosted in Ontario (early 90’s) was referred to as the “Haliburton International Forest Marathon”. But the organizers banned members of Orienteering Ontario to participate because they didn't want them to dominate. So good on him for a nice marketable name but not so good in limiting the group of athletes to draw from.

Then along comes AR that takes the navigation fundamentals and puts it together with other multiple sport adventure disciplines. It even had a cool and marketable name (though that is even under debate in AR circles). AR had no international federation and in many countries (when it first came out) no national federations either. With good marketing and no rules limiting how it gets marketed (and done) the sport grew quickly. The types of maps used and the features used in the early days of AR in Canada are exactly the same as those in the early days of O in Canada (topo maps). 24-36 hour point-to-point races were the most common. No loops with most CPs on major features. Then 5-8 hour point-to-point races were introduced and gained popularity and the sport is healthy at a time (in an Ontario context anyway) when orienteering was on a serious decline.

Using Ontario as the example I know best this should have been a 'wake-up call'. Ontario had been using the term 'adventure running' since the early 1980's. A consultant even developed a marketing campaign around 'adventure MTB', 'adventure running' and 'adventure paddling' BEFORE adventure racing even existed in Ontario. But the same traditionalist attitude of O that likely led to the international development of the mountain marathon and rogaine limited the ability of O to link to the growth of AR in Ontario (and Canada).

Its at this time that my orienteering club took the consultants advice and started hosting our 'Adventure Runs'. It was our equivalent of the mountain marathon but over one day. Teams of 3 racing 25km on simplified orienteering maps linked by trail running (BTW our race tomorrow is sold out with 100+ teams). But the adventure run was yet another race format in the 'endurance navigation sport' market! And what was the feedback to the adventure run? It isn't "real"AR and it isn't "real" O. Nope! it isn't but I would argue that it has been a race format that has developed an important cross over between O and AR in Ontario.

While I've been involved in organizing about 20 of the 25 races we've hosted over the last 11 years, this race format has developed into a very popular one that stands on its own. I enjoy the team format and pushing hard for 3-5 hours. But I also like the panic thrill of a full-on middle distance orienteering race and the untouched wilderness that you can experience in adventure races and rogaines.
So where am I going with this far too long post?

I would argue that for the Championship races in all of the different yet very complementary "endurance navigation sports" (AR, O, MM, Rogaine) a set of rules need to be followed. These rules definately exist in O, MM and Rogaine and are being developed for AR and perhaps is the reason for the post on that AR blog(ie., should rogaine format be in AR?).

But strict rules can also be 'limiting' for the development of a sport. For example, it is much easier to organize an 'adventure run' than a 'major orienteering race'. So outside of the "endurance navigation sports" Championship races I'd like to see the "endurance navigation sports" community embrace the variety rather than argue what is "pure" and "real". Lets develop a community that can help each other market our community of races together and perhaps more importantly develop athletes and high quality race directors.

Thanks to the vision of Bob Miller (one of canada’s top adventure racers) and also some new and vibrant members of the Orienteering Ontario board (e.g., Barb Campbell, Ian Sidders), there is now an Ontario points series that links our adventure runs together with adventure races and endurance multi-sport races. Sothern Ontario has some good orienteering opportunities (6 clubs in southern Ontario). But we also have our high participation adventure running series, the largest adventure race in Canada (Storm the Trent), a rogaine-style adventure race (Rockstar), a non-nav multisport race (Logs, Rocks and Steel), the ‘back to the traditional’ 36 hour AR race in Wilderness Traverse and we are only a few hour drive to the upstate NY Rogaine organizing gurus in CNYO. We have year-round 'endurance navigation sport' opportunities and I think we have a community that is really embracing all these formats together which is valuable for the development of both the community and the respective individual sports.

Hopefully the 'us' vs. 'them' attitude will stop and the sports can grow together. They need to.

Lots of great points, Hammer. As you know because we've chatted a time or two ;-) in the past, we share a similar vision for what endurance sports should be and can become.

Hopefully the 'us' vs. 'them' attitude will stop and the sports can grow together. They need to.

:-) Sigh. When I saw this topic appear in this forum, I jumped in to comment out of fear that orienteers might misinterpret this as an "us vs. them" debate. As Hammer points out, such debates do exist but this is not one of them. I've obviously failed to make that point clear. This discussion is neither anti-orienteering nor anti-rogaining. I've heard similar passionate discussions about time credits and penalties in AR - and for exactly the same reasons.

These discussions are in *favour* of some very cool aspects of adventure racing - the subtle strategies that come into play over a long race. Strategies that disappear from the sport if you have no idea where you are in the pack. Imagine if people were allowed to start the Boston Marathon within a 2-hour time window. I'm not sure everyone would be happy with that and I'm not sure the same people would win.

AR is a very complex sport, especially as the races get longer. For those who don't follow it closely, we are frustrated that the recent 6-day Adventure Race World Championship was virtually impossible to follow online. Racers didn't get finalized results at the awards ceremony and the results posted after the event are dubious and probably always will be. The race had no rogaine sections but it did have time credits, penalties and short coursing, all of which contribute to the same problem (and are hard to avoid).

To declare a bias, I sit on the USOF Rogaining Subcommittee and we are actively trying to grow the sport in North America. I suspect that a rogaining "purist" would prefer that a rogaine not be surrounded by a multi-sport, point-to-point adventure race!

I think Kirikou makes a good point that it's fine to advertise rogaine-style adventure races. I don't think they make good World Champs courses where pacing and sleep strategy are key aspects of the sport over 5-7 days, but they are awesome fun in a short race like the 8-hour RockstAR event held in Ontario each July - a race that's short enough that you should be pushing hard the whole time anyway.

I really don't think there is an us vs them attitude here at all. I agree that there is plenty of room for events with various designs. However, there is now a definite lack of traditional "pure" adventure races in NA these days.

I'm also pretty sure Sean knows what orienteering is. I am trying not to make this personal . The issue is we are fighting for more pure old school races that are traditionally point 2 point. However, rogaine sections, score o sections, out and backs up mountains, or loops around lakes to add distance etc seem to take away from the sport and cause problems and controversy (ref the last 2 AWRCs).

One argument for these types of sections, optional loops etc are to have teams finish around the same time. I made this comment on the blog/poll site but think it has it's place here as well. When you add sections like this and make sections optional or allow teams to miss CPs they actually don't complete the race course. You can't run 23 miles and finish a marathon, or skip the run and finish an ironman. Ironmans have ppl finish upto 8+ hrs apart, the WS100 has ppl finish 12+hrs behind in short 1 day events. In the 4-8 day event there is going to be some separation, that's just adventure racing.

I will stress again that I have nothing against rogaines, adventure runs etc...I like them and compete in them when I can. I'd love to see a 24hr rogaine in ON.

I'd also love to see more races like the Wilderness Traverse. The problem is it has to advertise it as an "Old School" Adventure Race....in my opinion it's just and adventure race. There aren't many of these around these days and I think it's sad. Every RtN race (36hr or RtN-X) and, I've done a few, didn't have any of the above and are still the best races I have ever done. We would just like to see the return or more races like this...that's all we're asking for.

As I see it (as a relative outsider to AR - I do short ones with rogaine sections!) "pure" or "true" AR is a niche sport with massive workloads to organise events, high entry fees as a result, and a very limited pool of potential entrants who have a hope in hell of finishing the 5-10 day races. Finding new places to run events will only get harder due to the massive distances covered and the large (and growing) problems with land access, litigation-averse land owners and government environmental twitchiness....blah blah blah.

IMO the biggest problem of the above is the limited competitor list. How do you get more people in? By organising events that are achievable by a wider range of people, promote the crap out of them and inspire people with how awesome AR is. They might then up their fitness and attempt the true AR races and then everyone benefits. But this model guarantees that the number of quasi-AR races will outnumber the true AR P2P races, and then you get this discussion - the pure-AR nuts enter more events to get their fix, and don't like that the events aren't pure. Weight of numbers also guarantees that the course-setting techniques you (Kirikou) list will work their way into major events such as ARWC, and here we are.

In my corner of the world there is two significant ARs a year - one 24hr non-stop, one 2-day stage race. Then there is four or five minor (6-hour) races that are called AR even if they have no navigation. One of them is (according to the organisers' hype) one of the biggest in the world, with 1650 competitors lining up last week - but the pure-AR people wouldn't even put it in their diaries because there's no nav and it's full of those pesky triathletes. :)

If you want a real, 5-day, p2p race then you have to wait for XPD to come to Australia. The other major race (Keen) folded this year for lack of sponsors...and there's your rub. Lack of market means lack of money, and without money who's going to organise these races? AR doesn't have the long-running volunteer culture that O has.

It is interesting (in passing) to note that adventure racers are discussing their use of rogaine sections. I don't think we need to further that discussion here, it seems to be going pretty well on checkpointtracker.

It is more interesting to me to discuss what aspects of adventure racing we can adopt in orienteering (short and long, P2P and score). There will be just as much tension between those who want things to stay the way they are (or used to be) and those who want to try new stuff. There are even those who believe there is a fundamental difference between orienteering and rogaining. C'est la vie.

I like what's happening in Ontario. Thanks Hammer.

Whilst I'm not an AR'er and confess I only skim read the article in question, it seems to me that the ability to drop controls (oops - checkpoints) is the real problem and not the actual rogaine (or score course) style format. If you have to get them all then it is still an even contest and although you might not know who is winning during that section, obviously the first team out has to be in front (unless they accidentally missed a CP).

Blaming a rogaining component for a "roped" section bottleneck seems to be misdirected.

Maybe purists don't like scatter type checkpoints but I can see why an organiser would want to limit the total area used and thus implement this component into an event.

Don't blame the tool, but rather how it was used.

It's not a rogaine if you have to get all the controls. It is common to have sections within adventure races where part of the challenge is to choose the order of the controls.

I've been AR'ing since 2003.

I'm not sure what the point of the original blog post is. It leans towards an elitist-rant. The writer is certainly entitled to his opinion but how does the post advance the sport of AR? Proposing a boycott of any event can only be detrimental to the sport. Most if not all of the issues raised in the post sound like bad course planning (as pointed out by several others now).

old-school AR:

I understand the concept of old-school AR (osAR) and I understand the draw for some (the elite teams). osAR is as hard as it gets. The one osAR that I know of, Planet Adventure Old School, only ONE team finished the course in it's first year. In year 2, the RD went to a point system to avoid DNF'ing the entire field. Oh yeah, the entire field for both years was 8 teams.

There aren't more osAR's because they aren't economically viable.

Rogaine in AR:

I've never attended an AR with a true rogaine section (where cp's have diff point values). I agree that introduces a variable that should be left out of AR.

Many (all recent?) races that I've done have had a rogaine-like section where the cp's could be visited in any order, but all cp's were worth 1 point. If a team skips a cp, they're ranked behind all other teams that got them all. I have no problem with that type of leg. It allows weak-nav teams to adjust on their own.

Sorry, but to claim that 'any-order' eliminates route choice is baseless. Send me an email and I'll send you a pdf of the 3-hour score-o that I designed for our upcoming Turkey-O. Try to tell me that pre-defining the p2p order would increase route choice!

Bad Course Planning

Bad course planning and/or course setup affects everybody from beginner to elite. The elites will go on to another race, the beginners may not. THAT is a good issue to focus on. A mechanism and the resources to insure course quality (like that for A-meets) would be a good thing. For now - the experienced racers have a pretty good idea what to expect from established RD's. Because there are no published standards/guidelines nor quality assurance mechanisms, travelling outside your area or to a 'newbie RD' event is a total crap shoot.

Finally, I don't understand what a pure AR is. Where's the defininition? Who decided what that is? Most would agree that an AR requires navigation with map and compass and has MTB biking, trekking, and paddling. Beyond that, the structure, extra disciplines, and 'surprise' activities are up to the RD. But from my perspective, any RD that structures their events to maximize the experience for as many participants as possible is doing the right thing, for themselves and the sport.

I'm just amused that something as new as AR even has an "old-school"...

Earlier: "It is more interesting to me to discuss what aspects of adventure racing we can adopt". Something that interests me is whether it would be fun to run a rogaine in which you had knowledge of every other teams' scores throughout the competition. Never mind how to do it at this stage.

That would be interesting, but I've always found that as soon as I start paying attention to what other teams are doing, my own performance suffers.

How to broadcast teams' scores during the competition: (1) use radio controls to report electronic punches to base and (2) from base broadcast leaderboard to teams via cell phone text messages.

There is a photo of such a radio control on Wikimedia Commons, here