Discussion: Adv Races (from willhawk's log)

I don't know of any run/bike adventure races out there, but if you come across one, be sure to let me know will you!? The paddling is definitely useless, unless it's main goal is to destroy your shoulders with the repetition and weaken your mind with the boredom.

How important is the adventure race "hoopla"? The prize money, sponsorship, professionalism, etc.? For instance, if I put together a local event that included biking and orienteering of 6-8 hours would it be worth traveling to? Not promising anything here but seems like a doable thing if there's a demand for it. (Could go longer with suitable terrain/maps.)

My take on it is that if you want to attract people from out of the O community then the hoopla is quite important (whereas for orienteers the quality of the maps is really the main thing). What's more, the payoff to adding 'professionalism' to an event (getting sponsors and some schwag and the like) is quite high in terms of getting more people involved, I think. There's a really small market of 'orienteers who want technical navigation for six hours on bike and foot', whereas if you market it as 'Xterra with navigation' or something, then you might get more takers. For example, in the Philadelphia race this weekend I got the feeling that a lot of the 6 hour teams were corporate-based, and to get corporate entries and sell it that way, which would potentially make quite a lot of money, you need to look professional.

Edited to add: the professional aspect really serves a coordination function. It's a lot more fun to race such a long race against teams who are roughly as good as you. Professionalism is a signal you are expecting a large field (to make it possible and worth it to be professional), so that you are a good race to go to because there's likely to be competition.

Or maybe people just like schwag and I over-analyze.

bloody economists

I'll take that as a compliment...

Here's a mixture of thoughts... one thought may or may not have anything to do with the other:

I like a well-organized, "professionally" organized race. Why? Because it brings competitors and therefore - competition. People race all different kinds of races for all different kinds of reasons. I race because I like the feeling I get when I'm racing well, and because I like to go faster than the person/team next to me. I like races that bring in a lot of talented people. Athletes that are a challenge to beat. Sure, I set personal goals and try to have a realistic perspective on my abilities, but truthfully what drives me is my will to beat others.

In contrast, I love all the orienteering that I've had the chance to do. I'm not very good at it, and therefore I'm not very competitive which can be frustrating. But I still like it. I like mixing brain with athletic ability.


I actually like running, biking, paddling, swimming, and many other things. Sure, the point to some of these things sometimes brings to question, "what is the point?" I don't know, but I still like it. As much as I like interesting running in the woods using my brain to determine my course, I also like just running. I like the ability to shut my brain down to virtually no thought, letting my brain concentrate solely on moving one foot passed the other as quickly as possible. This is why Xterra is so attractive for me. The swimming is pure endurance and sometimes bravery. The biking is as fast as your lungs, legs, and technical ability can advance you. The running is fast and painful, and therefore pure. I also like the pace of Xterra vs. AR or Orienteering, because it' different. It's much faster and more intense.

AR: I like it because at some level it is an adventure, and therefore a challenge. Organizers will throw all sorts of unconventional, endurance-based disciplines, of varying distance, physical stimulus, and mental stimulus. Parts of AR are very interesting and others could be considered boring, but I like all of them. My point here is that AR brings together a lot of the things that I enjoy about several different sports. Orienteering is lots of brain and a respectable amount of endurance and athletic ability. Xterra is pure endurance, max intensity, and technical athleticism. AR is a mixture of all of this.

A point about Orienteers in AR. AR does not provide technical orienteering; you (orienteers) no longer need to point that out. Much like AR does not provide the technical MTBing of a Xcountry MTB race. Also, I think Orienteers often forget how much better at navigating they are than the average endurance athlete. For example, Will H. could walk a 5k nav intensive course while listening for interesting birdcalls faster than most superstar 10k runners could sprint it. This is why orienteers dominate in the AR. However, the number of athletes interested in AR with absolutely no nav skills greatly out numbers the few and far between skilled orienteers that exist. SO, to expect that AR should be more navigationally technical, or that every leg of the race should involve a great mental stimulation is just not realistic for the sport. If AR prospects show up for a 4 hr sprint and spend 12hrs lost in the woods that’s bad for the sport. In order for the sport to grow there needs to be a balance.


Swag is good. But I don’t go to races for swag. It’s a nice way for the race staff to say, “Thanks for coming out and getting poison ivy.”

Will, sorry to take up a chunk of your real estate here but you brought up some interesting thoughts on your ideal race format and I couldn’t resist.

This real estate is free... although maybe we can move this discussion to the main discussion board (Kenny?) since there are a lot of thoughts here now.

I think a lot of orienteers (in the US) are not so much into the 'racing' as the 'running in the woods', at least compared to other sports. For example, I've been feeling like I need a weekend off from AR to go hiking instead, because I get tired of racing (I used to care more about winning, but not so much recently, once I realized I don't have the physical ability to beat the really talented people out there and reconciled myself to that. That's why I'm not sure quite how long I'll be doing AR as much as this year.) And therefore the pure endurance parts of AR (the long paddles or no navigation road biking in crappy uninteresting urban areas, for example) don't do much for me.

I think you're exactly right on the realism of AR becoming more technical navigation-wise, at least at the non-elite level (there are some people saying that the big multi-day races should become more technical rather than more extreme). But it does beg another question that I've always been curious about. Do you think orienteering could make itself more popular in the US if it was more 'AR-like', with finish banners and swag and sponsors and the like (forget for a second where this is going to come from)? Or is the current low-key format the best way for it to work, because the 'hoopla' would alienate the current clientele? Kristoffer, as a half-outsider, I'm particularly interested in your thoughts on this.

AR, triathlons (including Xterra), marathons (and other running races) as well as most endurance sports are made up of recreational athletes that represent its majority core. In modern day there are hoards of people taking part in various "outdoorsy" activities in an attempt escape the monotony of everyday life. Then there are those who choose to take this recreation to a competitive level. (Side thought: Perhaps athletic competition is our way of showing our power or the next guy, but in a more modern "civilized" manner. Rather than fighting our neighbors for food or land as we may have done several hundred years ago, we settle our natural urges by beating him in a foot race.) Why do these people gravitate more and more towards endurance sports rather than the traditional big three (baseball, basketball, football), perhaps it has to do with learning curve, and accessibility/convenience. To practice one of the big three involves courts or fields, a skill set, and often a team. Get some running shoes and you can hit the road and work on your aerobic core. Grab a bike and helmet and you can ride the readily available blacktop that stranglers our earth until your quads bust through your shorts. And, although having a training partner as sweet and capable as Erin is awesome, it’s not required. Also, there is the small point that a semi-overweight, everyday gas station attendant with very little athletic ability can enter the same triathlon as say Peter Reid, 3 time Ironman world champ.

A point specific to AR is that not every American has the ability, time, or resources to tackle a climb of K2, or sail to Antarctica, or explore the jungles South America. But in a single weekend with a well-organized race they can get as much adventure as they can stand and still make it back to work on Monday. I think this is a very attractive concept for people.

SO, can orienteering in grow to the likes of AR or triathlon here in the States. Sure! This is America after all!? But rather then try to command a solution as to how, I’m trying to point out a why perhaps it’ll be a challenge. Orienteering requires honed SKILL. I for example ran a 4:13 mile at the age of 16, spent my youth running in the woods, and have what I’d consider above average athletic ability, however put me on an O map and these things are rendered all but useless. Orienteering is kind of like learning to play the guitar. Sure you can have a lot of natural talent, but you’re not going to be able to play (to a level that’s not going to piss your mom off) over night, or even in the first year. Then there is the point of accessibility. It’s not really that easy to get on a map and improve your skills. Boston, under the rein of CSU, has a great scene and regular course events, but that’s pretty rare here in the states. Will, from what I can see, with exception of the Canadians, logs the most time O’ing when compared to most other Attack Pointers. And I might add that it shows in his racing. Also, as a half-outsider I might add that the extreme geekeness, and hideous dress code associated with Orienteering might have something to do with the lack of growth.

I agree: but you need a fair amount of skill to do technical MTB races too, so the sensible question is more 'how can orienteering match other skill-intensive sports?' and not 'how can orienteering match road running in popularity?'

Actually, maybe we already know the answer. One answer is adventure racing itself (which you can view as a type of orienteering...), or GHO / EAS Hammer's invention of 'adventure running'. The other is the sprint series (see the concurrent discussion thread, which is far more accessible., less skill intensive, less capital-intensive (in terms of mapping), and just lies in wait for some more marketing effort. But you can tell this is orienteering, because the events came first and the marketing is an afterthought...

On the dress code, I can only agree... although I think bike shorts (for men) don't look too much better to most Americans.

(Footnote: I certainly don't do more O training than many here, and nothing like as much as I would do if I lived near a forest.)

I think the sprints are a great idea, and I would take part in them if they were closer to home. I think marketing strategy needs to be implemented if these sprints are going to be used to grow the sport.

We could shoot points back and forth all day about the skills required in Orienteering vs other endurance sports. But seriously... riding technical single track is way easier than running a 10k blue course in under 2hrs :o)

We've got a USA Orienteering team. Perhaps the team needs to represent not only the US but the sport in general as well. The US team is a marketable entity to gain exposure amongst the American public. In a nation where a local lawn mower racing squad can get sponsorship, what is the excuse for the US Orienteering team that is representing the US overseas?

this thread started in will's log, but I just moved it to the main forum.

Lots of people buy lawn mowers.

Willhawk wrote: Do you think orienteering could make itself more popular in the US if it was more 'AR-like', with finish banners and swag and sponsors and the like


YES! here is a little history and info about adventure running...

When Orienteering Ontario lost their government funding in the early 90's a government consultant was assigned to the sport. He pointed out that the problem with orienteering (and especially Rogaine) was that the terms didn't mean anything to anybody. So you had to explain the sport every time you mentioned it to somebody. From a survey of newcomers to thesport they pointed out exactly what Nielsen mentioned that it was technically very difficult and the consultant also mentioned the geeky image.

His suggestion was to change the sport a bit ("adapt or die" was he phrase) and his argument was that softball, 3 on 3,and beach volleyball were all changes to the sports of baseball, basketball, and volleyball. They adapted and grew and also secured more funding and sponsors. He also suggested re-branding the sport as 'adventure running' which interestingly was a slogan that Henry Lam developed for Orienteering Ontario back in the early 80's. Henry at that time suggested a team event that he called the pink course. Tthe length of red but the difficulty of white.

So taking these ideas Ian Renfrew and I came up with the idea of the "Adventure Run" in the late 90's. It would be a technically easier and longer team version of orienteering. Sections of trail running, some road running and different types of orienteering. We stuck with the Adventure Running term because the two names mean something to the average athlete. They know what running is and they know what adventure is.

Our adventure runs (and there is a race tomorrow night) are the largest orienteering events in Ontario each year. They are also the most expensive since we provide each team with SI timing, pizza and pop at the finish, showers, heated building, bus transport, cool swag, etc. Participation has grown by about 400% over the last 5 years and it attracts a mix of AR, O and runners.

Because it is a team event not everyone needs to be a cracker jack navigator. We give prizes to different stages so the trail running crowd likes to
take off on the trails. We have an advanced orienteering section as well. So people with different backgrounds will do well in some parts but not as well elsewhere - and thats what keeps them coming back. A few years ago we introduced 'The Matrix' which is a section where team members split up. That was John Yip of Team Running Free's idea and it was brilliant. Now teams need more navigators so we get more people at traditional orienteering events. Overall race length is 21km for the regular course and another 5K for the advanced. We call it Ontario's toughest half marathon. Yes, I know, we were told that we are supposed to market orienteering as 'the family sport' or 'your sport for life'. Hmm, well that ain't working is it!

There are now several Adventure Run events in Canada (Vancouver, Ottawa, Whitehorse, and 3 in Ontario). With some marketing we can grow this form of orienteering even more. This is what we use to introduce people to the traditional sport. Some will use it as an event in itself, others will want to use it for AR training and some will start to do more orienteering and/or take up orienteering more when they no longer AR.

But the key is that people will pay more if they get more - but the race needs to be marketed well.

A similar approach can/should be taken with sprint.
Not a PWT amount of 'hype' but a partnership with a running store and you can get people to do different type of 5K race. Imagine the "Sprint Adventure Run" that starts with a 2.5km race, then there is a BBQ or some music and then another 2.5km chase.

Rogaine... Hmmm marketing disaster but call it a
24 hour Adventure Run and well people know what it means....

There are a lot of races left this year to participate in and the three that interest me the most are tomorrow night's Night Raid, the sprint series final, and the Highlander...

So a question to Nielsen, if you were to go to these sites:

www.dontgetlost.ca/raid

www.dontgetlost.ca/sprint

Would these sports be attractive to you?

People buy lawn mowers, but Orienteers don`t tend to buy much of anything, or at least, not very often. I think something that hurts out sport in attracting either sponsors (please give us free stuff!) or partnerships with stores (we`ll help you sell stuff if you give us free stuff!) is that when you take a look at an average Orienteer, they`re wearing the same O suit from 1989. Okay, not everyone`s like that, but many are. If you bring a cyclist, skier or runner to an event, you know that for sure dude from your club with the 70s powder blue O suit will be there and leave a big impression.

If I`m working for say North Face, do I sponsor an Orienteering event? Not sure; these people seem to fit the bill in terms of being active outdoors types, but then again, what do they buy except for Subaru Outbacks?

This is not to say, we all must run out and buy new shirts asap, but as someone who`s worked for a while in sporting retail, often athletes or sports forget about asking, what they can do for said retailer/company.

Runners buy at least one pair of shoes a year. Orienteers will use the same pair until they are held together by duct tape. Which one is more interesting for a sponsor?

I think that one of the best things that could be added to orienteering events (ie the regular meets, not the "adventure runs") is something like the previously mentioned "pink course". Basically, something that is the length of the longest advanced course, but the difficulty of the shortest beginner course (or slightly harder). Where I live (Alberta), one often spends hours driving to orienteering meets. Right now, if you are someone who is in decent shape (ie runner, adventure racer, etc.), you have the choice of being lost in the forest for 3 hours on the long advanced course (frustrating, and not making it likely that you will come back), or finishing the 2-3 km beginner course less than half an hour (not really worth your time, especially considering your competition). In either case, it wasn't worth your time to come out was it? As an aside, how long do other people out there find to be the limit on how far they will drive to a weekend orienteering meet?

You are only furthering my point. If the goal is to grow the sport of Orienteering then you need to make it more marketable. SO, if the US team can't get sponsorship then that's a sure sign that O, in it's current state, is not marketable.

I've been to events and seen the duct tapped shoes, the torn gaiters, the 25 year old baseball caps, and the polyester scrubs. And, I no problem with any of it... I think it's cool in a grass rootsy, underground sport, cool to not care, sort of way. I'm not even saying that orienteering should change or grow. I'm simply pointing out possible reasons what might get in the way if it is one's goal to grow the sport.

Yes, people buy lawn mowers... not my point. Point was that Americans adopt all kinds of rediculous sports and televise them on OLN. They find a way. So why not a not so rediculous sport as orienteering. Besides do we really need to break out stats comparing sales of outdoor gear, running shoes, and compasses to that of sit-on-top lawn mowers?

NM wrote: Runners buy at least one pair of shoes a year. Orienteers will use the same pair until they are held together by duct tape.

Which these days takes about six months when worn regularly. Grrr.

NM also wrote: what do orienteers buy apart from Subaru Outbacks?

Orienteering Australia made a big effort to get Subaru online as a sponsor about 5 years ago, but it went nowhere... Australian orienteering events are also full of Subarus, so it seemed like it might be a possible sponsorship, but Subaru's response, in a nutshell, was 'you all already own Subarus so what do we have to gain?'

Hammer, I'm curious whether the 'guy in the 70s powder blue O suit' also shows up to adventure running, or whether you've succeeded in frightening him off (for better or worse)? That is, does updating the marketing scare off the older orienteers or not?

Maybe we should go after the second place car vendor of choice--Volvo. They might be hungrier.

The one need professionals working on promoting the sport not amateurs.

There seems to be an impression among orienteers something along the lines of "Adventure Racing is so cool and so big, and growing so fast. Why can't orienteering be like that?"

There's been lots of discussion of the answer to that question, but I'd go back the original statement - Is Adventure Racing really that big, or do we just think it is? The Philly race that Will did that (I think) inspired this thread, had ~15 teams of 3. About the same size as the GHO Night Raid last weekend. That doesn't seem so big to me... Perhaps the cross-over between orienteers and AR's seems to make orienteers think there is this big AR population out there, but perhaps it's not as big as most orienteers presume.

If you compare races in the same central Ontario market as the GHO NavStock Night Raid, the adventure races are typically larger. I was in a recent adventure race with 37 teams of three, and people were commenting on the low turnout compared to the previous race by the same company, which had 100 teams. It's not fair to compare a night race with a daytime race though. GHO's autumn adventure run, Raid The Hammer, gets about 80 teams of three, which is larger than most (but not all) adventure races around here.

BUT... a lot of adventure racers think of adventure runs as a specialized type of adventure race. They don't think of it as orienteering. Similarly, the long distance - and possibly the team concept - keep some good orienteers away. The participation in adventure runs has grown significantly over the past few years, but only a few adventure runners come out to O events regularly.

We are still working on ways to make that happen, so this thread has been really interesting. I agree with the idea of the pink course (which needs a VERY cool name, so that it doesn't sound like the "wimp course"). I'm primarily an adventure racer, and when I sign up for events, I want to do the longest course possible because I'm training to race for 30+ hours straight. I also enjoy difficult navigation, but I know that lots of adventure racers would rather have less nav and a longer course - and perhaps the opportunity to race together with one or more of their regular teammates.

Regarding Willhawk's question about updated marketing scaring off older orienteers... I'll let Hammer answer it, but last year's top-ranked AR team in North America, Team Nike ACG/Balance Bar, had three members in their early to mid-forties. So AR may be perceived as a cool sport, but it's not necessarily a young sport. AR is very expensive and relies on endurance, so the sport is not dominated by teams in their twenties.

AR is huge! Poke around a bit and you will see an overwhelming amount of races being put on all over the US. The weekend of the race in Philly there was The Cradle, The Longest Day, and The Bitter Pill all on the same day, just here in the north east. And, thhose are just the races I knew about. The first EMS sprint this year had 100 teams racing.

------------------------

Bash and JMM Bring up some very good points. I really agree with the idea of a longer, less technical course for newbies.

Also, I would like to make another point about the sprint concept. The sprints are a good idea for new people because they’re less intimidating and don’t require as much technical nav ability but still deal with the fundamentals of reading a map as an orienteer does. However, the sprints are short and if you drive and hour or more for a sprint race and don’t do so hot you can be easily discouraged.

Let’s look at bowling for a moment. I bowl maybe 2-3 times a year and therefore every time I go I’m basically a newbie. Bowling is made up of “turns” (2 balls), let’s equate those turns to “legs” of an O sprint. You bowl your first 3 turns and you’re doing pretty well, then on your 4th turn you gutter ball it and on your second ball you only hit one pin. Your string of 10 turns, making a game, is shot. Well O is kind of like that for newbies. You nail the first 5 controls and then, bamb, you spend 10 minutes on the sixth control. Your sprint race that you drove 2 hrs to get to has made a turn for the worse. You go home discouraged. In bowling maybe you play 3 or 4 games and when you’re done maybe you screwed up on three of them but had one really outstanding game. Far from a perfect 300 but you go home happy.

Having one or two sprint races that are 20min each is just not worth it. If someone put on regular sprint events that consisted of 4-5 short races I’d be much more interested. Maybe I’d make mistakes that blew the race on 3 of the races, but then maybe I do pretty well on two of them, and as a result I go home happy. And I got in a good workout. Shorter less technical races, but in abundance let’s a newbie finish the first race, say “man I screwed that up” , give him or her a moment to think about it and rest a bit, and then they can go tackle a new race.

We've got 4 sprints on 7/3 in the western Phillly suburbs...

A big difference between orienteering and AR is the accessibility factor (relative ease of finding out about races and registering). It's also ironic that we market orienteering as being a sport that offers something for everyone when in fact it doesn't.

Our narrow age classes get in the way of making the sport attractive to people who aren't already part of the orienteering world. If you're 25 years old and just starting out as an adventure racer, are you going to sign up to run a blue course at an A meet? Or if you do and you fail miserably against the best in that age group, are you going to try it again? I don't think so....

Awhile back there was a proposal on the Clubnet to change the whole US class structure into broad age classes on every course so people could compete on whatever course they wanted.

The idea received quite a bit of support when it was discussed online but it was ultimately discarded by the BOD because they felt it was critical that we stay in sync with IOF. If that's the case, then it's going to be really hard to ever branch out and make orienteering more accessible to the people doing AR or trail running, with the exception of special events.

Bowling and orienteering!....Check out the Norwegian World Cup team in England:

http://www.stud.ntnu.no/~oysteios/bilder/2005/WC-L...

http://www.stud.ntnu.no/~oysteios/bilder/2005/WC-L...

Brawn Course??

Liz-

That's a really interesting observation, and frankly one that I hadn't thought about before. It is true that the whole class structure assumes age is a proxy for experience, and in the US this is not really the case. Appealing to the AR crowd while maintaining this kind of bifurcation could be tough.

You can be a great 24 year old athlete, but take years to get the skills to run blue well. Should you be relegated to the rec courses?

Whoa, Holger's got the STYLE!

It is my understanding that you can compete on any course you'd like at A-meets. You can either run in your age class, "up" an age class or in an open category on any course you'd like. How is this an impediment to race entry? Your experience is what you make it. Thats the whole point after all. I think the class structure is meant to equalize the physical effects of aging on the body, not to imply "years on this rock" = "hours in the forest."

Can we stick to the subject, spike and eddie? :)

So, why not have more 'special events'? What would be wrong with running every event as a mass start? Or 50% of events? The O race that seems to have the most satisfied devotees is the Billygoat. Is that because racing head-to-head gives the feeling of a real sporting event? So maybe we should have mass starts at more races, because the Billygoat certainly seems to solve the 'heterogeneous navigation ability and speed' problem better than we're currently doing. It's also key to AR, I think. And it's why people like relays too, even though they're hard to organize in the US. Seems to me like that would be a good start. You can report results in age classes or standardized and normalized however you want, but what gets people excited is the feeling of 'racing' someone. Sure, you can follow your way to victory sometimes - but navigators are still going to win in the end mostly.

I'm not suggesting all races be as long as the Billygoat, or even that there be one course only, just that there be mass starts on every course. Sure, a few people who like split starts so they can look after their kids will lose out - but you can't make an omelet without breaking an egg or two (possibly a little pepper and some chives also).

Yes, experience is also a factor in AR, as Eddie points out. However, I'm in my 3rd season of AR and am considered a grizzled veteran. Then I go to O meets and compete against people who have decades more experience than I do. I hope to continue to improve, but it's hard for a newbie to ever catch up.

Also, I've found it easier to improve my adventure racing skills than my orienteering skills. There is a lot more that I can do on my own to get better at AR. We go mountain biking, trail running and paddling, plus do strength exercises, etc. I find it hard to work on my nav skills on my own in the absence of regular O events near where I live. So the people who get whupped in their first adventure race have relatively easy ways to improve their skills if they don't want to get whupped a second time.

The other thing about improving at AR is that few people are specialists at all the disciplines, so you can get away with being a weaker navigator if you are a fast biker, for example. This isn't the case at the top level of the sport, but is true if you are happy in the mid-pack - and remember that finishing an adventure race is enough of an accomplishment for many people. To be successful at O, you need the whole package and there is very little time in a race to make up for any errors.

I go to occasional orienteering events and clinics to improve my nav, but my AR teammates aren't terribly interested. Something else to think about... it's not that important for everyone on an AR team to be able to navigate well, because in most adventure races, there is only one map for the team to share. Thus it's hard to boot my teammates in the rear to get them to go orienteering with me, and there are many other adventure racers who don't know a lot about nav and aren't particularly worried about it.

Nielsen wrote: "AR is huge!", then mentioned 4 races in the Northeast on just one day. And there was once this one race with "100 teams racing."

By comparable stats, I think orienteering is a larger sport, or at least similar. On that same weekend, there were probably 5+ Orienteering events in the Northeast (I went to two of them), and the attendence at each of those probably averaged 50 people. Monthly BAOC events regularly garner ~150 competitors, big USOF events get 400+, and big Scout orienteering events get ~1000.

More anecdotally, when we crossed the border on the way back from Canada yesterday, we were asked the purpose of our visit. "Adventure Racing" we replied, as we presume the general public knows what that is, but not what Orienteering is. "What was it?" he replied? "Adventure Racing, in the forest". "What kind of racing?" he asked again. "Orienteering Adventure Ra-". "Oh, Orienteering", he interrupted.

So some people have heard of Orienteering, but not Adventure Racing... Are we suffering unnecessarily from AR envy?

Perhaps we should look to AR to learn some things given AR's better growth in recent years, but we shouldn't think orienteering is already a small sport relative to AR.
---
Aside from current participation #'s, I concede:
1) that there is likely more AR competitor hours in the US, than orienteering hours.
2) that AR is growing, vs. orienteering's long term flat membership #'s.
3) that people spend a lot more money AR'ing.
and
4) that AR gear tends to look better.

I wonder how much of the difference is simply because of money? Adventure Racing organizers are (I think) often for-profit enterprises (at least for one individual), and thus they have time and incentive to do solid marketting, seek-sponsors, and they charge entry fees accordingly. Orienteering (in the US at least) is almost 100% volunteer driven, with much lower entry fees.
I speculate that this Sunday's 4-Race Orienteering Sprint Day at DVOA would probably attract a ~20 AR teams willing to pay $100+ if it was marketted as a Multi-Stage AR Sprint race. Yet we're charging $10 a person for a huge amount of volunteer setup effort. One 5k road race usually costs at least double that.
If an orienteer decided to set up a for-profit orienteering organization (that earned them enough money so they didn't have to have a another job), it would probably end up looking at lot like an AR organization.

I dunno - GHO has some pretty nice O-tops. Its funny, we used "Adventure Racing" at the border yesterday too and got no further questions. Mihai was wearing a racing top, so we looked semi-official, and I had packed along so much extra crap it would be hard to dispute we were ARs :)

What kind of top was Mihai wearing? An O-top or an AR top? Just curious.

It was a hybrid sort of thing, like an extreme-O top. Fortunately it was red, white and blue. Mihai was also humming the star spangled banner while wearing a beard and a stove-pipe hat, and I was wearing one of those spikey statue-of-liberty head visors.

Manny, manny good points and observations on how to get more interaction between AR and Orienteering.From a marketing point of view, orienteering would need to get the expsure the AR's get, but from the practical/skills point of view, orienteering does not need the AR's but The AR's need the orienteering races and skils.I believe the AR's are great and I wish I would have the time and the resources to do some.I agree that we(Orienteering) should do something to atract and make the sport more accsessible to AR racers and a long course, even longer than the regular blue course with a yellow/orange(call it purple, gray or silver course) level would atract the AR racers if advertised properly.A course like that would satisffy any AR racers and with time they would have a chance to move to harder technical courses if they wish or just come out and do the purple/gray/silver course.I don't think it would be to hard to add a course like that at all the DVOA local meets for example.We have a lot of great event organizers whom try every time when they put on a event to accomodate all the participants needs for an orienteering event and they are doing it pretty successefully.

j-man I noticed that you have used the term "bifurcation" who seems to me it could be more eficiently used in orienteering, instead of the word "junction"(trail, road...), don't you think?Presently in US Orienteering control description, the term junction is used to describe both a bifurcation and also a intersection which could be confusing, especialy for some AR racers.
And Eddie, we were also lucky at the border when I mentioned something about beeing borned in Romania,and they pretended that they couldn't hear me.

Most of the LAOC meets we have out here now have a course called "long orange". Its about the difficulty of orange but quite a bit longer, usually around 6-8k. Its gotten pretty popular with the AR types (a large percentage of our meet attendees), since its usually challenging enough to keep them busy for two hours or so, but not quite so hard that the navigation is hopeless.

Actually, on many of our maps the true LAOC couse structure is something like: White, Yellow, Yellow-orange (orange), different-yellow-Orange (Brown), longer-yellow-orange (Green), even-longer-yellow-orange (Red), extra-long-yellow-orange (Blue), different-fairly-long-yellow-orange (Long Orange). The AR types are less intimidated by a course called Orange and the Orienteers can feel intellectually superior by running Red or Blue, but it's all just big hills, lots of green, and controls close to trails in the poison oak.

Around here they (AR people) try orange, green or red and spend a better part of the afternoon finding most of the cp's. red is too hard and orange is too short. long easy would suit them fine. maybe you could call the long easy course "tangerine".

I thought about the same name Joe but regresed, in consideration of the "Blind Tangerine",but anyway you would call it, will benefit both Orienteering and AR, if added to the majority of the local and not so local Orienteering events.And I have been using the capital O for Orienteering since everybody is using capital letters for AR, just so we know that at a more global view,Orienteering as a sport is probably ranked higher than AR and even marketed better in other parts of the world where is taken a bit more seriously than in NA.

Wyatt wrote: Orienteering (in the US at least) is almost 100% volunteer driven, with much lower entry fees. Trail runs and ultras used to be like that, too. Now they have decent food, and at rogaines they have vegetable soup. And they keep suggesting I bring my own hamburger.

I'm with Vladimir. Why aren't orienteering events put on by for profit organizations? We have almost bitten the bullet that mappers have to be paid (though we persist in making our own local maps). The only problem is that hardly any of us have any time to make maps and put on events. So where are the pros?

Or is it that, as a money-making exercise, the amount of mapping and event organization required for orienteering is inefficiently too high, and the efficient thing to do is to use topos and call it 'adventure racing', while the orienteering on detailed maps can't be sustained by any model other than the volunteer one? Maybe we are poisoned by our Nordic heritage - it's a lot easier to run a volunteer sports organization in a country where people have more free time. Why isn't O for profit in the US where we have more money and less time? I'd pay.

I don't think attracting ARers will be a successful means to grow O. As Bash mentioned there is only one navigator per team (unless you're the evil empire) and otherwise few people interested in improving their nav by taking up O. I think the certainly has been an increase in O from that of ARers but nothing that could make the sport of O sore to new heights.

I think if one wants to improve exposure for O then one should look at how to make the sport more accessible in general.

I'd pay too.

Who's the evil empire? Is it Joe and Erin?

I'd pay too, but I am also sensitive to the feelings of the installed user base, so to speak. The history of Orienteering in this country has been low-budget, and it would be foolish to cast off our heritage and alienate so many people.

On the other hand, the PWT was able to coexist with the IOF, more or less, and things like the Sprint Series could be separate but equal as well.

In fact, the SS seems like a great prototype for this idea.

"From a marketing point of view, orienteering would need to get the expsure the AR's get, but from the practical/skills point of view, orienteering does not need the AR's but The AR's need the orienteering races and skils."

The current ROGAINE world champions are Kloser (former pro MTBer and current world AR champ, Team NIKE) and Tobin (former Xterra world champ and current AR champ, Team NIKE).

No, I don't think that the average orienteer would improve by doing AR events. But surely O could benefit from bringing in great endurance athletes.

Not sure who finally brought it up, but the cost discrepencies between O and AR are a major factor. My family belongs to the Minnesota Orienteering Club and has gone to nearly every O-meet over the past two years for less than it costs for a single entry fee for a sprint AR. My wife and I currently race AR as a team, so that doubles the cost and over the past few weeks I have sent out nearly $700 in entry fees. At some point we will have to make a decision if that is really worth riding 40 miles on gravel roads, to be beaten by a team that didn't have to wait at the ropes section. (We're beaten by a lot more than just those teams, but the factor of luck in AR is getting to me.)

Granted, the costs of AR include more liability and logistics, but with entry fees going up in every sport, why not market the fact that orienteering is cheap training? Mayne AR's aren't the right folks to market for.
The longer intermediate courses sound very interesting, and after hearing about Adventure Running, I am going to follow up on possibly setting an event here in the Minneapolis area.

Well, speaking as an AR guy who has done a little orienteering, it's interesting to say the least to go from being near or at the top of the pack in AR to being at the bottom at O-events, behind people who walked the whole course. My orienteering skills are intermediate at best, but I enjoy the long courses most, distance-wise, although they tend to be technically advanced. At the Navstock long course, while the top guys are done in 1.5 hours, I'm just getting warmed up when I finish in 3 hours. I do find it frustrating, but am keeping at it to work on my nav skills even though I'm not the navigator. I'm not sure if I can speak for all AR types though. There is so much less precision needed in AR nav.

The observation about having only one navigator (generally) on an AR team is a really important consideration when trying to attract more adventure racers to orienteering. As Barb mentioned earlier, most AR teams are made up of people who have different strengths or specialities (bike, paddle, climbing, etc.) and they're happy to leave most of the navigation to one person who's really strong in that area. The rest of the team just has to follow along or go where the navigator tells them.... kind of like competing in a local road race where you can run without having to figure out where to go. Frankly, that kind of exercise is much more appealing to most people than making decisions while running or biking.

It's a big plus for us that many AR races now have genuine orienteering competitions on O maps as part of challenge (Infiterra's Michigan Coast to Coast, GOALS' Cradle of Liberty 24 hour race, e.g.). This is the kind of visibility we've needed for a long time so we can shed some of our image as a scout and military activity. AR is definitely helping us look cooler, even if we're not attracting new people in droves (yet). We also need to capitalize on the fact that we're generally way ahead of AR when it comes to things like getting results posted quickly and using epunch technology.

On the topic of prizes, I don't think cash is all that important in attracting adventure racers.... but we definitely need to have donated prizes from sponsors. Prizes that are often given for AR winners are shoes, paddles, packs, clothes, food. Even if we give out more traditional awards, we should try to make them event specific (engraving or printing the name date of the event, class, and place on medals, framed award certificates, even ribbons). If we want more credibility, we need to give this more attention.

Other thoughts..... in the current issue of Adventure Sports Magazine (pick up a copy if you get a chance) there's a piece at the back about a successful racer for Montrail who had to quit racing for awhile because of a nagging injury. He thought he might get back into trail running and ultramarathoning instead so he wouldn't hold other people back but he found it was boring to do an individual competition after being part of a team for so long. The team aspect really sets AR apart from orienteering. So maybe we should focus more energy there... including and advertising an AR team orienteering competition with mass start at every local and A event. We should also offer more AR navigational training too (for a price, of course) and include a section on every website that's geared for adventure racers.

As someone brand spankin' new to orienteering (about 8 weeks), this is an interesting discussion.

Up front, I have no background in running minus recreational jogging and training for soccer when I was a kid. I'd never heard of O until I began working near French Creek SP.

A couple of questions: Why the need for increased participation? Is it the desire for better competition or a better presence internationally? I'm curious. In the countries where O is popular, what are they doing? Can we follow their lead?

I hope this isn't too far off-topic. My background is about 25 years of competitive golf. As a PGA professional, I see golf as a sport that is struggling with losing its grass-roots support. Even with huge amounts spent on marketing at every level from the local club to the tours, participation is not growing.

The top two factors limiting participation are cost and time. The technical difficulty of the sport also limits interest (similar to O).

An increased corporate presence in the sport has driven up costs in numerous ways and at a club level (at least in the U.S) has needlessly increased complexity. Rather than the rootsy, more egalitarian sport golf has always been in the UK and Australia, golf on the whole in the U.S. has become even more exclusionary. As opposed to say, Scotland, golf in the U.S. has always been less accessible, but the contrast is growing.

The low cost, grass-roots nature, and technicality of O is appealing IMO. The unis, though, have a way to go. I will say golf has gotten better in this regard. A golfer can now stop for gas on the way to the course and not fear getting beaten up for wearing bad plaid sansabelts!

I personnaly believe that marketing is everything, especially in the US where it drives the consumpsion of evrything.
Basicaly you just say something is great often enough, and it becomes great. Look at car racing or baseball. Low number of participants, high number of spectators.
O is no different, if it had ads and sponsors it would be big. The main problem is the lawnmower question, what does a sponsor get from O? Maybe as Neil says, a shoe manufacturer would go for it.. But they are looking to sell not to the athletes, but the ones who want to look like athletes. But O meets in Europe have sponsors, seemingly unrelated to the sport. I've seen dairy and chain saws company's banners. Volvo sponsors tennis and sailing. No connection other than the demogrphics.
IE you O so you are the type we know is interested in our type of car...
NOte to Kenny and Will and CSU and NEOC.....I am still interested marketing the Sprints in the Boston area. My original intention was to set this up as a profit making club running only sprints...........

As an adventure racer who has a lot(!) of trouble on the navigation, I'll chime in here a little. I believe both communities can benfit from working otgether. In terms of skill development and training, AR has more to gain from orienteering, but the growth of AR could help to support the numbers in orienteering. However, I have gone to a bunch of orienteering events over the years and have found that they really haven't helped my AR navigation. In an AR, you're generally not traveling short distances and looking for small details like a boulder in the woods. In AR, we generally cover much greater distances and are looking for the quickest route, which may or may not require very technical orienteering. Usually it doesn't, so decisions need to be made quickly and speed of travel is very important. The CP placements themselves are often at orange, yellow or even white difficulty...it's the route choice that makes the difference.

Also, we are often working off of USGS maps which offer much less detail, so you need to infer a lot and learn to ignore a lot of your surrounds, looking instead for the largest features to work from. Unlike orienteering maps, the maps we use are typically out of date, showing both many more trails out there than are shown on the map (and many more trails shown than currently exist). If orienteering events started to offer (and market) courses that use USGS maps and are essentially AR foot (trek) courses, you may be able to attract more participants from the AR community.

Side note: Passing through Canada on a recent trip back from an AR in Michigan, the guard took one look at the gear in the car and instead of asking what we had been doing in Canada, he simply asked, "Where were you racing?"

more orienteers -> more money for mapping

more orienteers -> more good maps

more orienteers -> more events

more orienteers -> more event volunteers

more orienteers -> clubhouses with saunas (this may require scandinavian government sponsorship)

and all of the above should lead to more orienteers :)

Great discussion. One other prize that's common at ARs: free race/event entries. For clubs that hold an A-meet every year, that could be a great prize.

Hrm.... but free entries are only lucrative if they are really expensive... which orienteering entries are not.

Neil managed to hit my own favorite point about why it woudl be interesting for orienteering to grow: more volunteers (and the other "more" items as well). Depending on where you are in the country, there are clubs that exist basically on the efforts of one or two people who know what's going on, and they get burnt out. With adequate participation, that labor burden can be spread to more people.

AR operates under a different model. With orienteering, the motivation to put on races is that it's a co-op, and if I help out now, then somebody else will help out next time, and I'll get a chance to participate; entry fees cover expenses. With AR, somebody is making a profit. Thus the entry fees are higher, and with more money involved, there can be more "quality" in several respects -- more race support, swag for the racers and the volunteers, better prizes, etc. But things have to be racheted up quite a bit to get that to work. And that's why I don't do much AR -- entry fees are simply too high for me. One way to deal with that is to get a team sponsor, but that doesn't interest me.

Using that model for orienteering carries the problem that our insurance is handled through USOF, and USOF requires all orienteering clubs operating under its umbrella to be not-for-profit.

The navigation in orienteering is supposed to be about route choice as well, although that's often not the way it works out.

USOF clubs do put on events using lower-quality maps, but the reason why orienteering evelved/progressed to using good maps is that it reduces the luck factor. USGS maps dont show you where the nasty vegetation is, among other things.

Paddling can be less awful if you learn how to do it properly.

"Vladimir's Own Hamburger" would make a fine name for a rock band.

Less awful implies still awful, just less.

How do AR organizers handle insurance? Is that a serious impediment to, say, Jeff's for profit sprint series, or not?

Jen had some excellent points about AR navigation vs Orienteering. Often in the FAR races we're heading through a tough area to a CP with a huge backstop, so we're just looking for the optimum route. Some of the winter and ARC races have some CPs that are more like orienteering ones (Except that they're occasionally misplaced). Still, at the Appalacian Extreme, Bash wasn't the primary navigator but her o-skills helped when they needed some relocation. The team was saying that they should do more orienteering.
One second item is the team aspect. I find our team in general navigates far better as a team than as individuals, especially me. I'm looking forward to the Rogaine.

One might consider if orienteering is really cheaper? Sure, our race fees are lower. But if I want to attend an A-meet, I have precisely one event this year closer than 400 miles away. (And my club is hosting that one) Whereas if I wanted to do an ultra-run or an adventure race, I could choose from a dozen events in my own state. Once travel, lodging, and vacation time are factored in, orienteering becomes fairly expensive. If higher fees could lead to more big events nearby, it would be with it.

At the club level the fees make sense. It attracts families and scout troops. Plus, I kindof like the co-op feel that JJ mentioned.

But when I'm willing to drive 60 miles for a C-meet, I'm also willing to pay more than 6 bucks.
It may be legitimate for clubs to consider an annual special event with higher fees, swag, banners, refreshments. Throw in a brass band and speaker system for fun. But for this to be worth it, you would have to put in lots of marketing and sponsership efforts, combined with competitions that appeal to outdoor athletes with less orienteering skill. Think National-O-Day, but cooler. Hammer's adventure runs seem interesting in this regard.
Though I should aknowledge that I probably wouldn't host an event like this because of all the extra work it takes.

Just wanted to clarify a comment of mine that has come up in subsequent discussion... Yes, there is only one map per team in AR, but it is tremendously advantageous to have multiple team members with navigation skills. That's why I encourage all my teammates to get out orienteering, even if they don't go out as often as I do. It is tough for one person to concentrate on navigation for long periods of time (5 hours to 5 days). The other reason is that the person holding the map at any point in time can navigate better by delegating various nav-related tasks. I recently wrote an article called "Navigating as a Team" for the Canadian Adventure Racing Association Newsletter. I'm definitely not a nav expert, but adventure racers do better by working as a team, taking advantage of their teammates' strengths and compensating for any weaknesses. So Liz is absolutely right that the team aspect is attractive to adventure racers. That's one of the reasons that GHO's adventure runs have attracted so many non-orienteers.

Jennifer (BTW Jen, we met recently at a dark, rainy TA after a scary rappel that was enough to turn anyone off AR) makes a good point that the nav and maps in AR are different. However, I have found that the fundamental skills and principles overlap enough that doing O races improves my AR navigation. After doing a few A Meet orienteering races, I'm much more relaxed when planning routes for adventure races. It seems almost decadent to have an entire hour - or even overnight - to choose my routes, when I've become accustomed to turning my map over when the clock starts.

I agree that having more than one navigator is a big plus. At the NavStock Night Raid, our team, and the winning team, both had redundant capable navigators.

In our case, all three of us made critical contributions to the navigation, which reduced downside risk significantly. If (when) I do this again, I'd want to use the same model.

On the "For profit" thread... I just wanted to add that a non-profit organization can include paid work for employees. E.g. John Doe could operate a Boston Sprint Series, where the organization collects money, and he puts in some paid time and some volunteer time, and the net effect is that the organization is always a non-profit, but John can earn some $ that way.

Most big non-profits are just like this, and even USOF is kind of like this with Robin as (I think) the only paid employee. (She's not paid nearly as much as a fair market rate, but at least it gives her something for working so hard on USOF stuff that she doesn't even have time for another job...)

--
On the 'redundant navigator' thread, I definitely agree that multiple navigators help. At the Night Raid, they gave out maps to each competitor. (While we were quite cooperative in our navigation based on the maps, I think we would have fought over who carries a single map...) As for the navigation, when I orienteer by myself, I often do best when I use 'redundancy', where I pay attention to multiple aspects of the map, and the compass, and (sometimes) pace count. With multiple navigators in good communication, this load gets distributed somewhat, and the confidence level gets high enough so you can move quickly even on tricky maps at night. In the 'matrix' section where we split up, I know I moved slower, and we all made more errors.

I agree with Barb's point that any team will benefit from having more than one person that can read a map. If your navigator is going cross-eyed from sleep deprivation, exhaustion, or over exposure to teammates, someone else may need to look at the map. Or, sometimes a navigator just benefits from being able to talk something through. On a more serious note, it's simply not safe to have just one person who can navigate in case something happens to that person and you need to get them/the team off the course.

Do you think there would be an interest if an "Adventure Course" (not a color) was added at O-meets? Longer courses on USGS-style maps, where racers had to plot UTMs on the clock? Perhaps then mix up the order of some controls or use a score-o format to discourage following? Winning times closer to 2 hours, time limit of 4 hours. Categories for solo male, female or teams or co-ed/all-male teams of two (no age groups).Requiring a pre-registered early start time? Slightly higher entry fee. Market to AR groups.

Barb, There can be only one place that we met. :-) At the time the weather seemed miserable, but somehow it got even worse!

Didn't orienteering used to have master maps, where you would be given a blank map at the start, and you would run with your map to a set of master maps where you copied your course down while on the clock?

It still does in New England... nobody quite knows why, but NEOC feels this is an important part of orienteering skill. They are presumably in league with adventure race organizers who feel UTM plotting is important. This is one thing orienteering has totally right. Preprint the maps!

Jen, certainly orienteers won't be interested in your 'adventure course' with degraded maps when better ones are available. It wouldn't be hard to set up (just give out an all controls master map and call it 'score-o'), but whether there would be demand from AR people you are better placed to answer than us.

But I think orienteers are not really interested in training AR people for its own sake, though they might do it for the money. The original motivation of the discussion as I saw it was to answer ''what is AR doing right than orienteering could learn from?' not 'how could O events be more useful to adventure racers as navigation training?'. The second is of a little interest, because some AR people may discover they actually like orienteering, and because O clubs may make a little money off them in the process. But only a little, since we (orienteers) are volunteers, not professionals, and putting on training events that are more useful to well-funded people in another sport is only of so much interest.

To summarize where I think we're at on what I think the question is:

There's clearly something to learn from AR, whatever the aggregate participation numbers (Wyatt): look at the number of serious competitors, particularly among people raised in the US and between the ages of 18 and 40, in AR and in orienteering (where the blue course is mostly peopled by immigrants who learnt to orienteer elsewhere). I don't have the answer either, except that more 'sprint series', more professional marketing, outlawing old style o-suits, and more mass start races all have to be part of it.

orienteering clubs should make money to further orienteering, make more maps etc. mappers should eb able to earn a living. not that i'm against cheap entries - there's more than one way to skin a stag beetle

oh, i forgot earlier:
more orienteers -> more happy people
more orienteers -> the world is a better place
more orienteers -> save the children... emmm... no but seriously, a lot of people work for orienteering because it is a good thing, and not from purely selfish motives...

more adventure racers -> ?

Neil?

(of course, volunteering is great, and thanks again to all O volunteers. but volunteering is in a long term downward trend across many developed countries and many types of groups...)

That's easy...
More adventure racers -> more gear purchased
That's the reason most of us love the sport. ;-)

I second William re: volunteering.

Jukola costs $70 per person. Let's see, 1300 male teams * 7 legs + 900 female teams * 4 legs...

You get the idea.

Sure, we won't get that many participants in a US race ever, but with increased entry fees, someone could put on an equally professionally-run event.

Oh, and they charged us something like 10 euros for parking too...

The first three years of the GHO adventure run it was 10K and a solo competition. Participation was ~50 people per race. In 2000 we changed it to 25km and made it a team competition (teams of 2). We got 37 teams. Then the next year we made it teams of three and we got about the same number of teams. Now we are at ~80 teams for the Raid the Hammer (50 teams for the Giant's Rib Raid and about 20 for the first Night Raid). The team aspect is important because people that train together like to race together. It is also good for 'marketing' since if one person hears about the event then they tell 2 friends about the race and then they tell 2 friends and so on and so on...

Regarding map quality. Our biggest adventure run is the Raid the Hammer which takes place in the Dundas Valley (one of our oldest O maps). BUT we don't use the "O" map - we modify it in OCAD. We remove all form line contours, small point features, fences, woods thickness, small marshes, small trails, etc and make the map 1:20,000. More like AR. Last year we even made the map 1:50,000 and had a few CP's plotted using UTM. In the advanced section we have used contours only. Scroll down on this link to see last year's Raid the Hammer maps.

Regarding volunteers. Bash was the event director of this year's Giant's Rib Raid. She joined GHO after running a few adventure runs a few years ago and now is a member of the OOA BoD. A big WIN for Ontario orienteering. The event co-ordinator for the 2006 North American Champs was also introduced to GHO through the adventure run.

Ok, I did the math:

1300 male teams * 7 legs = 9100 men
900 female teams * 4 legs = 3600 women

9100 men * $70= $637,000
3600 women * $70 = $252,000

Total: $889,000

Wow.

So what is the difference between AR marketting and Orienteering marketting?

We've got websites & word of mouth as the two major components just like AR...

There's also the better gear - the only way I can see to fix that is to personally wear, and help organize buys of better gear, and try to slowly embarass friends into wearing better stuff on the course. That trend is finally happening, thanks in large part to a semi-organized push by (I think) Adrian Zissos a few years back, but we've still got a majority of people that wear pretty funny looking suits. I've finally drifted to wearing only the relatively new US team tops (short sleve) or coolmax like stuff, and only the dark blue O' pants or tights. That's not quite as stylish as typical AR gear, but at least it's a step. What it AR's think? Am I still wearing pajamas?

As for the Sprint Series - how is that supposed to help increase the appeal? DVOA's Sprints seem to attract only about half the advanced course runners and even fewer of the rest. Are AR'ers or new young/fast runners supposed to like these? How do we market to those people? Is the Boston area Sprint Series attracting new people to the sport?

As for the long races, such as the Billygoat, I can see getting AR's out for stuff like that. Let's say (as an example) DVOA hosted a ~20km Valley Goat some time this fall on the VF Mt. Joy map. How would we market this as an Adventure Race (Adventrue Run) too? Are there websites that list Adventure races that we could just sent email to the host of, and get ourselves listed? Is it that simple, or am I missing something? (I'd probably want to make a webpage for the AR folks having the main category being a team of 3 event for $100/team, so it sounds real. With an individual runner category for $35, discounted to $25 if you are a member of USOF, and to $10 if you are a member of DVOA....) We could even do forks near the tricky navigation areas, where there's a choice between longer easier Nav., and a shorter but trickier section.

Blah, blah... I think when JDW reads this he's going to wonder why I'm typing this and sending him the map to print for this Sunday... gotta go!

actually, most clubs probably paid only 16-19 EUR / person for their jukola entries if they entered before the mid-may deadline. and after that it's 27 / person. you must have baked in your accommodation or something.

To use a nasty cliche', Less is more. I think Randy puts it best on his blog, "The most fun you can have with maps is Sport Orienteering. No other activity boils down to just you and a map, no other clutter, no bull. Just pure you and the map." Just like in backpacking, minimalism is the sweetest form. Do the most with the least. This constant pushing in AR to buy and buy and consume more stuff is not for everyone. Paying more and getting nice "swag" at races is great. And yes there is some nice stuff given out, but frankly I don't need more stuff. If I need something I go and buy it. The less money I spend on races the more money I have left to buy only the things I need and not getting that 30th wicking shirt or that 50th water bottle, or that 3rd embroidered PFD, or the 100th box of "long-strand protien, genetically-modified, hand-husked, picked-by-a-man-with-one-leg, sawdust-fortified" energy bars or sugar-snot in a packet. Right now I need tires and steel cables for my bike. I have plenty of O-tops. In 10 years of O I have purchased 2 compasses for a total of $104 (both still working), and each year I buy a good pair of O-shoes for ~$120 to replace the pair I totally destroy the previous year. Occasionally I need a new pair of pants. My fav top is made by Aries and has narry a rip after 6 years of use. All other expenditures are for travel and entry fees.

I'm not saying that getting the occasional souvenier running shirt with the event logo on there is a bad thing - I've gotten some of my favorite stuff that way like the Yukon one from last year, but I'd rather pay less for an entry, let the club keep any profits to make more maps, and walk away with nothing more than my crumpled map, a result posted on a website, and maybe a few pictures of my friends to remember the good time we had.

Yeah, I included accomodation, sorry if that was misleading. I'm not sure how many teams rented tents - probably around 300 total. It's still some 6-digit number though, before sponsor income.

'what is AR doing right than orienteering could learn from? I know. Scouts and JROTC. That has to be their secret key.

Back to less repulsive, but nevertheless still Vladimir's Very Own Hamburger... Letting insurance costs and tax/non-profit arguments dictate what the orienteering community wants to be seems backwards. Individuals don't typically custom-tailor their lifestyles to the demands of an insurance company, or the IRS. Earn more, pay more tax. Play more, pay more insurance. ARs are insured, sometimes at better rates and often with better service than that of Marsh & McLennan (USOF provider). Maybe we could just focus on maximizing the fun (within reasonable limits of recklessness... large, well-organized events seem the opposite of reckless), and deal with the bills as they come—and charge enough to cover those, plus some to make sure the fun goes on and there are plenty of people willing to provide it, in exchange for reasonable compensation.

For a typical local event in BAOC-land (Northern California USA), suppose one calculates the total person-hours put into organization, billed at the rate those volunteers would normally earn at their regular workplace. This number is typically a factor of 2 to 3 larger than the event income before expenses, and that is at an about $10 average entry fee. For clubs elsewhere that charge $3s and $4s, the discrepancy is much scarier. It's no wonder these clubs typically end up with a couple of dedicated volunteers, with no other members willing to do the work.

Although I have a strong sense of loyalty to USOF because I've been an officer and BOD member in the past, I've often wondered whether orienteering in the US might benefit from the creation of a separate national association that was able to work outside of IOF mandates and the rules and traditions we've constructed for the sport in the US.

I can easily see an American (or North American) Orienteering Association with less structure that could thrive side by side with USOF and help the sport to grow. I'd hate to dilute the small volunteer force we already have, but I think expanding orienteering through a new organization might actually strengthen USOF's position and membership. The American Canoe Association, the US Canoe Association, and USA Canoe/Kayak all coexist and have different goals and priorities.

That's a really interesting idea, but seemingly a slippery slope.

Perhaps we'll become like boxing, with several champions and even a Mike Tyson. I wonder who will fill that role...

Seriously, though - I like thinking outside the box, and competition is a good thing, generally, unless we're talking about natural monopolies. Will - does Orienteering count? I could make an argument both ways.

But I also think the PWT paradigm has some traction...

So who is it that is interested in putting on orienteering events for money? And how much will they charge? Do we run these events through the traditional clubs and keep volunteers to do the enjoyable bits (course setting?) and pay people to do the boring parts (start / finish / ... ) and the parts orienteers are congenitally unable to do (marketing... )? Or do we need a breakaway organization?

(By the way, j-man, orienteering is definitely not a natural monopoly. The economies of scale involved are not large as these things go. Once you've got one map and three meet workers, you're set to go. Having 100 maps and 300 meet workers is definitely a bit better than 100 times as good, but not much more than that.)

once there are more than a couple of clubs in a region, putting on events is often about making money for one's own club. Which comes back to the orienteers that orienteer most, normally. My club, for example, pays entries to major competitions.

I don't see what restrictions the IOF/USOF puts on clubs to stop them developing. Minimal mapping standards for competitions, which is a Good thing...

IFK Lidingo seems to only put on one or two events a year, one of which is the world's "largest" cross-country race, and makes them S**t-loads of money (would you pay 70 dollars to run 30km?), so they don't have to organise more events and they can pay all entry fees etc and reward top club athletes. Other clubs in the area earn IFK L's money by organising orienteering competitions...

If there is an easy way of earning money (such as Adventure Runs, or just plain old trail runs) then do so. Make new maps.

Adventure Racers who don't become orienteers should be milked for all they are worth.

In fact, lets start a new pricing scheme - 10$ flat fee, 5$ for those with trendy O-tops, 20$ for psychedelic or excessively pyjama-like Ogear, and 30$ if you set out with a Camelbak...

Or a time-based one... which should also screw over the ARs ;p

---- The original motivation of the discussion as I saw it was to answer ''what is AR doing right than orienteering could learn from?' not 'how could O events be more useful to adventure racers as navigation training?'. -----

I'm going to second what Will is saying here. I don't think that shifting O events to be more accommodating for ARers should be the main focus. I think we need to look at what it is that is making AR so attractive for people. How event directors go about marketing AR and how that might translate to O events. Are there methods for gaining exposure of O that are used in AR or similar sports for that matter.

I'm interested by the discussion of a separate, "breakaway organization". I realize that right now within O there is a certain purity and simplicity, from the way that events are put on to the courses themselves. I can appreciate those who would rather keep the sport the way it is and has been rather than involve big money, lots of gear, banners, painted cars, and lots of new faces.

Although I'm relatively new to the sport of O and my interests also lie elsewhere, I'd love to see the sport be more accessible to others (the rest of the few active Americans in this country). Sure, money can be seen as an evil spoiler of purity, but the reality of how our world works now is that, for better or for worse, money facilitates growth.

Why not charge bigger entry fees to go towards building the sport. Let's make more maps, let's involve more kids (kids that don't have the benefit of parent orienteers). Set up camps and clinics for kids to learn about O. Parents are looking for fun and active things for their kids to be a part of. Kids can be a great way to grow the sport. Not only do you bring in a new generation of Oers but once parents see how much fun O is they might just try it themselves. This is why park O and sprints are a good idea (Wyatt) because they're more accessible. Try to sell the sport by convincing the average American that they should run into the deep woods with a piece of paper in their hand and you will fail. Setup a simple course in a park where parents bring their kids every weekend anyway, and you're sure to get people interested.

If the current sanctioning organization is not willing to budge from the old ways in a way that puts up road blocks and prevents growth, then by all means go around. Genesis Adventures puts on some of the best quality AR sprints available and they are not sanctioned by USARA.

Re: Kristoffer Nielsen's comment above: "let's involve more kids (kids that don't have the benefit of parent orienteers). Set up camps and clinics for kids to learn about O. Parents are looking for fun and active things for their kids to be a part of. Kids can be a great way to grow the sport. Not only do you bring in a new generation of Oers but once parents see how much fun O is they might just try it themselves"...

Ths is something that USOF and its member clubs have devoted a lot of energy toward, with (I think) quite a bit of success. However, it hasn't translated into as much growth as we'd hoped, especially among 18 to 25 year olds.

wyatt wrote: Are there websites that list Adventure races that we could just sent email to the host of, and get ourselves listed? Is it that simple, or am I missing something?

yes there are AR schedules listed on many sites and most allow you to submit your races. It is THAT simple. if you list it - they will come.

Yet even more organizational structures will serve only to overtax our already strained volunteer force. There are several tens of magnitudes more canoeists/paddlers in this country than there are orienteers. More management=bad. Kristoffer, let us know when you put on your first O-clinic for kids. Alexei Azarov has been putting these on once or twice a year for several years now. Attendance is generally about 20 folks at each - most of them already active juniors. Its open to anyone. I've never seen anyone I'd call an AR at any of them. There are other junior camps. Nearly every O-event in the US - local or national - has white and yellow courses for beginners and families. They are dirt-cheap to encourage attendance and free instruction is always available. O-clubs put on high-quality "unsanctioned" meets like this EVERY weekend. There is some sort of an O-in-schools program which USOF spends a tremendous (relatively speaking) fraction of its budget on and most uf us have barely heard of it or seen any concrete or even measured results from it of any kind whatsoever. Where exactly are we "blocking growth" in all of this? Can you give us some specific examples? Dividing a small force into even smaller parts to attack a big problem is a bad military strategy, and is probably bad for Orienteering in the US too. Besides, why would the USARA not be classified as an "orienteering" organizational group in just the same way that all the canoeing organizatons are loosely associated?

Related to getting new people interested, I'll say that SVO puts on 2 beginner's intro clinics with one of our parks each year. Its hightly attended - the park's most popular program. We get ~100 first-timers at these, all of which say they had a good time, yet on average we get 1-2 repeat attendees at orientreering events per year from these two huge programs. I'd gather that NOD, which has the same goal in mind, doesn't do a whole lot better. Yes, the NOD attendance numbers may be large and slowly increasing, but the repeat attendance after NOD events (which is not measured, mind you) is probably not showing any progress at all. I doubt its worth the effort. The energy should be focused elsewhere. The same may be true of O-in-schools, but until we actually try to *measure* the efficacy of these programs we'll never know whether they are really making progress towards their stated goals or not.

Quite frankly, most people - especially americans - don't want to get off their duffs to do anything. Getting them out of their vehicles and into the forest is even harder. I enjoy it so I do it. I've about given up on convincing other people to do it. If they want to, fine. If not, thats fine too. I've got races to run, as I suspect most of you reading this thread do also.

--" I think we need to look at what it is that is making AR so attractive for people. How event directors go about marketing AR and how that might translate to O events. Are there methods for gaining exposure of O that are used in AR or similar sports for that matter. "--- K. Nielsen

Around here, AR events are not marketed well, so I'm not sure how much there is to learn from their methods. If I weren't already part of the AR community, it would be hard to find out about it. The AR companies attend the annual Outdoor Adventure trade show, and there are notices posted at Running Free, a Toronto-area store that also hosts AR clinics. However, I only became familiar with Running Free through their generous sponsorship of AR, so that probably shouldn't count.

I volunteered at an AR trade show booth this spring, and what seemed to intrigue people about the sport was the "adventure" idea. Although Mark Burnett's ego doesn't need further boosting, I have to admit that uttering the word "EcoChallenge" caused a lot of people's eyes to light up and take a second look at the booth. If adventure racing had never been presented on TV in such an accessible, interesting format, I'm not sure that it would have become as popular as it is. That's how everyone on our team first became interested in the sport, and I've heard the same story from many others.

So... how does O learn from AR's success? Unfortunately, there are no major orienteering TV productions in North America to help us out. In any case, watching EcoChallenge is not like watching a pure sports event - the team dynamics and conflict add a lot of spice. There are a couple of things we can take from AR:

1) The team idea is very attractive and much less intimidating than traditional O. If you can ride a bike, you can do an adventure race without investing a lot of time in learning brand new skills. (Many mid-pack adventure racers are bad paddlers, but they can muddle through if they can keep the boat upright.) People enjoy an excuse to get together with their friends and do crazy things that will give them stories to talk about later.

2) The concept of adventure appeals to people.

So the most attractive way for adults to enter orienteering may be adventure running in teams of 2 or 3. Individual O events can be promoted to them as a type of adventure running training. Eventually, some may cross over and do both types of events. Others may stick with adventure running only. Regardless, it's more lucrative to a club to have more participants, regardless of WHAT kind of race they are doing - and adventure runs can be more profitable than regular O events, so they are worth pursuing.

Orienteering is sort of on TV--The Amazing Race. Maybe orienteering could do some events that more closely match this concept. Navigate around town, do a challenge, navigate someplace else, do another challenge or get your head shaved, etc. Metrogaines are already a move in this direction.

Like vultures! :o) Involving kids was merely one idea, and I wasn’t claiming it as an original concept. Perhaps with more aggressive event promo these types of offerings would draw more than “20 folks”. Maybe there’s a lack of repeat attendees because the clubs efforts to keep new people notified of upcoming events is falling short. Or maybe the clubs are doing everything they can to contact people about events, and Eddie is right, Americans are too lazy and this whole discussion is just a big waist of time.

Yes, nearly all club events have white and yellow courses, but the problem, again, is no non-orienteers know about these races. There are many ways to retain interested parties. Have any clubs tried using a mailing list (email or snail) to keep attendees informed about events? Have there been incentives set in place to get people to come back?

As for sanctioning organizations, I only suggested that there might be roadblocks. It was mentioned in previous entries that, “Using that model for orienteering carries the problem that our insurance is handled through USOF, and USOF requires all orienteering clubs operating under its umbrella to be not-for-profit.” There were other entries discussing the option of leaving the non-profit realm in an attempt at growth.

I also think a little friendliness goes a long way. Clubs that have the right people making newcomers feel welcome are going to be more successful than others.

While this is not necessarily the case today, I definitely felt that some clubs I've encountered were more interested in remaining "clubs" of inward-looking people and either deliberately or accidentally (due to the social proclivities and skills of members) remained that way.

There are many reasons I've been a fan of DVOA, but one of the top ones is the open attitude.

Of course, when volunteer staff is stretched to the limit, it is hard to have someone else available to greet and train newcomers. It is hard enough running start/finish, etc... But, in a sense, these are all related problems.

Almost every O-club in this country has a newsletter - snail and/or E, and lists to go with them. We collect e-mails of interested parties at all events. People are (understandably) reluctant to give out their addresses and more often ask for our website, which we give them. Our schedule is listed prominetly there. Most clubs I know of do at least this much.

As far as incentives, SVO this year is trying a "free entry to an SVO event coupon" for newcomers. We just printed them this spring. Should have some statistics in a year or so. I know QOC does soemthing similar for people who join the club that day. We've tried ads in newspaper "things to do" sections. If the weather is nice you'll get a spike in attendance but rarely any repeats. DVOA puts on more intro meets than any other club I know of. It takes alot of people alot of effort to put on all those intro meets. My club has a core of about 10 people and 50-70 members. I'm not sure how many more pounds of flesh we can offer up. I don't think any of our core have time to spare as paid O-organizers, even if the money was there. Many of us are trying to support the national teams as well. This leaves even less time.

But (chicken and egg problem) college kids do have time. For example, I know Viktoria Brautigam works for Genesis frequently. Why doesn't she work for CSU? She needs some money (and fair enough too). The question is not 'would the current core volunteers do more if they were paid?' but 'would somebody competent do it?'. The answer to the first is clearly no (in general). The answer to the second might be yes.

The whole point here is that yes, the volunteer model will not grow any further. So it's at least time to think about alternatives. Maybe there are alternatives that are better, and maybe there aren't. But it's good to discuss it.

Incidentally, organizations that mix volunteers and paid work tend to have difficulty getting the balance right. It certainly opens a whole new can of long thin earth-covered animals.

FYI,

http://www.shootingstaradventures.com/svs2.htm

Has this thread set any kind of record yet - number of entries, total wordcount, distinct contributors?

Some thoughts on the many things to respond to that have gone before:

- With border guards apparently a possible exception, I think most people in North America have heard of AR and know that races are happening near them but have either not heard about orienteering at all or are vaguely aware it exists but have no idea that any is going on near them (of course, some of them live in areas with no or very little O near them) . It will likely be so until someone comes up with a way to televise orienteering that is compelling to non-orienteers. I think this is largely why it seems to be natural for people to think "I'm getting bored with/as good as I'm ever going to be at running therefore I'll do a triathlon" and "I'm getting bored doing triathlons therefore I'll do an adventure race" rather than "I'm getting bored with running so I'll go orienteering". I wish there was a simple solution to this problem but I won't hold my breath.

Though while we're on the topic, I'm much more interested in trying to figure out why we don't get more of the immense number of runners that are out there at O meets than in why participation in O by the much smaller community of adventure racers is less than it might be. The latter is an interesting question too - you'd think when Nielsen is flatly writing "orienteers dominate in the AR." that competitive adventure racers would be beating down our doors - but I'd much rather attract a few percent of the runners out there than 100% of the adventure racers. I have hopes that getting some QOC-printed running tops (no specific make of top - we're going to get the design printed on whatever tops members choose to submit) will make some inroads into our collective invisibility - if I'm going to run in a local 5K, 10K or X-country race or just do some training, it can't hurt if everyone who sees me can tell that I'm an orienteer and that I belong to the Quantico Orienteering Club.


- Regarding sponsorship, Orienteers in North America aren't numerous enough, a distinct enough market, or famous enough to attract much sponsorship. No US or Canadian company manufactures anything that only we buy and those companies that do make things we buy can reach us pretty effectively by marketing to runners, hikers, etc.. Axis Gear is a rare exception in that their sponsorship of orienteering events and GHO's missionary zeal have a clear potential payoff in selling club uniforms (to a fair number of Canadian clubs thus far - no American ones yet that I'm aware of) but I doubt if any company could justify a much greater sponsorship commitment than theirs given the current state of orienteering in North America. Until and unless O makes it into the Olympics, we'd better resign ourselves to no one opening any floodgates of money our way. Not to say we shouldn't try to get some sponsorship for Sprint Series II.

- I like O events the way they are but if we can draw in AR types or anyone else by staging Adventure Runs and/or more events events offering many sprints in a day and/or more mass start races or by adding a long yellow/orange level course to our regular meets within the available budget of volunteer time, why not? Entry fees from adventure racers spend on mapping just as well as other money and I've witnessed adventure racers volunteering at QOC events. I'll have to run some of these notions by QOC's set of committed AR types to see what they think of the likely demand.

- O clothing could stand some improvement or at least a mass shredding of O suits that should have been retired years ago (some of mine likely included - my wardrobe is being renewed but my more pyjama-like O tops don't seem to have heard of planned obsolescence so I've got a conflict going between thrift and fashion sense). Though I'll never understand what people dislike so much about the appearance of gaiters nor, likely, what is so great about the way adventure racers dress - some of the ones I've seen with Camelbaks, trekking poles, French Foreign Legion-ish hats, etc. looked pretty darn geeky to me. Nevertheless, I'll be interested to hear responses to Wyatt's question as to whether he's achieved an adequately non-dorky look.

- Given that schools, churches and other community institutions generally don't share our desire to proselytise O to children, I don't think there's much point in expending a lot of effort on recruiting juniors. By all means, make events junior-friendly but the sad truth is that juniors too young to drive need either extreme dedication to cycling or adult help to get to most orienteering events. Perhaps some headway can be made by staging relatively accessible park-O races and organising carpooling for juniors who are interested but I think resource limitations dictate that we focus on recruiting adults. If anyone can point to the (as Eddie asks) measurable and duplicable success of a particular method of recruiting juniors, I'll be pleased to be proved wrong.

- I'll reiterate that I like O events the way they are. But I think I'd like them even more if they attracted so many people that I faced lots of strong competition and potential training partners even in local races and clubs could pay for new A event maps with the first meet they held on them. It's certainly worth trying new things in pursuit of growth.

P.S. Personally I think it's a step too far but QOC is abolishing our free meet entry thrown in on the day you first join the club policy as part of a general rise in meet fees that will fall mostly on non-members - a combined membership and map fund growth measure, if you will.

Wyatt asks:
"So what is the difference between AR marketting and Orienteering marketting?"

AR markets itself to the general public as competitive racing. Orienteering markets itself to the general public as recreational family fun and only markets competitive racing internally. This makes a huge difference in who gets recruited into the sport.

I don't think we should stop the marketing efforts we already have. The truth is the vast majority of our events - club C meets - are recreational family fun and they are the financial lifeblood of the sport. But in most parts of the country there aren't enough opportunities for someone interested in competitive orienteering racing to experience that aspect of the sport.

Some ideas to alleviate this -
1) Sprints are a great idea. They are highly competitive, fast racing, can be done in easily accessible areas, and are possible to complete with yellow/orange skill level.
2) Single day A-meets.
I have a brother (runner) who orienteers who has yet to attend an A-meet. Not because he doesn't want to. But because he wants to participate in the sport on a single day - go home and have dinner with the family basis. We don't have A-meets like this. I think there are only two clubs in the country that regularly offer 4 A-meet days every year. That's what you need for your local members to earn a ranking and feel like they're part of the racing scene without having to travel.
3) Series of local races.
I don't think either of the above will attract newcomers to the sport without the right marketing. And I think that includes series of single-day events rather than just a one-timer. This also helps keep awards costs, etc. down. People can enjoy the racing aspect, and the awards can be based on the series as a whole, rather than needing them for every event. Also, a series with the right scoring scheme gives newbies a chance to make up for blowing their first time out and realizing they need some training.
4) The rest of the marketing
It needs to be glossy brochures that look official and ads in local papers or event magazines. Not a cheesy xeroxed flier and small type in the newspaper event listings.

This should be doable for many clubs without a huge amount of additional work. Just take your four or five best single day events, package them as a series of races, and market properly.

That was an excellent set of ideas with a very apposite point to begin, smittyo.

Orienteer Kansas's new team tops are from Axis Gear. Of course it's no suprise to the o' cognoscenti that OK is on the cutting edge of o' fashion, at least in the US.

Though I'm with Jon, I don't really understand (with some big -- individual -- exceptions) what's so bad about o' outfits. Guess I'm just old school. But I rather like the classic o' look, if the clothes are not too ripped up and/or faded, while the stereotypical AR look leaves me cold. I do like the extreme o' top look.

...and if to use college campuses for sprint maps...

this way 2 goals could be acomplished -
1. O propaganda in the colleges
2. a lot of new map could be created in a short period of time.

Am I the 100th post on this thread? Do I get a prize?

WH asked:"Hammer, I'm curious whether the 'guy in the 70s powder blue O suit' also shows up to adventure running, or whether you've succeeded in frightening him off (for better or worse)?"

The powder blue is clearly visible at the startline in the slideshow of last year's Raid the Hammer. Swampfox had something to do with this in his pre-tangerine years with BSK.

WH also asked: "does updating the marketing scare off the older orienteers or not?"

I don't think so. Some older founding members of our club have participated in more adventure runs than traditional O lately.

Variety is good but not necessarily all for everybody at one race....

Well, now that we've verified that Ken's code doesn't contain any Y2K type rollover problems with the message counter...

As someone who went from O to AR, I must say I don't understand the AR Envy of this thread. It's true that AR has more money and a slightly higher profile, but in every other respect O is far more mature. The meets are better run, the fields are deeper, and (perhaps most importantly from a competition standpoint) there is an agreed upon set of rules that are uniformly enforced.

Look at the start list for a typical USARA qualifier (roughly the equivalent of an A-meet). There are maybe three teams that have a shot at winning. Two of those shots are probably pretty remote.

It's a rare AR that doesn't have a misplaced control. The maps are uniformly terrible.

As for the money, well it's there, but I don't know that it's being used all that wisely. Mostly it's just a redistribution from the large group of marginal teams to the few teams that are fairly good at it. I don't really mind this since the charity we race for can use all the help it can get, but I would prefer that meet directors used the money to put on better meets (and create some decent maps).

All that said, I love AR. I just wish it was run to the same standards as O. Maybe when it's more mature, it will be. One of the failings of many AR meet directors is that they don't want to look at the things that O is doing right. I hope that changes because both sports could learn from each other.

Yes, we can learn from AR, but it would be a terrible mistake to emmulate it.

good point, orienteering spent way too long in a stage where poor maps and misplaced controls were acceptable and to some of the organisers provided half the interest. Some proponents of low standard orienteering have yet to be eradicated, although they are probably being outbred. Long live Darwin.

prize to hammer for post 100, prize to jtorranc for longest split. can we beat 154?

Back on the subject of gear, apropos of AR envy.

I don't find AR gear, whatever that is, to be necessarily superior to O. But, it seems to be similiar to many other sports in that there is an opportunity to spend money liberally and the sport in configured to feed the beast.

Much like ski or golf magazines present the latest toys to their devotees, encouraging them to shell out hundreds or thousands, our friends at EMS and REI fill the same role for AR. And the inclusion of kayaking and ropes stuff is that much better. Perhaps they could introduce a skiing section or something else to incorporate more pricey equipment?

O needs none of this. That is why Eddie's (and Randy's) comments are so incisive. O just requires a map and compass, and clothes that don't get in the way. The essence is simple. Now, we can have more stylish clothes per se, but more or less, form followed function in this sphere.

So anyway, I think AR gear envy is misplaced, unless you're jealous of the toys AR gets to play with...

Why the AR bashing :o), seriously? There shouldn't be any AR envy if there is any. I think the original premise of what Will, I and a few others, was not why -AR is cooler than O. The question was more along the lines of -what is AR doing that makes it the marketable sport that it is, drawing sponsors, top athletes and overall has more exposure.

Comments on ebuckley's thoughts:

It's ADVENTURE racing. The name implies a loose set of rules. There is a commonly excepted philosophy in AR that if it doesn't say you can't do it in the rulebook provided by the race staff then it's legal.

The most recent USARA qualifier that I attended granted had only 5 or so Coed "elite" teams however any four teams could have won on any given day. The Swamp Stomp earlier this year had a winning time of 25+ hrs and the top three teams finished within a very short amount of time of each other, with the 4th and 5th place teams right behind them. Looking back at the start roster for that race and it'd be very hard to say which of the top ten teams would have won.

O has deeper fields!? Sure maybe attendance is higher when you count bodies, but where is the competition? As for elite Orienteers here in the US there's MAYBE a dozen on the men's side and FAR fewer on the woman's side.

I've raced in a couple dozen ARs and can't clearly remember any misplaced CPs (however, I have heard of it happening in several events). But I would by no means say, "It's a rare AR that doesn't have a misplaced control"

Yes, indeed, some AR events do provide poor maps (racing ahead series comes to mind) However, if you are comparing USGS AR maps to O maps you are going to be disappointed every time.

And finally in the very generalized, misinformed comment that O meets are better run. Yes, there are poorly run ARs but I've been to few of them. I think the US O Team qualifier was an awesome meet; I enjoyed it thoroughly and would love to back to OH to race next year. West Point was also very nice. Let's try to put things in perspective though. Your average AR events deal with far more logistical challenge then your average O meet. All of the Genesis races are very well put on. Balance Bar Sprints and 24s last year and yrs before are amazing race experiences. The Big Blue series in CA is very, very professional.

Pointing out the faults of AR is not going to improve the sport of Orienteering or it's exposure.

Another AR company that seems to be doing a great job of organizing events is Infiterra Sports in Michigan: www.infiterrasports.com/

While their Coast-to-Coast race wasn't a big one in terms of national visibility, it was very well organized and had a large field with mostly regional entries. They provided detailed information for racers both before and after the event, well managed TAs with banners and flags from their sponsors, web updates of each team's progess, and valuable prizes (lots of cash from Michelob Ultra; shoes, clothes, and gear from Salomon, SmartWool, and others; and a free entry to next year's C-to-C). They finished up with a big dinner that was included in the cost of their entry fee.

Regarding AR clothing, most of it isn't all that practical for short orienteering races but the popularity (and perceived coolness) of the sport has led companies like Go Lite and EMS to develop some outstanding new fabrics and adaptable designs that provide warmth or cooling with very little weight. Maybe we could even get them to design something for orienteering too.

Thanks, div (Andrejus) for suggesting that college campuses be used for sprint races. USOF clubs have quite a few campus maps already but they don't get used much. I'll check my list when I get home. If anyone is interested in organizing a sprint or score O at a college, please let me know (lizk at netway dot com). I would love to be able to advertise a bunch of campus events for National O Day in September. With a full fall schedule, we might be able to help some colleges start clubs.

The major difference is that ARs are run by professionals for money, O events are run by volunteers for no money. 100% dedication vs. 10% dedication. And, yes, many of O volunteers get burned by the load. And no mass marketing at all since it is last in the list of priorities.

We need professionals working in O that would take on organization and promotion of the sport.

thing is, most of us want to orienteer as much as possible... and we get upset if there isn't an event or serious training on...
helping put on more than two or three reasonably good quality competitions a year is more than I would ever really want to do. If it is likewise for others, then that means needing ten or more event-organising teams (supposing we keep the volunteer approach) in each region. Less than that and all one can expect is a barebones organisation and little or no promotional effort.

Although I suppose an alternative is to have one less team of event organisers and have a group instead whose SOLE orienteering job is promotion - glossy fliers, ads, sponsors etc, also talking to teachers, getting them interested... haven't really thought this idea through, as you may have guessed :)

I used to have a cartrige for my Atari called ADVENTURE. It was a pretty cool game, what with the "magic dot" and all. Grindel the green-pixelated dragon was so easy to kill. Yokel or whatever the yellow one was called was a little harder. The red guy was a tough bastard. You had to poke him - poke him GOOD - with the arrow-dagger. I loved the sound they made when you popped them (DEEERRRrrrrrrrrooowww), and then they'd just lie there bent over in a pile of pixels. Still, I couldn't help but resent being represented as a plain old square. So PONG-like. Its hip to be square.

This is getting epic, but a couple things:

1) WillHawk asked about veteran Orienteers doing adventure runs. GHO has a couple of teams of Masters who rank this as their Orienteering highlight of the year, including the battle between Hammer`s Mom versus mine. The reason my mom loves the race, it`s better than running a half-marathon on the roads, she gets to boast to her running club that it`s the hardest half-marathon in Ontario, its fun to run in teams, and they can beat faster teams who can`t navigate as well.

2) I think it was during the winter and a major US club was looking to get new gear. The owner of Axis gear posted stuff about his company and that he was interested in getting involved with Orienteering. The positive from that is that people want to get involved with Orienteering. The fact that someone who had received a free shirt and complained about the fit, well, I`ll forget about that.

Sergey is trying to make a good point, mentioning that we need profesionals if we want to get the sport of Orienteering to grow and make more money and get more people want to attend more and more O races.And I will explain what I mean by profesionals: It actualy means that the clubs and USOF will have to find a way to pay enough of our own profesionals (the past, present and future volunteers) who put on events keep the clubs the USOF and the Teams going.Eliminating the volunteer and underpaid(mapping for ex) work in Orienteering is the answer to main subject of this thread.
And there is a doable solution for this too.If all the Orienteering clubs and USOF would double or triple their income (also doable) everybody would be able to get paid for their work and a lot of the present volunteers or some who do not volunteer for the above mentioned reasons, will start to get more involved and do what needs to get done in order to accomplish that.
Only taking some good ideas expressed by several participants to this discussion thread and putting them toghether will possibly make a realisticly workable plan of action to get things started in that direction.Volunteerism will need to be abolished and only accepted as a charytable action or donation if someone does not want to get paid for his work.

If all the unpaid volunteers in US orienteering stop doing so, orienteering will collapse in this country. Suggestions on how USOF and its clubs can "double or triple" their income - especially without volunteers - would be greatly appreciated. Until then, the entire thread regarding paying people to put on O meets in this country is just pie-in-the-sky. I'm talking about realistic solutions, not "if Bill Gates donates a million dollars to USOF" kind of miracles.

Our club seems to do ok when it comes to finances. We are not a large group either. In the past I have offered to set a navigation clinic for the local AR group. In return for my time they gave me a free one year membership (~$35). I now no longer set courses for our O club, because I have little time in between AR races, O meets, work, home and family (not in that order). If someone were to give me free membership for setting an O meet, I would do it. How much does the club lose? About $100 a season if you have 6 local meets. Seems like a win win situation.

But you can't buy food with a club membership. Or 6. There is a one-to-one relation between the number of qualified course setters in my club and the number of meets we set each year. If one of my course setters sets for another club's meet (to earn a free membership) and doesn't set one for me, I have to replace that labor. I either have to do the work myself, train someone else to do it (more work, but a good investment) or hire someone from another club to do it. Or put on one less meet of course. I think its a zero-sum game if its entirely within our non-increasing O community. Its just a redistribution of labor. Setting for the AR community in exchange for hard-cash is a different story though, since they have the cash. piutepro has done this for a few races and earned himself some extra spending money (some of it went to HVO too as I understand it). But I doubt if he has quit his day-job to become a professional course setter.

Almost all of SVO's revenue above expenses is used to pay off map loans. Once we reach zero we take out another loan, make a new map and start all over again. This appears to be about a 2 year process per map for an average orienteering map given our available labor force and the cost of map production. I personally measure our growth in number of maps produced. Increasing membership is always a goal. You have to have a stable membership of some size simply to support the map-production cycle. I think as long as we have sustainable membership numbers we can continue with the map production. More maps over more area leads to more meets leads to more membership (and fewer bored course setters :) This map production priority comes with the approval of the membership or course. If they (we) decided we had a different goal in mind this process would change to reflect that.

Eddie I disagree. I think if somebody were to say that you would get free membership if you volunteered to run a meet, you would get a dozen people signing up per season. you would have a few more meets on the schedule and would have more people attending.
As for your clubmates setting courses for another club, well that works both ways. Boris and Sergey have set courses for our club for the last several years. I would happily give them free club membership to have them do it again. In return, if HVO asked me to set courses for them I would do it, but not for nothing. the time spent volunteering to design, set and pick up controls, coordinate registration and results is, in my opinion, worth a free membership.
if you spend a day volunteering for an AR club helping out at a race or clinic you might get lunch and a nice shirt, a schwag bag and possibly credit towards a race in the future. this is the type of incentive that gets people involved in the club and brings in new blood. it's only a start though. I think the real attraction is money for the winners. the prizes that are given at O meets really suck. I have some pieces of wood, some scraps of metal, some magic crystals and more ribbons and medals that just collect dust. I would rather get a gift card to Sears. People have mentioned the fee to enter AR's, but the prizes are more than the entry most of the time. $200 entry, $300 for the winner. In O, $17 entry and a $2 award for everyone in every categorie.

More incentives=more people
more people=more money
more money=more prize money
more prize money=more people

The solution is(are) to add something to all the major orienteering events(or any) and charge higher entry fees.The problem is that even if I give to enyone any specifics on how I believe that this can be done, there it will be a big problem anyhow at first, and it probably never going to happen because it will involve a lot more volunteered time and more people involved until the transtion is made and the new system would be in place.That means that people who will first get involve to make this will have to tkke off work and dedicate more time for orienteering and I for example even if I would like to help and see that happening I can't afford to do so.Altough there is the solution that the club which eventualy will make money, to pay the people for their time from the start.The other problem is that most of the people in the US orienteering think that orienteering is doing good in the present organization and they will be very reluctant to start anything that it will involve more time and people for organizing the events.So if nobdy else can see how it can be done is because they don't want to.As Will pointed out somewhat, there is only so much that it can be achieved with only volunteers.

While I stand by my comments, they were not intended to offend. Merely to point out that much of what we look to in AR as better than O is, in fact, not.

I won't bother with a lengthy defense of my position. If others have different experience, that's fine. But I think I've been to enough of these things that my experiences are, in fact, quite well informed.

I would not be surprised to find that the average quality both in terms of field and organization is higher in the Northeast US and Southeast Canada than it is in the central states. But this is true of O as well.

As for the misplaced control comment, I count in that control locations that are vague enough that the only feasible strategy is run to the circle and start hunting. It is certainly a rare AR that doesn't have a few of these. Genuinely misplaced controls are becoming more rare, but we've encountered them in two reasonably high profile races this year.

Again, this isn't meant to bash AR - it's a young sport and some growing pains are inevitable. I hope that increased participation from the O community will help to bring the sport up a notch.

As for marketing, I think AR does this reasonably well, but the results are mixed. Here I can only speak regionally, as I've not done local races outside the midwest. We get 70-100 participants at local O-meets and see about that many at local AR. Given the additional barriers to entry with AR, I'd say they're doing a better job of promotion. It's still way below participation for more established and similarly expensive sports like cycling (200-500 for a local event) and auto racing (100-200 for local event) that I have experience with.

Yep, I know Boris and Sergey set courses for HVO. Randy has set courses for my club. Vlad and you set courses for the US Team. Sandy and Valerie regularly do work for every club up and down the eastern seaboard. My argument is there is no "new" blood in this process. Its just old blood being shifted from one organ to another without any net increase in blood. Giving these same skilled folks (or even some semi-skilled registration workers) free memberships is a nice thing, but I don't think its going to net much in the way of new members.

Getting a few extra bucks for winning a race is nice, but without genuine corporate backing, the ammount of prize money you can give away based on entry fees alone is pretty small. You can raise entry fees to get this number up, but you will eventually reach people's limit for entry fees. At some point the race won't be worth the price.

I race for fun. Plain and simple. I would still race in the absence of prize money, trinkets, shirts, "schwag", etc. Consider local meets. Most of us go to lots of local meets where there is none of the above. My question to ARs would be, if there were none of the above incentives, would you still go to ARs? Or would you just leave the sport and look for a more "lucrative" activity. Like lawn mower racing.

I don't think people race for the prizes, although winning teams certainly don't refuse them. But the point is more that the whole 'professional' look of AR, of which prizes are a part, as is free swag, after-race parties, big finish clocks, you name it, get in people who want an 'event'. Orienteering is not in that market. It can never match the 'event' aspect of AR exactly; the question is whether it benefits at all from even trying. It seems from GHO's experience that the answer is yes.

ebuckley's observation that AR has few rules and no governing body is a good one.

Orienteering has very strict rules. The rules (map quality/symbols, course length, control descriptions, etc) and officials certification are needed because of the pace of the sport. It is so fast (relative to AR) that a problem with a map, poor course planning, and/or inexact CP placement will make the difference in placing 1st or 10th. The rules were added so the top orienteer on that day wins and not a person that got lucky because of a new trail on the map that took them from CP1 to CP2 that nobody else knew about or because the CP was placed on a feature that doesn't exist on the map.

As such the percent of time O club spends on the technical course planning side of an event vs. marketing/promotion is 95-5... maybe 90-10 at best

In AR it would be more like: 5-95, 10-90, maybe 20-80?

So what can we learn from this?

In AR the luck element is generally accepted (and some times admired) as part of the sport so not all "O" races have to have the 'championship level' detail and rules. This allows the organizer to spend more time on the "event" as willhawk mentioned.

I think we would all agree that we must maintain the map quality, course quality, etc. at our championships but that doesn't mean we need to require that at all O events.

Instead we should replace a few traditional "O" events with a hybrid of rogaine/O/AR and spend less time on course planning (1 course) for these replacement events. Put the race on an older map (still better than a topo). This would reduce the club's mapping budget and organizing time. These extra resources would then be put the into marketing of the event and the 'professional' look of the event.

As Eddie states there are few people in a club that can do the technial side of organizing (map, course, SI, etc). But many more people have the skills to make a fancy finish line, approach sponsors, etc.

I can set an adventure run course in 1% of the time that is required to set courses for a Championship Orienteering event
and this is why GHO now hosts 3 adventure runs a year and an "A" meet once every 3 years...

We won't match the AR level of 'professionalism' but it will be way better than our average "B" meet or some "A" meets.

Many participants of our adventure run realise that our event is not as fancy as an AR event but we don't have the sposnorship $$ (yet). But our events are still much cheaper than AR (more expensive than O) but whats is still lacking from the extra extra frills to match AR is made up by our better maps, better courses, better route choice, better race technology (e.g., SI) etc. than any North American AR has and as such most participants leave happy they got good adventure value.

If clubs are thinking of hosting an adventure run please contact me privately - I have some ideas and suggestions.

Eddie wrote: "I think its a zero-sum game if its entirely within our non-increasing O community. Its just a redistribution of labor."

Personally, I would gladly put on/help to put on a few more events if the labor were better compensated. I "volunteer" at our local trail-running for-profit company, Pacific Coast Trail Runs, in exchange for free entries. The money does work out at Vladimir's (regular pay rate / 2) rule, so I'm in.

There probably are a few cases where paying someone (via free entries or whatever) is worth doing in orienteering. However, there is a secondary cost. Let's say a club gets 1000 volunteer hours a year, for nothing. If it offers payment equal to $5/hr, they may attract another 200 worker-hours a year. But to be fair, they've got to pay that $5/hr not only for the 200 extra hours, but also for the 1000 hours they would have got for free. So in the end, the 200 hours costs them $5/hr * 1200 hours = $6000... a lot more than the $5/hr they were thinking about spending...

I'm sure there's some nice economic words for all this, but it is something that makes paying for O', especially within the given structure, more challenging.

I think that if paid-organizer orienteering does occur, it's going to have to appear alongside existing clubs, rather than replacing them. Say some college student offering a Summer Sprint Series or something, where a large part of their incentive to set this up is to earn some extra income. Would this even work financially for someone, anywhere in the US? I'm not sure.

I wonder if we could get over one of the hurdles by creating a new USOF 'club', e.g. US Adventure Running, through which anyone who wants to organize such an event can get insurance and 'branding' that won't affect the local all-volunteer club... They'd still have to buy maps, and/or borrow/rent equipment from the local O' club. But it might work.

As an example of the numbers for the Independence Day O'? I'd guess we'd get close to the same number of entrants (say 75% of what we got) even if we charged, say $20/race or $50 for the day... which would probably work out to something like $1500 of revenue, less expenses of, say, $300-500 assuming we paid DVOA for maps and equipment rental (?)... Say a net of $1000 shared among the 5 or so main event staff? Counting the amount of time this took, this isn't quite enough for me to jump in to do much more of this, (especially with the family back in town) but is it tempting for others? E.g. Vlad, Joe, any college orienteers?

Some words you might wish to consider using might include 'crowdout' and 'inframarginal'. Also 'synecdoche' and 'parataxis' although these are not relevant and just sound good.

I think I heard these words at the national spelling bee.