Discussion: WOC Sprint distances

Does anyone know if the distances given for the Sprint Finals at WOC were along the direct route or if they were along the best route (i.e. deviating for impassable objects)

Mens: 4.1km (3.22min/km)
Women: 3.7km (3.61min/km)

I've got to think that at those tpk's the distance was the actual shortest-route distance. Right?

Yeah, I think that's correct.

How is it supposed to be done?

IOF Rule 16.3:

The course lengths shall be given as the length of the straight line from the start via
the controls to the finish deviating for, and only for, physically impassable
obstructions (high fences, lakes, impassable cliffs etc.), prohibited areas and marked
routes.

That's the letter of the law. I'm just not sure what common practice is.

I, for one, have never bothered to give anything other than the direct line, leaving it to the competitor to figure out the distance. I do try to get the winning times correct, which seems more important to me.

On the other hand, I just found the "Route Choice" mode in CONDES which makes it very easy to generate the 'proper' distance - so I might be changing my modus operandi

The straight line distance doesn’t mean much for a campus or urban sprint. Following the IOF rule also seems convoluted. So when setting sprints in our local meets I like to give competitors the GPS distance of my test run along with the straight line distance. In fact I am test running the UC Berkeley courses this week.

'proper' distance / straight line ratio tells a lot how straight route choices runner is supposed to look for on average. What do you think, is it OK to reveal such hints in advance or is it something athletes should figure out when out on the course? Not sure myself - figures a lot like climb and those figures are told in advance.

What's the problem with a "hint" like that? Everybody gets the same hint. It's reasonable to have some idea of what you're going to be facing, that's why we have model events. This is a race, after all, not some kind of weird puzzle. Seems to me that the minimum distance you'll have to cover is useful to know, and the straight line distance through impassable objects or via impossible routes is entirely meaningless.

My objection to giving the "sensible route" distance has always been that a) it is one more thing for the course planner to have to spend time on, and b) it isn't really very useful information. The useful information is how long the race lasts (12 - 15 minutes) and that is fixed. Then giving the straight line distance gives people some kind of idea (multiply perhaps by 1.5 for urban sprint to estimate actual running distance).

But really - the distance only gives an idea of the nature of the terrain, if you can trust the course planners to set the correct winning time.

What's the problem with a "hint" like that?

If you tell both, like shortest distance is 3.3km and straight line 3.2 km everyone would know there is always straight route available. And if you tell straight line is 1.5 km everybody would expect there often is no short route available and look for far left/right alternatives. If you tell only the shortest distance you but not straight line at all everyone would need to make their route choices based on map and stay open minded for all alternatives,. But like I said is not sure is that a problem at all, but just thinking athletes are already making own maps and setting courses and studying google imagery, all additional info like that makes it easier to figure out things in advance, may help guessing is there artificial fences and how much and where. But I guess thats part of the sport already and giving hits to make such preparation easier and more effective is part of the game.

Distance is objectively measurable.
Winning time is an estimate at best, and is influenced by who shows up (in what condition) and the weather, etc. There are plenty of examples of where it has been significantly wrong.

One more thing for the planner to do? It really doesn't take long, and there are plenty of other "unnecessary" things that we have come to expect.

I'm not suggesting giving both straight-line and shortest-route distances. The first one is meaningless. I think shortest-route only is the right thing to do.

IOF Rule 16.3 seems to be pretty uncontroversial for forest orienteering. But, I'd really like to know what the practice is at WOC sprints. Is it that?

Straight line distances make a certain amount of sense for me, assuming that the planners are smart enough/care enough to set to a winning time, which I think they do at WOC, but often don't in the US. If you know that they are indeed setting to the winning time (of all the course setting challenges, IMHO, getting that right in a sprint is among the easiest), a runner, informed of straight line distance will be able to deduce a lot about the course. It is clear that a 4K sprint course will be more direct than a 3K course, ceteris paribus, unless you are in the US, where it is probably just too long.

In South Africa we apply the rule to sprint orienteering by saying that buildings and fences are "physically impassable" obstructions and therefore when working out the distance you need to go around them. This means that the distance is the shortest possible distance, not straight line (this is only done by some planners though).

This obviously makes distances for forest events the straight line distance because very rarely is there anything uncrossable.

The rule actually makes sense and at the WOCs where I have participated it is the shortest running distance, not straight line.

I believe the shortest runnable distance (ie around buildings, fences, walls, olive green areas, etc.) has been used at WOC since 2012 when it was explicitly written in the bulletin that that was how they were doing it because it was a new rule.

"this is only done by some planners though"

Since it doesn't really give any significantly better information, why bother to create this inconsistency. Because now when we go to a non-IOF sanctioned event how much confidence can we have in what the distance given represents? That makes it even more useless than the straight line.

On the other hand, the software support given by CONDES for "route choice view" is pretty cool and I think if course planners used that more then they would be more likely to get within the range of target winning times.

EDIT: Though of course nothing beats test running if you want to hit the target winning times

Canadian is correct - for WOC and other international sprints the course length is the "shortest runnable distance", so measured around buildings etc. This is indeed an extra task for the planner, but probably necessary if you are going to get the winning time correct. For anything other than a WOC/WRE most people wouldn't bother.

> Because now when we go to a non-IOF sanctioned event how much
> confidence can we have in what the distance given represents?

I agree. Don't do it wrong. If you aren't going to measure it correctly, then simply don't list the distance at all. Just as how at many local meets, climb isn't listed.

It takes such a short time to measure a sprint properly i.e. around the impassable lumps - less time than reading and potentially responding to this thread.

Well, until you change the course.
Then you have to measure it again.
Move one control and who knows how many courses you have to recalculate.

The real problem is that it is not "automatic" so it is just one more bothersome thing to do (and to remember to do). Straight line distance - all course planning software gives you that automatically. Shortest running route - only Condes does that for you (and even then it isn't for free).

I just don't see the point of doing *any* extra work to provide pretty useless information. I'm liking JJ's idea - just don't bother at all.

It doesn't seem to me that knowing the minimum realistic distance that one would be running is exactly useless (in terms of pacing, etc.).

Maybe "useless" is the wrong word. A better word is "worthless" - from a value of information point of view.

For free you have the following information:
1. straight line distance - given by course planning software
2. target winning time of 12 - 15 minutes
3. typical running speed of top orienteering - around 3.5min/km
4. WOC shortest route was 4.1km in 2015

Given all of that information you can guess that, for example, the shortest sensible route for the Canadian Orienteering Champs men's elite course later this month will be somewhere between 3.2 and 3.5km.

So how much are you willing to pay to find out more exactly what the distance is? I say nothing. We already have enough to make our race preparations and devise our race strategies.

[On the other hand, one of the most confusing things for non-orienteers is when they ask how long a race is and we don't have an answer for them - the straight line distance to them is meaningless. So I do think shortest distance has some value - to explain to non orienteers what we are doing]

[PS: Sometimes AP makes people sound fanatical - like me about this point of shortest route. I'm not really that concerned about it and apologize for ranting too much. I actually think shortest route is a pretty good idea in general - for explaining how long a course is to non-orienteers, and for helping course planners understand exactly how long it will take to run their courses (but I maintain that it is pretty worthless info for the competitor ;-)]

Sometimes AP makes people sound fanatical - like me about this point of shortest route. I'm not really that concerned about it and apologize for ranting too much.

I think you're the first internet commenter to apologize for ranting! AP makes me sound like a guy who hates beginners and Egyptians!

I guess the competitor can take four pieces of iformation and distill them into a number that stands a chance of being accurate.

Or the organizer could provide a number, e.g. 3.3 km, for which the competitor knows that he'll have to cover that didtance -- or more if he makes a mistake or opts for a longer but possibly better route.

As for remeasuring -- just don't measure the course until it's final. The actual measuring is easy with 0CAD, you just draw a purple line that traces the route, and click on the little ruler. If you move a control a little, that won't affect the distance enough to matter.

But if you don't measure until the end (if you even know when the end is) then you lose one of the main advantages of having the running distance (to make sure you get the correct winning time by getting the right running distance)

And I don't think the competitor needs to do much work - a campus sprint on flat terrain will be basically 3.4km long in NA. HOw much more accurate do you really need?

Well, if you aren't measuring, then, how are you getting the winning time?

It sounds like you're saying that if it's a NA campus sprint, then the length is always 3.4 km. OK, then put that for the length. (Except when the campus is particularly steep...)

It's not a new rule - it has always (*) been the rule that courses in any sort of event are supposed to be measured as the shortest possible distance avoiding out-of-bounds areas and uncrossable obstacles. It's just that in most middle/long distance events this rule makes little or no difference, so the fact that it was nearly universally ignored didn't really get noticed until sprints became a major part of the scene.

(* - for these purposes, 'always' = 'since I started noticing the rules').

* that would be always as in "the rule was written without thought for what a pain in the arse it is for sprint planners".

British rules specify straight line distance. It means at WREs W21E may be much longer than M40, even if its the same course !

Unless I'm really pushed for time, I always do the distance around uncrossable objects. If it's a one-sided feature (i.e., you have to go *that* way), I often leave the bent connection lines showing that I accounted for that distance. But for features where route choices exist on both sides, I make it complicated: I print maps with the connection line straight, to give the runner a guide to help pick which way they want to go, but I try to make sure the published distances (for example, on clue sheets and Attackpoint splits course data xmls) are corrected for the uncrossable objects.

I think a "correct" published distance is valuable both for the setter and the competitor. I almost cringe when I see a non-WOC 3.4km sprint.

The sprint at the recent Dolomite 5 day listed the distance for my age group at approximately 3k. Seemed long. When I inquired, was told that it was the short route distance and not straight line. "Isn't that the way everyone does it?" It is in Italy it seems.

by saying that buildings and fences are "physically impassable" obstructions

I am immensely entertained by any conversation where it is necessary to specify this as an assumption.

The distances quoted for the sprint were indeed "shortest possible route" rather than straight line.
AFAIK they were measured from the start boxes, rather than the start kite, so included a substantial run-out to the kite, and followed the mapped line through the arena which I don't think was an entirely accurate representation of what was on the ground (it exaggerated a bit).
The times per km were very fast - partly because of touch-free punching but also because IOF/SEA insisted on simplified control placement (e.g. placing controls such as #2 in the middle of the road rather than tucking them behind a wall) which meant they were visible from a long way off and competitors didn't need to slow down.