Discussion: A-meet quality

A very general question: by what measures do you individually evaluate an A-meet? What aspects of its execution and organization are most important to you? What attributes are indispensible, and what are simply enriching but optional?

References to specific A-meets as examples for constructive attributes in particular are helpful.

Well that's a provocative question...and a bit difficult to quantify. I'm not really sure of the elements of a memorable A-meet. Of course it is easy to say "good mapping" or "challenging courses" or "high-level competition." But thinking back, over 20 years of A-meets, it is not always the best maps or courses that stand out.

Attending an A-meet is usually a 60-72 hour commitment. During that time, I'm only orienteering for a couple hours. To a great extent, it is the things I do during the other 95% of my time away from home that determines my total "A-meet experience." In order to sign up for an A-meet I consider the following factors:

- other friends attending
- opportunity for pre-training on Thursday and Friday
- interesting local afternoon and evening activities that don't involve TV, bars, or malls
- travel and local transit (don't want a lot of driving)
- availability of free time during the weekend, to permit other planned activity
- new neighborhoods to stroll...get out of the car at least once

As an example, BAOC was recently banned from holding meets on their fabulous Annadel map that is within the city of Santa Rosa. Now they're holding meets 90 minutes north near Cobb, California, in a very lovely, open Pacific Coast forest. But Cobb, compared with Santa Rosa, is a cultural wasteland. And I'm having difficulty signing up for a weekend in Cobb.

Good maps, good courses. Fair, accurate maps, fair accurate control placement. Not too much miserable terrain. After what seemed like 90 minutes of greenbriar at one event a while back, I questioned my reasons for attending, and have thus done less of it since. This is the essential list for me. I don't care about the dinner, babysitting, T shirt, and all that stuff, where I generally make my own arrangements. (For the dinner, for example, I'd rather try to find a local experience than have a pre-packaged dinner at the hotel)

It goes without saying that if I pay $500 to get to an A meet, and a control is misplaced or unfair, I'll be pissed, but it still happens. This one goes above the essential list.

I think I'm on the other side of Clark on the "cultural wasteland" question. I'd rather have an awesome map in the middle of nowhere than a mediocre one near public transit or a big city. For me, it is about the map, about scenery, about remoteness, about getting away from all that stuff. It is still adventure sport to me, and sometimes adventure sport requires going to remote places. I'm not so hung up of the carbon footprint thing that I feel that parts of the planet not accessable to public transit are off-limits to me. I like exploring remote places, so sue me.

In general, maps being near cultural features and big cities and the like tend to be less fun for me (when choosing such a map, you are constrained by these non-orienteeering criteria, and thus have less degrees of freedom to choose the best one; moreover, cultural features have tended to be developed in less geographically interesting areas, for simple economic reasons).

Some of my favorite maps have seemed remote. US champs in Oregon a few years ago. Fishtrap Lake. Telemark. Hickory Run. PEEC. Various places in Europe. Don't know if there is public transportation to these places or if they would be defined as cultural wastelands, but I would hate to have not had meets at these places for those reasons.

Certainly it is nice if there is a cool downtown area near the A meet, especially with live music somewhere, but I would not want an inferior map as the tradeoff for this.

Also, lodging other than your run of the mill budget motels, where people are together, is nice. Telemark a few years ago was a good example of this.

For sprints, it is just the opposite. I feel urban or college campus is essential for sprints. I have little to no interest in parkland or forest sprints, unless the area is really special for that purpose.

HTH

The weather.

I look forward to the environment that an A-meet creates, friends, and good courses.

I completely agree with Randy, and PG's criterion also is important, though presumably beyond your control?

PG is a CSU member and for the CSU meet, that one is on him.

I'd certainly agree with Clark that if the time off the course is spent hanging at a bar or hotel room, the weekend experience suffers. Certainly it is fun to combine an A-meet trip with a visit to a real city. However, the point is the competition, so I'm definitely with Randy that the maps and courses must override all other considerations. My favorite format is for an Urban sprint on Friday followed by two days in more remote woods. That allows for a night in the city and then a night in the woods camping (if the weather cooperates). Also helps keep the cost down since a full weekend in city motels can get pricey.

I agree with Randy (re: fairness and not too much nasty or miserable terrain). I also like a course that has the technical difficulty that it should, with varied legs offering different challenges. Don't dumb down the brown course just because it's shorter than the other advanced courses!

Administratively, I like having the finish close to parking, results available nearby and updated more than once an hour. J-J's results method with individual cards for each person, and spread out, is really nice. Oh, and enough portajohns so that the lines don't get too horrendous. :-)

For what to do near Cobb, there are always the wineries and eateries about half an hour away in Calistoga (~17 mi?). Of course there is a nice wind-y get-out-of-the-mountains road between Cobb and the valley... tough to do at night when it's foggy. :-)

How do people feel about return visits to a second (or third?) A meet on these prime, but remote venues?

It seems to me that in recent years, there have been a couple of these areas used only once, and I wonder why. One A event, even if it is US Champs, usually doesn't cover mapping costs.

SLOC held an A-meet on the Hawn map (20Km^2) in 2003 and then returned there for team trials in 2006. I don't remember any objections and several people took the time to thank me for using such great terrain again before the map got out of date.

I think EricW meant "Camp Ripley".

Terrain, map and courses. I wouldn't necessarily care if I was the only one at the event. I like running in great terrain and on good maps. The rest of you ya-hoos just crowd up the forest. However, it is nicer if Lisa is traveling with me so I make allowances for her.

I don't spend any time thinking about museums, restaurants or other activities. If I have tired myself out sufficiently, I am happy to just hang out all day at the event site or in my room/tent reading or watching the tube.

And I have no problems returning to prime venues multiple times. There are always new control locations to visit, new legs, new route choices, etc.

Actually, it sounds like Randy and I would travel well together so I'll allow him in the forest as well.

by what measures do you individually evaluate an A-meet?

How were the courses? Were they properly challenging? Were they fair tests? In my view every other factor pales in comparison. For instance there is a club that every year puts on a great A-meet - the terrrain and maps are excellent, the facilities are usually second to none and, yes PG, they most often get the weather right. Year after year I would attend their meets but often I would drive away just shaking my head at how their course setters had failed to grasp how to set legs with varieties of route choice. I haven't been to one of their meets in about eight years. Hopefully things have changed.

Could we see an improvement in course setting standards if the US and Canadian Federations asked A Meet directors to submit their courses for a post meet evaluation with the best of each year being awarded a prize, the others a gentle critique?

A good idea, and worth restating.

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