Discussion: Sprint at Iron Hill

A very fine sprint at Iron Hill yesterday organized by Sandy Fillebrown and DVOA. Link to map and results. We need to have more of these.

I remember Wyatt saying after both events (there were also the usual selection of courses, so all the sprinters got to run a second course, normal distance) that while running the red course he had in his mind the thought to try to keep the speed he had for the sprint. And he had a real good run, just about 6 minutes a km, faster pace actually than his sprint!

And there was also some talk that we need some sort of sprint series for 2005 to see who the best sprinters are. Seems like we've got the first 5 events already (Alabama, the 3 sprints at the DVOA/Team training weekend, and the Trials). Other events? Ideas for a scoring system?

Peter

There will be a sprint at the Pacific Northwest Orienteering Festival.

Whatever the scoring system is it needs a good name like "The Sprint Tangerine".

I'm designing two sprint courses for a Cincinnati local meet on January 29.
http://www.ocin.org/schedule/schedule.html

I've been looking at the sprint maps on PG's site, with the thought to try to copy some elements of the course design. For example, several of the maps appear (from looking at the map) to be about evenly split between legs that *look* trivial and legs that look more complicated (For example, Brian May's WOC Sprint Qualifier). The WOC final is like 75%/25% hard-to-easy legs (to my eye), so (?).

There are usually one or more longer legs which include getting around a fairly large impassable or difficult-to-cross object or area. Some of these are quite subtle, at least to my eyes. On this map, leg 3-4 (with the solid line between them)seems like it would take a lot more than a few seconds to decide on a route. http://orientacnibeh.cz/english/wuoc2004/obr/map/s...

I've got a mental list of several more things, but they really aren't in a form I think I should write down, mostly because I'm not too sure about them. In spite of my better judgement, I'll probably write them here anyway...

What I really want is to mimic some features of the big event sprints, but what I'm missing is the competive experience from a big sprint.

So...can people who have run big event sprints show us a map and a write a narrative of what happened?

Here's a quick and incomplete list of what I mean:

1. How trivial are the easy legs? Can you ever see the next bag from the current control? When the control is a trailhead across a field, is it visible from 200m away? (That's for this map, 5 to 6:)

http://bmay.d.umn.edu/orienteering/woc2004/sprint_...

2. How are you affected by the higher speeds? Is it harder to read the map, or does the scale take care of that? Do you lose contact? How difficult is it to balance the urge to go fast with the urge to slow down and look at the map more?

3. Are there any rules-of-thumb about running sprints? I got the impression that for some of the longer legs, the idea wasn't to necessarily take the best route but to just execute a good route as fast as you could. Picking on Brian again, leg 2-3 of the map above. (Although Brian's route seems to be pretty good to me.)

4. One rule of thumb I think first saw on Michael Eglinski's blog is to favor the trails.

5. In the absence of an impassable castle or 400m cliff face, legs "against the grain" of trails (requiring lots of trail changes and choices of going off-trail) are also good.

6. Do you have any problems with the Sprint Map symbols? Are there any "impassable features" which are too easy to misread? Are the impassable green (settlement) areas taped off, or do you have to know to stay out from looking at your map?

7. Do you re-fold your map a lot? Or are you moving too fast?

8. Are there any no-no's in sprint design? Conversely, are there any things US courses should emphasize?

9. How far away from a control are you when you see the flag? Is it similar to regular length events? Do they vary (some visible from far off, some not)?

10. Why does this map look funny? http://orientacnibeh.cz/english/wuoc2004/obr/map/s... Are the symbols larger than normal or is it just me?

11. Finally: I'm interested in anything you've got on course distance and climb. It's 12 minute winning time, right? The big-event maps seem to cluster around 3km. This is where I'll probably depart from these big event maps. I'll probably be designing for a 12-15 minute winning time by non-world class competitors, with most of our competitors taking over 20 minutes. Since these are here, in January, and there are two of them to do in one day, I'll probably have one of about 2.5km and one of 2.0-2.2km or so. I don't know.

Matthew
Cincinnati, Ohio

> 2. How are you affected by the higher speeds?
> Is it harder to read the map, or does the scale
> take care of that? Do you lose contact? How
> difficult is it to balance the urge to go fast with
> the urge to slow down and look at the map more?

I think it's like "normal" orienteering in this regard.
You never want to outrun your contact, and this
urge may exist in normal orienteering also. I
personally find urban sprint maps easier to
memorize and simplify than traditional forest
maps (and much easier to navigate), which may
have some bearing on the question, but other
than that, I think you look at the map just as
often (i.e., constanty in my case).

I think "speed" questions are a bit of a red herring.
I think what you (or at least I) get is psychological
time compression/expansion. Sort of like how driving
85 on an interstate may feel the same psychologically
as driving 30 on a crappy, winding one lane road.
You orienteer at the maximum your body, the
terrain, and rate of information flow can be handled,
then try to push it over the edge without getting in
trouble. A 4 min/k urban sprint and 10 min/k rough
forest feel the same to me if I'm doing this right, and
the course setter has done his or her job (that is,
information flow and decision rate per unit of
psychological time).

> the idea wasn't to necessarily take the best route
> but to just execute a good route as fast as you
> could.

Obviously, you want to take the fastest route for
you. It is better to take a 30 second route that you
find instantly, than a 25 second route that it takes
you 10 seconds to figure out, if your goal is to
minimize your time. If your goal is to train, you may
look for the second route, so you can train that
process and try to get that 10 second figure down
to 0 seconds in a future race by training the skill.

Again, I think this is like traditional orienteering.
The one contrast is that I think you always want
to take the fastest route, as opposed to a longer
traditional race where you may take a slower,
easier route early to not burn yourself out or read
ahead and make a profit on the time investment
later in the race. Investing time this way in
short races probably rarely pays off.

> One rule of thumb I think first saw on Michael
> Eglinski's blog is to favor the trails

You don't want the fastest route to be painful in
terms of nasty vegatation. I think it is ok for the
fastest route to be thru the forest, or painful in terms
of climb, tho pain is relative, and stacked lines are
rarely a feature of a sprint (and probably shouldn't
be (nor should they be a feature of traditional races
IMHO)).

> 5. In the absence of an impassable castle or 400m
> cliff face, legs "against the grain" of trails (requiring
> lots of trail changes and choices of going off-trail)
> are also good.

I think the abstract concept to shoot for is rate of
information processing/decision per unit of
(psychological) time. I personally don't think this is
different than other orienteering, but others may
disagree.

> Do you have any problems with the Sprint Map
> symbols? Are there any "impassable features"
> which are too easy to misread?

I personally don't find any any more difficult to read
than the uncrossable fence symbol (which I have
trouble with in a cluttered area). The thing to
remember, tho, is some people may not be familiar
with some of the symbols (e.g. uncrossable stone
wall), so you may want to have a little primer in
the course setters notes for any new symbols.

> Are the impassable green (settlement) areas
> taped off,

Not in my experience.

> or do you have to know to stay out from looking
> at your map?

Yes. And I personally much prefer the olive than
crosshatching the out of bounds settlements with
the pink hashing, as it is easier to read the features,
which is still valuable, even if you can't go there.

> 7. Do you re-fold your map a lot? Or are you
> moving too fast?

Again, I think it is is the same as traditional
orienteering.

> Are there any no-no's in sprint design? Conversely,
> are there any things US courses should emphasize?

One thing is that it is ok to draw the line thru out of
bounds/uncrossable areas (I believe this is a no-no
with traditional orienteering). The ideal goal of US
courses would be to prepare runners for international
races. But we have to play the terrain we're dealt.

> How far away from a control are you when you
> see the flag? Is it similar to regular length
> events? Do they vary (some visible from far off,
> some not)?

I think it is the same, see feature then flag. However,
in urban sprints, there are less negative features,
and boulder-like features, so you probably see the
flag at the same time as the feature more often in
practice.

Getting back to the principle of information change
per time -- if you see a flag from well off (in any
course), there is little information change during the
span of time it takes to get there, of course.

One thing you may see in international races is tons
of flags in the circle. I've seen 3 or 4 within a 30m
radius. It can be like trail O (or micro O, I guess,
tho I've never done that). This will be a violation of
USOF rules (but I personally think this is an ok
violation).

> It's 12 minute winning time, right?

I've heard 12-15. The official rules may be on the
IOF web site. USOF, I believe, doesn't have
sprint distance rules (and by default, I believe,
inherits from the IOF).

> I'll probably be designing for a 12-15 minute
> winning time by non-world class competitors

I think you're free to do what you want. I personally
believe we should design to IOF winning times for
top IOF runners, and if our top runners take longer,
so be it. (The principle, I think for me, is that our
runners should see what looks like something they
will see at a WOC or JWOC, so design to the WOC
and JWOC qual specs, at least for now). This
opinion of mine holds for all USOF formats. This, I
think, is a minority opinion in USOF, where the
tradition is to set to a WT based on the expected
USOF field (so you'd be fine to do as you propose
w.r.t. to the expectations of USOF members).

I've also written more opinions on urban sprints
at http://www.mapsurfer.com/ol/ol_ar074.html.
Disclaimer: I'm bad at sprints (last at WC at the
EOC last year), so take my opinions with a
huge grain of salt ...

It would be interesting to hear other opinions in
this thread from those who have had more success
internationally.

I'd like to add a couple of comments.

Firstly, sprints are often two-dimensional rather than three, without any significant detail contour-wise (Rocklunda proves this rule!). This provides a major difference from ideal middle-distance terrain.

Secondly, the 12-15 minute winning-time was chosen for a reason : it is about the time it takes for a head to explode racing at _full_ pace (I paused there to search for a picture of Hakan Eriksson at the end of the sprint qualie but to no avail). Personally I have a lot of trouble after 7minutes maybe and I'm still not running fast enough.
And I think most non-elites (myself included) only manage to run sprints at what should be middle-distance pace, and middles at classic pace... probably because we don't train map-reading at these high-paces.

Regarding planning, an interesting rule-of-thumb change is that best route in sprint can involve exiting controls as you entered, contrary to usual forest planning.
And in Sweden some flags were near-side, others far-side... I'm not sure what the logic was.
Anyhow, I'm tired and probably incoherent :)
best wishes,
neil

8. Are there any no-no's in sprint design?

Don't go back and forth in your mind about exactly where the start should be to pose the most interesting route choice problem right at the start and mess up and put the start triangle in one place on the map and then the day of the event actually start people about 15 feet away at a different trail junction like I did at Iron Hill... My apologies to anyone that got messed up by that.

A big difference for me in Sprint format is being able to see the map without stopping. I can no longer navigate on 1:15000 without stopping completely, and not much better on 1:10000. 1:5000 is great!

Thanks so Sandy for a very fun event. As Peter said, I tried to run just as fast on the (short) Red and more-or-less managed to do so, with few mistakes. I had the added incentive that Mihai walked up to me and showed me the winning time splits before I started. And he was quite clear to call it the winning time even though I hadn't started, and others like Leif were still on the course... Very good taunt though - it helped me push hard, and indeed the statement held up through the end of the day.

On a somewhat differnt topic, I noticed that the Iron Hill Sprint was the shortest (CSV) of any event that's ranked* on AttackPoint. I'm going to need to learn to get my speed up on these short things. That, and not get lost too. Tough combination.

For comparison, the CSV of this was ~62,000, vs. 1,200,000 for the Highlander, making the Highlander (the longest-CSV ranked event) about 20 times as long an effort as this Sprint.

actually the us-champs sprint was shorter, distance and csv-wise. (btw: csv = course scoring value ~ knarliness factor)

That's "gnarliness value".

Matthew wrote:
"2. How are you affected by the higher speeds? Is it harder to read the map, or does the scale take care of that? Do you lose contact? How difficult is it to balance the urge to go fast with the urge to slow down and look at the map more?"

I am affected greatly by running fast in sprints. Things that look very easy on paper become tricky at high speed on the ground. I find that it's very easy to lose contact when going from simple to complex areas of terrain at high speed, and I find it harder to modulate my speed for map contact than in middle or long distance races.

3. Are there any rules-of-thumb about running sprints? I got the impression that for some of the longer legs, the idea wasn't to necessarily take the best route but to just execute a good route as fast as you could.

The good route fast rule-of-thumb is probably a good one, but the real goal--if you want to win--is to take pretty darn close to the best route fast. Sometimes the "best" route isn't the shortest. A long, simple route can be faster than a shorter but complex, twisty or bumpy route. I think this was the case on a long leg at the WOC 2003 Sprint in Switzerland, but I don't remember for sure.

A few coments.As Peter mentioned,I realized how relatively inexperienced we are at both running or setting (designing) sprint courses(bytheway, congratulations to Sandy F. for an exccelent sprint at Iron Hill) and only practice and obtaining quality input on how to... will help us improve better and faster.
Wyatt,sorry I did not realized that I said "winning time", but I quess I was right in the end anyway.
On Peter's "who the best sprinters are", I believe that Leif has a commanding lead so far.

...and on scoring I believe that it should heavily depend on speed(pace, min/km), and named "The Speedy Tangerine",or it could be entirely based on ones average speed at sprint events.

With respect to trail legs - I'll use them in a sprint if the trail network if fairly simple or the woods are green. Otherwise, I prefer to run straight lines. I find the time it takes to read the trail junctions accurtately is greater than the savings over such short distances. I typically only use trails on fairly long legs (or if I happen to find myself running on one). I'm sure a better map reader (such as Spike) could make better use of trails at sprint speed.

Sandy,
What was the scale of your sprint map?

The sprint at Iron Hill was on 1:5,000 map and I believe this is the recomended IOF map scale for sprint-O races as well, George.

I printed out the section of the map where the course went in OCAD at 1:5000 on a color printer and then made color copies on regular paper at Staples. Not high tech but sufficient for this event.

Thanks for all the very helpful information. I'll always be interested, so if you think of anything else, or want to write something about a sprint you ran, I'd love to hear about it.

On PG's site there is a Sprint Design link in french, and the Google translate tool did a half-decent job on it:

http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=fr&...

(At the very bottom it missed a section, and that worked out to this: - "sprint in forest: Sometimes the only solution to organize a sprint, the forest is not stripped of specificities for the sprint. The stations must be of easy or average level with 1-2 stations of difficult level. The problem then posed with the runners is to know to manage the variations of pace between the easy and difficult zones. It is possible to alternate easy zones of meadow or from dwelling with forest belts where the orientation is closer to the average distance. The few difficult stations come often just after an easy zone following which the athlete can lose his technical clearness. Cf Charts below - items 3 and 4 - chart 7 and items 11 and 13 - chart 8."

(Trust me, it makes more sense if you read the whole translation first.)

So, again, thanks for all the posts.

Matthew
Cincinnati, Ohio