Discussion: O/NA

So, here's something to think of:

In the past many years, under both managements, the content of O/NA (perceived subjectively) has been something like 40% A-meet/WOC reports, 10% mapping, 10% O in schools/NOD/beginner stuff, 5% Nancy Clark, 5% M-C/Tiger Mann, the rest was USOF pages and calendars.

Conclusion: Orienteers in North America do the following:

* Go out to A-meets
* Try to persuade others to engage in activities similar to what they enjoy
* Eat (while feeling somewhat unsecure about it)
* Get injured
* Elect the Board to take care of business

I do realize the Bermans used to/Donna does now publish all they're sent. Anyone see something missing?

I think we need to publish our discussion/tips on ONA pages :)
I found some ONA pages helpful. But more on training and meet experience from top ranked oers would definitely be more than welcome. I always enjoy article by Mikell Platt, by the way. Would be very nice to see training schedules by Mikell, James, Eric on ONA pages as well to motivate juniors.
The major point here - we all should contribute to ONA to make it more interesting :)

Marketing 101 - 95% of orienteers in US could not care less about elite training schedules, etc.,
Therefore there is no need to print in the national publication such information,
Plus it could be very personal information, and using it without having proper experience
In training and knowledge of body limitations at certain age (juniors or veterans) could be even damaging.

What is really missing for years in that publication is a discussion: how to become a better orienteer. Why I called that a discussion: because I think there many different ways to do so, and no one way has been proven to be better than others. The only difficulty I see in it, the articles about it are not too easy to write. Plus I think there are
Less than handful of people who know what enough on this subject, and they may be do not feel like writing about it.

Greg Balter

I have seen a lot of other national publications, and they all have mostly elite news/coverage. not "how to be super-elite", but championship reports, interviews with the winners, etc. nothing like "I just put on my first a-meet and I didn't mess it up too bad." Sports fans generally don't care about your mom playing softball, they would rather read about the red sox, even if the readers don't ever expect to be professional baseball players. of course it's fine to mention your mom too so as not to alienate her (as long as she wins her age class or does something else interesting;)

I remember the austrailian publication is particularly good (amazing actually for a non-euro country) and is perhaps partly responsible for generating excitement about their elite program, which used to be more like ours but is doing very well these days. maybe william can say some more about this.

I don't think O/NA is quite constrained by marketing concerns, as it has a captive audience (yr USOF $25/yr pays for it). So the exciting stuff Kenny is suggesting may just fit.

I was hinting at the fact that since there is little (reader-contributed) material in O/NA about training, maybe that is an indication that the general membership couldn't care less about training. Pick a Runner's World, there's always training tips, mostly for the mid-pack and the beginner runner. It just appears to me that too many have taken the "thinking sport" paradigm to the extreme—all I got to do to be better at it is think better? (Not surprisingly, all those knee injury articles...)

I find one of the most interesting things about orienteering is route choice and splits analysis. I haven't subscribed to ONA since the switch but the Bermans did a good job with this. Linked with interviews with the athletes was done well also. Having said that now... with electronic punching and web pages now this can be done much better. Perhaps a future expansion to the attack point web site?

One thing that the US lacks is a connection to Orienteering in Europe. Maybe people just don't care, but I think it would be very interesting to see articles about European events, interviews, etc. Basically everything Kenny mentioned would be great and it could include both US elites, and some of our more successful peers around the world. Most people in the States don't know hardly anything about Orienteering in Europe, and what the sport can be at its best.

Even though the magazine is Orienteering North America, at least a smidgen of what the rest of the world has to offer should get some attention from American readers.

I agree with much of what has been said above. I think that Vladi has hit the mark by pointing out that few people care about training. I’d say we have less than 500 people in the country that view orienteering as an athletic endeavor. The rest are concerned solely with navigation. That’s fine – people are free to enjoy their hobby however they see fit, but it would be nice if those of us who do view this as a sport were a bit more prominent in our national magazine.

I don’t think you have to be an expert to share training ideas; you just have to have something to say. The ONA readership is capable of evaluating advice.

I think it *is* the case that people just need to think better. What I mean by that is that, over the readership of O/NA at large, the potential for improvement due to elimination of errors is much greater than the potential due to improvement of fitness. I can name some individuals who are navigating well enough that if they want to get faster, they need to be physically faster, but I think that the vast majority of time lost by American orienteers is lost making mistakes, not by going slow. So if they could "think better", they could improve a lot. This isn't necessarily to say that I think O/NA has enough information on technical training; probably it would be good to increase the coverage of both technique and fitness. But as everyone has noted, someone has to write it.

at www.alternativet.nu (just in swedish) link runoway (upper right corner and in english if you so wish) you can find numerous of maps and route choices, all ages and all different categories.
I think Ken Jr has drawn his route from some of his races overseas for instance. (Am I right?) Also, go to staff-valstad.com, jrostrup.com, jummybirklin.com and other personal websites and you'll find lots of intersting maps with route choices.