Discussion: Orienteering performance (inspired by thread from US JWOC team announced)

The discussion that took place regarding performance in the US, and ways to improve the US teams standing in international events interested me from a physiological view point greatly. I work as an exercise physiologist at the Swiss Federal institute for Sport, and my current research project just happens to be with the Swiss national orienteering team.

If there was so much discussion over 10km time and possible correlation with orienteering performance I thought it was maybe time to show that there is research going on that tries to answer this question.. If you are really interested in what has already been studied and published you should go to www.pubmed.com and type in orienteering performance. An article I would recommend is Larsson P, Burlin L, Jakobsson E, Henriksson-Larsen K. Analysis of performance in orienteering with treadmill tests and physiological field tests using a differential global positioning system. J Sport Sci. 2002 Jul; 20 (7): 529-35.
Larsson et.al states “that a high VO2 peak was the best predictor of performance (time for completing the course) and that a high lactate threshold was associated with less additional distance caused by mistakes and shorter total distance run, but not with total course time or mean course speed.” 10km time has a component of aerobic work and anaerobic fitness. This means that is has some influence on orienteering performance. Orienteers in general (even the best in the world) are slow road racers in comparison to the best road racers in the world. Simone Niggli Luder just ran the 10-mile race that I also ran over the weekend. She ran, what I consider a respectable and impressive time of 59 minutes, but lost almost 5 minutes to the best women. She probably has a VO2 peak that is just as high as the winner, but the anaerobic capacity of orienteers is just not as well trained.
Unfortunately this article is not available on line, and you would have to go to the library and find it in the journal articles. I suspect that it doesn't fit into most of our time schedules. I just thought that since such a heated debate can occur over performance, and how it can be best reached; I would offer a way for all of us to be better informed.

Everything I have said goes aside from the obvious lack of money, coaching, and organized training time that is essential to becoming a top international orienteer. I am speaking strictly physiological capacities that correlate to performance. But since our resources are limited maybe the easiest way to at least a slight improvement in performance is to be well informed. I have an article about flat and hill route choices, which I have not yet read (because I am spending too much time on attackpoint!!). If your intersted I'll email it to you (since I have no idea how to make a link to a pdf file, help?!?)
I hope this was of interest to some of you....

I am wondering (as a statistician, not a physiologist) what the mechanism behind the correlation is. A VO2 max may well predict performance, but that doesn't mean it's the cause. Obviously, if this sample was increased to include all athletes, the correlation would be close to zero. Navigational ability dwarfs all other factors, so you will only see the effect when the navigational abilitites are fairly close. That is a reasonable assumption when studying the Swiss national team, less valid when looking at North American teams.

It could be that the training required to become a good navigator produces a high VO2 max as a side benefit, but that it is really the increase in navigational ability that causes the improved performance. I'm not saying that's true, just that research should at least consider such confounding factors, especially when (as in the case of navigation ability) they are difficult to measure objectively.

I think that the best orienteers in the world all have the navigational skills to win a race. But it’s those who end up not making a mistake who win, right? Yes, the factors that play a role into who makes a mistake or not are varied, experience, mental preparation fitness etc. all play a role. There is evidence that mental functioning decreases at high exercise intensities, i.e. > 85% of VO2 max. Furthermore there is also evidence that a high concentration of ammonia in the blood, which is released from working muscle during exercise, also has an association with mental fatigue. In addition, the ability to perceive visual information is greatly impaired by fatigue induced by working above ones ventilatory threshold (this occurs a little after the lactate threshold, the body need to breath out metabolic CO2 a product of accumulated lactate, so one starts to breath harder and faster).
So the challenge posed for the best orienteers in the world is racing at an intensity as high as possible without compromising the speed and accuracy of cognitive decisions. This means that those who have a higher VO2/ and or higher ventilatory thresholds can race at faster speeds without compromising their cognitive decision making skills. If this results in fewer mistakes is debatable.

You’re point is well taken, but I think we often forget that the best are really good at navigating, and for them, their physical fitness plays a much larger role in performance than it does for us North Americans.

The best way to answer questions such as these is at the QOC Beer Chase, coming up in just over a week. VO2 max, concentration, mental fatigue at high exercise intensity...are moot. It all comes down to how fast you can down a brew and how well you carry it through the forest in your tummy (or how quickly you get it out of your tummy as the case may be). Hope to see you all there! We need large-number statistics to get meaningful results. The race is being held near Baltimore - maybe 40 mins drive from my place, so if anyone needs a place to crash you are welcome. Might even inspire me to do some unpacking to clear some floor space. Come on down on Saturday afternoon (the day before) and we can go for a trail run by the Loch.

Use two finger technique to get that beer out of your tummy. That may prove to be the decisive factor in winning the QOC Beer Chase! Just trying to dessiminate some wisdom :)

" I think that the best orienteers in the world all have the navigational skills to win a race. But it’s those who end up not making a mistake who win, right? "

I'd say this pretty much sums it all up. If a North American orienteer wants to be able to compete at the international level they need to do what the name of the sport implies... go orienteering. The US has just as many fast 10k runners as the rest of the world (perhaps more). North America, from what I can see simply lacks an orienteering infrastructure. I think if a north american orienteer were to get on a map as many times in a week as say, Sandra, then performance would improve greatly. I think when it comes to orienteering, at the level of the current high end north american athlete, running speed and endurance is a lot less important. Furthermore, if you're on a map say 4+ times a week with additional training on other days, if you have any sort of natural ability, you're going to climb towards that ~30min 10k time by default.

By the way Sandra, the10mile time you posted is impressive. Between all the time you been putting in orienteering and your current running ability, you should turn some very nice results in Japan :o)

Of course, increasing one’s ability to run with an increased blood alcohol level is also very important.

Sandra, I'd be very interested in reading that article. Please email it to me.

Viewed one way, I agree that running speed and endurance aren't so important to the current North American elite, i.e. they are the current elite because they are the best navigators in North America and not because they are the best runners in North America. Viewed another way, I'd say running speed and endurance are extremely important to high end North American orienteers in the sense that it's actually possible to have much higher running ability than the competition. Combining adequate skills and blazing speed can get you very close to the top in North America (great skills and adequate speed will also serve). Internationally, wizardly skills and blazing speed are both required to win though there clearly is still some variation in both skills and speed within the elite and terrain can certainly affect the impact of each.

That said, I haven't yet thought of a viewpoint from which the prescription to spend a lot of time training and a large proportion of that time orienteering is debatable. Nor is it anything but a pity that we don't all live as close to as many maps and orienteers as Sandra seems to.

Sandra, I would be interesting also in thia article.

Actually, there is very strong correlation between intensity of running and number and "quality" of mistakes I do - most navigational mistakes happened after long steep climbs or after fast down hills - when body performs above LT (lactate threshold) level. I never gathered these statistics but each time during post race analysis I see the same pattern: intensive load-> lost of concentration (or ability to think clearly) -> navigational mistake.

Regarding performance, from mid pack orienteer perspective, improving any of components will produce better results - run faster at any given navigational level - and you can have better results. Or try to improve navigation...

At least in Bay area steep terrain physical component has significant impact. Same could be applied with some extent to the sprint races.

And another moment - cost (in the meaning of time, efforts, and affordability) of improving running speed is a way less than a cost of improving navigational skills.

These not applies to elite athletes or dedicate to sport individuals, who can spent more than 10+ hours per week for training. During school and university times I had from 6 to 14 training sessions per week lasting from 1 to 3 hours each. This was enough to build a sprinter from un-perspective weak health boy lacking natural abilities to run fast in 8 years. My PR on 200m was 22.4s, which is comparable to 32 min on 10k. (if this comparison is valid at all).

Sandra, the article sounds interesting, please send it to me. Thanks!

Perhaps someone could host the file and post a link to it...

(Sidenote) I don't know how to host the file or post it for that matter:-) I will send it to those of you who asked, and maybe someone else can do it. I would love to learn, so if someone wants to tell me, that would be great. I would also like to post digital pictures of my maps, but I don't know how to do that either.

My point was never that North Americans should focus less on physical fitness, because we need to work on our navigational skills. My point was exactly the opposite we need to be fitter! Most of our lost time due to mistakes is probably more do to the fact that we race above our lactate threshold, get fuzzy heads and can't navigate as accurately or as quickly. I think this is also why we haven't broken any barriers in Sprint racing, because we are just not fit enough. The navigation in sprint racing is not exactly tough, but if you’re running for 15 min over your lactate threshold it sure becomes a lot harder. But lets say we get faster, or improve our lactate threshold, or our VO2 max, then we can work at a faster speed without getting a fuzzy mind and making mistakes. I am certain that the top North Americans have enough navigational skills to be one step better than we are.

In contrast to what I just said, I am also certain that some navigational skills are lacking. For instant route choice decisions, doing that quickly takes practice, especially when you have a 2km leg in front of you with options both left, right and on the line.

I guess its clear to everyone, that if we want to get better we have to train more both physically and also technically. We’ve all heard that story before. I just wanted to make the point that a higher physical fitness can help us use the navigational skills that we already have.

Great article Sandra. I have been lucky to have many VO2 tests over the years and my VO2 does not correlate to those magic 10K time empirical formula (ie., if you have a VO2 of this you should run this 10K time or vice versa). My PB was 'only' 34.5 for 10K but my VO2 was over 82 on two occasions. Why did I not fit the formula? Specificity. As a teenager I did 75% of my training in the woods. I can run well in the woods but I have a much higher leg lift than I should for road running. Plus, I hate road running. Boring as hell and nothing to think about except how much nicer it would be to be orienteering. You need to be inspired to dig deep in a race. Last road run I did was in 1993 (yup when we had to run a 10K under a certain time to make the Canadian Orienteering team)

Nielsen wrote
"North America, from what I can see simply lacks an orienteering infrastructure."

I almost agree. We have an OK infrastructure but we are not utilizing it - and the US and Canada need to work together more to benefit from our infrastructure (races, training camps, champs, etc).
Sprint orienteering also changes all the rules. THe Vancouver group is leading the way on sprint map development and making the use of these maps for good training. How about an annual sprint weekend festival there? 5 races in 2 days (or 3). Some of the best maps and terrain in the World (yes the World) are one hour north of NYC. Why isn't there an elite camp and big race there each year? The US south has nice terrain and good winter training opps as well. Could the USOF develop training camps and WRE's like Spain and Portugal? North America is big but it can be made smaller if we develop a half dozen to 8 or so elite orienteering groups/cities/regions. CSU is the perfect example..

Time to map a plan....

I saw a study (sorry, don't have the reference) that the vast majority of fatally bad police decisions were made during elevated heart rate (e.g., after a car chase). Some folks studied the mechanism with MRI's and such and found that at really high HR, many of the higher brain functions go completely offline. The paper actually claimed that at above 95% of maximum heart rate, the still functioning portion of the brain was not significantly different that that of a dog.

Sandra, I can post your article on my web site.

Correct me if I'm wrong but didn't we recently hear that Simone won the Swiss Cross Country Running Championships in which some other orienteers also placed very well. I don't know how long that race would have been (probably shorter than 10 miles) but I'd be interested to hear Sandra's take on that vis-a-vis aerobic capacity, anaerobic capacity and adaptation to the mechanics of terrain running or road running since I assume the top Swiss cross country runners would be about as fit as the top Swiss road runners (don't care to guess just how much overlap there would be between the two groups).

Commenting on the article that Sandra passed around - I find it very interesting that the flat route actually had a higher energy expenditure.

What exactly do they mean when they talk about the 1.8 ratio of added distance to climb? You should only run the flat route if it is less than 1.8 times the distance of the climbing route?

Just to clarify, the Swiss cross-country championships are a fairly small event in Switzerland. Cross-country running has no way near the same popularity as in North America, for one reason, there are no high school, or university cross country teams. The course was also on uneven, muddy trails, with patches of ice on some parts (took place in early March). The orienteers did awesome, and Sime's time for the 8km was 30:40! 2nd place was 31:05 and 3rd 32:02.There were 18 women in the race and 5 were Swiss team members. The times varied from 30:40 to 37:20. Afterwards it has been discussed that one reason the orienteers did so well is because of the conditions of the course. But the Swiss orienteers are by no means slow. I never meant to imply that!

Its the Ovamaltine.

mindsweeper, yes in their finding it's only worth it to go around on a flat route, if that route is less than 1.8 times the distance of the climbing route. I think that this certainly depends on the steepness of the incline as well. There is a lot of discussion about the difference in "effort" between flat and uphill, and this is exactly what my work is on now. Or more so, we evaluated the differences in ability in uphill and flat running capacity in the Swiss team. I will certainly post my findings when they are published.

Ooooooovamalllllltine! Moo.

GVOC is organizing the BC Champs 2006 in Whistler. Probably last weekend of August. There will be a middle Saturday morning, a sprint Saturday afternoon and then a long on Sunday. We are looking into ideas to extend the week and create something similar to the PNWOF. One idea could be to have several days of sprint orienteering in Vancouver, as Hammer suggests, in the week leading up to the Whistler events. Our club will have around 10 proper sprint maps (ISSOM standard) by next summer. Then we could also throw in some events (or training camp) in the great terrain in the Kamloops area on the weekend before Whistler.

What does the Attackpoint crowd think? Would some of you considerer traveling here for such a week of orienteering?

I put a copy of the hills article here. I'll leave it up for a week or so.

Paula and I would come up, but we are a little closer than a lot of people.

I wasn't suggesting the Swiss women are slow either (I'm sure karmic balance would have to be restored by having Swiss women mysteriously show up to blow past me in the woods like I was standing still much more often than random chance would lead one to expect for the rest of my days if I did); quite the opposite. I assume you have enough physiological data on Swiss orienteers and runners to be able to authoritatively state that the former have less developed anaerobic capacity but I would have thought a 10 mile race was long enough for the aerobic capacity to be much more important than the anaerobic. Aren't we supposed to run 10Ks around our lactate threshholds and longer races below them?

The 1.8 equivalence of climb to horizontal distance seems way too low to me. That says it's not worth going more than 90m out of your way to avoid a 50m climb (or 10 orienteering contours). OK, I know the article is talking about smaller hills, but it still seems way off. There was a study of results of many races in Britain (mountain races or orienteering - I'm not sure) that came up with a ratio of 8, based on the total climb on the course. That seems about right. I've even used that ratio on the fly in orienteering races a few times, and it seems to agree pretty well with what your instinct tells you when looking at a leg. I'm sure the BAOC folks are well practised in this, so they can tell us what works!

Here's a reference to that study (at the bottom).

Somehow I was guessing that the 1.8 factor corresponds to the horizontal distance of the climbing route versus the flat route not 1.8 times the relief. You probably need to adjust the factor based on how much relief there actually is on the climbing leg - or is this a misinterpretation?

No, I'm pretty sure they're suggesting that 1m of climb is equivalent to 1.8m of extra distance (at least for their 9m bump).

The difference is in how much climb and how tired one is - 10 meters climb is just nothing and 100 meters climb is something to think about.

In the study I worked on we used a factor from 6.5, I also thing 1.8 is way too little.

It obviously matters a lot whether you can soak up the climb anaerobically or not. The ideal ratio is probably a curve that increases with total climb up to some threshold of what you can sustain aerobically.

This around versus up-n-over thing is a little like two horse racing scientists debating the sex of a race horse they can see off in the distance. They can see the horse, but it's far enough away that they can't tell whether it's a mare or a stallion (or a gelding--poor horse.)

Being scientists, it's much more interesting to do it in abstract, resorting to theory and complicated equations heavy with variables and texan math symbology. They will also enjoy indulging in as much as jargon as possible, because that is their way. They would never, never instead simply walk over to take a closer look at the horse in question!

Of course, it's great to be a scientist. But even in science (especially in science?) a little common sense goes a long way.

About 25 years ago my orienteering trainer found out, from sources linked to IOF resarches that a 1 m vertical climb would convert close to 7m running on flat and that is the only climb/flat ratio I have heard of.

Sandra's comments on VO2max and mental functioning are very interesting.
It made me wonder, have there been any studies on whether you can improve the way your mind functions at a given physical stress level?

And by what mechanism might functioning improve? Could there be physiological causes like increased capilaries to the brain or improved flushing of toxic chemicals like ammonia?

Beyond actually orienteering, I assume the best way to improve this would be to read maps during physical activity. But would short intense periods or longer mild periods work better? Could I benefit from simply reading journal articles on a treadmill?

Indeed by training at lower intensity you do develop more capilaries in your brain (we had the very proof this winter when my boyfriend had a blood clot in his brain - the neurosurgeon said he would not have survived had he not been such a fit athlete with so many extra capilaries - so do your LSD training dammit!!!). This of course improves oxygen transportation, and waste product removal.
But unfortunately, it doesn't make you any smarter!

Thanks, Sandra.

The standard non-map reading material for running is comic books, not journal articles.

At the moment my only comics are two old copies of Aku Ankka. So right now I'll stick to articles with lots of plots and figures. Maybe that'll make me smarter too, or at least help me survive finals week.

Sandra, interesting stuff on the mental capacity versus cognitive power.
NA orienteerers focus too much on detailed navigating. Works OK in detailed terrain, but is useless in the fast continental terrain. That's why I think track workouts improve O performance.
But yes, as Mike points out, specificity counts. Orienteerers, even if as fit as road runners, have too much knee lift. Interestingly though, fast track runners have good knee lift.

Another research from the same Scientific Journal of Orienteering, Vol. 11, No. 1
Source

"... The study suggests that orienteering is anaerobic threshold work with enormous demands on aerobic endurance capacity ..."

That is very close to truth.