Discussion: Longer Longs?

While setting the Long courses for a championship (in North America), I've started musing whether the non-elite course participants would prefer to have longer target winning times for a Long. (Not a question for this event...they'll follow the current standard.) But, with shorter courses the other days (Sprint and Middle), I wonder if people on courses 3 through 8 wouldn't rather somewhat longer Long courses, perhaps 60 minutes winning time (rather than 45 to 55 minutes variously now)? Sometimes I get the sense that people in the older categories find the lengths unsatisfying...they want a shorter distance than the elites, but maybe not less time in the forest. And a longer Long would allow increased scope for long legs and route choice, giving a more Long feel to the course. Of course, people can "run up" a category, which many do.

What do people think? (Just an idle thought, while tweaking my courses for the 30th time.)

I'm switching back to Blue this year, and even in my age group I'd be on Red, so it's not an issue with me. However, from the feedback I've received as a course setter, I would also be inclined to agree that the older age groups would be happy with longer courses provided two things: 1) not too much climb, and 2) plenty of water on course.

I run green at most A-meets and championships to compete against my peers and have enough ranked events, but I prefer the red (or blue) distances (if I'm not injured!), and run the longest course at all local meets. I know a lot of others who feel the same. So, yes, bring on longer longs!

Since Jim is talking about longer winning times, I don't understand how "too much climb" can be an issue - presumably, that's taken into account when calculating expected winning times.

I believe this issue confronted the F50+ and F55+ age groups several years ago. USOF had decided that the Green course was too extreme for their frail constitutions, and suggested changing their championship levels to Brown.

The national organization received many salty letters in various feminine hands, complaining that they wanted the challenge of longer courses and the opportunity to spend more time in the forest. I don't recall why, but ultimately USOF went ahead and reclassified F55+ to Brown, leaving F50+ on the Green course.

I think climb matters a lot as your fitness degrades. I know that when my fitness is off, I can still run a long course, but throw in enough hills and I'm toast. Of course, you could walk really slowly up the hills, but even that takes it's toll and it's obviously not much fun.

As a 51 yr old M50 I share the sentiments of wanting longer courses. I run red or blue (when available) at local meets , and run green only at A-meets to be in the correct age group for USOF ranking . Once i have my 4 ranking days in a given year maybe i'd switch back to red at A-meets.

It would be nice to see more explicitly 'long" events at A meets. I guess it will be a long time if ever before we see in the USA the practice of both short and long e.g. M50S and M50L etc being offered at an event (a common practice in the UK)

Well, as a 66-year old who is very happy competing on Brown courses, my perspective about retaining more reasonable shorter course lengths is:
1. Strength and endurance declines in all of us, beginning in our 30's... orienteering has always been one of the few sports to acknowledge this by establishing both age-groupings and course length reductions.
2. Orienteering is supposed to be an athletic and navigational challenge: when events are too long, only the endurance aspect is rewarded.
3. As much as I would like to continue to run Green (classic winning time: 50-55min) or even Red (60-65), the reality is that these days, by the end of a Brown (45-50) course I've already given my best, and any more distance would only degrade my pace/km and performance.

Longer is certainly fine by me. And I can't help but notice a trend. Roughly speaking:
Up through the 80s there was an accepted distance for orenteering ("the "individual" race).
Around 1991, a new distance was added, originally called "short".
Then a while after that, the decision was made that "short" wasn't short enough, so it was tweaked a bit and renamed "middle", and "sprint" was added.
Now we see people deciding that even "sprint" isn't adequately short and viewable, so we're faced with "orient show".
I can see where this is leading. What's the obvious next move in terms of shortening up our sport, something that still preserves the essential elements of having something that shows you which direction to go, and requiring you to do it accurately, but making it very brief and ensuring that you don't actually cover any ground?

Dance Dance Revolution.

I have no problem with longer for Long courses. As J-J says, there is already a wide variety of shorter course. Having real longs without going the Goat event distance or running "up" is just fine. Next year I may start lobbying for M65 to run Green.

Here's a statistic that, when phrased in the following way, makes one stop and ponder. Life expectancy in developed countries grows by about two years per decade, which is about five hours every day. This despite the generally worsening state of the enviroment, and with the obesity and inactivity "epidemic" in the United States already taken into account.

Given this, how reasonable is it for orienteering to stick to guidelines established decades ago? In particular, the WM35+ categories were presumably established first in post-war Scandinavia. How different are the lifestyles and general health now to continue justifying these categories?

* A lot of the recent orienteering champions were 35+ (Mårtensson, Valstad, Bührer, König-Salmi, others?).

* In the States, our best-ranked male orienteer is 49 and our own World Champion in F45+ just achiever her best-ever World Ranking standing.

* The situation is similar in running, more so as course length increases.

* Physiology gives something like 0.5% reduction in maximum possible competitve performance for men at age 35 (cf. went around the tree the wrong way a few times), down to 3.0% at age 40 (cf. made a couple of one-minute mistakes on a one-hour course). (I should dig out those references.)

I'm limiting this post to the 35–40 situation, but certainly similar arguments can be made at upper reaches of the age category tree.

I've heard arguments that people should be cut some slack for being busy with careers, families, etc. in that particular age bracket, but these seem to be outside of the competitive realm.

Lotta tough talk in this thread...but the results don't lie:

BOK Umstead 007 - Sunday Classic - March 4, 2007
Class.... #Men ............. Winner's pace(min/km)
M-21+... twenty-eight .... 6.65
M40+.... nine ............... 7.30
M45+.... nine ............... 8.24
M50+.... seven ............ 8.71
M55+.... five ................ 8.38
M60+.... four ................ 9.38
M65+.... nine .............. 12.92

My how that pace falls off in the older age groups. In other words, even with one of the largest age groups, the M65+ winner was significantly slower....on a much shorter Brown course!

I think it was Swampfox who once said: "If you think the course is too easy, you're not running fast enough" Are we sure we really want longer longs?

I've always viewed the age groups as the place where you go when life intrudes on competition. In all the sports I compete in, the serious 35-45 year olds compete in "elite" (whatever that is for the particular sport). I wouldn't want to see the 35-45 year old age groups go away since that is the only realistic way for a mid-life convert to get into the sport and see any results at all.

Clark, speed is for the young, but endurance peaks in early 40's and doesn't start to drop until nearly 50. Many of the world's top athletes at "ultra" events are in their mid to late 40's. Just because the kilometer times drop off doesn't mean there's any problem handling the distance.

The list that Clark has provided doesn't include the information that several of the "M21+" competitors are very "+". Like, I see at least two M45s in that list.

But anyway, the question was just whether a winning time of 60 minutes (instead of 45) would appeal to people. If the older folks really slow down after 45 minutes, then maybe that would mean a course only a couple of hundred meters longer. :-)

Well, in the above BOK Umstead 007 example, the Brown course was 1.9km less than the Green course.

If the M65+ class was made to run that Green course instead, the winning time would have been over 82 minutes...if the M65+ winner maintained the same pace over the extra distance, which is unlikely.

Winning time on Brown, excluding the ooung hotshot, was about an hour. Thus the original question translates to, "So, the Umstead Sunday courses were somewhat longer than usual, would you like that sort of length more often?".

I don't miss the old, vanilla format of orienteering, where the courses were all about the same length (but still slightly longer or shorter, depending on one's age and sex). I love the variety of having sprints, middle, long, and ultra-long courses (as well as stuff outside that spectrum, like orient show, rogaines, night, relay, trail-O, team-O, whatever). Of course, I can't speak for the older and younger age groups about course length preference, but I think that having shorter distances like sprint and middle allows some freedom to make long courses a little longer than the old "classic"/"normal"/"standard" distance.

I'd really like to see more ultra-long races, with a 2-3 hour winning time.

Are age classes pointless?

Well I'd like to look forward to more ultra-short classes.

On Brown, I'm already on the shortest USOF championship course. And I want to orienteer for the next 30 years...into my 90's! I have nowhere to go! In about 15 years, that Brown course will become a gruelathon. Is it just a coincidence that the BOK Umstead 007 event had nine M65+ competitors but no M70+ guys?

Most international events recognize and encourage seniors by offering courses as short as 1.5k for the M90+ class. Seniors are our fastest growing age group...the Baby Boomers are coming! How will USOF respond?

We don't want the indignity of Orange or Yellow...we're just as mentally alert and cunning as ever; just not as strong. Where is there for us to go? Perhaps this thread isn't the correct place, but I'd like to call for the creation of a Gray course at all sanctioned A-meets by 2012!

I am sure USOF will be willing to sanction courses for the M90+ crowd if the demand appears. However, at the moment I don't see too many 90-year-olds signing up for A-meets...

Well, as I see it, it's like putting in bike lanes on city streets: It is hard to show that there's a demand for them, since few people are willing to risk their lives to bicycle until the improvement appears. Even then, it is a long slow process to persuade people to use the lanes by biking to the store, work, orienteering meets.

Additional studies would have to be done, but designating a new championship Gray course for M70+ or M75+ classes might just encourage a few of us to continue competing vigorously for many more years.

"Build it and they will come....."

Nor 70+ guys, apparently. All but one of the M65+ guys at Umstead finished within about 150% of the leader. Is it the case that there's a sharp break at age 70, where it suddenly gets so tough to complete the Brown course that they don't even show up? In some cases I believe that's true, but this sharp break precludes them orienteering at all (e.g. a serious knee problem). I'm skeptical that most of those nine M65s will suddenly find Brown to be too much when they reach age 70.

For your reference - below you can find the course lengths for the older (male) categories for this year´s O-ringen in Sweden. Being a 5-day competition the courses are generally shorter than usual, but the longest isn´t really much shorter than a regular Long (maybe 10%).
When it comes to difficulty all the 'A-courses' are generally Blue, only differing in length, while 'B/Motion-courses' are Orange.

H55.................3,0-5,0
H55 Kort..........2,3-3,9
H55 Motion......2,5-4,5
H60 ................2,5-4,5
H60 Kort .........2,0-3,6
H60 Motion .....2,3-4,1
H65 ................2,5-4,2
H65 Kort .........2,0-3,3
H65 Motion .....2,0-3,6
H70 ................2,5-4,0
H70 Motion .....2,0-3,2
H75 ................2,0-3,3
H80 ................2,0-3,0
H85 ................2,0-2,8
H90 ................2,0-2,6
H95 ................2,0-2,4

I think a shorter Brown is needed, possibly starting at M75+ and F70+. It was not needed until now, but it will be soon. Orienteers tend to stick around.

The Umstead Day 3 Brown was not too long as far as USOF Rules go. It was meant to be longer to compensate for Day 2's 3.0 km course. The GV (extrapolated 100-pt Brown person) times were 39:56 on Day 2 (3.0 km) and 51:27 on Day 3 (4.5 km). I received a lot of comments for Day 3 Brown's advance-published length. However, there are five Brown courses over one hour in this table.

Recall that as recently as about 15 years ago, Brown was not commonly offered.

Back to my earlier point, I don't think MF35+ are dignified. There are M Red and F Green available to all competitors. If the point is to make excuses for other life issues, why not have MF22+, MF23+, ... ? Why can't 23-yr-olds get a ribbon for showing up and 35-yr olds can?

One of the Brown courses over one hour in the linked table is the US Long Course Championships, which has a winning time target of 60 min (i.e. target GV of 6000 vs. actual of 6055). What's important is that the course GV's are in the range specified by the rules (or communicated beforehand) so that competitors know what to expect. I think many course setters don't spend enough time trying to get winning times correct by focussing on length without fully considering speed in the terrain (of the 100-point runner in the class running the course). I agree with the potential need for a shorter Brown course, but getting a good shorter Brown course will be a course-setting challenge. There may be some 4-control courses.