Discussion: 2008 US Rogaining Championships

This is a reminder that the US Rogaining Championships will be June 14, 11:00 am, in Allegany State Park, about 1.5 hours south of Buffalo, NY. The event is co-sponsored by the Buffalo Orienteering Club and the Rochester Orienteering Club.

For information, go to Information

The deadline to avoid a late fee is June 4.

On-line entries are encouraged. There is no transaction fee charged to the teams. Go to Register to enter on line.

Anyone may participate in this event. To be eligible for the US Championships, the team must enter the 24-hour category, and everyone on the team must be USOF members and satisfy the following:

Meet one of the following citizenship requirements:
- Are U.S. citizens and citizens of no other country
- Are in a permanent residence status commonly referred
to as "green card carriers".
- Hold dual (U.S.) citizenship and reside primarily in
the United States.
- Hold dual (U.S.) citizenship, reside primarily
outside the United States, and have not yet and agree not to
compete for a championship title in another country during the
current calendar year.
- Are full-time students in the U.S. holding a current student visa.

What is the US Championship, and how does it differ from non-Championship participants ? or, in other words, what is there a motivation for a non-USOF participant to become a USOF member so he can become eligible for US Championship ?

you get a cool magazine every few months.

The magazine, plus the potential "glory" of being declared US Rogaining champion for 2008, I suppose!

There will be separate awards for non-championship-eligible teams.

USOF members, in most cases, receive $3 (USD) discount per A-meet day.

Just a reminder, the entry deadline for the Allegany Rogaine, to avoid any late fee, is tomorrow, June 4. (On-line entries must be made by that date, or mailed entries must be postmarked by that date, to avoid a late fee.)

After June 4, only on-line entries will be accepted, up until June 10.

My team once placed first overall a U.S. Rogaine Championship and did not win the Championship. On another occasion, my team placed second overall and did win the Championship.

Just a reminder that the final entry deadline for the US Rogaining Championship is Tuesday, June 10. Only on-line registration is available at this point.

There is no transaction fee charged to the teams. Go to Register to enter on line.

We have an international competitor looking for a ride FROM the event to New York City or environs. If there is anyone who can help, please let me know at "dlevine at cs dot sbu dot edu" or tell someone at registration when you check in. Thanks.

Thanks to everyone involved. We had a good time.
Jim and Sue

Great event and course. fun terraine and completely different from what we have out here in the west. Great accomodations as well. Thanks for putting on the event.

Thanks - it was a lot of fun! (Especially for the first 8 hours and when it was over!) A challenging course, and great food, organization, T-shirts, map, ...

Amazing how there wasn't any poison ivy, plenty of it just a couple hundred km away going south... btw, beaver dams near the waterstop on the NE corner were impressive.

Great event and course. Ah, and the potatoes and cheese pasta were tasty. Thanks for organizing this event.

No poison ivy, though one control in a streambed was surrounded by a sea of stinging nettles, which I managed to do a faceplant in!

Really a first-class event: terrain, map, course, organization. Thanks.

one control surrounded by nettles??? We found a sea of neetles all over the place. I especially loved the waist high ones that couldn't be avoided. also I have never seen so much wildlife before; 2 bears, porqipine, owl, newts, salamanders, deer, crawfish etc

Is it possible to see the map and what courses people took? I didn't see anything on the webpage but maybe I just missed it. It's always cool to see what rogaines are like in other countries.

Where were your bears, The Mahican? We scared a baby (who ran over to his mama to complain - there was a full bearish conversation involved) on our way from 506 to 802...I was maybe 75m from the baby when I saw him take off. Mama and baby soon departed NW (while we beat feet SE). Can't say I've had that happen before!

Two thumbs up on the chow, by the way - i had been fantasizing about scrambled eggs since sometime in the deep dark night when we finally rolled into the base camp, and was delighted to see eggs made to order on the menu. Yum.

Great time, thanks!

Are the results somewhere? Thanks!

Saw loads of newts, but no bear or porcupines, more's the pity. Perhaps it was all that fog, and my fading concentration... Excellent event in every way, and fantastic food. Thanks for a lot of hard work!

On behalf of the event organizers from ROC and BFLO, thanks for all of the nice comments. The results were provided to me late yesterday; I'll tidy them up and add in the names of the team members and where they're from, and send them out to all of the entrants today, as well as to the ROC webmaster for posting.

I'll also try to scan a section or two of the map and have that posted as well.

Saw the bears at 415 less than an hour into the event. Two small ones together. Didn't see a mom but thought she might be nearby so we made a lot of noise and they ran off

There is a recent press piece about rogaining at:

http://thegearjunkie.com/rogaine-orienteering-race....

BTW, if anyone has photos to share, that would be great. Didn't see many photographers. Did see one family taking a 360 degree video of the mass start.

Leanimal put some photos on her log. I tried to convince her to put up a video of the approach to 801; it's not there yet, but I am hopeful that she'll do it soon. Perhaps if she gets lots of requests...

Some photos from RMOC member Ken Lotze are here.

We saw two bears and two porcupines as well.
The bears were very early in the race, on our way to 502. First saw one larger and then one smaller. Very very cool. The porcupines were the first I've ever seen in the wild.

Excellent event all-around. Definitely a nice change from the relative flat and the saw palmetto of Florida.

Kip
Team kipnjon

If you click sherpes' link above to the Gear Junkie article, you need to remove the final "." to get to the story from June 11.

i.e. http://thegearjunkie.com/rogaine-orienteering-race...

RL Shadow sent out links to the routes of the top open male team and the top open female team.

I see that results are posted here.

David Levine and co did a great job in setting this course (as always). The control points were set on a variety of features, were fair and most importantly there was no obvious best route.

Thanks for the compliment, but credit should be shared. A large part of the course design was done by Jon Sundquist who could not attend the meet for family reasons. Jon is truly a master in the "no obvious route" school of rogaine course design.

Compared to another rogaine, I found the control locations to be easy to identify, such as hilltops, stream intersections, spurs. Control 504, on a reentrant, (which I have not attempted to find) seemed more difficult than the others, specially if coming from uphill, due to the lack of features to indicate where to aim off. Having done just a few rogaines, cannot generalize on how difficult control locations are usually in rogaines. For some reason, I expected the locations to be harder to identify. For example, 802 could have been placed in a nearby reentrant, just 100 m SE. Control 506 could have been placed in another reentrant, about 300 m S, 507 could have been placed in a mini-spur 400 m S, and to make 504 a bit more difficult, the reentrant 100 m SE could have been chosen. If someone has maps online of past rogaines, would love to see them and see what mapped features are chosen for control placement. BTW, at the rogaine two years ago, there was a control worth only 40 pts not far from base camp (Camp Allegany), I think it was north from camp and not far from a pipeline, and the control was placed in a reentrant that was only a hundred meters long, and otherwise, uphill or downhill from it, it was just plain hillslope. It took us a while to find it, zig-zaging a bit. Maybe that is what I was expecting in terms of control locations... Any stats on which controls were visited the most/least ? it seemed, from talking to folks after the event, many chose not to visit 305 and 411.

Sherpes' statement is related to mine. The rogaine map has less detail than the orienteering map. As such I think that it is especially important that the course setter(s) choose locations that are fair, places that are readily distinquishable on the map and that one can find straightforwardly from the information available on the map.

I agree with GHOSlow. Rogaine challenges should include route planning and strategy, physical endurance, and accurate navigation over long distances to easily identifiable features. There's nothing worse than doing a huge climb or running 2 km to the vicinity of a control, only to end up wandering around in the dark looking for a hidden or hard-to-find flag.

Sherpes, interesting comments about control siting...

One of the challenges of the ASP map/terrain is that the contour lines often hide similar features, albeit of smaller size nearby. We began by choosing sites and values with regards to point density and then field checking them for quality. If nearby similar objects were of sufficiently smaller size, we ignored them, but if they were of nearly the same size, we declined to use the site. Similarly, if a site was such that we could not adequately describe its location besides a circle on the map, then we discarded it. Note that "in a reentrant just before the terrain gets steep" qualifies as a description here though I would hesitate to be that vague for a traditional orienteering course.

Stie 802 was originally much further E. We were worried that it might be too obvious a "skip" and tried to bring it closer to the other controls. The reentrant you propose might indeed have been a better choice, but I couldn't say without looking at it.

Site 506 was originally on the terrace on the north side of the reentrant you mention. I moved it to its current location partly because the reentrant junction was essentially a point feature and partly because "your" reentrant (which I did consider) was much closer to the abandoned railroad bed (light trail).

Site 507 could indeed have been on the spur you propose, but that would have brought it a lot closer to 305.

As for 504, both it and 510 were added relatively late in the game. (Actually 504 was relocated due to the fact that its feature (clearing) was no longer present; indeed we removed it from the map.) Both of these controls were included to cause some consternation among teams returning to base camp. "Do we stop and get these on the way in - or are we too tired or too time-pressured?" Similar rationalizations were used for the point values for the two hills closest to camp (500 feet up, but 70 and 60 points). We also wanted to give 6-hour folks something to shoot for although that audience was not part of our primary design. I actually like the asymmetry of attack for 504 for just that reason.

Mostly, though, we felt little need to make the sites difficult. We were confident that the hills, and the very dark woods at night, would provide enough difficulty.

It's interesting that you contrast this design with the one two years ago. Jon and I designed both courses and I am unaware of any major difference in our approach. We did incorporate the idea of time-pressure near base camp after listening to comments made by several competitors, most notably Mark Dominie.

Looking at the 2006 course, I am not sure which "40?-pointer" you mean. There is a 40-pointer near a pipeline SE of the base camp, but no hill upon which to wander. There is a 30-pointer north of the base camp almost 2 km north of the base camp near the pipeline, but it is on a veg-boundary that is pretty distinct at a distance (at least in daylight).

I don't have the stats on most and least visited controls, but based upon my (possibly faulty) memory one of the least visited controls was 311 (the second hill near camp with few other points around it) and 407 (a spur SE of camp and S of ASP3). The most visited seemed to be 604 and 701 - the two previously mentioned hills near camp. 305 was not visited by a lot of folks, but I was surprised by how many given that it was worth only 30 points and I gave the warning about blowdowns affecting the area.

And Bash, the meet director used to sign his emails, Rick "Hang 'em High" Worner; we used his guidance in hanging the bags because we agree with your generally stated philosophy.

> It's interesting that you contrast this design
> with the one two years ago.

actually, my contrast is with a rogaine in Maryland held a year ago, Green Ridge state forest. Sometimes, the three of us would be looking for a spur barely noticeable and find it after meandering for 20 minutes.

BTW, you guys did a fantastic support job. I didn't put much faith in expecting water at the water drops, and carried with me a water filter, just in case. Turned out it was unnecessary. And the reflective tape (wrapped around a cylindrical tube) really really helped. Just curious on the surface of the "intent" board where people pencil in their next control, what material is it? amazing how one can write on it even in the wettest conditions...

Dave Cady deserves credit for the water stops. He placed all the water Friday afternoon/evening, checked its integrity Saturday morning (we had an incident with a porcupine two years ago; check the results from that event for photos), verified that they had enough water both Saturday evening and Sunday morning and then picked them all up Sunday afternoon. It's great to have one person do all that so that the rest of us can worry about other things.

The intention boards contained what I believe is called "mylar" plastic. I don't know the details about finding it, but it is water resistant and is great for field notes for mapping as well as for intention boards.

Craft stores sell mylar sheets for quilting templates...

The mylar sheet was the material that all maps were drawn on back "in the old days". One sheet for each colour.

I was the registrar for the event but didn't have anything to do with the course setting, and thus was able to participate (although I only did the 6 hour category). Based on the 11 controls that our team did, I have to echo some of the other comments. Controls which we visited were all fairly set, easy to find once you got there, and nice and high. As Bash says, rogaine challenges should be in route planning, endurance, navigating properly to the area of the control, etc., not in hunting down a hidden control once you're in the right area.

The significant hills and the scarcity of trails and roads was enough of a challenge!

I agree with sherpes, the controls were fairly easy most on hilltops, reentrants and spurs. But I do not think this is a bad thing for a Rogaine. Especially with the woods and all the foliage, that reduced visibility even during the day.
We should remember that the route choice, route planning, fitness, and overal plan execution are what the race should be. Looking 30 mins or an hour for an indistinct feature or ambiguous control, or a bingo control should not be what this race is about.

In fact looking at the route choice we took (first overall) and the route choice the second overal team took, you can see that we did not differ that much on route plan, but a lot on individual controls route choice. We opting for straighter but involving more climbs and riskier route choices. (I am not saying ours were better route choices, Matt and Glen's team had some injuries so there is no telling what the situation might have been otherwise.)

pictures... pictures... not that great, but they from a disposable Fuji. Hey, we found an old rusted bus from the 50's, with an ice cream ad on the top front.

http://tinyurl.com/6bqpau

Results updated again on June 23. See USOF Results page, or ROC web page.