Discussion: Trail-O bashing thread

If you like Trail-O, don't read this thread. If you do, you have nobody but yourself to blame. You have been warned.









If you think map-puzzle-gaming is an annoying waste of time, or have other adverse things to say, let loose, here and now. C'mon, don't be shy. And let's keep it all here where the Trail-O fans won't have to look at it.

Isn't trail-O just ski-O without skis? What's wrong with that?

Seriously, isn't this a bit too much energy expended towards an activity that most of us agree is not orienteering?

In my current state of contrition, I cannot play these games.

You know better than Thierry G.?
Read what he says after a training camp with his orienteering club before 10Mila:

But the highlight of the camp was definitively the precision orienteering events organized by Pan-Kristianstad. While orienteering in sand dunes terrains, I realized when I saw a big cluster of controls in forest that there might be a Pre-O competition soon here. I checked the SOFT website and discovered that three days of competition were going to take place in Åhus. Yeeeeeeeeeees, I could satiate my biggest passion: discussing hours why the mapmaker had been drawing this fuc%#@g curve like this....

That were great tight competitions perfectly organized, and here you can’t use your legs to beat those guys who have more than 50 years of experience...

Speed doesn’t mean a thing if you don’t have the precision...

/Thierry Gueorgiou, flerfaldig världsmästare i "vanlig" orientering

He is also European Champion in trail-o.

I see Trail-O as being like short-track speedskating in that you hold the competition, and then you go through the protests to find out who the winner is. In Trail-O, it appears that there might be a danger of walking a fine line between too easy and simply bogus. In fact, it's more that you have to get completely bogus in setting control problems in order to not have it be too easy.

(Don't worry Clem, you have absolution in this thread. Chime in.)

Here's how I see it: there's nothing wrong, in theory, with the precision map reading game known as Trail-O. It doesn't hurt anybody, it doesn't offend anybody, it's as harmless as, say, underwater basket weaving. It also has about as much in common with actual orienteering as underwater basket weaving does. At least underwater basket weaving has an endurance component.

So I don't care if people do it. I may even participate myself. But I think it's quite deceiving that it's got "orienteering" in the name.

When Trail-O was first invented, I wanted to like it. I really did. It sounded fun. I participated in several events. But then I attended a national championship Trail-O event in which a good 1/4 of the control problems were either bogus or simply incorrect, as JJ has mentioned. I'm no longer very interested in an activity where your competitive success depends, in part, on your willingness to protest poor course setting.

I have seen for myself the long, long hours Karen Dennis and David Irving put into making the Trail-O events they have set for us in BAOC as perfect as possible. Unfortunately, not all Trail-O course setters put such extreme care into their work. Trail-O is an activity that, by its very nature, demands perfection. When you get that, Trail-O is great. When you don't, it sucks.

I just think it's demeaning to handicapped people. It'd be like replacing playing basketball with stitching basketballs (and two out of five basketballs are timed). Let them race!

I have said so much on Trail-O already, but hadn't realized that people were keeping track. So, I am reluctant to add more. But, perhaps I could index my previous comments to remind myself how deserved I am of censure, obloquy, epithets, or the like.

But, my most recent comments on Trail-O followed on the heels of my adverse reaction to the notion of spending resources on pork-barrel projects. This admits to a much broader, and more interesting excursus. But, briefly, and on topic... that is why I don't necessarily agree with Cristina. Or why one might not.

Trail-O could be seen to "hurt" someone if it deprives that person of resources they need. Similarly, the US Senior (Elite) [Foot] Orienteering Team could be seen to hurt other interest groups if they, in turn, are deprived of resources they need. So, in a world of finite pie, there is only so much to go around.

What does orienteering want to be? What does OUSA want to represent?

I want to expand the reach of orienteering, as OUSA might also. US Teams (of all sorts) have made sacrifices to provide for such strategic goals. But, when push comes to shove, it seems as we revert back to what we know; funding things with which we are familiar, polishing existing mechanisms.

I am not saying that Trail-O is sucking up valuable financial resources that might be better applied to promoting orienteering generally more broadly. God knows, Trail-O doesn't receive gobs of funding, either. It doesn't really suck up much in absolute volunteer resources either. But, at the margin, it does divert some resources and does not do much to clarify the concept of orienteering among the heathens.

I think we actually agree, j-man, at least with regards to how trail-o could "hurt" other orienteering aims. But, as I said, in theory I don't have a problem with people doing it. I don't necessarily think it's useless or silly or a waste of time. Just like I don't have a problem with people playing music really loud, in general... but if they started doing it in front of my house at 2am I would certainly be against it.

If people want to do trail-O, radio-O, canoe-O, photo-O.... fine. Enjoy. If I have the time and energy, I enjoy the puzzle solving of trail-O, ubiquitous protests notwithstanding.

But while it diverts only small amounts of financial resources, I find it to be a distraction and a time sink when dealing with OUSA goal setting, strategizing and initiatives. Given all the challenges OUSA is facing, I think Trail-O should be way down on the list of priorities (as in "off"), yet it gets an equal seat at the round table of the US Teams. The activity was designed for the less physically-abled. I would have more support if I saw significant evidence that efforts were being made to get these new orienteers to the starting line. As is, it is primarily another activity for those already coming to orienteering events.

I'll now go stand in the corner with Clem. Is it ok if we bring a few beers while we wait out our penalty minutes/hours/months/years?

But it's not orienteering. There's no navigation. There's not even hypothetical navigation. Trying to guess the speed of a pitched baseball is not even remotely baseball, even though it is clearly related.

I'm not saying that that makes the-activity-known-as-trail-o bad or wrong or not worthwhile for (other) people to do, just that it's not orienteering.

I tried it a couple of times, didn't really like it, no big deal.

What has annoyed me over the years, along the lines of what Tom is saying, is the amount of time and effort at the Board level that has gone into it with, in my opinion, so little to show for it. In particular --

1. How many trail O' events are there is the USA each year? I think it is in the low single digits. It seems like the efforts and the focus of the trail O' folks is to have an event called the US Champs, and to send a team to WOC, and that's it.

Which is fine to do those two things. But I would have thought that both those two things also implied (a) having more events each year, actually a lot more events, so that the US Champs really meant something. And (b) that some effort was made via training and practice and attending other international events to prepare the WOC team as well as possible.

Since neither (a) nor (b) has been done, I have a hard time taking them seriously.

2. And now that we are supposed to be moving towards a unified Team, which I think is the right thing to do, then I think that demands that each of the up to now separate teams gets on board with the program, which means both making a serious effort to send the best possible team to WOC, and also showing some signs they are supportive of the other teams.

And I have seen no sign of any of that from the Trail O' folks.

So I say again, I have a hard time taking them seriously.

I've made my effort, albeit a small one, to reach out in their direction -- the last couple of years I've sent out reports from WOC to various USOF/OUSA mailing lists about what's going on at WOC, and included reports on how the Trail O' team is doing. Never got the slightest feedback on that.

Regarding using resources, it certainly used up a lot of Board time over the years, turning Board meetings into Trail O' committee meetings for non-trivial amounts of time. When the Board had a lot more important things to be worrying about.

I just think it's demeaning to handicapped people.

What handicapped people? Do you see any handicapped people? Somebody invented Trail-O for handicapped people, and made sure that it was something that they could do even if they were as mobility-limited as Stephen Hawking, but the handicapped people never showed up, at least not in the USA. It's not like a bunch of people in wheelchairs were pining for a way to participate in orienteering. Even the handful of people who we have in the Paralympic category do not have any evident handicaps, as demonstrated by the fact that they are (or recently were) participants on regular courses. I don't know what their handicaps are, assuming we ignore the elephant in the room.

You mean you have an active trail-O scene that does not include any of the original target market? How is this possible?

Dan, I sat in at several Board meetings over the years where a good bit of time was spent on trail-O' stuff that never should have reached the Board level, should have been taken care of by the Trail-O' committee. But with many/most of the main trail-O' players on the Board (Frank, Chuck, David, Robin, Clare,...), it just seemed to keep happening.

Now, I will also admit to being a little miffed because at the same time I was getting the sprint series going, thinking that was a good way to improve our team's performance plus raise funds plus help open up some new venues, and I couldn't get the slightest bit of interest or support from the Board for these efforts. All I remember from them was resistance to the idea of having a US Sprints Champs.

And after a couple of years we were pushing 100 sprints a year, while trail O's were still very few and far between.

Sorry if I'm still a little annoyed by all that.... :-)

Joe would be a good example (and perhaps Nikolay too, though in his case I don't know for sure) of just what I would hope all our WTOC team was doing -- working to prepare himself as well as possible. And he has done well, and almost brilliantly, as a result. And I have been a big fan of him, and his approach. Because the bottom line for me is I want to see all our teams do as well as possible.

Orienteering falls squarely within the greater family of running sports. As others have said, if there are people passionate about trail-O, that's fine far as I'm concerned and great for the people who are into it. But it's not orienteering and it isn't even remotely conceivable as a sport. An ordinary trail running race, even without any map, has worlds more in common with orienteering than trail-O ever has and ever will.

Orienteering falls squarely within the greater family of running sports

I have similair thoughts about MTBO, but that is another topic

"As a fan, I do find it frustrating at times that not one orienteer in this country of any discipline trains any harder than many recreational runners, but that's just the way it is. The way to change that is through future growth and development."

Well that's pretty offensive. I'll let Ross know that after the next week he spends running to and from a ten hour a day job, winning the Billy Goat, helping out and completing a team at the Speedy Goat relay and then collecting in a whole bunch of controls after that he's really not training more than a recreational runner. Or that those hours AliC spent in Sweden and then on the golf courses of MA honing and perfecting her single track Ski O' technique were pretty average as these things go.

Orienteers in this country have to have jobs. They have to raise a ton of cash and sacrifice all their spare time to go and compete in Europe. I think the whole team do a damn good job of training and promoting the sport, and that comment suggests you're not that much of a fan after all. Can you run 3k as fast as AliC danf?

David's contributions to US Trail-O are widely appreciated.

Indeed, they were a large part of why he was recognized by the BOD with the 2009 Silva Award--USOF's highest honor.

So how many events a year, how many competitors?

Guys, what exactly is the point of this thread? Is there really room in OUSA for us to be squabbling with each other??

The interests of the orienteering and Trail-O communities in the US may not coincide 100%, but as danf pointed out, prominent Trail-Oers do a lot for orienteering, and prominent orienteers (such as Joe) participate in Trail-O. Both orienteering and Trail-O are fringe activities in the US, and we really can't afford to alienate and piss off one another.

Guys, what exactly is the point of this thread?

I just wanted to create a place for Trail-O bashing so that the other threads could remain clean of it. I was honestly hoping for more gratuitous bashing than thoughtful discussion. (Note that I categorized it as "Off Course".)

prominent Trail-Oers do a lot for orienteering

I can also name some avid golfers who do. Golf is more like orienteering than Trail-O is.

"Golf is more like orienteering than Trail-O is."

No, J-J, it's not. There is a big difference. Trail-O and orienteering are both, for better or for worse, controlled by IOF and by OUSA, and so we have to live together. Might as well live in peace.

I agree with Boris on this one.

Hey, live and let live. If you are looking for a wasteful Board discussion subject that actually hurt the development of the sport and took away resources and scared away volunteers, try Interscholastic eligibility. If you would like a zero-ROI budget item, try O in Schools. If you would like to pick on a niche, irrelevant format, I suggest the Classic.

It has been said before, but is more true now than ever: Boris for president!

I'm fine with Boris for president, but I'm not sure about the "we have to live together" bit. Things don't have to stay how they are just because that's how they've been.

I had to look up what trail-O actually was since I'm not in America. I therefore have limited knowledge of the subject. Here is an answer to a question I didn't know had been asked:

None of the above is the correct answer.

This sport sounds fantastic!

Golf-O...
You are given a map of the course and a list of holes in order determined by the course setter. Your task is to play speed golf through the holes in order. I'd play, though I doubt many golf clubs would see it as desirable. This form of orienteering is all about route choice.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xiyEyDwuq_Q

Dan, regarding my last comment, I just think that "this is the way things are, we should deal" is a really poor philosophy in general. I don't know that I care that much one way or the other in this specific situation, but one should use different criteria besides "it's the status quo" when determining whether or not something is good.

tRicky - you don't need a mountain bike.

Invisible - Aussie Rules Football was invented as a game to keep cricketers fit in the off-season. Does it matter why trail-O was invented and who actually does it?

For the record, I don't think trail-O has anything to do with orienteering either. But I've never done an event, and don't really care if others want to. And it's probably got more in common with orienteering than things I've been asked to teach while relief teaching at local high schools (apparently orienteering doesn't even require a map!)

I haven't worn my "Trail-O Champion - 2005" T-shirt since, ummm... 2005. Maybe it's time to break it out again. :-D

This thread is stupid, and I shouldn't even be commenting on it. But I can't help myself from wading in...

"We are all in this primarily for our own enjoyment in the US, even at our highest levels."

If that is the case, and you aren't in it for competition, then there is no reason you should be going to the world championships. Because people go to the world championships to try and prove that they are the best in the world, and if you don't have such aspirations, that is not the arena for you. Which is totally fine, but I understand we send a trail-o team to WOC every year. And if they are just in it for fun, well, that's a waste of money and time.

Warning.. Antipodean Rant.

> Aussie Rules Football was invented as a game to keep cricketers fit in the off-season.

Fletch.. I have heard that claim before and I have never believed it. I can't see how anyone can. When did cricketers start aspiring to keep fit in off or on season? It is certainly post Boony.. maybe even post Warney.

And I asked my question about participation because I was interested in the answer. Trail-O has never taken off down here, so how and why did it happen in the US? With an OT in the house, its a question of interest.

One thing that Trail-O does is to make people look critically at maps. Sometimes, the "critical looks" are associated with protests but participants do look critically at the map and the controls in the field. There may be some very real transfer of skills. Parallel fault errors are often made in foot-o and trail-o. Foot-o people may learn something here. While some trail-o controls are "too cute", others make people look carefully at contours or other features. Looking carefully a map has benefit. Not everyone will enjoy trail-o or find it useful but it is a mental exercise that may help with map reading. It is often stated that field checking and drawing maps helps with a person's orienteering. This, it is stated, is because the mapper must critically look at what is seen with what they draw on the map. It is not always easy.

In short, trail-o is not for everyone but it is a way to look critically at maps. (Other ways exist, of course.) I completely agree with those who say that the number of protests is a real issue. When controls are protested, the course setter is unhappy and the participants are unhappy which does not equal fun. There is also a unique set of rules for trail-o that baffle participants. If the clue is a "cliff", unless otherwise stated it is at the bottom of the cliff "in the middle". If you don't know this, then you might spend a lot of time looking at the control flags which are all at the top of the cliff and wondering which one is correct. This, of course, is dumb because none of the flags would be correct. Making the rules clearer to the participants before a competition would help so that the playing field is more even.

tRicky - you don't need a mountain bike.

Oh, well, what's the point then?

I don't understand why Trail-O gets a free pass on being critiqued as worthy of OUSA's and IOF's energy. We argue classic vs. sml, we argue what makes a good sprint..., heck, we have even argued about what to call the long course that is longer than the IOF long. Honestly, I doubt that if getting into the Olympics did not require inclusion of a para-Olympic category for a sport, that Trail-O would have even been invented; but maybe that's way too cynical.

I am a big fan of night-O. I'm pretty sure that I could find equal numbers of night-O fans to the trail-O fans. However, we have de-emphasized night-O to the point of obsolescence at the OUSA level. The obvious retort is that there is no World Champs for night-O but there is for Trail-O. On the other hand, two of biggest orienteering events in the world, Tio-Mila and Jukola, are night events. Training for night events would definitely help our other orienteering teams. And there is a whole contingent of AR folks who need and want night training. I would argue that a focus on night-O has the potential to generate a lot more starts and new participants. That said, I don't mean to turn this thread into a night-O vs trail-O debate. If I want to host a night-O, good for me (and I do). If someone else wants to host a trail-O, good for them.

However, Trail-O appears to be this sacred cow whose existence we are not allowed to question. It absorbs time and energy of our elected OUSA reps and our ED. It has a part in OUSA's strategic planning. But to what end? At this critical time why is OUSA wasting any time and energy in niche activity? Yes, we are arguing at the margins. But with our limited resources, we can't afford to waste even at the margins. We must focus. When the trail-O advocates are bringing in bus loads of participants for whom the event was designed to be for, I will happily jump on the bandwagon.

I guess I was warned - but now I´ve been reading a thread about Trail-O for half an hour instead of spending the same time training, hmmm... How´s that for misuse of resources?

I quit. No US trail O champs this year. Find somebody else.

Obviously I was wrong in the third post of this thread.

I just did the same as bubo. :(

Yes, because Trail-O has World champs we officially got recognition from our Olympic committee back in 2007. Trail-O is treated as every other sport and for good results at TrailWOC we can get also money and award. It is strange but we have more opportunity to develop Trail-O than Foot-O.

If you look only at Trail-O WOC events you could see that it is hard to say you can master the Trail-O. The “luck factor” is in my opinion much bigger than in Foot-O to get good result. I had back than an idea that competitiveness should be raised with changing competition rules to tournament like in chess or tennis.

Perhaps it is time to dial down the tone of this thread -- on all sides.

If we don't, the result might be a polarization that could resemble the USA's "left" (liberal) vs "right" (conservative) debate. Unfortunately, unlike that situation, if dedicated people become frustrated and quit, there usually are not others ready to jump in and fill the void.

As for the allocation of limited resources (time & money), I see nothing constructive in behaving like a bunch of starving dogs fighting over the last scrap of meat.

I quit. No US trail O champs this year. Find somebody else.

Say it ain't so, Joe! I was never a fan of Trail-O until I heard that our Highland Park map would get updated, and possibly become an excellent Sprint map.

I just meant that most US Team members do not have a realistic shot at ever medaling in our disciplines
A few years ago they were saying that about our US Track Team members, from 800m on up, then Khannouchi and Lagat became citizens and we had contenders...

Alex, I just meant that most US Team members do not have a realistic shot at ever medaling in our disciplines.

That is extremely insulting. Alex is a US Team member on the Ski-O team. Ali had an individual 8th place this year, and the team relay was 8th. I would say that the ski-o team has a very real change of medaling soon.

The members of all of the US Teams train way more than any recreational runners. If you don't recognize the amount of effort that they put in to make it to WOC, and then try to be their best at WOC, you will never understand why people bash trail-O so much.

This is bizarre. We're ALL weirdo's.

This thread only ever got heated because people can't / won't read and follow advice (see the thread title and first post)... what does that say about aorienteers?

danf, though poorly articulated, I think your points are not necessarily far off-base. Searching through Attackpoint logs, there are many North American elite orienteers averaging less than 7-hours of training per week year round. There are many "recreational runners" who train that much and more.

When I lived in Minnesota, I was one of the best orienteers in the US. Yet, I had a friend, a "recreational runner" who often asked "how I could be so good with so little training". By his standards, 100 miles per week (= 13.3 hours per week at 7:30 pace) was the standard for being a "serious runner". In contrast, we were only doing 70'ish mpw (i.e., 10 hours per week). He was a good runner in his day (2:22 marathon), but by both of our standards, our training was "recreational".

As far as being medal threats, the comment that "most US Team members do not have a realistic shot at ever medaling in our disciplines" is not far off. Five years ago, I was one of the best orienteers in the US and it took a "race of my life" to make a final at WOC. "Race of my life" to be top-45. As for being a medal threat, definitely not - not then, not ever.

As for AliC Ski-O results, they are phenomenal and she IS a medal threat. Those results are worth getting excited about it ... and we are!

I quit. No US trail O champs this year. Find somebody else.

Interesting. Is there some perception that the people interested in Trail-O are any less interested than before? True, there are some who are not, never were, and who may even dislike it, but so what?

On the other hand, if there were no US Trail-O Champs, that news would make about as much difference to me personally as if I heard about the cancellation of some NASCAR race, or a tennis tournament, or the World Netball Championships. So a lack of a Trail-O Champs would disappoint the Trail-O fans, and make no difference to the non-fans. Does that accomplish something useful?

does this thread accomplish something usefull???

Yeah. It gets the Trail-O bashing out of the other threads.

What are you Trail-O fans doing reading this thread? Was the first post not clear? GET OUT! We're trying to create a sewer here!

Now there is a great idea! Sewer orienteering! Or any other underground labrynth. JJ, let me know when you have the course set!

Yeah, that's been done, I believe. Who has the link? (There is an impressive map of the Paris sewer system on line somewhere, too, but I can't remember where right now.) (Ah, I think it might be here.)

This thread was all about underground orienteering

@ Invisible. There must be a North American filter in placethat prevents NA users seeing your questions! Either that or anitpodean involvement is often a bit frivolous on AP and their eyes glaze over at your username?

@ Tooms. Might be based on keyword. Could be "football" - but they use that word for something else. More likely "cricket". If I'm right they won't see this.

It was the mention of Boonie. None of them have a Boonie doll. I keep trying because this thread looked like becoming a serious threat to the reign of Antipodians as the pre-eminent sledgers on AP. Some of the comments on this thread even made me laugh.

@ Invisible: I know the idea of footy keeping cricketers fit (and the need to be fit for cricket doesn't seem that important for some) - I'm sure I saw it on a doco about AFL, but I suspect that's a warping of the truth - Cricket was a gentleman's game (ie it took so long to play that it wasn't possible for people who actually had to work) so it is possible that the cricketers were looking for something to do in winter that they could fit in between the rain and still get a whole game in (and simultaneously ensure that they avoided real work all year round). Just a theory.

As for your more serious question...

Okay, I'll say it, since this is supposed to be a bashing thread: Trail-O is like a side dish to orienteering. It's the kind of thing I would expect to see as a novelty fundraiser next to the extreme string-O and laser tag. A fun game. A diversion. Something you can go off and do to avoid talking to yet another sweaty old guy about your course.

Just like extreme string-o and laser tag, there's no harm in people having fun with it. It can be hard and people can get better with practice. And if people want to spend energy creating the maps and setting the courses and deliberating over the protests, fine. Doesn't bother me. But to say, "we're a serious activity, with a world champs and national teams!" makes me wonder what happened to reality.

Hey let's leave this thread for TO bashing. If you want to bash the senior foot O team or ski O do it in another thread.

Yes, let's please start other threads for those? Anyone game?

Go for it if you like, Clem. I might even have something to say.

Perhaps what Dan is trying to say is that the years and dollars Cristina has spent traveling around the country and the world to compete in orienteering events, and the countless hours of training to continually improve both her navigation skills and fitness, would have been better spent working on her Trail-O skills as preparation for Ski-O. But maybe I am interpreting his statement wrongly.

Since JJ started this thread, I think our first target should be canoe-O. That's going to hit him where it hurts.

Now that Canoe-O stuff is just WHACKO. But its still fun.

I still resent being singled out as an ahole when I have done an informal catalog (thanks to Google), and others have been more scathing and more prolific in criticizing Trail-O. Still, I remain chastened (a little bit, for now). Luckily, I have an inordinate threshold for this stuff.

However, I think I am in the lead with respect for condemnation of MicrObe. My vituperation was unrelenting, but now MicrObe seems to have died off and I am relieved. If OUSA got behind that, I would have gone nuts.

But, rather than start the anti US Ski-O, Foot-O, or Canoe-O efforts (I already feel filthy for still looking at this sewer), I will (fractionally) seriously suggest that OUSA get behind the US ARDF efforts. I think we have real talent in this country, and ARDF is an (really nerdy) athletic competition (or can be.) And, it is sensitive to branding, with a more acceptable name (ARDF) than Radio-O. Which sounds a bit Old MacDonald-y.

This is my attempt to implement a positive pivot in this conversation.

Dan, it has to do with the nature of the activity, not the talent or dedication af the athletes

The Ski-O athletes I met took their sport seriously but not too seriously - they realize that their sport is a little bizarre. They have a sense of humor about it. It seems like many trail-o participants take their sport very seriously. Disproportionately so. With no sense that, perhaps, they may be taking it a wee bit too seriously.

@Invisible: a few events each year, driven by a very small core group of dedicated individuals.

With about 300,000,000 people in the US and about 5 dedicated to making Trail-O events happen, that means that about 1 in 60,000,000 people are the type to be dedicated to making Trail-O happen. So, in Australia you should have about .3 people dedicated to making Trail-O happen.

given that the thread evolved into all sub-sub-sub categories of anything-outdoors, here is my pitch for an activity that OUSA can invest into.

There is even a biggins-made catching-features-equivalent training simulator for that.

J-man, I admit I have probably sinned at least as much as you, if not more, and--perhaps worse--I don't feel the least bit guilty. I wear my trail-O bashing on my sleeve, like a tattoo that does not show! And yet, somehow, in a divinely unjust way, you were the one singled out as a scurrilous incorrigible. No wonder you were caught snookering a beer on a golf course.

I admire your spirit and attitude so much I think I will invite you to join my professional network at LinkedIn, and see if that helps the IPO soar to even greater ridiculous heights. This is a greater honor than it might at first seem, as I have never asked anyone to my professional network before. But the time just seems right.

Feel free to bash Canoe-O, everybody does. If you're gonna be weird, you've got to be tough. The canoe people really hate Canoe-O -- well, some of them, anyway -- to the point where I suspect that a national official once tried to sabotage the national championships. So what do we do? We put on events, people have fun, and we don't ask the fine people of OUSA for any support for our fringe activity. In fact, Canoe-O at the national championship level is governed by another group entirely (and I'm not even referring to WHACKO).

There was a canoe orienteering event not too far from me a few years ago, organized by USCA. You can see the map and pictures at pages 17-18. Apparently, the same venue will be hosting again the event in 2012.

I am going to cop it locally for this, being somewhat chastened as well, but there has only been fleeting mention of orienteering on wheels. ?

Or on horseback.

Mounted Orienteering? At least it sounds cool.

it is good see the horse does the thinking

Mounted orienteering is actually another one that should be called something else entirely. More like mounted compass games... or maybe mounted shooting a bearing.

Since I ride and orienteer, ACTUAL orienteering on horseback would be right up my alley. Unfortunately none of my riding friends seem much interested in orienteering, and I think mounting my orienteering friends on horses and sending them out on a timed course would result in mayhem and destruction.

mounting my orienteering friends on horses and sending them out on a timed course would result in mayhem and destruction.

It would also make awesome TV.

What if the course wasn't timed but you had to answer trick map questions while on horseback?

What I really really want to see is synchronised orienteering. It ticks all the boxes - you do it in an arena - particpants wear skimpy gear - they move through some specially built terrain to music. With a map of course. Its a judged sport. Should ensure the Olympics.

Hold that thought, gruver - you've almost described Trail-O!

From the web site.
"CMO is like a mounted treasure hunt....- all while having great fun with your horse!"
All sorts of images there.

Yes but my imagination is already galloping off to.... Mounties. Lumberjacks. With this variety of orienteering we should all be cross-training.

pol-o

Marc-o?

Fish out of water!

*glop glop blub*

I've done two trail-O's. I've protested the outcome both times. Despite the fact that a neutral jury would have likely upheld my protests (based on the rules as described in the pre-race info and the controls and map as presented), in both cases, they were denied by the jury on hand (which happened to be the course setter, more or less, so lets not forget the Fourth Law of Thermodynamics: "People Respond to Incentives".)

Be all that as it may, and I'm willing to live and let live and move on to more intellectually honest pursuits, the real problem with trail-O comes in two flavors: a) the preaching of the illogical refrain of "if you are against trail O, you are against the handicapped", and b) the resource waste at the board level in support of this abject, non-orienteering waste of time (and yes, I sat on the board for 6 years were I observed this waste of time first person). In an organization where every volunteer cycle is precious, having several board members obsessed with this rather than actual orienteering is actually material.

Of course, given the catastrophic waste of resource with no ROI on present initiatives, point b) is now moot.

And yes, for the non-handicapped, trail O is Tooheyism IMHO. And if the allusion doesn't resonate, it doesn't matter.

I don't have a clue of what a Trail-O is, or how different is from a traditional orienteering course, but from reading all the posts here, really got to me curious on what it's like.

For those that remember Remo from Italy at the DVOA meet at Hickory Run last November, he's known as a Trail-O course designer. He had an event near Rome this past April. Here is another course and it's solution. Not sure what all this means. But this thread really got me curious on what Trail-O is.

What needs to be done to offer para-orienteering where the athleticism and route finding and navigation skills are tested?

Is anybody even aware of any organizers that have hosted athletic para-orienteering races?

I imagine that a campus or urban park with lots of pavement,concrete and/or hard packed trails and fields would be an ideal setting for wheelchair orienteering and would be an excellent way to move forward.

That would be a move in the right direction.

A rolling Labyrinth-O would be awesome. With a maze set in an enclosed space (a gym, for instance) you could also make it spectator-friendly and/or have only one competitor at a time if needed for safety. Even better, have two identical mazes next to each other and one competitor in each, starting at the same time. A real race... and something that would also be fun for running competitors.

head to head racing in two identical mazes sounds awesome.

I haven’t had much time for AP recently, but when 2 members of a US national Team resign (possibly because of an AP thread), I thought it would be worth a look. What I saw was appalling although not surprising given what passes for discussion on AP-after all you can’t spell AttackPoint without attack.

Here’s my take on it.
For a variety of reasons, the IOF has expanded the definition of orienteering to include Trail-O as one of the four official disciplines of Orienteering. A group of Oers tried the event, liked it and decided to advance the sport in the US. Not only do they like it, but they are good at it having already medaled in the paralympic class and an 11th in the open (far better, btw, than any foot-o team). So if you think TrailO is a waste of time, try to get the IOF to drop it and if you want ARDF or Canoe-O to be a discipline, get the IOF to add it. In the meantime, we should give nothing but support to all US Team members.I may not like sprint events, say, because it is too short to truly test endurance or because it is often run in an urban setting but I am always supportive of those who participate and excel in that discipline.

Whenever there is a change in the definition of something, there is inevitably a reactionary backlash by those who are vested in the status quo. Take gay marriage, no one I know really cares whether gays get married but there is selfrighteous group of reactionaries who say that it “will destroy the sanctity of marriage” or “erode the moral fabric of our society.”(arguments not dissimilar from the anti-Trail O group). In fact, the world will not end if Trail-O continues as an official IOF discipline or if gay marriage is allowed.

Judging by what’s been posted here, the reasons to deride TrailO are 1) it takes up limited USOF resources and 2) it sullies the good name of orienteering through association.
The first one is a crock since a)most people on AP feel that the BOD is an incompetent group of half wits who are incapable of doing anything correctly so what does it matter if they waste their time and b) the time being “wasted” is not the time of anyone bashing trail-o but by some perverse process of “electricity” it means that time spent on trail-o is time not spent on their favorite O discipline. Of course, some of bashers could get on the BOD, set policy and develop the administrative aspect of USOF but that is unlikely to happen as it would mean less bitching and moaning and more accountability.

As to the second reason, that Trail O sullies the good name of orienteering, if you find the name so distasteful that you can’t speak it, think up a new one. I would suggest “F*uck-Off” as a code name until you can get IOF to change the name. That way if J-man, Cristina, PeterG or Mikell ask their former US FootO teammates Eric/Joeb/ Sharon (and current US Trail-O team Members) what their doing this weekend, the answer can be “F*ck-Off “ and everyone will know what they’re talking about without using the word orienteering.

Final point and I’m not trying to justify Trail-O since being one of the 4 official IOF disciplines should be justification enough but let’s bring up Thierry G. In addition to being a multiple world champion, he is reknowned for the way he has revolutionized the training aspects of orienteering. If he can take time from his foot-o training to do the training necessary to beccome a past European Trail-O champ (and enjoy it and not be afraid to call it orienteering), then perhaps there is something to be gained from it, even if it doesn’t meet your definition of orienteering. As I quickly scanned the Trail-rankings, I only see one trailO basher on the list and few current team members (all ranked below 50th with ranking points of less than 35/100). Perhaps it some people took this discipline more serious, we wouldn’t be sending a foot-o team to WOC where half the team seems to be ranked less than 250th in the world, has no reasonable expectation of making an A-Final and will never be competitive at the international level. That to me, is a true waste of USOF time and real $.

Sherpes...number 1 on that problem you posted is pretty crazy!

And sammy, you can't directly compare Trail O' results with Foot O', and you know that really. The numbers involved at every level of the sport of orders of magnitude higher in Foot O'. Considering how few WREs there are within easy reach of the East Coast, for example, it's exceptionally tough to get points putting you much above 250 unless you have the resources to make it to Europe 3-4 times a year.

I'm not going to argue about what is the correct way to spend the money or indeed whether Trail O' is a valid form of O, but you have to acknowledge that you're not comparing apples with apples here. And as such, most of your final argument fails to hold water. Also, it sounds like it took Thierry G about a couple of months to become European Champ in Trail O'. How many years does it take to become a Foot O' champ if you excel at Trail O'?

Wow, I seem to recall a Sammy from the past that would post thoughtful and insightful comments. What happened?

Trail-O. The ties that bind.

Thoughtful and insightful comments, that's for other threads. Hammer, you're out of place here. But hey what about this weirdo Robin Hood thing that's crept in? You know, men in tights.

I missed something. What two members of a US orienteering team resigned?

I think that some racing wheelchairs (perhaps with some mods) could get through a corn maze, which would require serious handling skills rather than straight-line speed (though there woudl be some of the latter). Corn Maze Wheelchair O would be awesome, and a completely legitimate form of handicapped orienteering, though with no vertical.

In the meantime, we should give nothing but support to all US Team members.

I refuse.

While not quite in keeping with most of the rest of this thread, I would like to suggest a couple of things that could be done to make trail-O a lot more interesting/enjoyable for at least one potential customer. Primary amongst these would be to provide a concise listing of all the special conventions in use for trail orienteering on the IOF and OUSA websites, so that some orienteer thinking about trying it out for the first time could know in advance what sorts of puzzles were being set for him to solve (and also, what sorts of things appearing in the clue sheet are not intended as puzzles). Perhaps such quick synopses already exist on the websites since my navigation on the web isn't a lot better than my navigation in the forest, but I have made some effort to look after experiencing considerable frustration in the three or four events that I have tried out. These summaries of what is expected in the puzzle solving should also be available in print-out form at the start of the event, probably even permitted for use to carry along out on the course (after all, the primary purpose of the challenge is, I think, supposed to test the perceptual abilities of the competitor, not an ability to remember a very long, complicated set of somewhat arbitrary conventions).

I couldn't find anything at all about these "rules" for Trail-O on the OUSA website, and what I found on the IOF website was either a detailed set of guidelines for course-setters, or a protracted set of specific examples for experienced orienteers planning to try the activity. The latter could in principle be very useful, but much more so AFTER having a chance to read a summary of the rules before trying to solve the problems posed, then being told what you did wrong on a case by case basis after the fact. Very poor psychology if you want to encourage more participation to deliver mostly punishment, few rewards, in the training process. Yet this same approach seems to be in force at all the trail -O events I have attended in the US. As at the events I have attended, I have found puzzling why some of the aspects of the control descriptions provided in the IOF example set seem to be treated with nitpicking care, yet others seem to be ignored, or at least contrary to my interpretation of the meaning of the descriptor (and there is no way to ask questions as to why the choice of descriptor used). Examples would be a group of flags planted with the skewers for the flags (from my perspective of the picture provided) exactly at the perimeter where the boulder disappeared into the ground described as North side of boulder, whereas I would have thought North edge of boulder would be the appropriate descriptor, with some separation of a meter or so being appropriate for the "side of" characterization, while an example or two later has Southwest edge of pit in use, with the flag indeed placed in my perception where it should be called Southwest side.

Second, I think some of the "conventions" are rather silly to begin with, and specifically designed to test memory of conventions rather than ability to visualize terrain from a distance. When possible, I think that the conventions should be made specific by notations in the control description, not by a special arcana to be memorized by the "elite". In an earlier post, Peter Goodwin mentioned the example of the convention that if not specified otherwise
a description of "cliff" means "foot of cliff". So I and many others at a West Point meet a bit over a year ago were busy trying to estimate from the top side of the cliff, using either depth perception or relative position of other objects above the cliff, which of a row of flags planted along the top of the cliff was closest laterally to the center (the centering being an unstated convention applicable to some types of objects that we had learned about in a series of controls at the event in the same area a year earlier). Since there is a standard symbol to use if you want to indicate that a control is at the bottom of a cliff, why not use it? The other problem that I and a number of others were trying to solve seemed a lot more interesting to me than the one nominally being posed, once I got back to the finish and discovered where I had erred!

Another thing that would be good would be a pretty detailed checklist for course setters to go through on every control, since the demands on precision are quite a bit higher than for a usual orienteering course. It is annoying to be given no credit for half a dozen controls where the course setter used the control description for a knoll where he should have been using the description for a boulder, and to discover that another convention is that if the feature in the center of the circle is something different from what appears on the control sheet, you should assume that this is not something that the course setter was trying to test you on.

On the other hand, even with these amendments made to make the sport more friendly to the beginner, I find it hard to imagine that I would find it attractive as anything more than a way to fill in a couple of hours after the "main" event at an A-meet. I'm in accord with many of the contributors to this thread that the physical component of orienteering is the part I primarily enjoy. The second biggest thing I like about orienteering is the social component (even including acrimonious computer diatribes). The navigation aspect of orienteering is something that is also a lot of fun for me on less detailed Rogaine maps, but it is a little less entertaining on regular O-maps since even after 20 years of effort I seem still to be unable to recognize at any speed the majority of the detail shown, let alone the enhanced detail for a trail-O map.While it has been suggested to me that one reason I should learn to enjoy trail-O is that in a few more years it will be something I can still do when I am no longer sufficiently mobile to make it around a brown course in 3 hours, I think this is a highly unlikely scenario. If heredity is anything to go by, if I survive another 20 years I will still have the physical mobility to make it around a brown course if guided around by hand, but will not have the visual acuity to distinguish an O-flag at 5 meters from the background, or to distinguish any of the features on an O-map without the aid of an electronic imager to spread the size of a control circle over a whole computer screen.

Wow, I just looked at the course the Becks referred to--that sherpes linked to--and I don't even understand the solution, much less the course. It's like it's a foreign language! I'm even more clueless than I assumed I was. Is trail-O usually mass starts or interval starts? And are whistles mandatory at all events, or just the WRE ones?

after all you can’t spell AttackPoint without attack

But then you'd be missing the point, which seems to be happening a lot in this thread.

Badda-boom! Now for some more inciteful comments...

I think sammy has crossed a line. It's not right for an anonymous rant to name people in this manner. It's simply wrong to be a god in the machine and drop down from time to time to spout off about named people without yourself being known. Readers are not able to judge correctly the validity of your argument. Since you know about 2 team members resigning, I'm assuming you're connected. I think that makes it worse.

I'm not appalled by discussion on attackpoint. I enjoy it, and I learn from it. If you really have that low an opinion of attackpoint, please leave and stop wasting our time.

Becks: Sherpes...number 1 on that problem you posted is pretty crazy!

Swampfox: Wow, I just looked at the course the Becks referred to--that sherpes linked to--and I don't even understand the solution, much less the course. It's like it's a foreign language!

Okay, my Italian isn't that great, either, but allow me to interpret (I think). The first control is described as "between the boulder and the lone tree", and the boulder and tree in question are three circle diameters apart, both well outside the circle. And there's no control in the correct place, so it's "none of the above".

I'm not sure what the conventions are for the notations on the solution sheet. I'm guessing that the plus signs show the viewing stations (so that 1, 2, and 3 are all done from the same spot), and I guess the purple dots show where there were flags on the ground (with flags reused for certain controls), but I don't know what the purple squares mean. And I think there are supposed to be five controls visible from the first viewing station, but I'm not sure which five they are.

If I'm interpreting this correctly, #4 is also pretty nuts. I believe you have to figure out which of the two controls is "between the thicket and the tree", both on the edge of the circle. One of the controls is directly on the line, while the other is maybe a meter too close to the observer(?). I think the Italian text tells how you're supposed to decode this one, but I can't imagine what it must say.

I started looking at more of these, but I just can't stand it. The more I look at it, the more it looks like stitching basketballs.

Two national team members resigning because of this bashing? Good god, sounds like Trail-O needs to grow a much thicker skin!

Hey Trail-O, you're ugly and your mother dresses you funny!

Hey JJ that's nasty. There's a VERY good reason for having the variants and we should support them. Medalling. If a country can't medal in one discipline you can maybe do it in another. This provides the fodder for your PR machine. After all, the general public doesn't know what orienteering is so it is hardly going to know the difference between a medal in Trail-O and Synchr-O and Main-O.

With one proviso. The medallers have to be sexy. You can see what les Francais are up to with Thierry. As well as T-O they also have him doing that Orient-Show thing the Russkies invented. You doing that in NA? You should give it a go.

So can they medal, these Trail-Oers? And are they hot? Do they wear tights? Better still can you do it in swimming togs like track athletes (one of the drawbacks of orienteering in a forest). I mean look at beach volleyball. Now there's a thought. Beach orienteering.

The advantage of beach-O is that you can create the contours you need for each event, given the availability of big machines.

Can we get back to the Thinking Horse, Mr ED?

A course is a course, of course, of course,
that is, of course, unless the course
is XXX *

* Substitute whatever form of our sport is causing you indigestion.

Hey, Becks, we're having 3 WREs at the US Champs in Georgia next April. Come on down! There's always a good deal to be had flying LGA-ATL. Oh, and you could try the US Trail-O Champs while you're here! ;-)

Some of them are very hot, so I'm told. Some of them are... not. It's as with all things.

Indeed. Well, just trying to give the locals a chance at some points without having to traipse over to Europe quite so much. It's probably misguided, but at least it's well-intentioned.

I applaud GAOC for committing to the WREs. Six! that's six! World! Ranking!! Events!!! in orienteering!!!! in the United States!!!!! in 2012!!!!!! maybe that's a metric they can report progress on. And a World Cup in addition to that to boot.

Wikipedia describes O like this
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orienteering

OUSA web site
http://orienteeringusa.org/new-o/what-orienteering

I see O as a running race, but instead of marked/streamered route we just have some intermediate check points and competitors can choose their route in between. Like half marathon with intermediate check point every now and then and you are allowed to make shortcuts. quite simple. To make it fair everyone has a good map, so everyone has same changes to make the best shortcut. To make it even more fun, races are usually held in forests, so the actual running is a lot like these new "strong man runs", we climb cliffs and go over bogs if we think it's the fastest way to go. The unfortunate disadvantage is one needs to have map and be able to navigate a bit to actually have all this fun. Fortunately that nav part can be learned quite easily after all. And even if epic nav mistakes may spoil changes to make good result they often gives use the best laughs afterwards, so it really isn't a big deal.

Sprint/middle/long/ultralong formats are nicely parallel to 5k/10k/half/full marathon, that makes it easy to describe middle is "like 10k running race, but...". Same applies to ski-O, MTB-O and so on. Unfortunately trail-O doesn't fit in very well, it's not parallel to any sport or grow from an other sport - it's not an extreme and fun version of sport X like all other disciplines in O family.

I am not bashing anything, just trying to describe why I find it difficult to make it fit in O sport family. And some other may see it same way.

For handicapped IBO's "location orienteering" might suit better.
http://www.biathlonorienteering.se/IBOFrules2010.p...
Jusat replace maps with a ipad like tablet. Have map app, at control site competitor turns map on (clock starts running), pans/zooms maps and clicks location in question and map dissappears (and clock stops running). Penalty minutes would be easy to calculate with the app data. And it would be timed race, grows straight from the military roots just as O itself does.

My feeling is that the interesting part of orienteering is not so much about what happens at the controls, but rather what happens between the controls, and Trail-O removes that part entirely. It's like an automobile race that consists entirely of pulling into and out of parking spaces where you're judged on whether you're in the center of the space. Yes, they both involve cars, but I don't think the latter would be of much interest to the NASCAR or Indy crowds.

Wow. This whole time I've been in orienteering I had the misconception that Trail-O was just orienteering except routes restricted to trails. Learn something new every day! Seems like it's good to have a para-aspect of the sport if that's what it is.

Really digging the underground (no pun there, eh?) or tunnel / labyrinth ideas Mike! =)

Lots of WREs in 2012 is awesome, thanks GA!

Just asking - how many people in the US participate in Trail-O? How many with enough interest in it to be considered as part of a pool from which to establish a US Team?

A couple of years ago, BAOC had the US Trail-O champs. Since it was so close, I took my fried Elizabeth. Not only was it her first Trail-O, it was her first time orienteering. She has the use of her legs, but for any distance, a wheelchair is preferable. It turned out to be impossible to push her over some of the places on the trail. She ended up using the chair as a walker. Her assessment was that a standard electric wheelchair would have had trouble; you'd need an all-terrain wheelchair. Because there were only two paralympic class entries, though, and the other person was disqualified for stepping off the trail, she was US Champion that year.

What are the qualification standards for the Paralympic class?

Glad to hear there are hot trailers. Should certainly turn the youth market on.

Might be a good time to revisit MTBO that a couple have poked a stick at. This should definitely be part of the orienteering family because bikers have lycra. Have had since long before orienteers wore tights or skins or whatever they're called now. And they wear tops covered in advertisements, everyone is wondering how to get sponsorship dollars well these guys obviously know. They also know how to keep in the public eye. You know how there's no such thing as bad publicity but the way they keep spinning out the drug thing is nothing short of amazing.

@Charlie--

Trail O paralympic eligiblity description from CCOF page

IOF eligibility form

It's like an automobile race that consists entirely of pulling into and out of parking spaces where you're judged on whether you're in the center of the space.

So you're saying trail-O' is like this --

Nice! Could have used that skill when I was living in Asia. =)

Was just leafing thru the web, not looking for anything in particular, when I spotted:

"Column G - Location of the control flag
Note: No symbol is required to describe the location of the control flag in relation to the feature if the control flag is positioned at, or as near as possible to, the centre of the feature (or the centre of the foot in the case of the cliff)."

International Specification for Control Descriptions IOF 2004. Hey isn't that the ones those weirdo foot-orienteers use?