Discussion: Races as parades

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100014241278873248...

Good or bad for orienteering?

Read the same article and was thinking of posting also.
Is it relevant to the rules change for junior courses?

Funny that the races they mention in the article as being untimed are races that I don't enter.

"Are you doing Tough Mudder?"
"Nah it's not timed so I can't see how many people I beat."

People then tell me that I'm too competitive.

How can you be against mudderhood and apple pie?

I hypothesize that much of this curmudgeonly article's conclusions may be explained by other variables than the decline and socialization of our youth. I don't have much data to support my argument, so much of this is a guess. On the other hand, this WSJ article, which jumps to a McCarthyesque inquiry into the apparent trend among young people, could use a few citations. They seem to use an n of 1 to justify hasty generalization: "Old timers suggest...", "But to some observers...", "Among some, it simply isn't cool...."

My hypothesis is that running (specifically; you may be able to extrapolate to other athletic activities) is growing. To weakly illustrate that, consider this graph from runningusa: http://www.runningusa.org/statistics In 2010, about 13 million people finished a "running race" compared to 4.8 million in 1990. The trend in the marathon is similar (see Table 1 from this report from runningusa). The number of marathon finishes more than doubled from 1990 to 2010 (224k to 507k). The WSJ article notes that "Median US marathon finishes for men rose 44 minutes from 1980 to 2011", but it fails to note that the median age increased from 34 to 40 and the field size doubled in size.

It is this last point which is my contention: any activity that undergoes growth of this magnitude will not grow uniformly. I speculate that the increase in population of runners (say from 1980 or 1990 to the present) has been preferentially drawn from the more recreational, less competitive group. Put another way, a competitive runner was more likely to be involved in the sport relative to a casual enthusiast. What I would expect from this is that while the sport has grown over the past 20-30 years, competitive runners have become a smaller fraction of the population (though the overall number of "competitive" runners has presumably also increased, but more slowly). As a result, any population based measure like median time would decline.

The use of anecdotes and rare events to justify the thesis of the WSJ article is deplorable. Consider this statement: Old-timers are suggesting that performance-related apathy among young amateur athletes helps explain why America hasn't won an Olympic marathon medal since 2004.

There have been 12 olympic marathon medals awarded since 2004, and the United States hasn't won any of them. Is this a significant change in the trend? How many medals were awarded to the US before 2004? Since 1952 - over 16 olympics, the US has won 3/48 men's marathon medals and 2/24 women's medals. The author's command of statistics is underwhelming. A much better argument would be a decline in the rate of athletics medal rates in the US (data I have not accessed), but even that could be accounted for by improvement among other nations (e.g. Jamaica) rather than a decline and "embrace of mediocrity" among the young. Similar small number statistics can be used as a counter argument, e.g. Galen Rupp's 10k medal, the first since 1964.

The set of new events like the Color Run and the "socialist" Tough Mudder are targeted at a different audience than your standard road race precisely because accessing a new market segment is a good way to make money. Most people on attackpoint come from the competitive crowd and treat such races with disdain, but the existence of a non-competitive race does nothing to warp the minds of our children or weaken the resolve of our allies.

I can't believe this pathetic reasoning passes for journalism.

I did think quoting the number of US Olympic marathon medals won over the past two Olympics was a bit stupid given the number you have mentioned above as being available (12) but I wasn't about to research into the number they'd won before that. I just figured that there were 150+ countries competing so the chance of any one country winning an Olympic marathon medal was relatively slim, unless that country was Kenya.

I fully agree with everything Ian wrote, and would like to add that I think it's better to have twice as many people running than it is to have a brazillion Olympic medals.

"I can't believe this pathetic reasoning passes for journalism."
Its a Murdoch Journal then?

Sounds like the Wall Street Journal is as keen on conclusions unsupported by evidence when it comes to running as it is when it comes to climate.

Generalizations and unattributed quotations are the norm for lazy journalists and a curse on thinking readers.

+1 to Ian's comments, especially the reasoning around why the median would go down as the # of participants increases

On the other hand, Malcolm Gladwell and others like him have made careers out of churning out flowery prose promulgating anecdotes, rare events, and dubious pseudo statistics. He is regarded by many as a savant. Have you read that stuff? I'm sure he'd have some excessively confident things to say.

</hijack>

To go back to j-man's original question, I think that orienteering can draw lessons from the route running has taken. Marketing towards the casual enthusiast could increase our membership and participation. I don't know exactly what would be the analog of an ostensibly less competitive, happy fun run - perhaps corn maze, urban sprints, urban rogaine, or indoor-O would suffice. The goal would be to tap into a different group of people, draw them into some version of orienteering and hope for cross pollination.

It's true that most of the newcomers would likely have poor min/km times in the woods, but this diversification could be beneficial. I think Adventure Running Kids meets the criteria for this approach - a populist activity that isn't quite orienteering, but draws kids and leads to orienteering.

It's possible that Mudder's aren't "competitive" for legal reasons.

" think Adventure Running Kids meets the criteria for this approach - a populist activity that isn't quite orienteering"

Speaking of poor journalism with anecdotal comments and hasty generalizations!! ;-)

To be fair to Ian he did state that as "I think..." rather than as fact.

Without having read the article is not true that most local orienteering events (the majority of events) are more populist in nature than competitive? Local events tend to have no awards, you can show up and start when you want, people can get instructions from someone if they need it. etc. Granted, we don't provide the festive atmosphere but that's more a matter of scale and resource allocation than anything else.

But the WSJ article's sub-title was "younger athletes are racing with less concern about time" A couple of observations from this morning's paper:

Item: Over the weekend Tiger Woods lost claim to the $10 million 2013 FedEx Cup that was won by a Swede, after Woods led the contest for most of the season. Tiger's comment upon finishing the final hole yesterday: "There are more important things than getting a white ball into a gopher hole..."

Item: After numerous personnel changes, Team Oracle is beginning to win America's Cup races out on San Francisco Bay. Unfortunately there now is only one American left on the American team.

As poorly written as the WSJ article may be, isn't it just another of a long line of hand-wringing pieces expressing dismay that the US has lost its competitiveness...and no one seems to care?

@Canadian: and you can bring dogs to local events...

Doesn't the obsession with IOF rules, following ISOM and ISSOM map rules, criticisms of map quality, arguments over placement of controls, etc. at the average event not mean than orienteering is actually super competitive by nature? How many events in the US are not included in either a national or club ranking system?

Do participants in the colo(u)r run complain that there was too much red vs. yellow vs. green powder thrown at them?

All you've done is provide two more anecdotes. The plural of anecdote is not data. I don't see real evidence that Americans are losing their competitiveness. On the contrary, I see American competitiveness all the time, and sometimes wish it were declining. But you're right, I don't actually care that much either way. I'd rather just play with kittens. Is that a problem?

My kitten could beat up your kitten.

But it would be so cute and we could post it to YouTube and get millions of views!

Yokuppi Kitten is ready.

Agree this article is sloppy journalism, but I can only concur with the author's conclusion. Most younger people in the US are definitely less competitive athletically than their parents. When I think of my running and orienteering friends from my generation (M65), few if any of their kids have the competitive zeal that their parents had. (or may still have).

Of course what I just wrote is also anecdotal.

Re: Hammer and Canadian
I oversimplified my comparison, for which I apologize. As I recall, part of the ARK objective is to get kids running in the woods and de facto orienteering under the auspices of having fun running in the woods. It is called "Adventure Running Kids" and not "Orienteering Kids" for that reason - it rebrands to present orienteering in a different light. Some ARK participants then go on to the more advanced and more traditional orienteering activities. Please correct me if I am mistaken.

This is roughly similar to the notion of popular fun races in the sense that they present an activity (running) in a light to make it more appealing to a market that might not ordinarily try it. ARK is to a GHO local meet what a Tough Mudder (e.g.) is to a neighborhood 5k or 10k. The metaphor is only very approximate - the idea I'm focusing on is spreading the sport to a different market. An example of a less collectively attractive alternative (but more specific) for both running and orienteering is track intervals or a training camp.

The upside to this phenomenon is that Joe Average can conceivably hobbyjog to age group hardware off a pathetic 15 mpw. At least I hope so in a month.

For an extensive discussion of the question "Were runners faster 30 years ago than they are now?", this conversation provides some interesting statistics.

I particularly like the (tongue-in-cheek?) observation that runners are slower today due to "Better mental health treatment. Many of the individuals who would have been good runners back in the 80s are now getting treated for their depression and ADHD. So many of the idiosyncracies that would have let them spend 15% of their waking hours running on the roads alone have been eliminated". LOL!

What I would expect from this is that while the sport has grown over the past 20-30 years, competitive runners have become a smaller fraction of the population (though the overall number of "competitive" runners has presumably also increased, but more slowly).

Agree with what you wrote, except the idea that the number of "competitive" runners has increased in the past 20-30 sense.
1980 NY Marathon, 100th place = 2:28:34
2010 NY Marathon, 100th place = 2:35:53
The number of "competive" runners is getting smaller both in an absolute sense and as a fraction of the whole.

Thanks Brian--that is an important observation.

@Steve--I'd be sad if my ADHD and depression were eliminated such that I would be happily adjusted and content to sit on the couch. ;)

Re: bmay. You present an interesting observation and a much more compelling piece of data than the WSJ article. I was curious and extracted the best and 100th best finish time from the New York City marathon from 1975-2009 (I used gun time when multiple fields were presented, because that surely is the time of the older records).

The marathon started in 1970, so the initial decline can be ascribed to growing pains. The 100th place times from 1980-1983 averaged 2:25:45; however, the 100th place times from 1984-2009 have all been over 2:30 (mean 2:35:59, stdev 3:02). I don't have an easy explanation for this. Perhaps there were relatively fewer marathons in the 1980s, so more people came to the big races (Boston, NY, etc). Perhaps weather conditions were particularly favorable in 1980-1983 - a factor which is difficult to control for in examining the results of any one particular race. Perhaps there was some part of running culture that made the New York marathon especially important to race. I don't know, but there doesn't appear to be compelling evidence of the decline and fall of American runners that the WSJ article espouses.

Year	100th
1975	3:07:58
1976	2:43:02
1977	2:35:05
1978	2:32:19
1979	2:31:59
1980	2:28:34
1981	2:24:55
1982	2:25:45
1983	2:23:43
1984	2:36:39
1985	2:32:02
1986	2:30:07
1987	2:30:04
1988	2:34:49
1989	2:31:51
1990	2:36:03
1991	2:33:07
1992	2:32:48
1993	2:35:29
1994	2:36:07
1995	2:37:06
1996	2:37:58
1997	2:37:33
1998	2:33:21
1999	2:38:45
2000	2:37:11
2001	2:35:48
2002	2:39:42
2003	2:40:55
2004	2:40:16
2005	2:39:24
2006	2:36:10
2007	2:39:40
2008	2:37:03
2009	2:35:29

It's not just NYCM - Boston is similar - 100th in 2013 for men's would be >300th in 1981.

I wonder if this is related to the running boom.

Don't forget Global Warming!

I am far more competitive than my parents ever were.

1976 was the first year NYCM was a 5 borough course. 1970-1975 was multiple loops of Central Park.

This theme, the entropy of competive spriit, which all my anecdotal experience strongly agrees with, is not limited to running sports. By pure coincidence, this past Saturday, the mother of a Div 2 collegiate volleyball player expressed the same lament to me, that her daughter didn't have the same "fire in the stomach" (my words) as she did as a Div 1 basketball player in the early '80's(?), but also conceded, laughing, that the daughter might be better off psychologically because of it.

Not to suggest that I expect the 100th place NYC marathon time to be a reliable metric for the competitive drive of American youth, but, as long as we're picking things apart, while 1981-83 were the high point of NYC marathon 100th place times, it's not like the distribution is a flat line otherwise. There is a distinct upward trend in times since the early 80s.

Also, why on earth would you expect your kids to emulate you?

...why on earth would you expect your kids to emulate you?

What's the point of having kids, if you can't pass on some of your values, ideas, aspirations...? Are kids today really so co-opted by their generation that they're like strangers in the home, with no interest in learning from their parents, and yes, emulating their values?

I idolized my father throughout his life. And wanted nothing more than to emulate him in every way possible. And perhaps equal or exceed some of his accomplishments.

If you're trying to see whether competitiveness has changed across generations, then it's inappropriate to use competitors as your comparison group, as several have done above.

Suppose that 10% of the population is competitive, and suppose this is fixed and immutable. A group of older competitive orienteers will find that only 10% of their children are similarly competitive - evidence of a softer generation!

A group of sedentary office workers would similarly find that 10% of their children are competitive - evidence of a tougher generation!

I think that orienteering can draw lessons from the route running has taken. Marketing towards the casual enthusiast could increase our membership and participation.

I sadly can't contribute anything original to this conversation other than a note (supported by data) that orienteering's club structure and bargain-seeking culture seem a particularly poor fit for drawing lessons from the route running has taken.

@Chi -

I would expect most people to value their values, and therefore to consider it worthwhile to instill those values in their children. That's quite different from expecting your children to turn out a particular way. It's not so much being co-opted by one's generation as thinking for oneself.

Is there really nothing you would wish your children didn't inherit from you? Why is a competitive spirit to be valued, a priori? Plenty of people are overly competitive, driven to obsession, mean-spirited, etc. It's not obvious that being competitive makes you a better person.

But, evolutionary psychology would suggest Chi's perspective is valid. Ceteris paribus, a competitive SOB will be "fitter", in some respects.

I don't believe evolutionary psychology makes claims that broad or ill-defined.

Well maybe. In any case, it does make claims which are narrower, too:

Another anecdote, which I realize isn't data, but this one argues the other way. It's a comment on the same WSJ article made on the Finger Lake Running Club (New York) mailing list.

"I have been coaching HS for the past 12 years. I would say if anything, kids have gotten faster. There is also an increase in the number of runners, at least from when I ran, which in return can give more athletes the ability to slack off! We had 3 kids running 1:54 or faster in the 800 the past 3 years in Section 4 alone. As Alex said, top runners are def. getting faster! My 49.9 HS time holds nothing these days to some of the current runners, but I was in the top 10 in NYS in my day."

US Skiers are getting faster. Both at the senior world level and among the juniors. We're also seeing fewer numbers in the recreational ranks of skiers. So that probably means that if one did the stats, the median speed (this isn't so easily measurable with skiing, since speed isn't constant like in running) would be considerably faster than in the past. This is a major change from two decades ago. I don't have the time or inclination to go look up the data to support my comments, though, so you'll just have to take or leave them.

@RLShadow- I can agree with this observation, top level track results seem healthily competitive.
Unfortunately, I cannot say the same for road running, nor the running aspect of orienteering (improvement on the tech side).
To be fair, the growth in trail running, and other off road adventure sports need to be considered.

top level track results seem healthily competitive
In the US.
Here in the UK Mo Farah and Christine Ohuruogu have recently set national track records. Nobody else in the last 9 years has.
Scotland's fastest 10k last year was by a part-timer who isn't even primarily an athlete

I have also heard anecdotally that high school and college runners are as fast, or faster, today than they have been over the last few decades. But it's obvious to me, anyway, having been running for 30 years or more, that competitors in road races are getting slower. What I think we lack nowadays is an active group of amateur runners -- those who keep running just because they love to do it. Again anecdotally, I hear of good high school runners who simply quit running when they finish school. Those folks used to graduate to 10Ks and marathons, and enter them in droves. The percentage of runners finishing under 3 hours in the Maryland Marathon was as high as 20% in the early 1970s, but decreased to around 10% in the late 1980s. And in big marathons these days it's more like 2% or less. The big running "middle class" has gone missing.

I think there are lots of reasons for a drop-off in the number of "pretty good" finishers in marathons over the last couple of decades. One thing that Tom points out is that there aren't quite the flood of fresh high school and college graduates doing 10K's and marathons nowadays (or from my perspective, coming from 10 years earlier in the progression, marathons). What he may have forgotten is that in the late 60's and early 70's there basically weren't many 10K races, and there were almost no 5K races. What people out of school those days (mostly men, because Title 9 hadn't come along yet) had options of running once out of school competition were various odd distances in local races, or a few marathons. There got to be quite a few marathons available as qualifying times came to be demanded for Boston (the wise men of the BAA realized they would never be able to handle more than 1000 runners), and as the qualifying standard for younger men quickly dropped to around 3 hours after the first couple of years with laxer standards, there was a lot of pressure to make that mark if you wanted to run officially in Boston. And then a lot of that group of people who had run in high school or college (seldom longer than a 3K cross-country course for HS kids, 8K for collegians, but called 2mi and 5mi in those days) were interested in running shorter races, more like they were used to. Suddenly over a period of maybe 5 years there were many more 10K races than marathons, and far more competitors in them. More recently, the trend has continued, and now 5K seems to be the popular standard. Our local runners club has long since dropped both of the two marathon races which we used to hold annually for over 20 years, and by far the most common race length which I am currently asked to measure for certification purposes is 5K. So the place where I think the bulk of those somewhat-under-3-hour marathoners have vanished to is running 17 minute 5K races. A second place where some of those moderately quick marathoners have disappeared to is the crowd that feels a need to run a marathon race every couple of weeks. This seems to be something that many people can do, just at the expense of speed. One of the somewhat older runners in our local club ran a marathon race every weekend for a whole year a couple of years back. An interesting achievement, but he was by the end of the year barely breaking 4 hour finishing times (and probably the bank, considering the distance he was having to travel to find a USATF sanctioned marathon on some of those weekends. He's not the most extreme version of this approach I have encountered--I sat next to a woman on a plane last year while we were traveling to a rogaine, and discovered that she was heading to a marathon. She said she had set a record of over 100 marathons run in a single calendar year, though some on this listserve might dispute whether times near 6 hours actually count as running the event (it is of course a higher average speed than my wife and I walked in our 24-hour rogaine that weekend). When discussions of competitiveness come up, it is clear that people who after a few years of extensive training begin to realize that they are unlikely to ever win a race at some distance (say a marathon), they may try a race of a different length (say 5K) where their particular mix of capabilities may do better against the competition, or try to set themselves apart by something such as the number of races they can run.

Another aspect that I wonder about is the change of (and greater standardization of) training methods that has happened over that last 25 years. Jack Daniels' book on training has had tremendous influence on training methods, is based on a lot of very solid physiological groundwork, and has improved the performance of many competitors following his guidelines. His work, though, is based largely on empirical experimentation with the students athletes he had to work with in his own very successful college program. This was at a good Division 3 school which has a fine record of sports performance from many of its teams, but which basically has input of high-school students whose prior performance was not high enough to get them scholarship aid at a Division 1 school, so was presumably optimized for runners that might be 85th or 90th percentile amongst the total running population. And a key part of his program is keeping the intensity of the training low enough to avoid almost any time off because of injuries. It isn't altogether obvious that athletes that are more like 99th percentile performers would do best with the same set of parameters, or that if there were a large enough supply of raw material with comparable potential coming into the program so that a coach worrying only about the fastest time in a race regardless of ruining 90% of his runners by training them dangerously harder, that a different training protocol might be better for those that actually survived it.

On a separate track, looking at the decline of competitiveness from parent to child perceived by Geoman amongst his running acquaintances, I'm sure that the perception is in a sense correct, but suffers from a pretty obvious sampling bias if trying to extend it to a larger population. The running/orienteering acquaintances who have been known for long enough and closely enough for there to be an awareness of their childrens' running competitiveness have effectively been selected as almost exclusively highly competitive themselves, because they are the people he sees week-in and week-out at races. The people that show up once or twice and quickly lose interest, despite the fact that they probably represent a large fraction of the people he has actually met at these races, never enter into his consideration. So anything less than near 100% high competitive interest of their children represents an apparent drop-off in competitiveness. But many of these kids may well have been pretty much dragged to the races by their enthusiastic parents with little interest on their own part, and will have dropped the activity as soon as they were out of parental control. And others may well have strong competitive interests, but ended up following them in other sports which were less apparent to him.

I could certainly gain a perspective biased in the opposite direction by comparing the competitiveness in orienteering between people I know in my son's generation and what I know of their parents' competitive interests. Basically, the majority of my son's friends that come to mind in this context are other orienteers, most of whom can be followed on AttackPoint! While many of them do indeed have competitively focused orienteers for parents (it is one of the more likely routes for getting interested in the sport in the US), a lot of them don't. So I would naturally be perceiving an increase in competitiveness in the younger generation, rather than the reverse, based on this methodology.

In any case, at the top end of running competition, I don't see any particular decline like that which BMay/iansmith pointed out at the 100th place finishing times for the NY Marathon. The winning times since Bill Rogers' victory in 1976 have all been within 2 minutes of 2:10:00 except for 1984 when it popped up to 2:14 and for 2011 when it dropped down to 2:05. There is a little more scatter in the 10th place finish time (typically about 2:14) and 25th place (about 2:24), but on the whole the distribution of people with what might be considered to have at least some outside chance of winning the race doesn't seem to have changed a lot over this 25 year period. It is only when we get to this grayer area where the times are over 30 seconds a mile slower than what would be required to win that we seem to be seeing a significant dropoff. I would consider this to be a sign of an increase in some combination of competitiveness and realism. People want to be good at things, and if they discover that they are pretty good but not really near the best, one natural approach is to try out something enough different so that the relative standing improves.

The percentage of people able to read that last post in under three hours is about 10% or less, although that rate was probably higher in the 1980s.

tRicky can't even take the time to read full paragraphs now. Just another sign of our societal decay. http://www.xkcd.com/1227/

Not that it matters but in the early 80's the young men qualifying time for Boston was 2:50.

Perhaps I should have said 1880s.

Thanks eldersmith - I thought I was the only one who's post ever trailed on longer than one screen...

Interest - that's what we don't have as much of.

Back in the day, there were three stations plus PBS, and we were excited by the new WUHF (FOX) channel simply because now there were four and a half options...

Today - well today there's a huge number of options.

BTW - the very same topic is current on the Race Walk mailing list I follow... Imagine that. Their discussion is a little different in that it _is_ an Olympic sport, and the USATF _does_ sponsor international competition.

In addition to the laments of "where are all the athletes?" and "what can we do to bring juniors in, train them well, and keep them active?", they also face issues like "should we bother sending a team that barely makes the international qualification standards?".

And here's a big difference - the winner of the 2013 US outdoor championships took home prize money of $6000 (and there was money for the next 7 as well).

In the mean time, the Major League Gaming (MLG) Pro Circuit, expected tens of thousands of spectators for the 2012 video game event in Columbos - http://www.columbusconventions.com/pressrelease.ph...

And the Magic The Gathering (card based game) Grand Prix expects 800 teams in events starting in Devember - https://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.asp...

The question really has to be - what about Orienteering distinguishes it from the 2,637 other activities people could be doing?

And what distinction is there in being the fastest? (of your peers)

Steve, your post brings me to comment on my g/f's recent cyling competition at her workplace. They were organised in teams of four and had two minutes each on the windtrainer to go as fast as they could. Her team won with the g/f taking out 'most competitive' (she got the most distance out of all the girls). Apparently there were a few comments about it being unfair that she was allowed to enter because she is an 'elite athlete'. You see, she used to do triathlons. In her last tri she finished third last but this still somehow qualified her as an elite amongst her workmates, many of whom consider anyone doing organised outdoor activities as elite.

So yes even perception of what an elite athlete is amongst non-athletes is warped.

Meanwhile our local football team (Fremantle) made the national grand final, which was played yesterday (on the other side of the country), and 40,000 people turned up en masse in Fremantle to flood the bars, pubs and to watch on the big screens in the street. You have to wonder how many of these people would do sporting activities themselves that they would turn up in such numbers to compete.

Did they win? My niece went over for it.

No they got only one goal in the first half, came back to within three points in the third but couldn't bring it back.

In the third half? Sometimes this stuff is hard to comprehend...

Another perspective (on the original topic of the thread):
http://www.outsideonline.com/fitness/endurance-tra...

Ahh, the game is played in quarters but they only scored one in the first half (being the first two quarters).

Don't confuse things (again) tricky, quarters are coins as well. It's like a game of two-up you're describing!

You need to be drawn and quartered.