Discussion: Ultra-long advanced courses Saturday change

Due to prognosis of temperatures above 100F (38C) we are shortening all advance ultra-long Saturday courses 10-20% with less climb. We will post new course stats Monday.

As we plan early mass start 9am temperatures should be much cooler in 70-80 range but it would heat up by noon.

Once again we are placing at least 16oz/competitor of water on each of water controls. These water controls are about 2-2.5km apart. We highly recommend to drink at each of water controls at least 1 cup.

A manned refreshment table with water, electrolyte drink, trail-mix bars, and GU will be 1/2 to 2/3 on advanced courses. It will be designated with a human being symbol in the last column of clue sheets.

If you think that it may be not enough we encourage to bring a camelback water pack and/or more food/GU with you on the course.

Ultra-long new course stats (only advanced Blue-Red-Green-Brown courses changed)
Course Length Controls Climb Expected Winning Time
Blue 15.4 26 750 2:15-2:30
Red 12.3 21 600 1:45-2:00
Green 8.8 16 480 1:25-1:35
Brown 6.9 11 340 1:10-1:20
Orange 4.6 11 150 1:00-1:10
Yellow 4.0 11 75 0:45-0:50
White 3.1 9 60 0:30-0:40

If anyone else is curious about how much the courses were changed, here's a comparison to the original info I found on a cached version of the CTOC web page from June 8th. Just FYI! :-)

Course	Original				Revised
	Distance (km)	Climb (m)	Controls		Distance (km)	Climb (m)	Controls
Blue	17.4	750	28		15.4	750	26
Red	13.7	610	24		12.3	600	21
Green	10.0	450	19		8.8	480	16
Brown	8.0	400	15		6.9	340	11
Orange	4.5	120	11		4.6	150	11
Yellow	4.0	55	11		4.0	75	11
White	3.1	30	9		3.1	60	9

I can't believe the Orange course has gotten longer. I'm afraid that's not acceptable.

And, interestingly, Green has gotten a significant increase in steepness.

The "Original" statistics shown above were the initial course details that had not been finalized. Another set was published about a week or so ago. I don't have a copy of those stats cached, but I know Green was listed as 10.0KM with 580m climb (I'm running Green). I happen to remember that the climb for blue was 900m. So, yes, the courses were shortened and climb was reduced for the advanced courses based on the final course details that were posted.

Tentative start times are posted
https://www.orienteeringusa.org/eventregister/a40/...

There might be couple changes to accommodate some requests though but it is more or less stable.

FYI, change from earlier climbs to later bigger climbs was done due to switch from "traditional" USA climb calculation along the "optimal" routes to bee-line calculation. Due to the fact that there so many "optimal" routes. Also bee-line calculation gives better sense of the terrain.

WTF with the crappy climb calculation at meets!

A.17.12.3 The course climb shall be measured as the climb in meters along the optimum route.

The rules seem pretty clear on how climb should be calculated.
As this is a sanctioned OUSA event, and a championship at that, I would expect a more thorough following of the rules.

C.20 Ultra Long:
C.20.3 WINNING TIME: 2:30-2:45 for the elite men;

That's got to be some gnarly terrain to expect over 10 min/km for the M21 winning times

What Ed said! Please advise Sanctioning about the use of improper climb calculations.

Sergey, please recalculate the climb numbers along optimal routes and post both here and on the event website.

Ok and who is to say what the optimum route is? Over the hill or around? If the setter runs both options and does the same time: which climb should be used?

In that particular case, probably around.

so zero climb on that leg, even though its 500m longer than the straight line. Hmmm.
Anyone else having difficulty with the logic here?????

Unfortunately as we all know the climb is supposed to be calculated along some arbitrary route that avoids all the climb, regardless of where the straight line (or the competitor) goes :-)

That's got to be some gnarly terrain to expect over 10 min/km for the M21 winning times

Times were shortened due to the forecast heat (now 2:15-2:30) so now it's slightly less than 10min/km (unless you run on the route with the optimal climb, in which case it's less again).

so zero climb on that leg, even though its 500m longer than the straight line
a) It looks better on the stats.
b) Same time for the leg, the flatter one will probably leave you less tired than doing the climb. Yeah, there will be some leg where the tradeoffs are even, but the climb is different. The setter then picks the route he likes best. But the listed climb should at least be the climb on some feasible route, rather than always using the straight line even if it's implausible.

Just my opinion, but if there were multiple optimal routes, most would prefer the highest climb to be posted.

Looking from afar, staging an ultra-long in a potentially hot place in high summer does seem to me to be a somewhat courageous piece of fixturing.

Much better off coming to this. They don't even bother listing distances or climb, that's how confident they are that people will pick the best route.

One thing we can be confident of - it certainly won't be 100F in Ballarat at the end of August.

There's always a first time.

Highest recorded maximum in August: 23C/73F. Probably won't happen though.

As a competitor I always despised published climbs along some arbitrary "optimal" routes. They were and are always under-reported, especially for longer advanced courses. Why don't we request to publish course length along the same "optimal" route? And there so many "optimal" routes for long courses.

As a competitor and organizer I prefer bee-line climb calculation as being better suited for hilly terrains similar to Gold Rush Hills and better representing expected real climbs thus making competition more fair.

FYI,
Simple formula I use to predict winning championship times in the USA works most of the time:
Time(min)=(course_length(km)*map_green_factor+10*course_climb(km))*pace_color(min/km),
where
map_green_factor ranges from 1 for white/yellow map to 1.3-1.4 for mostly green map
and
pace_color is
pace_blue=5:30 (short courses) or 6:00 (long courses)
pace_red=6:00 (short) or 6:30 (long)
pace_green=6:30 (short) or 7:00 (long)
pace_brown=7:00 (short) or 8:00 (long)

orange/yellow/white is harder to predict but 10min/km is some rule of thumb.

Hope to check it again this weekend :)

Sergey, thanks for putting on this meet. Directors and setters have an overwhelming amount of detail to attend to in the final days / hours before a meet, especially when courses have to be re-created to accommodate crazy weather or other last minute catastrophes. In my opinion, calculating climb numbers is among the least important tasks you need to complete.

Personally, I find so much variation in how different course setters calculate climb, that the climb number is practically meaningless to begin with. Some setters simply add contours, while others add a "fudge factor" to cover numerous small ups and downs, ditches, etc. And what's optimum to each person can vary tremendously. And what the setter thinks is optimum often differs greatly from what most people do.

Now in some terrain, calculating based on straight line would be ridiculous, because nobody will go that way and it's simply not a reasonable measure of what people will do. In other areas, the difference between straight line and optimal is minimal.

Bottom line, concentrate on quality courses, fun and challenging. Get the controls in the right places with the correct codes.

As a competitor, I take one glance at published climb numbers and basically say "flat", "normal", "steep", "insane". Climb calculation is such an inexact combination of art and science, that I really don't pay a whole lot of attention to the "exact" published numbers.

Now I'm not saying "don't follow the rules", but I am saying that some rules are a lot more important than others and if your time and effort is stretched to the limit, focus on getting the most important stuff right.

Thanks again, and I am looking forward to the meet! And if I don't see new climb numbers published before the meet, frankly (what Rhett said to Scarlet). In the end, we will all face the same course.

"I'm very drunk and I intend on getting still drunker before this evening's over."

I don't follow.

please recalculate the climb numbers

Any wonder them "A-meets" are sparse and becoming sparser?

Mike, that was well said.

I thought the request to recalculate climb and post both side by side was a very reasonable response from the sanctioning committee. It is not that they are unaware or unfeeling about the amount of work this will create, it is just that they have a job to do. The sanctioning committee has an important task, to ensure a certain level of quality and standardization. Their work is also rarely appreciated, as they are behind the scenes, in fact I certainly would need to look up on the website to see who the volunteers on this committee are.

Sergey, if you would like, I can take a look at the courses and report climb, as least as I see the optimal route. The email address in my AP profile is the best way to contact me.

to ensure a certain level of quality

Exactly. With limited manpower (it's always limited), it shouldn't be hard to estimate which organizer actions (or inactions) will contribute most to quality during the week before the event.

Yes, sanctioning has a much bigger role earlier in the process. The week before the event is certainly best used for other tasks. However, as the topic was brought up by a concerned potential customer, we can see that at least some in the audience would value having the numbers in the approved format. A polite note asking that the agreed upon climb calculation be performed doesn't seem like badgering the Meet Director.

The rules and the sanctioning committee, I believe, are intended to make hosting an A meet easier! Having a set of instructions to follow and a panel of willing experts to turn to for help is a great benefit to anyone putting on a high level event.

It's also possible to take the Swedish appproach: just don't list the climb at all. It's a "requirement" at A-meets, but I'll bet I can find many examples in my collection where it wasn't done.

As jjcote said - we don´t list the climb at all in Sweden (or at least rarely).
This may often only be noted in the meet notes in terms of "flat", "normal", "steep", "insane" as suggested by mikeminium above.
The way I understand it the difference in climb seldom makes an impact on neither attendance nor final results. Could be because terrain used in Sweden seldom is in the "insane" category though...
On the other hand - not unlike the US - there are certainly a lot of other requirements to fulfill when organizing high-level events in Sweden.

One example: The 2011 Team Trials (admittedly just a "semi-A" event). As ED, I was aghast when the CS refused to calc climb, and would have gladly accepted any offer to have someone else do it -- if only for the Blue & Red courses (Rosstopher was a participant).

It isn't hard to calculate climb according to OUSA rules, to build control descriptions, put controls in the right place, etc ... for suitable experienced staff.

To me, calculating climb along the straight-line route makes as much sense as calculating course distance along a straight-line route, in that for many/most courses, neither comes close to representing actual distance covered or climb experienced. So it it's OK to do for distance, I don't see why it's not OK for climb.

We can certainly have a discussion about changing the rule about how climb numbers should be calculated and displayed. But while the rule is in place (and has been for a long time), it seems silly to say "oh, it's ok not to display it because I don't use it."

But if we are going to use anecdotal evidence, then I can add that I find climb numbers to be very useful information and am very surprised that this is one regulation on which Swedish orienteering is not stricter.

Agree with Boris. While there is always different opinions about route choices, 'optimal route' when chosen by experienced person is by definition a route that the majority of competitors could choose and not be unhappy with.
So, this is definitely a useful information to the competitors, and gives a good indication of the amount of climb one would expect.

Each of us individual expert orienteerers (aren't we all) should have a pretty good idea where their route picking preferences fall compared to the average runner, and adjust their climb expectations

Straight line is the minimum distance that the course could be done in.

Climb could also be the minimum possible climb, except that Swiss course setters would pick a route that detours off into the next canton in order to get the numbers down. So you go for the flattest sensible route. But that's a matter of opinion, so instead you do the optimal route, since one subjective thing is as good as another.

I've always assumed that Sweden doesn't bother with climb because the terrain is generally flat, and the climb would vary wildly with route choice depending on which little bumps you decide to go over.

That would be an apt motto for OUSA: one subjective thing is as good as another

Could a case be made that the quoted length should also be on the optimum route? Yes. But straight-line distances can be measured automatically. As of now, as far as I know, climb calculations still require somebody to count lines, so they might as well count them in a useful way.

I find it easier to count contours that the red (or magenta or pink or whatever) line goes over rather than trying to count them on some other course.

But would you try to run that route?

Maybe, but as mentioned above if the distance is measured on the straight line due to it being easier (and any course setting software will do it for you), why not the climb? It's not as though everyone's going to run the route that gives the suggested climb no matter which version you use so why dumb it down.

This issue was brought up at a recent Aus national league event where the straight line came out at something like 750m but the course was given as 480m. I climbed far more than the 480m.

Climb on this leg?

Don't know, there's no contour interval stated.

Three contours.

The point is, why devise an 'optimal' route for climb if you're not going to do it for distance also? No one in their right mind (although when am I ever in my right mind) is going to go down the hill, across the river, back across the river and up the hill on the straight line. Is the optimal route to take the track and climb the extra contour?

This is a contrived case (though very close to an actual leg that I had on this map last month), but it illustrates the point. The difference between the straight line distance and the distance that you'd actually run is small (468 vs 514 m, less than 10% difference). But 8 contours instead of the realistic 3 is significant. (5 m contours, btw.) When I count contours to calculate climb, I don't agonize over the optimal route, I just pick a reasonable route. There are cases in steep terrain where the straight-line routes are unrealistic, and the length would be underrepresented, and I don't think there would be much objection if the length were measured on reasonable routes, provided it were stated that this is what was done.

Sprints are meant to be measured on feasible routes due to impassable objects (doesn't always seem to be done, except at major events).

Actually, all courses are supposed to be measured around impassable features. I always measure around lakes or out-of-bounds areas, though I realize that most people don't.

Any results yet? How did the weather turn out? Looks like it was "only" 95F today.

Eric and Ali won the elite classes. I think they will post results after the weekend. It was "cool" to start, only upper 60s, ending around 90 in the hills.

around lakes is somewhat easy...