Discussion: Orienteering and AR

Having just participated in my first adventure race, I have a few observations about AR. In the past, there have been discussions here about the popularity and marketability of AR (or the perception of such things) and how orienteering can learn and/or capitalize on it. So, here we go.

1. Adventure racers understand the importance of navigational skills in winning a race. But many seem to have no idea that orienteering clubs exist or even that there is a sport dedicated to land navigation. I got a lot of confused looks when I mentioned an "orienteering meet".

2. Adventure racers pay a lot of money for one race and a lot of money for equipment. This isn't a new observation, but I just thought I'd emphasize it.

3. Desperate for navigational instruction and practice, adventure racers will pay big bucks for nav clinics where they learn basically what people get for free at a local orienteering meet's beginner clinic (albeit with a more organized and "official" presentation).

4. Adventure racers are enthusiastic and dedicated. They like to try new things, they pay lots of money to train and race, and they want to be better adventure racers.

I'm not in the "expand orienteering just for the sake of expanding it" party, but I do think that orienteering clubs do a pretty poor job of marketing themselves to interested audiences. Some clubs seem to think that just existing and having a website should attract new participants. A lot of AR types would not only enjoy orienteering to help train and to fill in those non-race months, they might even become enthusiastic volunteers for a local club.

If I lived in a place with an O club, I'd propose organizing and advertising a "navigational workshop" held in conjuction with local meets. Offer a package for $15 or $20 that includes instruction by a navigational expert (a competent advanced orienteer), a long practice course, and course review after the run. This is essentially what happens at every meet for some clubs, except that's not how it's advertised. Having one or two people dedicated to a group, with a set start time for instruction, pre-registration, etc., will appeal to people who are used to large, structured events. Just having a slip of paper advertising "navigation workshops" in the schwag bags at a race would probably draw some serious interest.

I don't know if this would generate a lot of new, dedicated Oers, but it doesn't seem like a lot of work, and my impression from yesterday is that adventure racers would jump at (and pay $$ for) the opportunity for nav training. I'd be quite eager to give this a try if I had a club (or even a map!)

I know some clubs have made an effort to reach out to the AR community, offering "AR-friendly" courses, or long orange courses. I'd be interested in hearing how that's gone...

Okay, if a club is already offering a "beginner's clinic", how much more work and time is it to change the name to "Navigation Workshop", and have a mandatory sign-up?

I've seen a lot of discussion of offering special events just for AR types, or mini-AR events. That's a lot of work. This is very much less work in comparison. Existing course-setting, existing volunteer structure, existing permits. One person giving a clinic. Some effort expended to advertise to potentially interested parties.

I'm not talking about making orienteering more AR-like, or orienteering clubs getting into the business of AR. Just a new spin on an old trick, which could be used to suck cash from adventure racers.

Info on the Golden Horseshoe Orienteering Club's "Dontgetlost.ca Navigation Clinics" is here!

The club has trained several hundred people in the last 5 years. Many of the adventure racers that started with those clinics are now very active members of the GHO club.

On a related note. Are there any clubs in the US that hosts orienteering sections within races for AR companies? (I am already aware of HVO). Also do any orienteering clubs rent out SI to AR companies? A list of clubs and contact info would be greatly appreciated.

I scored two adventure races with SI in 2005 for ex2adventures.com. They rented QOC's controls and SI cards from elsewhere. I used MultiSport, which is software from the same guy who does the O meet software. Software needs a few improvements before I would recommend it 100%.

QOC has set the O course for one of these events in previous years. They didn't do an O section this year.

Eddie - I didn't change the text of my first post. I was rather long-winded, so maybe you missed a paragraph (or two or three) the first time.

I don't know what seems to have changed, but I certainly didn't change anything to make anyone look like an idiot. I'm usually skilled enough at doing that to myself, I wouldn't subject others to it. ;-)

Okay, now I just look like I'm having a conversation with myself. Maybe I could be a subject in the movie "Proof 2".

I believe that CAOC set the courses for the Chicago Wild Onion races. They certainly supplied the maps and controls. They were very tough courses by AR standards, comparable to US Blue courses and they were done at night. Many teams lost hours to the winning Finns.

The Berryman Adventure in central MO, has always been set by Keith Lay, who's a member of PTOC, although there was no official involvement from the club.

As to the original question: SLOC has advertised and held a few nav clinics for Adventure Racers. They have been lightly attended, but those attending seemed pretty happy with what they got. The biggest problem we've had is convincing folks that real orienteering is valuable. They see the parallel with Rogaining, but detail navigation on O-maps looks like overkill.

I think that very few adventure racers realize how much time they lose en route. They focus on time lost to booms. Granted those can be catestrophic, but I think the big losses are simply due to an inability to stay in contact with the map while moving.

Also to the original point - the race in question is Raid the Rock, which I also attended this weekend. Most of the participants were from Arkansas. As no O clubs or meets exist in Arkansas, I don't think they can be blamed for not knowing about O clubs and meets. At adventure races in areas where there are active clubs, the majority of the racers are at least aware of orienteering as a sport (even if many of them have never done it).

Attention needs to be focused here on what happened to Big Eddie. Did a goblin get him? Could it have anything to do with the Harvest Moon? Perhaps the voodoo curse has previously unsuspected powers, including the power to take out a Big Eddie? The ideal agent for this kind of investigative assignment would of course be the reknowned Piutepro, except that, inexplicably, something seems to have happened to him too. But his disappearance is probably easier to explain, as he was always a little too quick to mock the western attack badger. They will only take so much of that sort of thing before retaliating, and it's a well known fact that even for attack badgers, dinnertime comes around once a day. Piutepro, we hardly knew you.

Well, now that Swampfox has joined, I think we can safely expect this thread to devolve into chaos. But before we get too sidetracked on Big Eddie’s whereabouts (a concern to be sure!), I’m wondering about the premise of Christina’s point 3.

Hammer’s response would indicate that at least our northern counterparts are hungry for some navigation instruction. Is that true in other areas as well? It certainly is not around here.

The adventure racers around here are dedicated and they train and spend liberally. But, they don’t seem to get the value of nav practice. David and I are constantly being asked what the “trick” is. When we tell them it’s several hundred hours in the woods with a map for each of the next five years, they suddenly don’t seem too interested in our advice.

The strange thing is that none of them doubt that it takes that sort of effort to become physically capable of winning a major AR. For some reason, they expect the mental training to be trivial.

Maybe what they need is a version of CatchingFeatures that is built around AR-style navigation.

That's actually a pretty good idea! What about it Biggins - could some of the catching features areas be remapped to USGS standards?

"Most men would rather die than think, and many do" -- Bertrand Russell. I don't know if this has anything to do with our missing Big Eddie or not, but it's clear that our culture values the physical over the mental. How else could the "Simple Life" be explained?

Big Eddie is not a sidetrack, by the way. He's Big Eddie, and as long as we don't know what happened to him, we should be very concerned because it's possible that attack badgers got him too, or else--even worse--he's been ensnared in some sort of evil Teslin based map trap. At $3 a sheet, he'll never be able to bring himself to rip his way out.

Hey Swampfox,

You ought to get some Teslin maps. When some yahoo out in Wyoming puts holes in your truck you can just patch it up with the Twin Boulders, Teslin Version. Try that with a paper map.

Heck - try some of the things I put my Robuskin map through at the Boulder Dash. Vadim has photographic evidence of my exploits. Soon to come...

Sure, making the maps less accurate is easy...

The Calgary club and Alberta association have taught nav to AR, and held ARs with an orienteering bent, with good success. Quite a few of our younger adult members are from AR.

ARs "get it" when orienteers blow by them in an AR. I ended up in 7th place at one checkpoint (out of dozens, many far fitter than me) after one particularly simple bit of nav. (As I came down a hill, I saw a half dozen ARs sitting on the grass by their bikes. One of them saw me and said "he's from the orienteering club!!!" and they all got up. Apparently they had been going up and down a trail for an hour not finding the side trail. But the side trail was in a huge side valley, easily visible from afar, so even though the actual junction was a bit faint, finding it was easy for an orienteer.)

I would make the point to ARs that they get a heck of a lot more nav practice for the time expended orienteering on a detailed map, where features come up every 30 seconds, and decisions need to be made every few minutes at most, than on a ROGAINE or topo map, where features come up every ten minutes, and decisions are taken every half hour or hour. If you spend an afternoon navigating and only make five decisions, that's a pretty slow way to learn nav!

I also wouldn't paint the picture of five years of intensive training. ARs need basic navigation skills. Being able to read contours well enough to perceive a 50m deep side valley off a 100m deep main valley would save them hours of frustration. In one season we've taught juniors well enough to do intermediate to advanced navigation by the end, and nearly beat our best existing juniors. A couple sessions with the O club, plus a few O events as practice, ought to be enough to make a dramatic difference in the life of an AR. Follow up with some intermediate navigation sessions (which your other members will also appreciate) and I think you'll have a dedicated AR following in your club.

Consider sharing a booth in an AR show with some friendly AR company, and hand out your schedules and brochures. That's one way we started the tidal wave of ARs in O. (The other was to host an AR in the city, stressing O a bit and giving participants a club membership. Work, but feasible.)

Most of the people I talked to at the race seemed to understand that nav was the name of the game if you wanted to do well and win at AR. Not all of them were interested in being the nav for their team, but they all seemed to understand that smooth orienteering was good. Some people just wanted to find a good nav rather than groom one, which could potentially be another draw for them to attend O meets - recruit a new teammate. (Hopefully the recruit sticks with orienteering, too ;-). That's not really what I'd be shooting for, though...

The paying big bucks notion comes from the fact that people attended the >Raid the Rock orienteering clinic, which was $75.
I didn't attend the clinic, but did get out on the map. The actual course setting was trivial (large feature, ROGAINE style). I don't know what they covered in the instructional portion, but setting out 15 controls and teaching for 3 hours at $75/person, even with only 3 or 4 people, is worth doing. If the course is already set and the controls are hung, that's easy cash for a small club.

It's true that many competitors were from Ark, but even the Missourans that I talked to were unaware of the existance of local clubs. It probably varies a lot based on location. I'll try not to generalize too much based on my one experience.

I could care less if people who aren't really interesting in orienteering start going to meets. But if I had a cash-strapped club, I'd look to these big spenders for some supplemental income...

And I know nothing about this "Big Eddie" creature. I only know that I have the words "Pig Freddie" written in a textfile, but in a different part of the file than I was using at the time in question.

Note that although many of the ARs who come to our events are mostly interested in AR, some have become avid orienteers and active volunteers. It's been good for our club all around.

A recent survey by the Canadian Adventure Racing Association found that only 6% of the adventure racers participate in orienteering events nationally. I suspect that this is higher in southern Ontario. But given that we have increased membership and had absolutely great peole join and volunteer in the club from AR already, imagine the growth and win-win potential if we attracted even a third of the remaining 94%!!

The 20 or so members of SLOC who make substantial contributions to the club are divided into roughly three equal groups: Long-time (20+ years) orienteering folks, relatively new (10 or less years) orienteers not coming from adventure racing, and relatively new orienteers coming from adventure racing. Drawing this trend to it's logical conclusion, I think we can expect that half the contributing members of the club will have an AR background.

Also of note is the fact that several of the "long-time" crowd have become avid adventure racers. Clearly, there is a mutually beneficial arrangement here. The hard part is, as Cristina points out, getting the word out to adventure racers. The nav clinics for Raid the Rock were put on by Team Traveler (competent navigators to be sure, but I don't think any of them have done serious orienteering).

Meet directors (as a group - many exceptions) seem quite oblivious of the orienteering community. I've had more than one respond to a comment about a misplaced control with, "this isn't orienteering." Really? It's not using a map and compass to find checkpoints in unfamiliar terrain? It sure seems like it to me.

I think that many meet directors intentionally downplay the connection with orienteering because they don't want to be held to the standards of control placement common to O-meets. I'm not saying they should be (nobody cares which side of the boulder you put it on in AR), but getting them in the right spot does seem like a reasonable expectation (one that was met at Raid the Rock, BTW).

At any rate, I think the only way this gap is likely to be bridged is if more people from the O community start putting on actual adventure races (not just clinics). The accounts of such have been uniformly positive both from the standpoint of competitor satsifaction and revenue for the hosting club.

In Feb, I am putting on the 2nd annual "Dillo-Goat" (Amidillo+Goat) for NTOA. It will be a bit shorter than standard goats becauses not many of the TX Dillo-Goat orienteers can run standard goat distances; longest course will be ~10km. After the previous thread on this subject I decided I would add a purple/black/"Adventure Run" course in an attempt to attract the AR folk and maybe some trail runners.

What type of course would attract the AR people? 10-15km of yellow/orange nav? How should it be sold to them? Are they happy with bare-bones type races for low cost or are the expecting a lot of SWAG? If there isn't a lot of amenities, am I doomed to a low turn out?

And if I did attempt to put on an 30 min instruction-clinic taylored to adventure racers, what information do they need? How should their clinic be different than the usual "beginner's clinic?"

I'm not interested in dipping into the deep pockets of the AR community. I would be happy to simply get more cross-over. I just don't have a good feel for what they are looking for and what their educational needs are.

Hammer can explain this more, but one of the keys in the cross-over from AR is to show teams the benefits of having more than one person capable of navigating. While most teams expect everyone to be solid runners, bikers, kayakers, breakers, djs, and other stuff, the majority of the teams I know put all their eggs with their one navigator and its up to them to lead them to the promise land. What the Raid the Hammer does is feature a section in which the team can break up and teams with 3 navigators can really move up, the Matrix.. I did the Giant's Rib Raid a couple of years ago with Wil Smith and Cherie Mahoney. We were mid pack after the first two sections, mostly featured a climb up a ski hill. Then it was pretty simply Orienteering on our own. We emerged in 3rd place.

Adventure racers want advantages, if they discover that it's useful for everyone to be able to read a map, they will start training for that.

I agree with Nevin, with an additional point. In AR, unlike adventure running or orienteering, there is usually only one map shared by a team of 3-4 people. It is best if they all know how to read a map, but they probably won't have one in their hands. So the challenge is to teach adventure racers the many different tasks that comprise navigation, then help them come up with ways to navigate better by sharing the duties with their team.

An orienteer has to do all these tasks alone, so you may need to think through the different things you are doing. There are a lot of duties that can be shared with people who can't see the map:
- pace counting
- tracking time
- monitoring devices used in some AR, e.g. bike computer distance, altimeter reading
- looking ahead for features that you want to see - or don't want to see
- leading the team on a bearing
- keeping an eye on the terrain in case you need to relocate later (every team member should do this)

As our AR team's primary navigator (and primary control freak), I confess that I never delegate any task completely. But still, it's nice to know that there is a second person who is counting paces or making sure that we don't drift off our bearing.

This is also consistent with the spirit of AR, where the best teams work together to make their group better than the sum of the individual parts.

Is there a logical reason why there is only one map or is that just the way things have always been done?

I don't know the answer to that, but they do the same in military pentathlon competitions and I think it's just one more way to test team dynamics.

The orienteering section of military pentathlon is similar to the nav portions of ARs, in that you're in a team (of 3), with one nav, and you can expect a lot of surprises (map changes especially). Some pentathlete orienteers just put their head down and run, leading the team with little communication. I'm not such a good orienteer that I do that - why not take advantage of two more sets of eyes? I basically dictate what I expect to see next, as in, "we''ll pass a large reentrant on the left, then head up the next one on the right. control is at the top". I could delegate things that I don't normally do - like pace count - to my teammates. I think it works pretty well, and offers up a better way to work as a team than if all three people had maps, which would probably just lead to a lot of arguing.

It's not always one map - I've been in several AR's where multiple maps are used. Sometimes this is on purpose, but sometimes it's just being resourceful. When you're given a special map for the O section, that area is usually on the USGS map as well. Nothing stopping you from giving the USGS to a secondary navigator. Most of the time, the "special" map is just the USGS contours blown up to a larger scale with trails drawn in so the original USGS is almost as good.

When David & I are on the team together, we always hand the map back and forth during the foot sections. Even when I'm more or less the sole navigator (as in this last weekend), I still explain to my teammates what we are looking for and what to expect. It keeps their heads in the game and often they will spot the actual control before me.

To Tom's question: AR folks like things tough. Whatever you offer, make it long and/or physically challenging enough that they will have good stories to tell at work on Monday. Wandering around looking for a pit on a hillside doesn't make a good story, but if that same pit is in the middle of really nasty vegetation (e.g., the infamous #5) you've got a winner. I, personally, hate controls like this, but I'm firmly in the O camp when it comes to control placement.

I would definitely allow them to enter as teams, but I don't think I'd require it.

How about just one bicycle per team on the bike section to truly test team dynamics? Or, just one paddle... test their time-sharing capabilities.

Teamwork is also the basis for the success of that high energy, power trio from the western Canadian prairie--the Cowboy Junkies.

Which Cowboy Junkies are you talking about Mr. Fox? The band is from the Hogtown of Toronto.

Well, maybe they're not a high energy, power trio either! But you gotta love that clean, single coil tone no matter what.

And their version of Sweet Jane can even make Lou Reed (one of the surliest men on earth) shed a tear.

Whoever said that once Swampfox joined a thread it would go to hell?

Actually, Vlad, your suggestion is often employed and it certainly does test team dynamics. Last year at Nationals the final leg was a "Triad" where we had one bike and one scooter between the three of us. We could pass around equipment at will, but had to stay together. You can run surprisingly quickly when you're being towed by someone on a bike.

I always thought one map per team was to save money - not team dynamics.

I figured if they wanted to give each teammember a map they could just charge another $125 per person.

I wouldn't mind having two sets of maps per AR team, but even though all my teammates have some navigation expertise, I wouldn't push for more maps than that - and neither would they. If you've ever been in a situation where 3 or 4 people are trying to navigate at the same time (and I have), it's not nearly as efficient as having a single leader and decision maker, with other team members contributing to the navigation in specific ways. The leader doesn't always have to be the same person, and in fact it's helpful if the maps can be passed around to different team members so they can take their turns as leader. But it really wouldn't be efficient to have 4 people holding maps and trying to take charge simultaneously!

It is efficient to have 4 knowledgeable teammates who can share in the planning prior to the race. In AR, you usually get your maps ahead of time, so it's useful to have everyone involved in looking at route choices.

Also in AR, there is more overhead involved in having a map. I've done 3 races over 200 km in length this year, and you can imagine all the preparation, cutting, waterproofing and marking of the many maps. In one race, we were given about 25 maps, plus a gazetteer of an entire state. If we had multiple copies, I know that some checkpoint would get missed on someone's copy. Carrying a map case for an overnight trek can be awkward, especially when you need to make sure that the map can survive swimming across rivers, etc. For biking, many of us have installed special MTB orienteering map holders, which are expensive. The person carrying the map may have to stop occasionally to refold or change the map. Etc., etc. More maps don't necessarily make your team go faster.

in AR the length of non-sprint races means a lot of mental fatigue. and having at least one other person double checking the navigation rather than blindly following can save disastrous errors.

Back when I was doing 24 hour rogaines one person would generally 'lead' the navigation for a leg (we would trade off every couple legs), but the lead would voice 'the plan' to the other and that person would also be checking off features.

Doing a 180, or wandering up the wrong reentrant system can be disastrous and having more than one person paying attention to navigation - even if not making the decisions - is essential. Moreso when you've been out in excess of 8 hours and at night.... And if you don't have a map in your hand - you are resigned to just trusting your navigator and following.

If you only get one map, then have multiple navigators and trade off lead duty if only to give a mental rest to the navigator. I have done a number of rogaines where I paired up with a non-navigating trail runner and being the lone navigator takes a much bigger toll than it might otherwise appear. And mental lapses and mistakes are what cost you the big time losses

In September, I ran a clinic the weekend before a local sprint adventure race, offering slightly less than an hour of instruction and then about 4.5 hours for the participants to work their way through a short and easy course, a line-O, a control picking exercise, a route choice exercise and (in case a genius showed up) a memory-O. I charged $30 a head - not a soaking the adventure racers price but I think we often are too eager to give away our knowledge, thereby encouraging people to undervalue it. This was overkill as the race didn't involve any precision navigation worth mentioning but I hope the participants appreciated how easy the actual race navigation was by comparision. I started organising the event in mid-August and there was an unfortunate delay getting the permit and therefore starting advertising - I hope to hold it again next year for more than 11 people.

BTW, I propose we abandon "expanding orienteering just for the sake of expanding it" and move on to "expanding orienteering so Cristina can't find anywhere to live in the US that doesn't have an O club". It's good that Cristina is towards the lower end of the age distribution in US orienteering because it may take us a while to achieve this goal.

In ROGAINEs and other team events, I have found that having two people is very efficient, and a great advantage to a single navigator. Of course, that depends on having the right kind of people and the right kind of interaction. (I've generally been on teams with good navigators.) Often, I'll alternate legs with the other person, which means that one can read ahead while the other navigates the current leg. But also, especially with non-orienteering maps, it helps to have two pairs of eyes to interpret the terrain and map. I'm not sure how this would scale above two navigators, but if I were on a team of four orienteers, I'd be happy for all to have a map.

In one AR I did, we were given a waterproof topo map (a kind that is made by a local comapny and sold at retail outlets) and a list of coordinates of the checkpoints. No map prep at all for the organizers...just go to the store.

The "no map prep by AR organizers" is pretty standard around here. We normally get a stack of topo maps (not waterproof) with no markings, and a separate list of race instructions with lots of UTM coordinates. Sometimes there are additional maps - ski trail maps, canoe routes or ATV maps that need to be synched with the topos. Map preparation, UTM marking, route choice and marking, cutting and waterproofing is a big job involving the whole team. That's one of the reasons that I wouldn't want more than 2 sets per team.

I agree that two navigators holding maps can be efficient, e.g. in a rogaine. In our early days of adventure running, we sometimes had 3 active navigators, which led to occasional debates at trail junctions that used up whatever time we might have saved by taking a better route. Having multiple navigators is efficient when the navigators have similar experience, skills and philosophies about navigation. This is extremely rare in AR compared to orienteering or rogaining. When navigators think in different ways, it is probably better for them to take turns at the helm, rather than discussing every decision when the team is trying to hurry.

One minor point I'd make about "occasional debates at trail junctions"...this should be "occasional debates before trail junctions". Making all decisions before the critical juncture is reached saves a lot of time, both in orienteering and AR. I'd say that this timesaver is second only to avoiding major mistakes, and is one of the key skills that make orienteers good AR navigators (or good navigators period). It's also key to making multi-navigator navigation work, as Bash points out.

Agreed, however, this raises another point about nav clinics for AR. In our early days of adventure running, as brand new navigators (like many adventure racers), we didn't have the skills to run along while reading and discussing our maps in ways that would be meaningful to each other. We would have laughed at anyone who suggested it. (I can show you the scar from the first time I tried to read a map and run at the same time!) Whether we debated at the trail junction or before (and we did it both ways), it meant slowing or stopping, and often looking at the same copy of the map and pointing things out to each other. It's hard for most orienteers to recognize the huge number of skills that they have accumulated, often over many years, and now take for granted. I learned AR navigation and orienteering at the same time 3 years ago, and I feel like a total newbie compared to most orienteers I know. By AR standards though, I'm a grizzled veteran - and I've even done coaching for AR nav.

So when you're talking about how to coach the type of adventure racer who might sign up for a nav clinic (which is how this discussion began), you need to keep their skills and background in mind. Also, while we may disagree with providing one set of maps per team, this is still the case in most adventure races. So someone coaching adventure racers will do them a service by helping them to learn how to navigate well as a team, given the constrant of a single set of maps. This is rarely taught, and is really, really helpful.

Having coached navigation to over 200 AR navigators over the years (including several of Ontario's top teams) I feel quite strongly that the best way to teach people to navigate as a team is for them to all have maps and to learn all of the navigation skills themselves. In AR, the better the entire team is at navigating or least understanding the concepts of it the better they will be able to plan ahead as Jim mentions. But as Bash says it takes time and can't all be covered in one clinic.

If more people on the team can navigate the team will appreciate the skills better and have more patience when things go wrong. If in a race situation where they do not have a map they will observe the terrain more, understand why it is important to keep track of distance by pacing, understand why the compass goes in the hand and not around the neck, understand what orienting the map is and why the main navigator is running along an umarked trail, and they will be another set of "experienced eyes" for that all important relocation when an error does occur.

The skills are exactly the same. Rough compass, compass bearings, relocation, simplification, 2D-3D-2D imagery, pace counting, attackpoints, route choice, etc.

A basic navigation clinic can be an hour or two long and you can charge $20-$25 for that.

Once a team has basic navigation skills we then move them up the ladder to an intermediate skills level and bring in some more race type situations.
This can be in the $60 p $80 range depending on length and what you include (lunch).

Then at the advanced level we get the team working as a team navigationally. Have them think about who does what best, etc. What do they do if (when) they only have one map per team. But you can't do that as efficiently until the people on the team have a respect for what the main navigator is doing and what the skills are. Teaching this is best done as a private lesson and should be with an orienteer that actually adventure races - to provide real race situations. A private clinic could/should cost about the same as sprint AR race.

Orienteering has its traditions and so does AR. Not doing any prep work on the maps (course printing) and only 1 map/team is one of them for AR. Also there is a traditional perception that has been spread by the first AR participants that orienteering is not helpful to AR navigation skills development. This is frustrating because the sports are very complimentary to each other. AR is multi-sport orienteering.

But one Canadian AR company still has this to say about navigation "Navigation for adventure racing and orienteering are NOT the same thing. Orienteering deals with finding precise markers using accurate, detailed maps. In adventure racing, navigation is about interpreting ambiguous and sometimes incomplete information to find distinct (and usually obvious) points."

Umm, errr. The guy who wrote this has really no idea what he is talking about. Navigation skills are navigation skills. Sure the maps are different but the skills are the same. You need to learn all the skills and decide at what time do I use skill A or B or X.

Interestingly I raced the guy that came up with that false statement about orienteering and navigation in an AR race this summer. After 4.5 hours of paddling and biking our team was 3 minutes behind his. After the next 10km of quite straight forward navigation (orienteering) we had a 90 minute lead. Hmmmm.

So I would encourage entire teams to take navigation clinics together and to practice navigation and orienteering events as much as possible because this is what still separates the teams at the finish line in AR. Learn what the skills are and learn from orienteers. Then develop a team plan to move as fast as possible and plan ahead as best possible.

And for everyone to race the Raid the Hammer in 3.5 weeks (we give out 3 pre-marked maps per participant on waterproof paper).

>>> I feel quite strongly that the best way to teach people to navigate as a team is for them to all have maps and to learn all of the navigation skills themselves. <<<

Definitely! The only way for a team to learn how to navigate well together is for each person to have his/her own copy of the map in the nav clinic. Each person must become a "complete" navigator on her own, and must learn all the different nav skills and understand how they interrelate. Then, for an AR-specific clinic, the students will benefit from guidance on how to share the tasks. The reason that I harp on this is because there are far too many teams with one navigator and 2-3 followers, even when all the team members have taken a nav clinic. This is because nobody has ever explained to them how they can share the duties.

>This is because nobody has ever explained to them how they can share the duties.

Then they haven't taken the Dontgetlost.ca Nav 301 clinic! ;-)

Good points, Hammer, but I do think that there is some specificity to AR navigation that is lost in orienteering. Orienteering should teach you to trust the map completely. If something looks wrong, you are wrong. That's not true on AR maps. Stuff is mapped wrong all the time. If you try to reconcile everything that surprises you, you'll give away a lot of time.

I believe this is at the heart of the AR objection to orienteering. It is certainly the standard excuse of race directors that put a control in a poorly mapped area, "It's part of the Adventure!" While O-skills certainly do help far more than they hurt, you do need to do some training on AR quality maps to get used to what sort of things you should ignore and when you really need to be concerned that you might have lost contact with the map.

I disagree entirely. No map is perfect, or can be. By necessity there's stuff left off the map, and it's inherently markedly subjective what gets mapped and what doesn't. Although the better orienteering maps are more consistent in their depiction of the terrain, I always come across, say, rock faces that aren't mapped (because they're ever so slightly too small the mapper felt...or occasionally the mapper missed them), and have to make the determination of whether they're mapped or not on the run. A good orienteer gets beyond depending 100.0% on a single feature, and keeps in contact with multiple features, in case that one feature just isn't seen, or looks different, or is seen but not on the map, or no longer exists, or whatever.

Yes, there's a difference in degree in map reliance between O and AR, but the same skill of determining what's on the map, and what's not, and correctly matching the terrain and the map, is a key skill in both.

The AR where I gained hours on non-orienteers was one where the map was funky. An unmapped trail continued down the main valley, and the junction with the mapped trail up the side valley wasn't easily visible. My orienteering skills are what made it easy for me to handle this poorly mapped bit. A completely routine matter of doing the best fitting of the terrain features and map features. No different from deciding which blob of rock is mapped as I approach a control.

My perspective anyway.

I very much agree with Jim. Anecdotally, I think the best technical Orienteers I know personally have also demonstrated the best ability to deal with ambiguities or inconsistencies with Orienteering maps and USGS or similar maps. They are good navigators, and as long as the challenge presented is "navigating" loosely or strictly construed, they will excel. I think they would find it nonsensical to suggest that AR navigating has a different starting point or philosophy.

I'm a huge proponent of O for its own sake, and O as great training for AR. And I agree - experienced orienteers are very well-equipped to deal with ambiguity. But Eric does have a point. The difference is that incomplete information and imperfect maps are considered to be a fundamental part of AR, at least in our part of the world. In O, the race organizers are often apologetic if a map is out-of-date or contains many errors. They might even go out of their way to avoid placing a control on a feature that is mapped incorrectly, knowing the barrage of complaints that will be posted on Attackpoint. ;-)

In AR, nobody says they're sorry about the maps, and complaints to organizers are uncommon. Some organizers even take special delight in putting checkpoints in areas where the map is difficult to figure out. Checkpoints aren't always located on or near mapped features (which is annoying). And it's considered uncool to let this stuff bother you too much.

In the advanced AR nav course I took, they spent a lot of time talking about how to choose which map information to rely on, and to what degree. Maps are often 25-30 years old, so man-made features like roads or buildings are the least reliable, although you don't discard that information entirely, because a road is definitely handy when you're trekking 40 km through the night. If we come across an unexpected road, we don't automatically assume that we've gone astray - although that's one of the options. We first consider whether the road appears to have been built more recently than the map was made. The most reliable features on an old map are the ones that good orienteers have no problem with - contours, watercourses, etc. Hence, people with good O skills rock in an adventure race!

It's hard to imagine an orienteering clinic devoting considerable time to discussing "things you should probably not trust on your map" - although this would be a useful skill for some events, especially rogaines. Dealing with imperfect maps is a skill that belongs to both O and AR, but it is truly a central feature of AR navigation. One of my biggest problems going back and forth between the sports is dialing in my "map distrust" factor to the right level.

"Checkpoints aren't always located on or near mapped features (which is annoying). And it's considered uncool to let this stuff bother you too much. "

That's a lesson I learned this weekend. I found it quite aggravating that many checkpoints were not located on a specific feature. Or, they were on a feature (like a large rock feature), but the feature wasn't mapped or indicated. I don't mind dealing with old maps, but this is one aspect of the sport that would take a bit of getting used to...

Eric mentioned above about how ARs don't think to spend as much time training for navigation as they do the purely physical aspects. I can see more ARs getting into orienteering (and sticking with it enthusiastically) once they realize that it is an involved subdiscipline.

While I'll happily concede that no map is perfect, I think there's a pretty big difference between a missing rockface and a missing uncrossable 20m cliff (like the one we ecountered at night last spring at Ozark Challenge and lost a good bit of time getting around it because there was NO indication on the map what was cliff and what was merely steep hillside).

The types of problems you run into on orienteering maps are quite trivial compared to what you find on a typical USGS map. My point was simply that to get through an AR nav section quickly you have to loosen your relaince on the map and be flexible in your route planning. You must take safer routes, use larger features, and be prepared to be out of contact with the map.

When I'm training novice orienteers I always tell them that the instant they don't recognize their position on the map, they should try to relocate (usually by going back to the last point where they new where they were). I don't tell novice adventure racers this. First, they won't do it. Second, it's not that good of advice. Instead I work on how to identify the things that you absolutely must see to be confident you're still on your route. If you see other stuff that doesn't make sense, don't sweat it.

These are all things that good orienteers are capable of and certainly not bad advice for a beginning orienteer even on good maps. However, I run AR courses fundamentally differently than I run O courses. I set aside training sessions on USGS maps secifically to work on AR techniques. Yes, O skills transfer, but my point is that there is some specificity here and it should be taken into account when training AR folks.

One final example that I hope helps illustrate my point. This was in a ROGAINE, but it could just as well have been a nav section in an adventure race. Clue is stream. Map shows the circle on a stream in a wide, flat valley. Easy control right? Wrong. We hit the stream well left of the control and turn right. We go quite a ways and don't find it. Surely we were left of the control, but now we're obviously right. After some more hunting we give up and move on. 100m later we hit a SECOND stream, exactly the same size and running parallel to the first. Orienteering training teaches you to do what we did - to place a control on a second, unmapped stream would be unthinkable. AR training would have taught us to consider the possibility of more than one stream in the valley (or the possibility that the course setter was using GPS rather than features to set the control) and search in two dimensions instead of one.

BTW: uncool or not, I have no qualms about telling the organizers (politely and usually privately) that these sorts of things detract from the competition. Usually the response is the typical dismissal, but some directors do listen.

I agree that imperfect maps are a key feature in AR, however i dislike the fact that organizers whether knowing or not misplace checkpoints. Bash, i may not have as many AR under my belt as you but isn't it defeating the purpose of navigating if CPs aren't located near a feature? I've been in race where almost a half dozen were placed in green area. On 1:50000, that can be and was annoying as hell since you can be magnitudes off with no catching features close by. Bingo control is all i could say.

I think that organizers need to take accountability in terms of misplaced CPs. You mention "Checkpoints aren't always located on or near mapped features (which is annoying). And it's considered uncool to let this stuff bother you too much." Well i think its uncool to let race orgainzers steal my money due to an error on thier part or the fact that organizers cannot place a correct CP. What am i paying for then? It appears it may a lesson in relocation theory. What it boils down to is that organizers need to do some vetting of thier courses. Unlike AR, i think O benefits in terms of vetting. You need a third party to go in there to determine if the CP is in the right place and if its even there at all. Thats the beauty of events like Raid the Hammer where you know that controls will be there and have been checked. I'd be surprised if any AR is checked throughly (up here anyways from the stories i hear). This perpetuates a credibility problem and in a way has to deter people from competing.

At Nationals last year (excellent course, BTW), the organizers, Global Extreme, made quite a big deal of the fact that the course would be vetted. I had to laugh, it was like this was such a novel concept that getting the locations right was a big selling point. You'd think that would be a minimum standard, not a bonus.

Eric i totally agree that you have to approach AR in a different light than O. Using the larger features and knowing that you'll be out of contact is a must especally on 1:50000. AR does teach you to get out of that box if you are traditionally O-trained and learn if you haven't seen it - go further approach. Its most likely further than you anticipate and you have to think like an organizer at times. Frustrating yes but almost expected most times. At least that's where O training helps in dealing with those problems. More nav practice the better off you are in the end. Thats funny though that a big selling point would be a vetted course...:)

You're right, Meridian. There is no excuse for misplacing CPs in AR, and it happens more often than it should. This is one of the reasons that we need the Canadian Adventure Racing Association to set standards for sanctioned races, including vetting by independent parties. For the price we pay (especially compared to O, which is inexpensive and where misplaced controls are rare and punishable by death), it's a reasonable thing to ask. For the top AR teams who need to do well to impress their sponsors, these mistakes cost money in addition to taking away the fun and fairness. Tthe main reason for misplaced CPs is that many ARs around here are not completely designed until the final few days before the race, so there isn't much time for vetting. And sometimes the CP is placed by someone other than the course designer, so they might get it wrong. Kind of funny when you think that all the NAOC courses for Oct. 2006 have already been set and tested! By volunteers!!

A misplaced CP is not the same thing as a CP that is not on or near a mapped feature. As an orienteer, I'd love everything to be on a mapped feature, but as an adventure racer, I have come to accept that some CPs will be "at the intersection of the snowmobile trail with an unmarked gravel road that leads generally northeast". It doesn't mean that I enjoy setting a compass bearing and looking for "a large birch tree" 900 meters ahead, but c'est la vie. (In defence of some AR companies, they don't all do this.)

And I wasn't trying to discourage anyone from being "uncool" and complaining about ambiguity and imperfect maps in AR. (Misplaced CPs are well worth a complaint.) Just saying that these things are generally seen to be part of the sport, so don't expect much more than a fake-sympathetic nod!

Actually, I have no real problem with the "bag in woods" controls in AR (or, more commonly, PVC pipe in woods). I think that finding a good attack point and then hitting the control with compass and pacing is a legitamate skill to test, especially since a well-trained team can fan out and find such a control much faster than teams that rely on a sole navigator. Anything that rewards teamwork is good for AR.

I don't like it when they hide controls, but thankfully that is becoming much less common.

As for vetting, USARA seems completely oblivious of the practice. There's nothing about it in their sanctioning guidelines - even for nationals qualifiers. I do know that some of the more enlightened promoters are not only vetting, but actually doing pre-runs of the entire course to make sure the expected winning time is right. Anytime I hear of someone doing this, I try to get to their race. It's a sign that they have a clue.

I agree with Jim. Orienteers have very good skills to know when to and when not to trust a map. My experience in AR is that that the orienteers excel even more when the AR maps are at their worst.

>"It's hard to imagine an orienteering clinic devoting considerable time to discussing "things you should probably not trust on your map"

Well we used to train this at National Training camps so it is important. Certainly one won't spend much time on it but you certainly develop that skill as you get more experienced. The size of the unmapped feature is not the point. Relying on a small rock face on ahillside is as important to middle distance orienteering as to relying on a trail on a hillside in AR. The point is that orienteers develop skills to deal with these situations as Jim points out.

Getting back to Christina's posting. We deliberately decrease the level of map quality as you go higher in the levels of our navigation clinics.
Change trails, flood valley's, remove fields, add fields, etc. But make sure you start off beginners on good maps. Then you can tell the advanced clinic people what to rely on and what not to rely on. This is as Bash points out an important part of AR navigation but is something that orienteers have very good skill at.

I should add that these statements about O vs AR are all generalizations. Not all AR events have misplaced CPs and not all O races have perfect maps and correct CP placement. Not all orienteers are good navigators and many AR'ers don't need any navigation lessons at all (and could give a lot of us a lesson in the use of map and compass).

The two sports are very similar and I believe orienteering has done its self a dis-service trying to suggest that it isn't the same. Similarly, some of the pioneers of AR have done AR a dis-service to AR by trying to suggest that AR is simply not multi-sport orienteering (which it is).

Sure the maps are different, the distances are different, etc. but the essence of the sports are the same. You have a map and a compass and course to follow a course. In orienteering be it running, MTB, ski or canoe is a one-sport race. AR is multisport.

I for one would like to see much stronger links between the sports. More AR events using orienteering maps (or simplified versions), more MTB-O races, more adventure runs and more co-promotion and race organization assistance and developing partnerships between clubs and AR companies (we can gain from their promotional and marketing strengths and they can gain from our tehcnical course planning expertise).

GHO is an offical Canadian Advenutre Racing Association 'race director' and we'll be going to the eastern Canadian race director meeting in late November (likely to be held in Hamilton). I hope it will be the start of a strong partnership.

I have set (foot & bike) orienteering sections for AR races using orienteering maps. Normally I use larger features with a lot of route choices to give the navigators an advantage. People who want to run, can run around. People who navigate get the shorter route. The normal level of controls is yellow. I can do things which would drive orienteers crazy: Put controls in the middle of a mountain laurel patch or have the control placed inside a culvert pipe.

On the Jeep/Genesis AR this fall I offered forked legs, a shorter one with intricate controls in reentrants and on small cliffs. The longer one was more or less a trail run. Interesting was, that about 80% of all teams chose the navigating legs.

I also had a boulder field with many controls in a small area, on top of boulders, in small caves (yes, Swampfox, they are the breeding ground for the eastern attack badgers, a species I found in your old play ground at West Point) and on cliffs. The insert map was enlarged to 1:2,500.

AR maps: Some trekking, canoe or bike sections are on sketchy, old maps, which need a lot of "intuition" to deal with. Some AR teams crawled through a 2 ft culvert because they could not find the 6ft culvert under the highway at the Genesis.

Some AR's racers are excellent navigators, these includes the orienteers who do ARs. The strategy for an AR is different, since the race is 12 hours or longer. As a course setter, I like the playful side of AR. Setting an AR course is inventing a fun game and I can invent the rules each time.

Having run AR courses set by Daniel, I can say the attention to detail is obvious. The controls may sometimes be on the "fun side", but they are always where they are supposed to be. This gives you confidence to attack the course aggressively.

This is sharp contrast to other AR races where the controls have been remarkably off from the mapped location. On those courses you have to hold back and run more defensively.

Getting the right mix of technical challenge vs fairness to the non-expert competitor is also important. Nav on some courses has been trivial (sub-white). That is frustrating to an orienteer. I can also understand the need to not make it too technical. Unfortunately, some race directors decide to make a course more challenging not by using technical control points in a well mapped area, but by dropping a conrol in the middle of a bland green section just to make it tough (read bingo).

Hammer wrote:

"The two sports are very similar and I believe orienteering has done its self a dis-service trying to suggest that it isn't the same. Similarly, some of the pioneers of AR have done AR a dis-service to AR by trying to suggest that AR is simply not multi-sport orienteering (which it is)."
"I for one would like to see much stronger links between the sports. More AR events using orienteering maps (or simplified versions), more MTB-O races, more adventure runs and more co-promotion and race organization assistance and developing partnerships between clubs and AR companies (we can gain from their promotional and marketing strengths and they can gain from our tehcnical course planning expertise)."

First time posting...

Hammer's comments echo the exact thoughts I have had recently regarding AR and O. My background is 22 years of Triathlon and have started O and AR the last 2 years. I have put on 6 low key sprint AR's 6 Adventure Runs (Ha!, I thought I had come up with a new event concept with Adventure running, only to look on line to see that Hammer had been doing the same thing for years).

Misplaced/vague controls ruin AR races. And not just for the top racers. One thing I made sure from the beginning with my AR races was to insure CP's were in the right place on the USGS maps I was using. Given the fact that I was also a novice/intermdediate navigator I located the controls on large features only. Even with limited navigation experience I have been successful at putting CP's in the right place. Better to have the navigation be a little easier and right than more complex and wrong. Especially with USGS maps.

I have been in AR's where the Cpntrols were marked wrong on the map. The last one cost my team 2nd place. We finished 4th when we went to the correct location on the map that was mistakenly located on the map wrong (confirmed by the RD) I did not complain because RD for AR have a tough job and there are not a lot of them.

I am doing Adventure Runs to introduce novices to Oienteering and increase the local O clubs participants and to give other endurance athletes another fun adventurous option in their lives.

Sprint AR's are absolutely multi sport Orienteering with a mass start and there is no reason AR's and O cant grow and prosper together..