Discussion: M35 vs M40

The recent US Relay Champs change to the M35-39 points allotment created an interesting discussion here and a similar discussion is ongoing at Nopesport

The thread discusses the age of masters and touches on why we have so many categories and why winning times get shorter with age and more.

I have often wondered if orienteering was introduced today and by North Americans would we adopt the same course length and age group standards of Scandinavia? For example why does USOF have more age groups than trail running that gets 5-10x the participation rate? OR, why do people run different length courses in orienteering when a 10K road race is the same for all participants as is a triathlon, marathon and an ironman?

Personally I think that masters should start at 40 (and I'm not saying that because I'll be 40 next year). It would align O with trail running and adventure racing. Anyway, give the thread a read.

This is an interesting question and I might be able to contribute with some facts relating to Scandinavian (i.e. Swedish) standards.

A similar diskussion is/has been going on at the "Alternativet" website - not so much regarding where the masters age should be, but more as a proposition that runners from different age categories should actually be competing more against each others on the same (and for masters longer) courses. The results should then be presented for that course only and not divided into age results.

Part of the discussion is building on the fact that the Swedish 'parallell ranking system' Sverigelistan does not at present handle very well the growing number of (too?) good point scores by many older competitors.

Physiological reasons for dividing into masters categories seem to become evident a lot later than the current system implies. As Hammer says 40 might be an appropriate age...

Looking at the top runners in the current Sverigelistan I noticed that among the top 100 runners there are actually 25% that are 35+, including several of the very best - with (former?) national team runner Håkan Eriksson at 45.

Domestic races in France are organized in 10 year classes, starting at 40 years. Veteran 1 is for 40-49, Veteran 2 is for 50-59, and so on to Veteran 4. There is no M/W 35.

When I ran there as a 38-39 year old, I thought an M35 class would have been useful. In national events, France gets a good turnout in M21E (about 70 entries), but there was no way I could handle a 15km course with a 90 minute winning time for Thierry Georgiou. M21A provided manageable distances with close to 200 competitors: enough competition that you dropped a few places for every minor error. The races were really satisfying.

But I got my major motivation for training for one of the few races where M35 was offered, and I had a chance to figure well in the placings. Motivation changes when there's a chance for a podium finish in your top age class, rather than moving from 50th to 45th in the second age class (M21A) if you do well.

In the US where competitor numbers are much smaller, there is a case for dropping M/W35. But if that occurred there should be the possibility for a technically demanding course shorter than Blue for 35 year olds who don't want to put everything into training, but do still want a technical challenge.

That is, there would be a need for both M/W21A and M/W21B (assuming the US won't offer M/W21E any time soon). M/W21B used to exist as a technically difficult course when I ran in the US in 1997, but it seems to have been dropped from the USOF classes: it had very low participation.

So if M/W21B doesn't work in the US, overall I would favor retaining M/W35. Not everybody wants to be superfit, and for those who are superfit, entries can be made in M/W21A courses.

It would be a mistake in the US to focus purely on the fittest/most active in the sport. Getting greater participation (in part, by letting lots of people have their little personal victories) provides for greater entry fees, more money, and more and better maps.

I also think it's a mistake to assume other sports have got it right, and orienteering has got it wrong. At the Masters Games, participation in orienteering outweighs other sports, precisely because orienteering has always been a sport that provides incentives to participate (ie a chance of doing well) at all ages.

M21B still exists, it's just now called Red Open (or M-Red). As before, participation rates are very low.

I've thought alot about this, and have often speculated that the US not having 21E and 21A (and specifically called that), was a barrier.

My reasoning is that if a young, fit athlete came along to orienteering without top-notch navigation skills, they perhaps would be intimidated by the 21E field in the US (such that it is), and get frustrated pretty quickly. Starting out in 21A, perhaps would be a different experience, perhaps leading to middle of the pack finishes right of the bat, and less frustration, and easier mobility and motivation to the podium in 21A, and then on to the jump to 21E. So the theory goes, anyway.

My experience, starting out neither particularily young or fit, is also something worth looking at along these lines, (which will drift the thread a bit). I was started on the yellow course (only about 2k or so), and it was suggested that I start on the even shorter white course. I wanted more distance right off the bat, and could see how younger, fitter althetes may blow off a starting course of 2K (unless it is spun as a sprint).

As for the M35/M40 question, I guess I see the IOF setting the direction there by starting the masters at 35, and would be curious about their reasoning before making the change here (tho I have always argued that M35 should be on blue, and perhaps M21 on something longer)

Seems like people got caught up in the age group situation and forgot about the other important point Mike brought up: why not have everybody run the same course?
I think this approach should not be rejected right away. I mean, I cannot see everybody run the same course because unlike a 10km race, I think in orienteering the navigation factor would increase the length of the race for some competitors by probably 10 folds... but having said that, reducing the number of different courses offered would be a smart idea. From an organiser point of view, orienteering is ridiculous. You look at events like Barebones (ALberta) that only offer 3 courses, and gees it's a popular event. If the medal is the carrot at the end of the stick, let's keep those silly 5 year age groups, but why not have them run at least the same course though? It would still make the awards ceremony unbearable (!) but at least it would reduce the amount of work for the organisers and offer more chances for competitors to compare themselves with other runners.

A separate M35 on Blue (and M20 also there, while we are at it) sounds perfectly fine to me.

Running the same course has the advantage of being able to compare splits and route choices with all participants.

I would say that M45 or M50 could comfortably run Blue course. Mostly its not the matter of age, but training volume. And category M35 is very strange, but if you start orenteering at age 35 it could make sense.

I thought the reason for the large variety of diffferent courses was because of the target winning times. USOF course structure is based on winning time, not course length, right? Generally if the M21s and the M50s both ran blue, the M50s would take longer.

Say you hypothetically have only one course and everyone runs it. If you have a large crowd of participants it takes some time to get them all interval started. And then even more time to get them all finished by the end of the day. And then there are the problems of having a string of people through the forest...all on the same route, which is not an issue for a road race. You also need technically easier and more difficult course options.

There is some balance between all of these factors to give the best number of courses at a given meet. Its > 1 and <= Nageclasses. Billygoats excepted.

Lets imagine that junior cateogories went up to 19 (as in Canada) and masters started at 40. This 20-39 age group would consist of individuals with:
1) good nav and endurance,
2) good nav but lacking endurance
3) weaker nav but strong endurance
4) weak nav and lacking endurance

Type 4 individuals would likely participate on white/yellow/orange and be happy with that.

Type 1 individuals would run blue on sprint, middle and long races. As has been pointed out in other threads we don't have many Type 1's but that should be a goal to develop more of them. To do that we need to keep type 2 and 3 people in the sport by either training their endurance and navigation skills respectively (or attract type 2 and 3 people to the sport).

Currently though...

Type 2 would run blue in sprint and middle but would want something shorter for long races

Type 3 might not be too interested in middle but could handle sprint but the long would be too tough navigationally and as Randy says could turn them off the sport.

So to avoid turning people off (as Randy has suggested and Nielsen did in another thread last year) why not introduce three official Championship categories in open. Call them Elite, Expert and Sport. The Elite champion runs blue and would be recognized as the National Elite Champion but then Expert could run red and be a champion too and the Sport champion (on a 12K orange course) would also be celebrated. It is open so a person of any age can run in that class. For the sprint and middle distance races the 'elite open' category would probably suffice (or maybe expert and sport can be added to middle as well).

I believe a similar approach is done in cycling....

Someone suggested in the relay thread that classes should be purely physiological, not demographic. Thats probably true. With course structure closely following class structure, then all you need are "open" categories on each course for people who don't accept their physiology. Which we have. The question then goes back to "is 35-39 a distinct and separate class of humans?" M21 and M35 are like neandertals and cromagnons. They look and act similar, but are they?? If you put an M21 and an M35 in a jar and shake it, will they fight? Will crossing these two groups produce grotesque mutants? Will they sit in circles chipping flint into kartpekarens?

Here in Missouri we passed a constitutional amendment prohibiting the crossing of an M21 and M35. M40 and F35 (my current situation) is OK.

Mountian biking does run national "championships" in beginner, sport, and expert. As those are self-selecting classes, that always seemed stupid to me. Why is the guy who's been riding beginner for four years a national champion when all the other riders of similar experience are getting crushed in Sport?

Road and track cycling have one national championship class for open ages contested across events of varying distance and discipline. There are also age-graded championships in various distances and disciplines. Of course, road cycling has many more participants than either MTB or Orienteering, so there are no shortage of elite competitors to fill out the fields (except in the really old classes). But, I recall the system working fine back when USCF had 2000 members instead of 80,000.

I think a distinction should be made between classes and championship classes. If a 25-year old wants to run brown, fine. That's what M-Brown is for. But to call that person a national champion is silly because all the good 25 year olds are on Blue. (I actually have a national championship medal on M-Brown from the year I broke my ribs a week before nationals and couldn't run a longer course. I still think it's silly.)

Finally, to Hammer's group 3 which constitute the bulk of promising beginners: a long version of the Orange course would give these folks more practice and allow them to use their fitness. I think encouraging people to stay on orange a bit longer while they develop the skill of navigating at speed would go a long way towards retaining fit competitors that are turned off by the fact that they have to walk advanced courses to keep from getting lost.

Hoping not to offend but I wonder if MTB is more similar to O and road cycling is more similar to road running. That is, MTB is more technical than road cycling so it needs those sport and expert levels to ease people in. While road cycling like road running is not a technical sport (relatively speaking).

Perhaps this is off topic but did you ever wonder what a newbie to the sport thinks when they see the term M21B. It really is an odd term. Change it to Men's Open Expert or something like that and it may mean something more.

Moe? Nyk nyk nyk... :)

My thoughts. Current system is definately not ideal, but no solution will satisfy everyone. There are too many conflicting goals. We are trying to provide competition at appropriate difficulty, create a strong field of competition, and stroke egos. Very difficult to meet all of these goals, considering the state of US orienteering.

These debates seem tedious after a while. Perhaps part of the problem is that people are seeking a single system that promotes both begineer participation AND selects a national champion? It might be better if we could decouple the two questions - but this is hard. Orienteering is a unique sport with subtle gradations, and a thin competitor base. Sometimes I feel that the small age group catagories weaken depth - maybe they also prevents us from providing more important class distinctions.

Perhaps we follow USOF structure too often? Maybe meet directors should feel more comfortable to define their own age class and course structure (from club level to national)? Then we might be more prepared to take advantage when someone like Hammer hits on an adventure running format that does seem to attract competitors. Or maybe we will discover that the ubiquitous white-yellow-orange sequence isn't the best way to introduce new competitors to the sport.

Meet directors *are* free to define things any way they choose. The USOF sanctioning process is in place to define what meets fit a specific criterion so we can have a uniform national ranking system (i.e. "A"-meets, National Championships). If you think defining course and class structure is difficult, try forming a scoring system that crosses all of the above. There is nothing stopping people from holding whatever kind of meets with whatever kind of class structures they want.

No criticism there. I don't envy the person who has to make the decisions about USOF course guidelines! Like I said, they've got to satisfy a lot of consituents. And the "elite" guys at attackpoint are only one group. I personally would like larger age brackets, but many would disagree.

Fortunately, this was a hypothetical posed by the Canadians. I think they're trying to sow internal dissent in Team USA, since they're behind in the olympics ;-)

Seriously though, one reason I posted my last response is that I've been preparing some documents for a training session (to teach scout leaders how to design orienteering events). The only good sources I can find are derived from USOF guidelines. So Hammer's questions about wether our course breakdown is the natural one seems very relevant to me. I don't feel most scouts benifit from starting on white, but it's what they are encouraged to do because of how the elite youth ranking structure works.

Buckley says: "If a 25-year old wants to run brown, fine. That's what M-Brown is for. But to call that person a national champion is silly because all the good 25 year olds are on Blue." To that I add: that's exactly what M&F35 are at the moment (no offense to anyone running those categories), but to name only a few, Pam James, swampfox, wadd... they all are running Elite and not their age group, duplicating that situation mentioned above but just giving it another name. That makes M&F35 champions King of the bunny hill, really.

One thing that is lost in the shuffle of these discussions sometimes, is the fact that, according to the WAVA age grade tables (were people have looked at race/age results and calculated performance decrease as a function of aging, for handicapping purposes), a 39 year old man pays a 2.5% performance penalty to a 34 year old man (and basically the M21 set) over a 10K track race distance.

Projecting that to a 60 minute WT (which for the sake of argument we can assume is close enough to a 10K track race to make the data applicable)), the 39 year old walks to the starting line with a 90 second handicap against is younger competitors. Is that fair in a thick, tough elite field? My guess is that that was part of the rationale for IOF starting masters classes at 35.

Apparently, other sports do think it is fair, as, has been pointed out, they start their masters groups at 40. I don't know anything about these sports; it would be interesting to know their thinking. Perhaps WAVA is bad data, and other data is used. Perhaps the fact that under the WAVA data, a 35 year old man is the same as the M21 set over 10K, and they just said -- well that ain't fair either, we'll draw the line differently. Perhaps these other sports deal in distances longer than 10K (and tho I don't have the tables in front of me, the data is also a function of distances, with age being more of a handicap the shorter the distances).

For my part, when I run red, I run M35 to be contrary :-) Call it the Dominie effect (although I personally don't care about brass trinkets, I think it would be total harf to be known as king of the bunny hill -- can we get a suit made?) (This has actually only happened once, I was second in M35 at the long O champs, and my time would have put me in second in M40 on the same course, so big deal)... and yes, I do feel M35 should be on blue, regardless if it is a different class or not.

Yeah, dropping the MF35 category and extending the M21 to be M21-39 makes sense. I guess this needs to go though channels. As in someone will have to make the proposal to USOF. Not sure if that should go to the AGM or the Board or both. That would make the MF21 category the only 10-year cat in USOF (other than 10- and 70+), so there would have to be a preponderance of evidence that this is a good move in order to get it passed. Might make sense to propose the M and F cat changes separately. Are we sure its important enough to go through the effort? I suspect changing the entire USOF class structure (i.e. if you wanted to make 10-year bins across the board) would not fly. Even this change alone will be diffficult.

Getting M35 onto blue would be *much* easier than the class change.

Getting M35 onto blue would be *much* easier than the class change.

I attempted once to get to get M35 on blue thru official USOF processes. It did not get out of committee (I was basically in a minority opinion on committee). I can take this to the board, but it needs to be backed by some sort of evidence or popular opinion.

Maybe we can set up one of those free online voting forums, advertize it on the USOF web page and in ONA and on AP and on clubnet, and collect people's opinions with a semi-scientific poll.

MTB is more technical than road cycling so it needs those sport and expert levels to ease people in.

No offense taken, but this is objectively false (and irrelevant to a discussion of "championship" classes). Once you're on a piece of single track, you ride it. It doesn't matter what race you're in or whether your opponents are ahead or behind you. In road cycling, if you can't stay with the pack, your race is fundamentally different from the intended experience.

Road cycling actually has 5 open classes in the US (6, if you count "Professional" as a class above Cat I). Those are needed to get newbies into the sport. But nobody suggests that people in those classes should be crowned National Champions. Nationals is open only to Category I riders (who are less than 1% of the total number of riders).

Projecting that to a 60 minute WT (which for the sake of argument we can assume is close enough to a 10K track race to make the data applicable)), the 39 year old walks to the starting line with a 90 second handicap against is younger competitors.

Given disparities of overall abilities, even among elites, in North America, I'd say that's fair. A 90 second hit would only cost someone a few places, maybe none at all. In Sweden, the situation would be quite different.

However, I think the dropoff is considerably less than that for several reasons. The most significant is the fact that speed in orienteering is limited by both fitness and navigation. Navigation should improve with experience, so there is some offset.

Theoretical arguments aside, an empirical examiniation of the top 20 orienteers in North America is ample evidence that competitors in their late 30's (and even 40's) are not at a significant disadvantage. One might hope that the young-uns would change that, but for now, the argument for M35 is very thin.

Many fine suggestions here, and it occurs to me that I have already implemented some of them in a local manner:
1) I never ran M35. Started on M21B, but once I moved to Blue, I kept running M21 until I was 40, at which point I started doing a mixture of M21 and M40.
2) Now that I'm 45, it's doubtful that I'll run M45. For races where I run Red, I'll probably stick with M40, because I'm in favor of 10-year age categories (might make an exception for the Night-O Champs).
Everyone else can do whatever they want.

There are other problems with the class structure. For instance when there are multiple red and green courses, M35 and M40 run one course while M45 runs with F21. On green, M50 and M55 run with M18 while M60 run with F35, 40, 45,and 50. These are USOF guidelines but most clubs seem to be reluctant to go against them, esp in Championships. Efforts to get them changed or eliminated have gone nowhere so far.

Sometimes when a throught gets stuck in your head, you just have to go crunch the numbers before you can move on...

I was too lazy to calculate standard deviations, but the inter-quartile ranges of the top 10 in the AttackPoint rankings are an average of 6.5 points. That is, each of our elite runners has range of about 6.5 points into which half their results fall. The actual ranges are from 3.5 to 9.

Norming this to a 60-minute winning time, one gets an average range of 3.9 minutes. Thus, half the time a runner can expect their result to deviate from their own norm by at least 2 minutes. So the bias in fitness (90 seconds) from M21 to M35 is significantly less than the variability each runner sees from one run to the next. It's a stretch to say that such a handicap is onerous.

JJ - another reason to stay in M40 versus M45 is the competition, if you're interested in looking good on paper - which, knowing you, isn't really a factor.

Looking at last year's Boulder Dash results, which I think were fairly representative for the northeast /east coast. There was only one Red course.

I was 31st overall on the red course, 10th for M45 (my registered class). If I'd registered for M35, I would have placed 3d in that class, or in M40 - 6th.
(Also would have been 11th if I was female, 4th if I was under 20, and 2d on Red-open.)

JJ was 3d on M40, would have been 4th in M45 (by 7 seconds), and 3d in M35.

Other than confirming that I was (am) out of shape, overweight by a few pounds, and had some problems in the woods (both navigationally and got a stick in the eye losing a contact) and hence I'm much further down in the standings than I want to be, the results by class don't really do much for me.

Actually, having the class structure doesn't do much for me.