Discussion: Course Flow

I noticed that among the middle distance courses at The West Point event some went around the terrain in a generally clockwise direction, others counterclockwise.
My practice is to try to avoid that situation for two reasons - 1) it seems to give more opportunities for the approaching orienteers to see someone running with speed and therefore probably away from a control and 2) it can be very stressful for the wildlife to be fleeing a human coming from one direction only to be confronted by another coming from the opposite.
Are either of these situations ever a consideration for more experienced course planners or the second for park officials?

Well Gord, I'm certainly with you re the coordinated direction of course flows, although for different, or at least additional reasons.

One objective is to provide the best orienteering possible for all advanced courses/classes. (lower level courses may need to have a different routing agenda) If studied, usually one direction will provide better or more practical options, which all courses should partake in as much as possible.

Another objective is to provide similar or overlapping courses and legs for improved post meet discussion/ comparisons.

Another objective is to reduce the number of controls, with maximal sharing of the best legs and control sites, with just enough forking to dissimilar nearby control sites to prevent pure following between courses, and prevent overload on any sinlgle control. This provides efficiency in the total number of controls, as well as the total distance required to set & collect them.

When flows go opposite direcions, the ideal control site (back side of feature, and/ or back side of general structure) from one direction will almost always be too easy, visible, bingo, or otherwise stupid compared to the other. Orienteers going the unfortunate direction will simply run through the most interesting features while exiting rather than using them to find the control. Sharing control sites from opposite directions simply creates a poorer O experience for someone, in addition to the giveaway approaching/ leaving problem.

I'm with kofols on this one.

Here in Georgia, I was taught to layout courses in a consistent direction for the two reasons that gordhun describes. Having startled wildlife running across your course is not fun.

For the sizes of meets that we have in the US, I think the wildlife issue is not a significant consideration.

Plus the orienteers spend half their time backtracking to find a control.

Eric brings up some good points. But to counter JJ, I know of three incidents where orienteers at races in the USA were run over by panicked deer (one resulting in significant injury), in addition to personally witnessing another such incident in Scotland a couple years ago. So I would not completely dismiss the notion of using course design to direct animal movements toward safer havens.

Thanks Eric. You are bang on about choosing the best and most interesting way to approach controls. Few spots are good from 360 degrees.
I'd like to expand on the wildlife issue. Back in the early 70's I was at an event in Sweden where the newspaper headline one day was that a horse had died of an apparent heart attack due to the stress of orienteers coming at him from different directions. The same year in Switzerland I witnessed deer bouncing around a forest like pinballs changing direction every time a runner came at them from a different direction. They were scared, really scared. Sweden implemented wildlife protection areas and single direction courses. I assume the Swiss did the same.
This year when I was organizing events in Florida I found one park manager particularly impressed that I had thought of the issue of wildlife safety. I was able to explain and he understood that the wildlife - in this case mostly deer and pigs - would move away from the first approaching runners until they found themselves a safe spot. Alligators would take to the water, snakes and gopher tortoise to ground. These animals do not want to attack humans; they just want to be safe. A threat to their safety in their eyes is humans approaching from different directions. That is when they will strike out to defend themselves.
I look forward to hearing from others but I suggest that showing you have strategies to protect wildlife is a positive point when approaching park officials about holding events in their terrain. It may not make a difference but for sure not having a strategy definitely will not help.

There's another angle to consider in this I think. You can design a particular direction of flow into a normal O course, or better into a group of courses that are run simultaneously, and thus allow wildlife to find a safe place from which to spectate. But when you design a score-O, or when you design a course that loops around crossing over itself and reversing direction a lot (which is now more readily possible due to the replacement of pin-punching with e-punching), you can end up with the same situation as with a group of courses like those on Sunday morning that flow counter to each other.

I don't know which 3 deer incidents Mike is thinking of, but just a few years ago my kids and I crossed paths in a score-O with an orienteer going the opposite direction who was nailed by a deer less than a minute later. The deer won. The attendance at that club meet was far less than a typical US A meet.

Just a week before West Point this year, during another small club meet, I saw a group of deer clustered in a small forest corner with orienteers passing them on all sides and going opposite directions. In fact I ran past that spot 3 or 4 times myself going different directions during the red course I was running.

It's not just "large" meets where this is an issue.

What symbol do you use for swamp with alligators?

I'm just not convinced that routing people in the same direction is going to have the orderly effect on wildlife that people imagine. It's my understanding that at large meets in Scandinavia, there's a crew that goes out into the woods in a line before the meet making noise to chase the animals out of the competition area. We don't have meets large enough to warrant that effort.

Move to Australia where your only concern is a few kangaroos bouncing around. You can even hitch a ride in their pouches; they are quite friendly.

The IOF actually has a few papers on this subject (wildlife) and they recommend having "safe areas" for the wildlife. These safe areas would be out of bounds for all runners, and all courses would tend travel around them in the same direction. I think this is probably what goes on at larger European events - you can sometimes see the out of bounds "safe areas" marked on the maps when you look at courses.

It is a bit tricky to find a "best practices" recommendation - I haven't found it yet ;-) But my personal favorite resource on the IOF Environment resources page is "IOF-ENV-002 Review of research into the ecological impact of orienteering". It includes the following quote (on page 22):

"In all three competitions environmental good practice with respect to deer was employed in leaving areas free of the courses to act as deer refuges and in planning the courses so that they progressed in the same general direction to avoid repeated encounters between deer and orienteers appearing from very different directions – known as the ‘pinball’ effect."

I imagine if there was enough people at some aus events circling roos from different directs they would attack - people have been hospitalized from boxing roos!

Just don't throw the first punch and you can claim self defence in the kangaroo court.

If a lot of people going in the same direction was supposed to move animals away from them, you wouldn't get things like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2oymHHyV1M (at a MTB race here in South Africa a few years ago) or this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQeuT7ekOhE&feature... (this year at the Cape Epic MTB race). So yeah, dont really buy the moving animals reasons. We have had Eland wandering through our events before, and regularly have duiker and smaller antelope. I even saw a heard of Wildebeest across a valley from me once (moving towards a part of the course i had already been at).

But i am in favour of a single course flow for most of the other reasons mentions. Sometimes going backwards though can be useful for the simpler courses (can use a more complicated course's control from an easier direction)

@tRicky
I have had a collision with a roo (large grey male) during an orienteering event. Luckily for myself, I was only bruised. The roo ended up with a broken leg, terrified and jumping in random directions on the remaining leg posing a significant danger to oncoming runners. It is the only time in my life when i considered a firearm at an event would have been useful. I think roos are an issue to consider seriously in this thread.

PS I gained the handle "Roo Barr" for some time following this incident.

I read the link, thanks.

Was the 'roo too busy looking at his own map to notice you there?

The roo was too busy avoiding the person about 15 metres in front of me.

I have heard that orienteers shun other human contact whilst in the bush. I guess the kangaroo thought the same.

It didn't shun me.

It shunned the other guy.

That must have been a rood shock to your system!