Discussion: U.S. Rogaine Championships 2013 and North American Rogaining Championships 2013

At its conference call yesterday 10 June 2013, the Rogaine Committee of Orienteering USA confirmed CNYO Rogaine on 13 and 14 July as the U.S. Rogaine Championships.

The North American Rogaining Championships rotate each year between the U.S. and Canada, and were in Washington State in 2012. Following conversations with Canadian rogainers, it is now clear that there will not be a 2013 North American Championships organized in Canada, absent unexpected and late developments. The
U.S. Rogaine Championships in July is therefore most likely to be the only 2013 North American qualifying event for the World Championships that are in South Dakota, USA, in August of 2014. (The 2012 North American Champs were also a qualifying event; there was not a 2012 U.S. Rogaine Championships event.)

At the conference call, the Committee also accepted the resignation of Barb Bryant, the Chair of the Committee for many years. Today, the Committee unanimously confirmed Bud Laird as the new Committee Chair.

How does qualifying work for the 2014 Worlds? Is that event only open to people who qualify?

There will be some qualifying slots, and some first-come-first-serve slots. It's not yet possible to say how many of each because the overall participant limit is not yet known (because negotiations with the landowners are still underway). What the system boils down to is that if you placed in the top 2 or 3 in your category at a qualifying event, you are guaranteed an entry. If not, then you will either get in anyway (if the limit is permissive), or will need to enter within the first several days that the registration is open (if the limit is restrictive).

Neither the 2012 nor the 2013 World Champs sold out because the limits were high, 1000+ participants. The 2010 WRC did sell out, but most of those who were on the waitlist eventually got in as many of the qualified entrants decided not to attend. My feeling based on all available information is that the 2014 WRC will probably not sell out. However, given how rogaine-hungry we are in North America due to the scarcity of 24-hour events (organizer burnout; entry fees don't support the costs) and how much the sport has grown in Europe, while remaining strong in Australia and New Zealand, even a 1000-participant limit may become restrictive.

If the CNYO Rogaine is the U.S. Rogaine Championships, does that mean that there will be water stops on the course? 120 square kms with no water stops would mean having to carry a lot of water, if one were not planning on returning to base camp. :-)

From the notes: "Water is available at the base camp and at approximately five locations around the course."

If the criteria remain unchanged, only the top two teams in each of the Male, Female and Mixed Open categories at the U.S. Championship will pre-qualify for the World Rogaining Championship. Teams can consist of 2 or 3 members, each of whom could choose to race with a different teammate at WRC. At a North American Championship, podium places in age/gender categories would be considered as well.

Will there be a 2014 NA Rogaine Champs somewhere in the States before the Worlds?

Currently, qualifiers must be held before entries open. Wording for using North Americans as a prequalifying event also indicates previous two NARCs, though that may assume an annual championship.

2013 WRC criteria....
"2.3) Teams that include at least one person from a team filling 3rd place in any age/gender category in the following qualifying events:
a) The two North American Rogaining Championships immediately preceding the opening of entries"

If no event is held in 2013, perhaps NARC 2011 might be considered as a prequalifier.

In any case I believe there is still a requirement that one team member must have completed a 24 hour rogaine within the previous two years, a requirement which our team isn't likely to meet by the end of this year. I suspect that organizers of a 24 hour rogaine in spring 2014 (NARC or not) might get pretty good attendance if the WRC2014 cap, whatever it may be, hasn't been reached.

Yes indeed, there are rumors of a March of 2014 NA Rogaining Championships in the U.S.

CNYO organizers have been asked whether they would like to have their event as both the U.S. and North American Championships. To date there has not been precedent of holding both events simultaneously. There are no other 24-hour rogaines in the U.S. for the remainder of 2013.

Here is the other relevant criterion. (The criterion above applies to "Preferred Status Pre-Qualifying Entrants", who are a level below "Automatic Pre-Qualifying Entrants".)

Automatic Pre-Qualifying-Entrants

Teams meeting the criteria set out in clauses 1.1 through 1.4 below shall be deemed Automatic Pre-Qualifying Entrants
...
1.2) Teams that include at least one person from a team filling the nominated places in any of the 15 age/gender categories in the following qualifying events:
...
c) The first 2 places in the two North American Rogaining Championships immediately preceding the opening of entries

As Bryan correctly points out, a 2014 NARC would pre-qualify rogainers for the 2015 and 2016 world championships. The pre-qualification entry period for WRC 2014 will take place late in 2013. By March of next year, WRC 2014 entries will have been open to everyone for awhile - assuming that it's not sold out already (and it probably won't be, but you never know!)

I punched my ticket. I'm ready to go in 2014!

"My brain hurts." It's all sounding like a very good way to not develop the sport. "Just sayin".

I hear you. I started rogaining because it sounded cool to do the 2004 world championship as my first event. That would be harder now. The world champions at that event were newbies too.

However, to be fair, the International Rogaining Federation is entitled to decide that the purpose of their world championship is not to encourage novices to try the sport; they want it to be a competition between people who already do rogaines, preferably some of the best such people. Although I find the pre-qualification rules complex and more favourable toward Europeans, they only come into play at WRCs that sell out, and that hasn't happened for a few years.

Calling a pair of world-class adventure racers who had hundreds of hours on 1:24 maps "newbies" is a bit of a stretch ;)

Anyway, I agree with Vlad, it probably won't sell out but it's also a bit disappointing that we don't have a full set of qualifiers (US, CA, & NA) this year. FWIW, we (SLOC) tried to address that, but the fall season was already booked pretty tight and NOBODY is going to be happy about spending 24 hours in our woods during the summer. We do plan on holding a 24-hour championship of some sort in the relatively near future, but plans are still vague, so that's as much as I'll say.

The sport is very happy in Europe, growing dramatically, is still growing but less dramatically in Australia and New Zealand, and thus the need to have a mechanism to limit the attendance. Although it's very unlikely that anyone in North America would attempt a 24-hour rogaine who doesn't understand what they are going into, this happens regularly in Europe (say for lack of other things to get yourself in trouble, aka mudders), and World Champs organizers have other things to worry about besides search and rescue! therefore the one-completed-rogaine requirement.

Ebuckley, I am teasing, of course. :) For those who don't know, it was the near-invincible (at the time) adventure racing team Nike. As the WRC pre-qualification rules discussion developed, at least one person felt that they shouldn't have been allowed into the world champs for their first 24-hr rogaine. (!!!) Amongst other things, their win proves that marketing across sports is worth doing - and that there are other ways to gain the requisite skills.

There were other sports to market across at the time

:)))

teasing, of course.

Hey, those are Canadians in that photo! :)

There aren't *too* many sports other than adventure racing that already include 24-hour (and longer) treks with navigation. The funny thing is that Team Nike got about 80% of the available points at WRC 2004, then drove home without realizing they'd won the world championship until they checked the website later.

The new requirement to have completed a 24-hr rogaine within the previous two years (which would have excluded Team Nike) could make things difficult for cross marketing - even for people in North America who are experienced rogainers, since there haven't been many events here, and they haven't always been promoted well in advance.

The new requirement to have completed a 24-hr rogaine within the previous two years.

So this is an official rule? Because that'll knock my team out, unfortunately. My team will have done four 24-hour events in the previous eight years, and many others in the 6-to-16-hour range.

[Edit: I'm answering my own question: From the rules I found online: "At least one member of any team registering in this Non-Pre-Qualifying Entrant category must have competed in at least one 24-hour rogaine in the two years immediately preceding the opening of entries."]

What is the definition of "complete"? Can you start the race, find one checkpoint, sit on a rock for 23 hours, and then come back?

----

Tangent: I was just looking at the Rogaine Results page on the O-USA website, and it lists the recent CSU Urban Adventure Run!, which is a bit of a stretch to call a rogaine, don't you think? (urban, point-to-point courses, winning time of the longest course was under 3 hours).

CSU event was originally advertised as a 6 hour score-o, re: rogaine and listed on rogaine schedule. The format change occurred a couple weeks before but results were posted there anyway. I don't think anyone is suggesting the event as it went down was at all rogaine-like.

So does anyone know when "the opening of entries" will be? My last 24 hour rogaine was the US Champs in November of 2011. Will that be within the two year deadline?

The rules say that it must be "not less than 9 months" before the event, which would be mid-November.

What defines "completed a 24-hour rogaine"? Because it's not any more specific than that.

Does the rogaine have to be sanctioned? If yes, by whom? Can it be urban? What about the Henry Coe Adventure Trex? It's 32 hours total, but not 24 continuous.

Can I ask the organizers of the annual Seattle Night & Day Challenge (max 16 hours) to add a category for 24 hours? What if they do and I still finish in 16 hours?

What if I'm only on the course of a traditional, internationally-sanctioned, 24-hour rogaine for 23 hours? 16 hours? 12 hours? 1 hour?

Can I have a friend host a 24-hour rogaine in their backyard? We'd have a 1:24000 map of course, one checkpoint at the mailbox, another by the garden shed.

Can I have a friend host a 24-hour rogaine in their backyard? We'd have a 1:24000 map of course, one checkpoint at the mailbox, another by the garden shed.

And a really well-stocked hash house, eh?

The intent of the participation rule is to not have woefully underprepared participants take slots away from prepared ones, and not to tax the organizers' S&R capabilities. The secondary intent is to create some attendance for non-WRC rogaines. It serves nobody when people show up for a World Rogaining Champs for the novelty of it, get lost, and have to be rescued, while a more prepared team cannot get in because they didn't enter as quickly as the former. This doesn't happen (ever?) in North America, but is a frequent situation in Europe (the attracted-by-novelty-got-lost part, not the taking-away-slots part).

I think what will happen if you enter, and the organizers don't know who you are, they will try to look up your prior results. If they can't find prior results from 24-hour events that are on the schedule of Orienteering USA, or other rogaining nations, then you'll be asked about your qualifications. I personally think that a 16-hour (or just about so) SND run will qualify, but we'll have to check with the IRF. The IRF is being exceedingly flexible with liberal interpretation of its rules when it comes to North American rogaining because the participation/event situation is somewhat dire; we went from a peak of 7 24-hour rogaines in 2010 to a low of most likely two this year.

Events on Orienteering USA rogaine schedule: The Committee made a decision to list all rogaine (not point-to-point) events, urban and wilderness, that include an on-foot division of 4 hours or longer. If the longer division is subsequently cancelled, or if the format of the event changes from rogaine to point-to-point, the Committee does not follow up with excluding the event from the schedule.

Having organised 7WRC 2006 Australia the matter of entry qualification has been about for some time. The IRF would say that the Entry standard attempts to balance reward for performance and interest in rogaining, that entry remains open for all and we would encourage you to enter.

I would strongly recommend that you watch for the opening of entry and enter as early as you are able. It is not our intention to discourage people from trying to enter.

Alan Mansfield
Promotion and Development Manager, IRF

On a personal note I thought it was wonderful that Kloser and Tobin won WRC2004 Arizona, a performance that put their qualities at that time and Rowland and Barbour's performances into perspective.

What does it mean to "qualify" by placing well in the CNYO event? If you are able to register as "general public" (with some other qualifications it looks like), are you not eligible to "place" in the World Champs?

All that prequalifying gets you is a chance to enter earlier than the general public, at a time at which the event is guaranteed to not yet be sold out. All teams are eligible for awards in their age/gender categories.

It also gives you and your teammate the chance to plan your 2014 race and travel schedule sooner since you are guaranteed entry into the world championship, even if it should be sold out. (Which seems unlikely but it has happened in the past.) Non-pre-qualified applicants will have their entries confirmed in winter 2014.

In the meantime, please support the CNYO Rogaine on July 13-14 - the only 24-hr rogaine in the U.S. in 2013!
http://cnyo.us.orienteering.org/2013/html/ROGAINE_...

I noticed that the CNYO rogaine has the same fee ($50) for 6-hr, 12-hr, 24-hr from reading the text of the event description.

Is this true ?

I don't know whether this is true or not, but I think that the fee should be the same. Regardless of whether you do 6, 12 or 24 you are getting the same service: same map, same hash-house, same controls in the woods, same option to camp at the event site, etc.

Also, I know it's not a popular view (I'm waiting for the rotten tomatoes) but I don't think $50 is enough to pay for all the work that goes into putting on a rogaine. That's one of the reasons we don't get to do very many rogaines. At GHO, we regularly sell out Salomon Dontgetlost Raid The Hammer to 300 people (with a waiting list) at $60+/person for a challenging point-to-point race with a 3-hr winning time. The average 6-8 hr adventure race in our area is $150/person. For a 24 hr adventure race, it is $250+. There are additional costs like boat and truck rental but on the other hand, there's no need to serve food at a hash house throughout the night.

An average American can eat more than $50 worth of food in 24 hours if left unattended. Come on!

It is true that the same fee applies to all categories in our rogaine, though minimal late fees will soon be added. We are glad that you recognize good value for your money. Fifty dollars is nothing compared with the cost of getting to and competing in Russia two weeks later. Eric enjoys the mapping and control setting and is not expecting to get paid for all of these weekends in the woods preparing for the CNYO rogaine. We hope the food will fill you up, even though it's not champagne and caviar. All volunteer labor helps our club keep costs down, and it's an annual event.

First of all, I know and I think most anyone who has been to one knows that CNYO puts on great rogaines!!

A couple of points --

- I do agree that 24-hour rogaines in general are definitely underpriced. When compared to road races (I just took a look at the latest prices, not having run one in a while -- 5K's are typically $20 to $30 in the Rochester area; I saw a half marathon for $45 pre), $50 is a huge bargain, when considering how much work it is to put on a rogaine (mapping, course design, setting out controls, putting on food, manning the hash house for 24+ hours, etc.).

- However, to me it makes sense to charge less for someone doing the 6 hour than someone doing the 24 hour. If the rogaine was only 6 hours, a much smaller map would be needed, the course setting would require much less time, the food would only need to be provided for 6+ hours rather than 24+ hours, etc.). While it's true that there's nothing preventing a 6 hour competitor from hanging around eating food all night and into the next afternoon, realistically I bet nearly all people in the 6 hour clear out within a few hours of their finish time.

Also, I think it's a bit of a barrier in terms of getting people involved in rogaining who haven't done it before if the cost of entering a 6 hour event is fairly modest.

So basically -- raise the price for the 24 hour, but consider lower prices for 12 and even lower for 6 hour, would be my thought.

The airlines seem to have largely succeeded in filling their planes. One of their tools is that they sell seats at different prices. They get more money from some passengers, and less money from others who maybe don't care when to make the trip, or who wouldn't otherwise travel at all. Presumably this optimises the income. So why not charge some people more according to perception of value?

Because orienteers see no value in the labor of their friends. They only want to pay for supplies.

An average American can eat more than $50 worth of food in 24 hours if left unattended. Come on!

I think I will sign up, let others do the running for me (aka "pimping") and just spend the entire 24 hours eating, relaxing, sleeping, eating some more, etc, {repeat pattern above...}. Now... how should I name my team? gotta find an appropriate name...

>>RLShadow >> I think you are pointing out the fact that for most people, prices make the most sense as relative to some other price point, and thus you can pull some neat tricks with menu engineering.

If you want to attract 6hr participants then offer at least one option that costs more, right?

I am also reminded of the singing groups at my college that would sell tickets to their show for 1$. If they advertised free admission, people would not have a big incentive to show up, but if they have already paid for a ticket then it seems like a waste of a dollar to skip the event. Which is to say, you can price something so cheaply that the consumer gets the impression that there is no value in the product.

I have often heard that reaction from adventure racing friends after they've done one of CNYO's very reasonably priced events. With such a low price, they hadn't expected such a great event. If they'd paid more, they would have been less surprised at how good it was. Funny how that works.

We face this issue with pricing for the Salomon Dontgetlost Raids. Our costs are almost identical for the Half Raid vs. the Full Raid. We usually get away with printing one less map per person but everyone eats a meal, visits an aid station, takes a map case, needs space at the host venue, gets covered by insurance, gets entry fee to conservation areas, uses SI timing, receives swag at check-in, visits the website, etc. The Half Raid is priced about 10-15% lower than the Full Raid because people like to see a price differential - but not because we save much money on costs.

@Sherpes, one of my friends always threatened to do that. He was famous for visiting all-you-can-eat buffets, and he said that a rogaine was the best deal he could find on a 24-hr buffet!

These pricing issues are so complex! The first annual CNYO rogaine held 22 years ago (this year is no. 23) was my first try at a 24 hour rogaine. It was maybe two years after I first learned about orienteering, and I had already tried a 6-hour version at Grafton Lakes earlier in the year, but the 24-hour seemed a lot more interesting to me in advance, and turned out in fact to be much more to my taste in practicet. I don't remember whether or not that first CNYO rogaine had shorter options, but by #3 where I was meet director, the decision had definitely already been made to offer a shorter option, since quite a number of people had voiced the opinion that they would like to try a very long score-O type event, but didn't want to go out overnight. As we didn't seem to be able to get the idea across that you didn't have to spend the whole 24 hours on your feet, and that in fact most teams didn't, there seemed to be a lot of resistance to taking part in an event which was going to last longer than the participants thought they themselves were going to. At that time, there seemed no particular reason to charge them less for the event, as our costs were about the same for them (as many people have already pointed out in this thread. Our main hope was that getting more people out doing the event was going to eventually get more of them converted to trying the longer race some years down the line. An overly quick look at the number of entries in our races over the years might make it look as if this has indeed happened. It used to be that about half the racers were 6 hour folks, a few more liked 12 hours, and no more than 1/3 were doing the whole 24. Nowadays it typically seems to be about 2/3 of the entrants doing the 24. Sadly, this mostly doesn't seem to be all about the 6 hour folks upgrading as much as the 6-hour folks on the whole losing interest faster than the 24-hour group. So on the whole, just having lower pricing to bring in more people might bring in more people for an event which might well run at a loss, and which is unlikely to in the long run involve more people participating in the type of event from which I personally derive more pleasure.
While as RLShadow has mentioned, we could cut our costs and efforts a bit by just doing a smaller map and holding a 6-hour event, it ignores the possibility that the organizers might get (a great deal) more pleasure out of setting up and running a 24 hour event than a 6 hour event. Yes, the cartography and control setting, vetting and pickup may take a lot more time than for the 6-hour event, but those are the parts of the preparation that I personally really enjoy doing. The ordering of PortaJohns, dealing with land-use permissions, awards, getting information up on the web, etc., are all things that I don't enjoy, and might well become a sufficiently large portion of the total job so that I wouldn't be willing to put on the event at all if it were just a 6-hour event. The savings are also smaller than they might seem. After all, the pace of the runners in the 6-hours is enough faster than that of the 24-hour group that the winning score is often about half that of the longer race (no night navigation, fresh legs for the whole race, etc.), so the area mapped would only be cut by about a factor of two, not a factor of 4. And the 6-hour group seems to be a little less exhausted when they get back at the end of the race--they actually eat more per capita than the 24-hour group does, a somewhat counter-intuitive circumstance that I found really hard to believe after the first time I organized one of these events, but something I have learned to expect over the years. It is true that our neighboring clubs ROC and BFLO have put on 5 or 6 hour long score-type events at a price significantly less than we charge for our 6-hour rogaine. And I have enjoyed participating in several of those when I didn't have conflicts for the weekend. But I haven't managed to get to anywhere near a majority of them, because they simply don't get my interest level high enough to rearrange the rest of my life to fit them in. The price differential is certainly not the driving issue. Nowadays, the price of gas to get me to an event within driving range is often as much as or greater than the entry fee, and when it comes to flying, there is no comparison.
Further, I certainly don't think we are overcharging for a 6-hour event. After all, it isn't any more than people would pay at an A-event with a Sprint (1 hr time limit), Middle (2 hr limit) and Long (3 hr limit), and they get fed as much as they want to eat. And I haven't ever heard of the winners of those events coming up to the meet director and asking for a 2/3 refund because they finished in 1/3 of the time that the slower runners on the course.
As for charging more for the longer events..... We are a registered not-for-profit organization, so we shouldn't be making on average a net profit over on the total mix of events we are putting on. One can certainly contend that people who contribute their time should be appropriately compensated rather than making a free gift. However, from my personal standpoint, I'm actually both rather competent and reasonably well paid in my job as a physicist, whereas I'm neither very good or very fast at the orienteering stuff. It would be irresponsible for someone to be paying me much more than minimum wage for my work at rogaine organization. If I were to charge what I nominally get payed for my regular job, the competitors would likely be paying as much or more than those adventure racers are doing for their more elaborate events. Maybe the higher entry fee and perceived greater value would bring in more entrants from upper income brackets, but I know for sure that it would cause an immediate exodus of many of my best friends in the sport under the current system.
As a final point, I'm quite interested in maintaining the continuity of an annual CNYO 24-hour rogaine for as long as I can (at 70 years age, the prospects of my personal contributions may not go on for quite as long as I might hope, but I try to stay optimistic in that regard). I'm happy to include shorter sub-events in with the main attraction as long as it doesn't involve a lot of extra work on my part, but I'm not really keen on subsidizing those events any more than we are already doing with a higher percentage of the participants taking home an award after the event and having consumed (on average) more food.

If I were to charge

All I know is that the fee for CNYO rogaine is about half of what 24-hour rogaines cost in nations that have about 40% of GDP per capita (Estonia, Latvia, and Russia) compared to the U.S. Something isn't right.