okansas.blogspot.com
Occassional thoughts about orienteering


Wednesday, September 04, 2002

Route choice in the USA

 

While I was cycling today, I was also thinking about route choice. In general, I don't thinkroute choice is very important in the USA. I don't think many races are decided by route choice. Here are five reasons why:

Legs tend to be short. In the US, we tend to have courses with a lot of controls and relatively short legs. I've done some comparisons between course setting in Sweden and the U.S. and found that we don't have many long legs. When the legs are short, it is less likely that a route choice mistake will cost much time.

Course setters seem to try to make route options even. I'm not sure of this, but my general impression is that a lot of course setters think a good route choice leg is one where there are two or more options that are all similar. But, if the options are similar, the choice doesn't matter. A good route choice leg gives you options that are clearly different. For example, a good route choice leg would have an option that is clearly faster but forces you to climb; and another option that is clearly slower but is flat so you can save energy for later on the course. I don't see that sort of leg very often.

We usually orienteer in park land. Most US O' races are in parks -- land that is owned by the public and closed to forestry. Compared to land that is actively subject to forestry, parks have relatively little variation in vegetation and a simple trail network. Land where forests are harvested are full of different thicknesses of vegetation (felled areas, areas with young trees, mature forest, etc.) and the industrial processes leave a lot of trails. It is easier to have difficult and interesting route choices in forests that are being logged.

Booms are big. Booms are common and big. It isn't unusual to boom 3-4 minutes on a control. It isn't unusual to have two or three booms on a course. But, it is hard to make a route choice decision that is so bad it costs 3-4 minutes. You can often get a good result by avoiding booms and not worrying about route choice. [Note that this is something you could probably study, by looking at split times and routes. I haven't done it, but if I get inspired some day I might.]

Maybe Americans don't like route choice. I don't have any evidence, but I think most American orienteers would rather have a course with lot of controls that are hard to find than interesting route choices. A course setter who had a couple of controls that were easy to find would probably be criticized even if the legs were interesting. We tend to focus on controls rather than legs. As an experiment, take a look at a few courses and see if you could create some interesting routes by just removing a control or two.

posted by Michael | 7:46 PM

0 comments


Comments: Post a Comment
March 2002April 2002May 2002June 2002July 2002August 2002September 2002October 2002November 2002December 2002January 2003February 2003March 2003April 2003May 2003June 2003July 2003August 2003September 2003October 2003November 2003December 2003January 2004February 2004March 2004April 2004May 2004June 2004July 2004August 2004September 2004October 2004November 2004December 2004January 2005February 2005March 2005April 2005May 2005June 2005July 2005August 2005September 2005October 2005November 2005December 2005January 2006February 2006March 2006April 2006May 2006June 2006July 2006August 2006September 2006October 2006November 2006December 2006January 2007February 2007March 2007April 2007May 2007June 2007July 2007August 2007September 2007October 2007November 2007December 2007January 2008February 2008March 2008April 2008May 2008June 2008July 2008August 2008September 2008October 2008November 2008December 2008January 2009February 2009March 2009April 2009May 2009June 2009July 2009August 2009September 2009October 2009November 2009December 2009January 2010February 2010March 2010April 2010May 2010June 2010July 2010August 2010September 2010October 2010November 2010December 2010January 2011February 2011March 2011April 2011May 2011June 2011July 2011August 2011September 2011October 2011November 2011December 2011January 2012February 2012March 2012April 2012May 2012June 2012July 2012August 2012September 2012October 2012November 2012December 2012January 2013March 2013April 2013May 2013July 2013September 2013
archives
links