Discussion: WRE Status

At its winter meeting on January 9, WCOC decided to apply for World Ranking status for both days of the A-Meet. Check back here for updates.

I guess that rules out "2-day classic" format. Will it be an SML or ML?

try fitting a classic course on the Ansonia map. ML

BTW, as far as I know the WRE bid and the ML format for the weekend are independent decisions.

Cristina>>That's correct. The event is ML regardless of the WRE status. US Team fundraiser (probably sprint relay) on Saturday afternoon is forthcoming.

The WRE is only for MF21. Other courses and categories are not affected by the WRE.

The Planning Calendar says the event will be in Danbury. If the Middle is on Ansonia, will the Long be at Tarrywile?

GuyO - I'm not sure why WRE sanctioning would rule out "2 day classic". Maybe it would, but it would certainly be legit to have two long distance WRE events back to back. Am I missing something?

BorisGr - a problem that has haunted recent WRE events (at least in Canada) is a failure to count any points for the Women's class due to not enough ranked participants. Is this anticipated to be a problem for this event?

GuyO - Per the AP Event listing, Day 1 is at Ansonia; Day 2 is at Huntington SP.

AZ - We certainly look forward to enough ranked women joining us for the weekend to allow for full points to be awarded. Having two events available will hopefully attract them along with a full range of competitors.

Assuming the following people don't add any new WRE scores that are really low, these will be the "R" women in NA at the time of the meet:

USA: Sam, Sandra, Viktoria, Pavlina
CAN: Louise, Carol

Unfortunately the meet is a week too late for the 2009 TT scores to be within the 12 month mark - or perhaps, if needed, the 12 months can be stretched by a few days? Don't know...

As IOF Event Advisor, I did send the IOF a report following the last Canadian Champs pointing out the problem with the 12 month expiration and requesting it be extended to 18 months. Don't know if that will go anywhere.

I had an idea that although it is nice to have people like Thierry come to visit us, it would perhaps be a lot more helpful if our star visitors were ranked women. Perhaps an invite to one of the European national teams might attract some ranked women?

AZ>>May is a very tough time to get top European runners to come over, with the competition season being in full swing there. However, an event in January-February in a warm place like California or Arizona could probably attract a few ranked competitors if we invited them.

There is some planning underway for a joint BAOC/Get Lost!!/terraloco Sprint WRE at Golden Gate Park next January, followed by an elimination Sprint festival.

Boris, we are tracking. A WRE + training camp in AZ in Jan/Feb is a fine dream.

Are the other North American WRE's finalized?

Canada has NAOCx3, COCx2?, GLOFx1 (forest sprint)
is that correct?

Dude - Barebones too!!!!

Oh, and I think just one at the COCs

AZ: I'm not sure why WRE sanctioning would rule out "2 day classic".

Only because "classic" is not an IOF distance -- at least as far as I know. I suppose one could organize an "LL" event, but it would be a first in NA.

I thought "Classic" was just US lingo for "Long". Wrong? This seems like the sort of question that has been debated in a long thread somewhere else in AP ;-)

If we can't understand it ourselves (and I don't purport to either) it is no wonder that there are the issues alluded to in this thread. Aside from the innate abstruseness of the sport itself.

AZ, probably has. USOF Classic is a bit shorter than IOF/USOF Long. It's basically the kind of length you'd want a course to be if you had one on Sat and one on Sun. I've seen "multiday" lengths in other countries, same kind of thing, really.

Well if you want to get into fine details, not really. USOF's Classic has an emphasis on all aspects of navigation (route choice, coarse and fine navigation), whereas IOF's Long places an emphasis on physical endurance. The easiest way to explain the distinction is, if you were to shorten an IOF Long course so that its length conforms to USOF Classic, most people would call it slightly boring. The mental challenge only becomes up to par when superimposed upon a degree of tiredness. Going the other way, a USOF Classic lengthened to IOF Long's winning time will probably be executed too slowly, and not yield the necessary physical intensity.

This fine distinction may be washed out and lost as the skill level of the course setter decreases.

And that is probably the best explanation I've seen of the differences.

I believe the IOF's description/ definition of the Long is deserving of serious criticism. (I don't have serious criticism of the other formats)

First, once the winning time is established as 90+min, is there really a need to further emphasize endurance in a running race??!!
Or Is this a call to add more gratituous climb? ;-)
Or perhaps the author(s) wanted to distinguish this from 90 min Trail O or Micro O which indeed might not tax physical endurance. ;-)

Second, if this is the only characteristic for the event, is it really worth doing? The author and approval people fell asleep on this one.

Third, ironically, the reality of international Long courses (including IOF sanctioned Long courses) is that that they ignore this vacuous language. Some courses (the best in my opinion) actually do combine all appropriate elements. However the predominant tendency seems is to be courses that are more like Middle courses than anything else, which is essentially the opposite of the stated intent. Add to this the trendy short leg butterflies, which also do the opposite of their stated intent, and I think we have a theme going.

I think there are some IOF people who need to be woken up on this subject. The traditional classic format which was the long time successful standard during the growth period of the sport has generally gone to hell. I have hopes, but not necessarily expectations, that the recent "group riunning" report will help, because I think the core recommendations in this report dovetail nicely with my complaints.

So who are the people that need waking up? I'm looking for real names of those responsible for creating, or more constructively, fixing the Long format.

May I ask what IOF definition you refer to?

When I look in the document "IOF Foot Orienteering Competition Rules 2009.pdf" on the IOF website I find the following definition in Appendix 6, page 39. I do agree that there is an unnecessarily strong emphasis on endurance, but it does explicitly say that it should include elements of technical navigation. As well, the summary table on page 37 seems to me to be a pretty balanced description of the character of the Long course?

"The Long distance profile is physical endurance. It takes place in a non-urban (mostly forested) environment, and aims at testing the athletes’ ability to make efficient route choices, to read and interpret the map and plan the race for endurance during a long and physically demanding exercise. The format emphasises route choices and navigation in rough, demanding terrain, preferably hilly. The control is the end-point of a long leg with demanding route choice, and is not necessarily in itself difficult to find. The Long distance may in parts include elements characteristic of the Middle distance with the course suddenly breaking the pattern of route choice orienteering to introduce a section with more technically demanding legs.

pi, you have the correct passages, and I must say you are generally correct about the content of the IOF language. I was going on memory of having read this with "a fine tooth comb" over a year ago. On the rereading, it was more complete than I remembered. My memory obviously let me down, although aggravated by a generally dismal impression of almost everything I hear lately related to the IOF.

At the same time I don't want to soften my comments about the overemphasis of "endurance" (I appreciate your agreement), or the current practices of Long course setting and controlling.

EricW, the "group running" report you are referring to, is it available somewhere online for review? Did IOF order this report?

I don't know who motivated this report, but you can see a discussion here:

http://news.worldofo.com/2009/12/21/extensive-repo...

[Ed: it looks to be Norwegians. I should have known!]

The USOF BoD has approved the bid for both days and the application for WRE status will be submitted shortly.

WRE status has been approved for both days of the WCOC meet.

Great job! One more USA WRE 2010 is open, most likely for the fall.

The wonderful forests of CT await, with excellent and challenging courses available for all. We look forward to seeing you all in May.

Our web site is up and running. More details will be added as we go along.

is the online registration page down ? was the same yesterday

I got this from the registrar (Jim Henderson) about an hour ago --

"I have emailed Kent about the problem. It has something to do with site security. I haven't heard back from him but hope he will have it resolved soon. It's been down since midday yesterday."

The expectation is that it should be working soon, but that might well not be until tomorrow.

Note that the deadline to avoid a late fee is next Monday, April 26.

As of this writing, online registration is back up.

https://www.mountainwebsoftware.com/oreg/wcoc10/

The 'pay now with PayPal' link took me away from the page where you can print the waiver. Does anyone have the direct link? Or will there be blank waivers at packet pick-up to sign?

We will have blanks ready for signing before you get your packet.

I believe there should be a link to the waiver somewhere in the confirmation email you received.

I'm seeing conflicting information about camping at Kettletown SP between the WCOC site and the CT DEP site.

WCOC says it's $36/night plus reservation fee. (Total $72 + rsv fee)

DEP site says it's $27/night plus $9 reservation fee (Total $63) and that the campground opens May 28.

Has anyone verified yet if this campground is going to be open. I'll try to call, but being a weekend I might not reach anyone.

Looks like the state has changed their pricing and opening dates since we first put up the information so Kettletown is no longer an option. The closest open state campgrounds are Macedonia in Kent and Black Rock in Watertown. There's also primitive camping at Tarrywile.

dan: you are right - I see the link - thanks for pointing that out

In the fiddling around to close the multi-billion (with a B) dollar deficit, last October our worthy politicians doubled the camping and park fees, and hunting and fishing licenses. While noteworthy, the move was largely met with silence until the fishing season was about to open. Faced with the doubling of fees, the fishing lobby awoke, threatening to escape to a neighboring state with much lower fees, and better fishing. The pols capitulated last week just before opening day and raised all the fees by 25% instead of the 100%. This major contribution to state coffers will most assuredly solve the budget misadventures.

As our web guru has been traveling for the last couple weeks, the site has yet to catch up to this important late breaking news.

Hi George! Your ISP (Comcast) doesn't like my ISP (actually the mail relay I use for all outgoing mail). Do you have another address?

I just decided to register, so that makes us just enough ranked women (yes?). But I'm getting over being sick and need to finish within a certain percentage of the winner, so don't run too quickly Sam!