Should have gone to

[The Loofa]

Gnitworp - I suspect you go to too many Army Wednesday events - well at your age I'm not surprised. SLOW's last use of hankley was Feb 06, and that was a small one - before that was OK Nuts in Dec04. As to how many Wednesday events there have been in the interim, I shudder to think. Next SLOW use is Feb13 for the CSC** qualifier - assuming I can get through Natural England's hoops
(** - relaxed in the knowledge I've got the name right!)

[Gnitworp]

Gnitworp - I suspect you go to too many Army Wednesday events - well at your age I'm not surprised.

Yes, I'm young enough to attend

[IanD]

assuming I can get through Natural England's hoops

Think yourself lucky if you get some hoops to jump through - Mole Valley are currently facing a brick wall (that's a solid black line for the Penrith thread) on an area which we have used before with no problems whatsoever.

[awk]

This art and skill is not required when running round a street O'
(nor indeed in creating a street map)

I disagree: that is exactly what is required in urban orienteering.

[Kitch]

a building is a building
a wall is a wall
a street is a street

unless of course if you mean the skill of guessing that the clearly crossable thin hedge in front of you, which is 2 feet high is the thing marked as an uncrossable boundary (when clearly it is crossable but has been mapped as not to be crossed to create some atificial barrier and force you off on some pointless extended dog leg because street orienteering is so simple that the only thing you can do is invent ridiculously convoluted bizarre and obscure routes to make people run round).

[King Penguin]

I'm suspecting Kitch might only have ever done a simple urban event in an area with an American-style rectangular grid-iron street pattern and never experienced the real thing.
Yes it's different to a terrain event, but in the right area with good planning it can be every bit as challenging, just in a different way.

[graeme]

a wall is a wall

...and is shown with a symbol 2m across. Two walls 2m apart, accurately mapped, will completely obscure the path between them. Or not, depending on the mapper's skill.

a contour is a line of equal height

...
... but a contour on a good O-map runs up and down hill picking out the landforms.

[epocian]

street orienteering is so simple that the only thing you can do is invent ridiculously convoluted bizarre and obscure routes to make people run round).

Try the Venice race if you think street o is simple
Here's this year's M21E
http://ol-shop.at/erik/2011/venice-inte ... ng-2011-3/
Leg 15 - 16 - simple? Erik simplified it but how many others spotted that route

[rocky]

Venice is a poor example. Yes, it is intense at speed but there is no art to it as Kitch says. It's a subset of orienteering - you can do the whole course using about 3 skills. I remember Yvette giving a talk about O technique and saying she had about 20 skills in her toolbox, and the challenge was selecting the correct ones for each leg. That is the art and challenge of traditional orienteering. Urban can have some of those subtleties but they rarely decide the results.

[Kitch]

thanks for articulating Murray

Sprint and Urban are not the same either

Spring gives a sub 15 minute race, which means it can be run at a intensity around your VO2max. This extreme intensity counters the reduction in required skillset to create a significant challenge in properly executing those skills.

Urban races are typically 2 or 3 times as long and so the intensity drops, leaving a race that requires few skills at a less than critical intensity, meaning that the skills are easily applied

[Gnitworp]

Constant abrupt changes of direction at controls and, maybe more significantly, during legs (needing constant map reorientation) where visibility is low (i.e., buildings blocking sight lines), e.g., old city centres with many narrow alleys, is a 'new' and rather demanding skill needed for urban O, and in my view well worthwhile testing. (a bit like navigating in rhodo etc, thickets, if (and it's a big if) they're accurately mapped.

[graeme]

Completely agree with Murray: urban races are just a subset of O-skills. I think that's why they're a good vehicle for introducing novices. Also happens to avoid the skills where the kitches of this world really pan me - ploughing through cr* p for miles, bearings to nebulous feature, leaping obstacles with a single bound.

Disagree again with kitch. I don't see much physiological difference between a 15min vs 30 minute race (think 5km vs 10 km). Personally, I feel much closer to VO2_max for urban races than the finickity sprints we get in the UK. I accept it might not be true for the best guys who can do the processing and focussing faster than I. It could be checked if anyone has got HRM traces to compare?

Of course, the specifications for long and middle nowadays only require a subset of skills too... but I wouldnt recommend trying to get round the JK sprint with two or three techniques next year.

[IanD]

I'd rather celebrate the variety of formats on offer than get sucked into an argument about which format is "best". Classic-distance in the forest, long urban, middle-distance forest, park sprint, urban sprint, trail-O, they all present different challenges and some individuals may get more excited about some formats than others. Good!

[madmike]

I'm in IanD's gang on this one -

[Gnitworp]

When's the showdown, Mike?