Training Log Archive: iansmith

For lack of an obviously better forum for these comments, I will here post my responses to an ongoing discussion about the US Team Training Camp in Harriman, NY the weekend before the Hudson Highlander.

The central question in the discussion is who should be allowed to train. Clearly many US team resources (USOF money allocated to the US team) are being spent putting on this camp, like the coach's salary and acquisition of maps (I think that actually might be free).

There is much merit in a team-exclusive training camp (consider what a fiasco a US Olympic Swimming open training camp would be, where any kid who could float could show up). It allows the team to focus, possibly discuss things amongst each other, receive individual attention from Mike Waddington and the French guests, and generally concentrate on preparing for WOC. There also may be limited resources - like the housing the HVO families have graciously offered, maps, the number of people we can allot without requiring a permit, and so on (though it seems we could apply for a permit... dunno).

However, it seems that the orienteering community (and especially that component willing to overcome the energy barrier to traveling to this event) is fairly small. Most of the events of the training camp do not have obvious limitations - if you set a course or an exercise, other people visiting those controls don't detract from the US Team's use of that exercise. If Mike and the French guys want to focus on the US team, non-team members can stay out of their way or listen to the discussion without receiving explicit individual attention. Moreover, since many aspiring US team members (who are neither on the team now nor juniors) may be on the US team in the future, it seems that there is a reasonable interest in improving their skills now.

I think there are three reasonable size constraints:
- Only US Team members and US Junior team members are allowed to attend. While constraining, I think this is reasonable - there are certain privileges that come with being a US Team member, and first access to training resources seems logical. It does seem to have some holes (imagine if a Junior team member last year turned 21 but had not yet made the C Standing team).

- US Team/Junior team members may attend and some small number of non-team members. This could be decided on first come, first serve basis, by invite (e.g. invite the top k elites), or by some combination (some threshold of skill + first come).

- Open to the orienteering community.

A train of discussion I vehemently oppose is that non-US team members have to pay some sort of fee ($20 per day and $50 per day were discussed) and to make the camp a US team fundraiser. I applaud the zeal of those trying to raise funds for the US Team, but improving the quality of the elites and raising funds are orthogonal goals here. Consider that many aspiring members are students, and even a nominal fee is burdensome. Consider that even traveling to the camp can be prohibitively expensive. Finally, (and in my mind, most damning of all) the implied exclusion of non team members (or more precisely, inclusion if and only if you give money to the US team apparatus) is destructive to the community of elite members in the US (elite := those members trying to improve to be able to compete on the world level) and counterproductive to the goal of raising the competitive level in the US.

As Boris said in his response on the e-mail thread to this line of thinking:

If this is the kind of event that draws people who are off the team, but improving, and gets them to train harder and better, than the benefit to the team is much greater than the 50 bucks a day we would get off some of them. I am thinking here of people such as Alex Jospe or Brendan Shields, who are motivated and are steadily improving as orienteers and starting to push those who are on the team.

Disclaimer: I don't have a problem with non-team members having to pay some fee for materials (maps, etc). I presume there exists some USOF funding from the "US Team" category, which logically should be used explicitly for the US Team. There exists a semantic difference for cost of attendance and mandatory donation to the US Team fund.

It may be that I cannot attend (since apparently because of a lack of permit, they are constraining the camp to six non-team members), but were they to implement the required US Team donation, I think I would eschew attending and start organizing a training camp for the spring done in the manner I felt best embodied the goals of the US elite training program (or even more broadly - to anyone who wanted to get better at orienteering). I have to suppose that the US Team Training Camp with its vast resources and coaching would be superior to a camp run by one or two of the participants in the US Team Training Camp, but I'm happy learning from Ross and Boris at club training camps if the US Team is unwilling to be inclusive a priori.

C • Good thoughts 6

Need to do training besides commuting... slow week.