SPORTS PSYCHOLOGY

MTB-O vs Foot-O

it’s not (only) about the bike

Jason McCrae

ONE of the biggest developments in Orienteering over the last 5 years has been the introduction of Mountain Bike Orienteering (MTB-O) within the broader discipline of orienteering. Australia, despite having a relatively small number of people competing regularly in MTB-O, has been highly successful in this field with the hosting of the World MTB-O Champs in Victoria in 2004 and competitors such as Adrian Jackson, Alex Randall, Belinda Allison and Emily Viner winning medals at World Championship and World Cup races. Quite obviously the main difference between MTB-O and what is now sometimes referred to as Foot-O (traditional orienteering), is that a person competes on a mountain bike rather than running or walking. This includes the requirement that in MTB-O races, a competitor is only allowed to ride on marked tracks and through marked yellow clearings, versus the foot orienteer who can go wherever on the map his or her legs can carry him/her.

The change from Foot-O to MTB-O is not only about the bike (apologies to Lance Armstrong). From a psychological and technical view point the challenge of Orienteering can broadly be divided into ‘route choice’ and ‘navigation’. Navigation, for the purposes of this article, is the mental and technical processes used in finding your way between controls. That is, navigating to each control following the route you have chosen through the terrain. It is made up of a series of mini or ‘micro’ decisions such as which gully on the map is the one you see before you, what piece of information in the terrain you are looking for next and whether the track junction you just ran or rode through is the 2nd or 3rd on the way to your control.

In contrast, route choice decisions are ‘macro’ decisions usually made at the start of a leg regarding which route the competitor wants to take to get to the next control. Route choice is also a very conscious decision-making process with orienteers examining different routes and weighing up the pros and cons of each choice and concluding which is best for them. The information considered in making a choice between routes is often not only about the map and terrain but can also take into account personal aspects about the individual – a competitor feeling strong and fit early in a course might be more willing to choose an option travelling over a hill compared with later in the course when fatigue has set in and round the hill becomes the best choice.

In MTB-O the route choice aspect of our sport is often greatly emphasised and challenged, possibly more often than in Foot-O. The restriction of MTB-O to tracks, yellow clearings and roads and also the ability to cover greater distances on a bike, compared to on foot, encourages the emphasis on route choice. By contrast, in Foot-O, the fact that a competitor can go anywhere across the terrain allows for challenges in navigation with short legs and detailed point and contour features that are not always present on tracks alone. That’s not to say that both disciplines don’t have challenges in navigation and route choice, just that each lends themselves to different emphasis.

The nature of MTB-O also changes what are the key components to be considered in making route choice, compared to Foot-O. Firstly hills and height gain or loss assume great importance in MTB-O. On a bike much greater distance can be travelled down hill compared to up hill and research using GPS equipment on MTB-O has shown speeds as high as 60km/h down hills in contrast to going up steep hills at below 10km/h. This wide variation in speeds, not as wide in Foot-O, becomes very important in route choice decision-making. Secondly, the quality of a track has greater influence on speed in MTB-O than in Foot-O. A minor, heavily rutted and bumpy track will not allow a competitor in MTB-O to attain high speeds compared to travelling along a main road or track. In contrast, in FootO there is less speed difference between uphill running and down-hill running. We all know there is a difference (!) however the difference might be between 17 km/h down hill and 12km/h uphill. For some this means key criteria for Foot-O route choice are based on which route is going to make the navigation aspect easiest, for example, if going up and over a hill rather than around it makes navigating to the control easier then the expert foot-orienteer will often choose that route. So how does the examination of these differences in route choice decisions affect the way a competitor orienteers in each discipline? At the top end of both disciplines of orienteering our elites are able to identify key criteria for making route choice decisions before the competition starts, and then use the criteria in making route choices during the race.

For example in MTB-O two key criteria, as previously discussed, could be avoiding up hills and using main roads/tracks instead of smaller more indistinct tracks. Knowing this allows a competitor to plan to make decisions on route choice options in their race based on which choice has the least up hill and travels along the most established tracks/roads. This encourages quicker route choice decisions to be made, provides a framework that supports route choice decisions based on the most important information about the terrain, rather than using less relevant pieces of map information, and with practice should improve the quality of the decisions being made.

The process of having criteria or some key points to assess route choices can also be used in Foot-O. Before the 2004 World Orienteering Championships in Sweden Grant Bluett, then Australian team member experienced in Swedish terrain and now Orienteering Australia’s Head Coach, advised Australian team members to choose routes that ran along the south side of marshes as the marshes were good navigational features and on the south side received more sun than other parts of the forest so were firmer and faster running.

In conclusion, I would suggest that a key component of orienteering, in either discipline, is decision-making for the fastest route choice between controls. In MTB-O, where there is a greater speed variation than Foot-O, making fast and correct decisions is vital. Having criteria for assessing route choice based on what you consider to be the key features of the terrain can improve your ability to consistently make the route choices best for you.