Rosaryville MTBO

Update: The meet registration area is in a covered pavilion with a couple of grills and picnic tables. Meet Directors John & Jody Landers will have the charcoal grills going by 12:30 and will supply a limited number of hot dogs and rolls for finishers. Participants are encouraged to bring a picnic lunch and something to grill for themselves.

Mountain bike orienteering will return to Rosaryville State Park for only the second time with, weather permitting, an event to be held in the morning before QOC's regular, bike-less orienteering event. Two courses will be offered of roughly similar length and difficulty to those offered at the same venue in May 2011, which can be viewed here - see preliminary (there may still be some tweaking of the course designs) course stats below. Timing will be done using electronic punching (explained here in the section "What is Epunching?"). In addition to the MTBO courses taken separately, an orienteering duathlon competion will be offered, with results computed by combining the times for MTBO courses and foot-orienteering courses as follows:

• Men and Open Teams - Long MTBO/Blue Foot O
• Women and Female/Mixed Teams - Long MTBO/Red Foot O
• Men, Women and Teams - Short MTBO/Green Foot O
• Men, Women and Teams - Short MTBO/Orange Foot O

Participants may race solo or in groups. Participation will be capped at 100 start groups, i.e. each solo racer or group counts as one start group. Update: We're pleased to announce that pre-registration using our friendly Registration Form is available for use, so sign up now! Registration will close midnight Thursday April 26.

Background on Mountain Bike Orienteering

New to MTBO and curious what it's about? Wikipedia is helpful of course, as is the Orienteering USA web site. If you're more into video, YouTube has lots to offer including coverage of the 2009 World Championships Middle Distance Final and some headcam video from the 2010 Sprint Final. If you don't want to click through to any of those at the moment, suffice it to say that MTBO is navigational racing on mountain bikes, in which each participant is given a map showing a series of checkpoints to be found in a designated order in the shortest possible time, with the choice of route between checkpoints left up to the racer. Success therefore depends on raw speed, of course, but also on the ability to read the map, make good route choices and execute them efficiently.

Rules for this event:

Note: rain and therefore poor trail conditions may require the MTBO to be cancelled. The foot-O in the afternoon will take place rain or shine. MTBO entry fees paid online will be refunded in full in the event of cancellation.