Scouts Suck

No, not the Boy Scouts and certainly not the source of my annual Thin Mint cookie dosage. I mean people who live near the location of a major Adventure Race that take specific advantage of being able to comb the areas around known start/finish locations and pre-screen for unmapped trails, logging roads etc..... Race promoters should have the freedom to design courses that involve "route finding". Forcing navigators to identify unmapped trails or roads that appear to head in a logical direction to a CP placed in the middle of USGS Quad "nothingness" is truly adventurous. Finding out in advance that the short route is a crappy washed out hike-a-bike and that riding around on the long route on a far better road that is is marked on the map as being of the same quality is NOT adventurous. Spending a month of training combing an area around a race course is lame. Being able to detail your training in an area around the race course and identify a 95% accurate course layout on web forums before a race is pathetic. It ruins the competitive balance for those not fortunate enough to live in the hometown. Races that captured the imagination at the dawn of this sport were almost always in exotic locales where virtually none of this knowledge existed. Not every event we do can be in some mysterious backwater but you can do a part to preserve some of that feel. There's no regulating this type of behavior. But I'd like to issue an honor-based challenge. You wanna know the course? Go register for a triathlon, they'll be happy to show you each cone you have to follow. Otherwise, leave scouting to the kids!