Physiological and performance characteristics of United States championship class orienteers

The purpose of this investigation was to study the anaerobic and aerobic power of female and male United States championship orienteers and relate these data to competitive performance. In addition, it was considered valuable to obtain a general physical description of the athletes. Anthropometrically, neither the females (n=5) nor the males (n=13) conformed to a somatotype classification typical of endurance athletes. Although the mean anaerobic power values for the females (76.6 kg.m.sec-1) and the males (106.6 kg.m.sec-1) were consistent with what is known for distance runners, the respective aerobic powers of 46.1 and 61.6 ml.kg-1.min-1 were considerably below expectations for national class competitors. The explanation for this latter finding was attributed to their reported training programs. Partial residual plots and multiple regression procedures were used to determine the relationship between aerobic power and gender, respectively, with speed of competitive performance. The final equation to predict performance was P = -13.10 + 0.62(VO2max) + 0.26 (Experience, years) - 0.03 (Anaerobic power) + 1.21 (gender) - 0.01 (VO2max)2 with an R-square of 0.73 and P less than 0.01.