Well...it depends...
The primary advantage that the CTRIO provides is that it runs much faster than the PLC scan and can trigger your event independently of the PLC, with a much shorter latency. If you don't need that capability, just check the quad counter's value and trigger your event that way. Looping an output back doesn't provide any real value, and a simple relational contact is very easy to implement. Just read the accumulator and compare to your target value. This might be complicated slightly by the fact that CTRIO counters are 32 bit, and relational contacts are only 16 bit, but you can work around that pretty easily.
And yes, you are the first to ask a CTRIO question....but the forum has only been up a couple of weeks.