Light Green

[AndyC]

If we are being radical let us do away with colours entirely and use a two digit code for every course First digit being the TD Second digit relative distance

so 1.1 White
2.2 Yellow
3.3 Orange
3.4 Red (long Orange now)
3.5 Purple (I think)
4.3 Light Green
5.3 Short Green
5.4 Green
5.5 Short Blue
etc. (too bored to fill in all the list)
Does have the merit of adding courses like Long Long Light Green as 4.6 long White as 1.2 etc. I suppose and would give a truer description of what to expect in terms of technicallity and distance -anyone for a 5.1?

[awk]

These colour problems are because orienteering colours mix technical difficulty with length. Awk, assume you mean different colours ....

Exactly. But I wouldn't use short, medium, long etc, or you are in danger of getting the slightly silly combinations lampooned by geomorph

I'd just advertise it as Black 10k, Black 8k etc., and let the customers decide for themselves. I really don't see why we need to make it so complex, except for the fact that British orienteers always do.

[andypat]

I've thought for a long time that we ought to show the TD/length combination in some way. Why not just that: a two-part number where first part is TD and second part is length (rounded up to nearest km, so:

1.1
4.3
5.6
5.10

as necessary - or would that be too difficult a leap?

In short yes!
There are two problems with that in my view.

1. Despite the explanations above its more complicated than a simple colour based scheme and therefore a step backward rather than forward from the original question.
2.Its inherently open to misinterpretation and quite counter-intuitive. The numbers would be to easy to confuse with simple distance ie seeing 1.6 as 1.6 km versus 6km at td one. Also using a decimal point suggests that numerically the difference after the point is less signficant but the difference between a say 3.9 course and a 4.1 course would be quite a leap.

[awk]

....which is why I reckon a combination of colour for TD (using a system that is recognised in other outdoor sports too) and distance would work.

[Familytaxi driver]

I may be wrong if things are posibly changing again with the colour courses(and I glaze over when I read the changes ) But if it ain't broke don't fix it . I have no problem at all with Lt Green-
I started orienteering 2 years ago and had no problem with the concept of courses -colours white to green.
I was told what they stood for ( and didn't catch on for a long time that the colours got darker as the courses got harder) and just learned the system.
I also understood that as an adult I'd start at orange - as I could map read to some extent. Then I'd progress to Lt Green (and understood the courses would get a little longer as well) eventually I made it to Green, harder and longer again!
No problem; I understood the difficuly and length progression It soon sank in as I was on Orange for a long time but looked at what the other courses where + how long they were. I started to relate the colours to TD 1-5 also. As it tends to be youger ones that run the easier courses it made sense to me that they are shorter as well. Once you've been to a few events the concept sinks in. Why make it more complicated its nice and simple.
As a newcomer and not used to the old classes (they were going out as I was getting to the point of being able to run TD5) I also have no problem with short green short blue etc. I'm a bit older not super fit, dodgy knees on steep hills and have had a bad back. So I can choose short green at those events that have that structure (glazed over so not sure what they are called )and still do TD 5. I'm hoping to progress through to longer courses eventually but also choose the lenght I want to run at TD 5 depending on the terrain the course is on.

Having said that i do see that it's nicer in some ways and more relevant to compete aginst the same ages as you become more competitive but I'd rather have choice of course length and somehow it seems easier to enter short green than -for example a W60 class (to get a shorter course) when I'm a W45!!

[roadrunner]

The thing that baffles me about course naming is that, in an international sport like ours, there's no consistency between countries. I remember ages ago meeting orienteers in Sweden and trying to explain to them what courses I ran and what standard I achieved: Green/Blue/Brown and Bronze/Silver/Gold meant nothing to them. What do other countries do? Surely a bit of consistency would be a good thing, like with downhill ski-ing, where a Green is easy and a Black is hard whichever country you're in.

[andypat]

It could be worse - if youve ever tried to follow the paralympics the categories for the different classes in each sport are a PhD subject in themselves!