pete.owens wrote:As a novice in any sport, if you turn up to an event and sign up for the longest and hardest course you should expect to find it challenging.
That's true to some extent. But I think orienteering TD is difficult to fully understand, so newcomers are more likely to base a decision on distance (and possibly climb). And there are three problems with this:
1- The quoted distances of O courses are deceptively short
2- True difficulty level varies a lot. And with the best areas typically saved for higher level events, someone might think they've experienced TD5 at some lower level events, but haven't really
So the risk of someone selecting a course that is too challenging is quite high, even if they've been sensible and researched and tested it first.
The third issue is a somewhat different point that, in that the lack of longer but easier courses means that there's generally no good option for novice adults. I'm quite attracted by Graham's thought, which I interpret as newcomers having to successfully complete easier courses to 'qualify' for harder courses. But that would be difficult to manage. I also think it would need consistent offerings of longer less technical options (why not a competitive long orange class for those in their first three years?), as a mirror of the shorter more technical courses for those at the other end of their career.