More orienteering in JK sprint than previous 2008 events?

[PG]

The sprint race required more thought than the rest of the weekend put together. Brilliant!

The JK sprint was pure orienteering, which required intense concentration for every leg till we were heading for the final control. I suggest that we were orienteering for 95% of our running time.

For most events in the UK (but not JK day 2 the following day and probably less so in much of Scotland and the Lakes), we spend the majority of our time knowing exactly where we are going (collecting feature, track junction etc) and just running as hard as we can to get there. Often the amount of time spent in true orienteering is less than 25% of our running time.

If this is true then in terms of orienteering time per pound spent, the best sprint races can be better value than many classic races!

[Gnitworp]

.....and they are are even better when they last longer, as in the UK Cities Cup, i.e., urban/park O on large scale maps.

I've said this before: the 'Sprint' length is often a natural product of what an area can elegantly accommodate. It's the distinct character of this type of orienteering that distinguishes it from other orienteering disciplines, more than its length. People like it because of its nature, where it takes place and the map it uses, and not necessarily because of how long it lasts.

[Gnitworp]

Further to my previous post, I think different people can do well at orienteering of the type staged at Guildford, and it is definitely a different discipline from conventional classic forest O, but I do not see how this so called 'Sprint O' discipline suddenly changes it's nature (especially for non-elite) if a race is longer than 'spint length', e.g, in a race with say a 30 minute winning time in an area that will sustain it.

I therefore wonder whether a separate urban/park O (for want of a better term) British Championships for all Classes would be more appropriate, attractive and easier to organise if designed to a longer one-race format. I personally would have preferred the wonderful Scarborough races as one double-length race, and I suspect the results would have been very similar.

[awk]

From my own very personal perspective, I'm convinced there would have been a big change in results if the distances had been longer. I had one of my best results in years on Friday (not spectacular by other better orienteers' standards, but a big one for me at this stage of building up again): I definitely benefited from the short intense distance which punished mistakes and hesitations so rigorously, relying as I do much more on precision, speed/technique balance and control flow. It was no coincidence to me that my best results this weekend were where precision was at a premium (Guildford, Leith Hill to a lesser extent), and my worst result was at Pippingford where the emphasis was much more on the physical. (No complaints - I enjoyed Pippingford, and in some ways it was the most satisfying race I had all weekend simply because I coped better than I thought I would on a course that didn't play to my strengths).

Yes, longer urban-O can be really good fun (York, Oxford, Lincoln, Warwick and Venice have been highlights over the past year or so), but the sprint distance has its own demands which I for one thoroughly enjoy.

[brooner]

Perhaps this is where RJ's idea that "Sprint is only a challenge for the elite" comes in, but it applies to the longer distance races rather than sprint races. When the distances get longer it is (probably) only the Elite who can continue to maintain such a high tempo over the longer distance, thus maintaining the mental challenge, whereas others won't be able to run so hard for 30+ minutes, and thus will find the orienteering slightly easier. In theory.