Midland Champs

[NFKleanne]

Help I'm confused!! I'm trying to enter both days and it's coming up with the wrong price. On the NOR website its says I should pay £14 as a member of EAOA. On fabian4 its says £18. Also whats the difference between an A and B course -

[Clive Coles]

Need to talk to the Event organiser/coordinator. They will then sort out which ever source of information is wrong.

[sketchweppers]

Help I'm confused!! I'm trying to enter both days and it's coming up with the wrong price. On the NOR website its says I should pay £14 as a member of EAOA. On fabian4 its says £18. Also whats the difference between an A and B course -

I don't know why you get £18 fee. I have just tried and get £14 for an adult for the two days! Have you entered your BOF number correctly?

The A course is longer and harder than the B course for juniors- see page 4 of this download off the BOF website http://www.britishorienteering.org.uk/i ... line_b.pdf
It gives details of how the colour coded courses correspond to the age classes and give ratios and ranges for the distances of each course.
Good luck.

[Marco Polo]

Agree with Clive, I would talk to the organiser. One thought is that if you are not a National BOF member, the entry system may not have picked up the discount?

[NFKleanne]

We're local EAOA members, so when we all decide which courses we are going to do, will post a form to Alan. Thanks for all you help

[Muddy Boots]

Entries close this Sunday for the Midland Championships, which take place in North Norfolk on the 19 - 20 February. Entries on-line through fabian4.

[NFKleanne]

entered by post

[harry]

I hear Oentries has improved it's payment gateway and added new features.
Event organisers should check it out: http://oentries.com/tour

[Muddy Boots]

Entries on line via Fabian4 close on Sunday. At the moment there are no entries on M35. Is this the way the future of our sport is developing.

[awk]

I know the Midlands is on a distant area for many orienteers, but I'm still surprised at the very low entry - less than 300 at the time of writing, with just a day to closing. And the entries on junior/open classes is pretty desperate.

In answer to your question MuddyBoots, yes I think it is a reflection on the way the sport is going, but not entirely a message of doom and gloom. Rather than just an issue of lower numbers, it's a shift in choice.

Not a scientific comparison, but the M21 entry at the Midlands is just 7(!), and the W21 entry is 3 (!!). At our midweek night street score event on Wednesday, out of an entry of 42, there were 19 M21s and 8 W21s - indeed one experienced, but first time at these events, W21 commented how surprised she was to see so many M/W21s. Two-thirds of the field came from within a catchment radius of 3 miles, almost all of the rest less than 8 miles.

As I said, not scientific, but this is a trend I feel we're seeing more and more evidence for: a shift in what younger people seek from the sport, and a need to recognise both their temporal, financial and geographical needs and availability.

Interesting also to see that, as it currently stands, the entry for the British Nights is greater than the Midlands (with a lot more M/W21s).

[IkeySol]

Speaking as a Midlands M35 its just too far away from the West Midlands for me to consider it, I think the same for a lot of my club as theres very few of us enterered.

8 hours driving and 360 miles just isnt that appealing for a day trip from a cost and time point of view and the event on day 1 doesnt really interest me to make it a weekend costing me a further 100 quid to stay over and eat etc in the area.

I could drive to Scotland and back in less time!

[SeanC]

It's quite easy to use the ranking list to plot the age distribution of the orienteers who go to ranking events - and therefore the sort who would go to the Midland Champs. See attached. I did a bit of fudging to make 5 year age classes all the way down to M16.

Might be interesting to compare with a similar graph from 10 years ago to see if/how the distribution has changed, and what the likely impacts will be if these trends continue.

[awk]

8 hours driving and 360 miles just isnt that appealing for a day trip from a cost and time point of view and the event on day 1 doesnt really interest me to make it a weekend costing me a further 100 quid to stay over and eat etc in the area.

I have to agree that the Saturday event was not very attractive, and we decided not to enter. Would have done so if it had been a short/middle/urban race for instance - we want to look forwards not backwards, and have been glad to see the back of things like pin punches rather than wanting to go back to them. We're going as it's half term, can spend an extra day down there visiting, and it's part of the UK Masters series, but can understand why it's not attracting lots especially in the younger classes- which is part of the subtext of my previous post.

[Muddy Boots]

Sorry AWK sees it a retrogade to use pin punches for the Saturday event. The reason is that NOR is a small club and to put on a National event stretches all its resources on that day. Hence a do it yourself run with an SI start and finish.

In fact Day 1 at Felbrigg is a gem of a deciduous wood National Trust area. The recent cold spell means that it very runnable with very little undergrowth and has contour features to match those of the Sheringham area. It also has a very random network of small footpaths. So enter now before it is too late and have a practice run for next day.

Regards the Midland area itself the 10 or so M21's will go into the Kelling area exclusive to themselves to give the required course length. But because NOR used the area for their club championships 15 months ago it was embargoed by the Events Committee to those who ran in it before because of the two year rule.

[graeme]

Might be interesting to compare with a similar graph from 10 years ago to see if/how the distribution has changed,

Mike Hamilton showed this at the BOF roadshow.
Extending your graph to M10, you have two peaks, the "junior" one is just as and where it was 10 years ago. We do well at recruiting juniors and they drop out when they leave home.

The "senior" one is moving right at 1 year per year. We recruited lots of people in the 80's, and kept them, replacing the drop-outs with our friends in the same age group.

Not rocket science to see where this is going.