JK Relay

[madmike]

With the greatest respect Graham, that's not a weak link - if you'd come back 30+ minutes down and as aresult your team had not finished on the podium then you'd have been a weak link in my view

[graeme]

Well, I disagree. Of course you can mess it up, but you can also be a weak link and run well.
At one race last year, one of my team mates was over an hour down on his lap and lost almost a hundred places. Self-evidently a weak link, but also a valuable team member who ran well and so both deserved and got the respect of his teammates.
The underdog who performs well and achieves a result beyond his talent is the greatest thing on sport. Relays are the best chance for that to happen.

[EddieH]

The year that JK Trophy went from 3 to 4 runners loked bleak for WCH who had I beleves won the previous 2 years with I guess Dave Peel, Andy Kitchen and Steven Palmer. Dave Smith, a very ordinary (for more so than Graeme) M35 came in to run 2nd leg. Dave ran a fantastic race, still a long way down, but enough for the others to win the Trophy. Experiences like that are just amazing.

[madmike]

Graham,
I think you miss my point - if you stuff up and finish 30 mins down you are a stuff up - if you run the best you can and finish 30 mins down you are a weak link.

The rest of your points - completely d'accord
Mike

[andypat]

Madmike - on behalf of the real weak links - we salute you

[Roger]

I think Roger's point is that it's difficult to gaffle legs of different length.

Precisely. Some recent correspondence with the controller of this year's JK relays suggests that even the current guidelines, with a Long - Short - Long format (and the Short lap being the Long lap of another relay), have given the planners gaffling problems on an area as feature-rich as Braunton Burrows.

Trying to set up a three-way mixed-distance gaffle with laps as short as 5km, 3km and 4km, while preserving features like a mid-race spectator control and coping with e.g. a large field in the middle of the area (JK 2009, Dipton) is likely to lead to too many compromises. Surely 3 x 4km for the women and 3 x 5km for the men would give scope for better, fully-gaffled, courses?

A Long - Short - Long combination is next best: 4.5km, 3km, 4.5km could work well for the women with tri-gaffled 3km loops to a spectator control, from where the middle lap went straight to changeover while the first and last laps ran a bi-gaffled 1.5km loop to finish.

Yes, more complicated patterns will work. It's also possible to try to conceal from the runners exactly when they're running the ungaffled sections, but it's often all too obvious. The flexibility offered by Scandinavian forest, seven or ten laps and an average lap length of 10km or so give greater scope for good courses than the much tighter constraints for the JK relays.

Since my navigation improved I've been 'promoted' to last leg, but the most exciting races of my early orienteering career were first legs on the big relays, especially the JK: fighting to reach the punches, getting a stray elbow in the face when ducking through some light green, trying to work out who was going where; seeing the pack re-forming, splitting, coming back together again and then splitting once more.

More people + more parallel gaffles + good courses = more fun.
Making the legs uneven may increase the number of people slightly, but will reduce the parallelism. If all laps retain a spectator control (which I'd favour) then the likely need for at least one uncomfortably short loop may also mean worse courses.

Keep it simple.

[Vidalos]

So out 113 teams entered so far there are 4 on the JK Trophy and 2 on the Womens Trophy, yet many more of the entered teams are capable of competing on those classes. People seem to prefer being in the top 10 in their class rather than enter the open classes. Just evening out the no of legs and leg lenghts do not seem to be the solution then ! So what is ?

Can we mandate that each club enter at least one team ??? (only partially joking ! )

Nearly every club has the capability to enter teams in these classes ( new format ) so why dont they ?

Including the Senior classes would seem a possible solution but still have the recognition for the Top Teams in these age groups.

[graeme]

Nearly every club has the capability to enter teams in these classes ( new format ) so why dont they ?

Probably because the JK trophy is rubbish to run in. Four teams: what's the point of being the fifth, going straight off the back and staying there. This will never be fixed by tinkering about with lengths and numbers in a team. For every winner in a tiny class, there's also a loser, running all alone, who wont enjoy the experience. That's why the right answer is to have a single big relay where every team can have a realistic target, and feel good about achieving it: the continued popularity of Tiomila and Jukola with all age groups show this. As do ton of now-disproven theoretical arguments failing to reverse the decline of the JK relay.

[Vidalos]

Approx 2500 people will run the previous two days , but probably around 50 % or less will compete in the relays , sad really !!!

People dont seem to like the uncertainty of knowing when they will run
They dont want to be a weak link or let other people down
They dont want to be running or finishing on their own ( +30 mins to the winnners time per leg is 1 !/2 hours after the winners have finished)

So reduce the number of classes and the subdivide by age if appropriate
Change the start order of classes using historical information and stop the Ad hoc class
Let people run selected legs as individuals , not part of a team

Any other suggestion to condense the first starter to last finisher time, create more inclusivity and increase the numbers per class ?

[EddieH]

The newish handicap system used in the Scottish relay produces a gaffling nightmare. I solved it last year with it being particularly successful because no-one knew how it worked. I feel that my solution may well become the norm in future - even when it becomes commonly understood it produces fair gaffled courses with some head to head racing.

[mike g]

Approx 2500 people will run the previous two days , but probably around 50 % or less will compete in the relays , sad really !!!

stop the Ad hoc class

Great idea ... boost participation by scrapping the most popular class

[Vidalos]

I do understand your comment Mike , but do people really think at the beginning of the year I really must run or win the Ad-hoc class at the JK this year !!!! Or is it just to be the last chance, give who ever is left a chance to run class , and do the people who end up in the ad hoc relay think about it this way ??? Given you can run up classes and I dont think there's a restriction on women running mens classes isn't it just a participation class without meaning ??? And if so, isn't there a better and more meaningful way for people to participate ?

[SeanC]

When I run a relay I never expect to win, or even making the top 50%, it's just like normal races, you do your best, see if you can beat what you did last time/your expectations/people of similar ability. Except that it's not just you, it's the team and therefore a great opportunity to get to know/socialise etc - and such opportunities can be very limited in Orienteering. For me it's being in a team that counts. Doesn't matter if it's JK Trophy or Ad Hoc (so long as there's a course about the rightish length).

Ad hoc is also needed for the 1.5 persons per club leftovers from club teams, and is the only course with an orange course for inexperienced adults (I'm expecting green to be very green this year )

[distracted]

As said here already and in the other thread - make the JK Relay simple.

Three classes for the seniors - men's, women's, ad-hoc

If you want to award age-based prizes then this isn't impossible.

[Gnitworp]

The underdog who performs well and achieves a result beyond his talent is the greatest thing on sport. Relays are the best chance for that to happen.

As an M60 member of the winning team in the BOC M50 Relay at Culbin I can attest to that.
The entire team were very much underdogs, but turned in 3 clean runs unlike the favourites.
I love relays