Harvester 2011

[afterthought]

awk writes

the event IS too hard for most British orienteers

Maybe that's exactly the right storyline for the BOF website and magazine?

[afterthought]

Sorry for error in a club name in previous post.

To say sorry and to further emphasise the fine achievement of the Lincoln Orienteering Group I have compared the number of runners at the 2011 Harvester to the number of ranked members as in Dave Nevell's "Can where you live in Britain make you a better orienteer?" in CompassSport Vol 32 Issue 1. The top 10 are:

Code: Select all

Forth Valley Orienteers                     0.45
Lincoln Orienteering Group                  0.40
South Yorkshire Orienteers                  0.37
South-East Lancashire Orienteering Club     0.33
Happy Herts                                 0.33
South London Orienteers                     0.28
Nottinghamshire Orienteering Club           0.24
RAF Orienteering Association                0.23
West Cumberland Orienteering Club           0.22
North Gloucestershire Orienteering Club     0.22

The average across all clubs is 0.1 (that is a tenth of ranked members attended the Harvester.)
Eight clubs provided half the runners.

[ash]

Slowly getting the lost property from the event sorted. But the following items are still unclaimed:
* left handed thumb compass with attached magnifier.
* red and black Silva headtorch.
* pink kids fleece.
* A red, white and blue WOC 1999 jacket.

If any of these items belong to you, please email shuoc (at) shef.ac.uk

[PMG]

I organised a couple of Harvesters in the 1990s on behalf of OD. We had over a 100 teams each time. The courses were different then, 7 runners on each. The B course then had some shorter and easier laps than there are now. This allowed a wider spread of club members to take part.
Perhaps there should be a "C" course to cater for this?
It would certainly not be a Peter Palmer replacement. This is a great event.

This would perhaps increase participant numbers?

Peter G (OD)

[SeanC]

The problem is that there arent many clubs with sufficient numbers of new/inexperienced members to make a 5/7 person night relay team. It could be a lot of work for 4 or 5 teams.

Could it work to have a joint competition with one of the Adventure Racing organisations - with the AR people doing something more appropriate to that market and the orienteers doing the hard core navigation race that is the Harvesters? Inexperienced orienteers could then join in the the AR race instead of fearing letting down the team of more experienced club members in the Harvesters relay. This might make it more attractive to organise - if much of the organisation was being done by the AR people and the O club's main task was planning and publicity to orienteers?

[DJM]

Just had a look at the results ... can anyone enlighten us about who was running for ShUOC as I guess their parents didn't really name them as The Ginger Hound, Athletics God, Angry Dave 1, Bomb Meister T, Forest Dump, He's Got a Massive and Angry Dave 2

[Strider]

Sorry for error in a club name in previous post. .

No need to apologise - it's a mistake often made!

To further emphasise the fine achievement of the Lincoln Orienteering Group I have compared the number of runners at the 2011 Harvester to the number of ranked members as in Dave Nevell's "Can where you live in Britain make you a better orienteer?" in CompassSport Vol 32 Issue 1. The top 10 are:

Code: Select all

Forth Valley Orienteers                     0.45
Lincoln Orienteering Group                  0.40
South Yorkshire Orienteers                  0.37
South-East Lancashire Orienteering Club     0.33
Happy Herts                                 0.33
South London Orienteers                     0.28
Nottinghamshire Orienteering Club           0.24
RAF Orienteering Association                0.23
West Cumberland Orienteering Club           0.22
North Gloucestershire Orienteering Club     0.22

The average across all clubs is 0.1 (that is a tenth of ranked members attended the Harvester.) Eight clubs provided half the runners.

Well, that is nice to know - makes getting our a*ses kicked feel a touch sweeter

S.

[awk]

Perhaps there should be a "C" course to cater for this?

Wasn't this tried, and got rid of in the slimming down that took place a few years ago?

Personally, I think the format as it stands is fine, but we will have more B teams and fewer A teams next time if the course lengths stay the same (especially as they were different to what were originally advertised).

Having said that, we could have raised at least one more team if it had not been scheduled at this time, perhaps two (and the vegetation is an issue for potential organising clubs).

[Adventure Racer]

Just had a look at the results ... can anyone enlighten us about who was running for ShUOC as I guess their parents didn't really name them as The Ginger Hound, Athletics God, Angry Dave 1, Bomb Meister T, Forest Dump, He's Got a Massive and Angry Dave 2

Athletics God is surely easily identifiable from other information posted on Nopesport.

[ba-ba]

When the idea of hosting the Harvester was banded about GG bought to our attention a Swedish day/night relay where they run the 3 night legs at night then stop, take a break and re-convene the relay in the morning with the 4 day legs, a system we thought about borrowing - although BOF's harvester guidelines wouldn't allow this.

The beauty of this format is that people know what they're running (nay/night) and there's no chance of early day legs being set off in the night, which they may not enjoy (although I really enjoyed my impromptu night leg)

Just had a look at the results ... can anyone enlighten us about who was running for ShUOC as I guess their parents didn't really name them as The Ginger Hound, Athletics God, Angry Dave 1, Bomb Meister T, Forest Dump, He's Got a Massive and Angry Dave 2

Deed Pole is a wonderful thing...

[cbg]

When the idea of hosting the Harvester was banded about GG bought to our attention a Swedish day/night relay where they run the 3 night legs at night then stop, take a break and re-convene the relay in the morning with the 4 day legs, a system we thought about borrowing - although BOF's harvester guidelines wouldn't allow this.

The beauty of this format is that people know what they're running (nay/night) and there's no chance of early day legs being set off in the night, which they may not enjoy (although I really enjoyed my impromptu night leg)

The Swedish Army Relays one year (late 90s) went to running all 3 night legs together in a combined mass start. Early in the morning Leg 4 started in a hunting (sorry, chasing) start, calculated from adding together the times of the night legs. Everybody (except the results team, I suppose) got some rest at the same time; the night legs were exciting with mass participation (at least 2 legs were over the same distance); and spectators were out in force throughout the remaining 3-leg relay. Worth a try?

I am not a fan of commentary at individual events, but missed the opportunity to wake occasionally in my warm sleeping bag and hear how teams were doing. Not your aimless, fill every second commentary, just finishing team/runner, team position, time taken and runner's position on leg. Of course I accept that local homeowners would not have appreciated it and it would have been yet another task for someone to be found to do, so consider it a idea for the future, not a criticism of SHUOC.

Otherwise, like many other posters, WELL DONE SHUOC. Now, when can we take on SYO off their own terrain ...?

[HOCOLITE]

A lot of us don't take part for the prizes but for the fun However I'm sure a lot of ladies are put off by the length of courses. I can only really offer my services for the dawn leg and that is longer than I'd usually run. I quite enjoy night O but for 60 mins not any more so as I'm not elite or competitive I 'm prepared to make up a team. I found this harvester very much to my liking due to the non physical nature of the terrain, but still a little too long. It was obvious from the mini mass starts that leg 2 (B Relay)was too long for a large number of competitors if the event were to finish before lunch. To get more competitors the headbanging camp will have to sacrifice something if not the numbers will not increase. Perhaps there should be shorter loops and teams can elect how many their runners do as long as each runner does at least one. Might increase strategy too.

[Adventure Racer]

Could it work to have a joint competition with one of the Adventure Racing organisations - with the AR people doing something more appropriate to that market and the orienteers doing the hard core navigation race that is the Harvesters?

Have you seen how much adventure races cost to enter? The thing is most of the AR organisors are professional (or at least semi-pro) - no comment on the excellent standard of organisation on show at the weekend, but I'm sure nobody was charging for their time, or aiming to pay a mortgage out of the profits.

Meanwhile, those adventure racers into this sort of thing were there anyway - apart from myself at least 5 other elite level (or ex-elite level in my case) adventure racers out there I'm aware of. Most adventure racers who aren't already orienteers won't be that keen on an event like this no matter how much you dumb it down (bearing in mind typical AR events have teams of 3 or 4 with only 1 navigator in each team).

[frog]

I wonder if one reason for few clubs than you'd like going is it not really being in the radar for Scottish clubs, although 400 sounds a really good turn out for a relay to me.
I'm in the habit of just looking for Scottish events when I click on the BOF event website so hadn't spotted this was on, although getting several club members down to Sheffield who like relays and night o and aren't busy preparing stuff for the 6 days 2 weeks later would have been very difficult, if not impossible for us.
I hadn't realised the location of the harvester varied each year, I knew it was at Tonbridge wells last year and never having been to one presumed that club or area always put the harvester on so didn't look at this thread until today, now I've got my string course maps posted off to be printed. Where is it next year?

[awk]

Perhaps there should be shorter loops and teams can elect how many their runners do as long as each runner does at least one. Might increase strategy too.

I really like this idea. It could also be utilised so that clubs wouldn't have to fit exactly into the 7/5 per team format. Say, 10-12 legs to be completed by teams of 5-8 people, with each running 1-2 legs (I've suggested numbers pretty much at random). There might need to be restrictions on who can run what leg (to prevent people simply duplicating).

On the lack of commentary: yes, great to have, but I thought the solution this year of timings from controls at various points round the course provided an excellent substitute, and certainly couldn't have been replaced, only supplemented, by commentary. Generated loads of interest.

In terms of generating more numbers, the event really needs a few years in reasonably central/accessible locations. Obviously this is highly dependent on who is prepared to put it on, but optimally it needs time to generate interest before adding barriers.