Colour Codes

[Adrian]

you turn up to run a brown to find it is won in 35 minutes, barely a green.

This sounds rather far-fetched. Can you give an example of an event where it has happened? (apart from any middle-distance events that have been clearly labelled as such) In my experience, planners tend to make courses too long rather than too short. It's not unusual, for example, to find Blue courses that are 7+ km with 200+ m of climb, which is way outside the traditional guidelines. Perhaps they do this because they know the area has the potential for very few TD5 legs, but the average times taken on such courses are often very high.

[AndyC]

In which case my test of "did the competitors feel it was a Brown course" would decide it wasn't.

[LostAgain]

you turn up to run a brown to find it is won in 35 minutes, barely a green.

This sounds rather far-fetched. Can you give an example of an event where it has happened? (apart from any middle-distance events that have been clearly labelled as such) .

Latest example:

http://www.logonline.org.uk/wp/events-c ... x/results/

[LostAgain]

2nd example:

http://www.cix.co.uk/~neper/wales10/results.htm

[LostAgain]

you turn up to run a brown to find it is won in 35 minutes, barely a green.

It's not unusual, for example, to find Blue courses that are 7+ km with 200+ m of climb, which is way outside the traditional guidelines. Perhaps they do this because they know the area has the potential for very few TD5 legs, but the average times taken on such courses are often very high.

I must say I rarely find a course that has been planned over length with respect to winning time. This is probably a product of the fact there are few new areas without some former results from which to get a guide for running times.

I generally find SYO courses closer to the guide and therefore tough when you have been fed a diet of under-planned courses.

[NeilC]

I generally find SYO courses closer to the guide and therefore tough when you have been fed a diet of under-planned courses.

Surely last Autumn's Wincobank and Ramsley Moor events were underplanned? Remember a top elite orinteer should be winning a Brown in 57 mins.
Ramsley Moor won by a Junior in 46 mins
Wincobank in 42 mins

[LostAgain]

I generally find SYO courses closer to the guide and therefore tough when you have been fed a diet of under-planned courses.

Surely last Autumn's Wincobank and Ramsley Moor events were underplanned? Remember a top elite orinteer should be winning a Brown in 57 mins.
Ramsley Moor won by a Junior in 46 mins
Wincobank in 42 mins

Agree. These are also short, but you could also have picked some which were in line with your planning understanding, some clubs I cannot find any .

I would like to see your understanding of the guidelines more widely applied. But I'm afraid 57 minutes brown winning time is not the current understanding. Distance ratio's are what seems to be whats referred to above.

[NeilC]

Guideline B - Long distance events (2012)

"The Black course, if planned, would equate to the M21L course at an old style Regional Event, with an expected elite winning time of 67 minutes. All other course lengths should be scaled to the length required for this course, which has been allocated a course length ratio of 1.00.

Where no Black course is planned, it is still necessary to determine the length of a nominal Black course with an elite winning time of 67 minutes in order to use the ratios for the other courses. In this instance the winning time on the Brown course by a top standard elite competitor should be 57 minutes."

[Adrian]

2nd example:

http://www.cix.co.uk/~neper/wales10/results.htm

Thanks. That's virtually a park race, isn't it. It's very hard to make the guidelines fit with such areas, so should we even try? Maybe we have to, but perhaps they should've limited themselves to a middle-distance event.

As it is, and although it wouldn't have made a lot of difference, the Blue and Brown should both have been 15% longer. (Or no Brown at all.) Apart from that, the best we can do is make it clear in the event information what the area is like.

Unless I'm mistaken, the problem with this and the LOG event was that they were League events and the organisers felt they had to put on classic races with a full range of courses even though the areas were unsuitable. If this is the case, the regional associations need to change their League guidelines. The WMOA League includes middle-distance and urban races as well as classic races, and doesn't force Brown courses onto areas that can't take them.

[LostAgain]

Guideline B - Long distance events (2012)

"The Black course, if planned, would equate to the M21L course at an old style Regional Event, with an expected elite winning time of 67 minutes. All other course lengths should be scaled to the length required for this course, which has been allocated a course length ratio of 1.00.

Where no Black course is planned, it is still necessary to determine the length of a nominal Black course with an elite winning time of 67 minutes in order to use the ratios for the other courses. In this instance the winning time on the Brown course by a top standard elite competitor should be 57 minutes."

Looks plain enough to me and what I have "tried" to use , so why the mis-understanding or blatant ignoring?

[graeme]

you turn up to run a brown to find it is won in 35 minutes 2nd example:
http://www.cix.co.uk/~neper/wales10/results.htm

Thanks. That's virtually a park race, isn't it.

It's called a "district" event, and it looks like a "middle distance race". I guess you were hoping for a "long distance" race, but (as far as I can see) its not advertised as such. BOF decided that black was 67 mins but could also be a 35 minute race at "middle distance". That was a mistake, and this confusion is the consequence.

[Adrian]

it looks like a "middle distance race".

It might look like it to you, but it wasn't. At least, I can't see or remember any evidence that it was ever claimed to be a middle-distance event.

[LostAgain]

it looks like a "middle distance race".

It might look like it to you, but it wasn't. At least, I can't see or remember any evidence that it was ever claimed to be a middle-distance event.

Neither event put forward as examples were advertised as "Middle Distance Events" and if you look at routegadget were not planned as such.

They are just examples of underplanning, unfortunately (IMHO) this is VERY common. The guideline of 57 minutes Brown winning time, in my experience is missed the majority of the time and quite significantly so. NeilC put in a couple of further examples from SYO. This is not a rare occurence.

[Red Adder]

The discussion that has taken place here seems to confirm my earlier contention that the guuidelines for colour coded courses (not the events that comprise of CC courses) havegone missing with the result that everyone has their own opinion from past memories of what each CC should be.

Perhaps as a matterf urgency the new events group should look at recreating the guidelines for each course stating TD length range EWT etc. They are alluded to throughout the guidelines without being explicitly defined themselves. This is not a good state of affairs and without it I suspect the non-standard courses mention earlier in the thread will proliferate.

[graeme]

It might look like it to you, but it wasn't. At least, I can't see or remember any evidence that it was ever claimed to be a middle-distance event.

That's not the point: there's no evidence it was a long distance race either! I'm not arguing that they did or didn't stuff up in this particular case, nor whether you were confused or the planner was confused. I'm just saying that once "black" can mean a 67min race or can mean a 35min race, it no longer means anything useful at all.
As you found out.
We need to go back to having consistency