On any area, its always possible to set "the most technical course possible, constrained by not taking on rough terrain or climbing fences".
If you can't physically get through the terrain, making the course shorter isn't going to help, it just reduces the time of misery. I completely disagree about not providing courses if the terrain won't support it - Orienteering in the south of England seldom gets above TD4 but we still have fun events there. The planners just set the hardest courses they can given the terrain they have. For older runners on rough areas, the planners also have to accept the constraints of the terrain, and make sure each leg offers a not-too rough routechoice.
Also, for very experienced orienteers, its worth considering what really is a technical challenge. "TD5" is essentially the final step in learning the skills of orienteering: many people have been at that level for dozens of years. For them, "Follow an accurate bearing" is no more a challenge than "take the first left, then the third right", and much less challenging if the bearing is done at a walk and the turns at a run.
Probably, it means more path running and tips the balance towards route choice and away from finding controls. The MW70+ courses might end up with a similar fraction of path running to WOC long https://www.tulospalvelu.fi/gps/20210709M/ - is that so bad? The one issue is that it needs extra, appropriate controls: yet more complication to benefit a small number of competitors, when we're struggling for volunteers to get the controls in the right place.
Orienteering and the older competitor
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Re: Orienteering and the older competitor
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graeme - god
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Re: Orienteering and the older competitor
Atomic wrote:just have clear course descriptions so that people can decide for themselves what to enter
Definitely agree with this part, and it's not only useful for older competitors. I often choose between the course suggested for my age class and a shorter one, and the standard length/climb/number of controls table is often not enough for me to understand what I am gaining or losing when choosing a shorter course. Particularly, I'd like all anomalies (shorter courses with more climb or controls) explained in words, but also all cases where courses of a similar length have a different character or use different parts of the map. Sometimes final details mention that "longer courses" visit a particular part of the map, why not say which courses exactly? I may enter a longer course if it visits an interesting area that a shorter course does not, but not if it means running more circles in the same part.
- MChub
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Re: Orienteering and the older competitor
Atomic wrote:But except at the very largest events you could solve all this by removing all the notions of which class certain age groups "should" run in and just have clear course descriptions so that people can decide for themselves what to enter based on their ability/fitness/experience.
Just a thought...
Perhaps we could devise a new system and give each course a code (say a colour for example) which standardised specifications on what was expected in terms of technical difficulty and time to complete.
- pete.owens
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Re: Orienteering and the older competitor
Atomic wrote:we could solve all of this by not using something as arbitrary as EWT which depends on who enters! If we want to stick to times then as you say something like "time for a notional 6000 pt ranking runner" would probably be more logical.
The EWT doesn't depend on who turns up it is based on a notional elite M21 - with everything else scaled. It really doesn't matter what point you take as your reference point you will end up with the same result.
- pete.owens
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Re: Orienteering and the older competitor
Auld Badger wrote:
8 Control Density - ie number of controls per km should not be more than on say blue or brown course.
I'm not sure you would want to include a 2 km leg, which could be found on a brown course, in a 2.5 km VSG course.
Last edited by pete.owens on Fri Sep 20, 2024 10:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.
- pete.owens
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Re: Orienteering and the older competitor
pete.owens wrote:Atomic wrote:But except at the very largest events you could solve all this by removing all the notions of which class certain age groups "should" run in and just have clear course descriptions so that people can decide for themselves what to enter based on their ability/fitness/experience.
Just a thought...
Perhaps we could devise a new system and give each course a code (say a colour for example) which standardised specifications on what was expected in terms of technical difficulty and time to complete.
Nice idea in principle, but doubt it would work in practice. For a start, that would only address the identified issue if physical difficulty was a third factor. Time to complete would probably be used as a proxy for physical difficulty, but it would be ineffective, and particularly disadvantageous for people with reduced flexibility or mobility.
It would also be inevitable that such codes would be used to indicate relative length/difficulty within a given event, rather than against a set standard. Otherwise, many events would likely only be able to offer a limited range of courses, with the 'longest, hardest' courses becoming very rare at least in some parts of the country. My expectation would be that most people would agree it would be better to offer courses labelled as something more challenging than it really is rather than limit the range of courses on offer, even though that dilutes the usefulness for using such codes in assessing what one's individual experience of a given course is likely to be.
The human condition being what it is, you would likely also find the same coding labels being used across multiple competitions in different ways. For example, how might climb be used to adjust length of courses within each code? Many will recognise the effect of climb on estimated time to complete. But there would likely be at least one major competition that takes no account of climb within its course labels, thus risking courses in some areas becoming a much harder physical challenge than would be expected from the given label. No doubt this would be a competition that claims to focus on maximising team participation or some such, oblivious to the fact that its creative use of established labels risks alienating those less likely to participate.
One approach might be to trial such a system, but then undertake a meaningful review of how it works in practice to honestly appraise its strengths and weaknesses, and identify how it might be adjusted to improve its efficiency in enabling participants to make an informed choice of course. It may be that there are some factors particularly important to one or more subgroups of competitors that would be best handled with additional information, given that any system trying to balance multiple variables will always have to make compromises that risk diluting its effectiveness in delivering its core purpose. However, that would rely on everybody engaging respectfully with well-considered points raised by those with a different perspective, personal experience and/or expectations to their own. Lovely though that sounds, it doesn't feel very 2024.
- spitalfields
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Re: Orienteering and the older competitor
And for an older competitor looking at the wish list posted by the OP I would recommend a trip to Haverigg Bent Hills this Sunday:
https://www.lakeland-orienteering.org.uk/events/bh-ghows-sun-22-sept-2024
Highly detailed technical terrain mapped to 1:5000. Very little climb (under 2.5%) with no point more than 20m above sea level. No tough vegetation. Plus the added bonus of a good weather forecast,
https://www.lakeland-orienteering.org.uk/events/bh-ghows-sun-22-sept-2024
Highly detailed technical terrain mapped to 1:5000. Very little climb (under 2.5%) with no point more than 20m above sea level. No tough vegetation. Plus the added bonus of a good weather forecast,
- pete.owens
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Re: Orienteering and the older competitor
pete.owens wrote:The EWT doesn't depend on who turns up it is based on a notional elite M21 - with everything else scaled. It really doesn't matter what point you take as your reference point you will end up with the same result.
You are of course correct, and yet it still seems to generate much debate even for the top level events in the UK when its either a bit too long or a bit too short as shown when when of the Elite's appears...
However have you ever tried to work out which course to enter when the courses are described as "EWT = "... even worse on an "oldies" course where its something like "course will be 0.4x the length of the notional black course (which doesn't exist as this even only goes up to Brown) which would take 90 minutes for an Elite M21 if they came to this event, which they wont". Then try introducing the idea to someone who hasn't been orienteering since the 1970's and see what face they pull! Or try to get a new planner to understand how all that applies at his level D event where Green is the longest course. It would be nice if we said "an average experienced orienteer (ie. 6000 ranking pts) would be expected to complete this course in X minutes". We can then measure that easily.
- Atomic
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Re: Orienteering and the older competitor
pete.owens wrote:Atomic wrote:But except at the very largest events you could solve all this by removing all the notions of which class certain age groups "should" run in and just have clear course descriptions so that people can decide for themselves what to enter based on their ability/fitness/experience.
Just a thought...
Perhaps we could devise a new system and give each course a code (say a colour for example) which standardised specifications on what was expected in terms of technical difficulty and time to complete.
Its a nice idea, but I can't see it catching on or being "enforced". Even within a single club I've experienced Green courses that should have been called Light Green to Short Brown! Then there's Orange courses which can be anything from one decision point too many for a yellow to a essentially a short light green. We could train a group of individuals to make sure that planners follow the rules right - but given they come from the pool of experienced planners who seem to make mistakes themselves I'm not sure it will solve it!
In anycase though I don't think "billing" a course as having an EWT of X (or some ratio of the EWT for another course) is helpful unless both (a) its accurate AND (b) there's some way for an ordinary orienteer (or a newbie) to translate that into "their" time. When I enter a 5K/ 10K I'm asked to predict my finishing time - that's pretty easy to do with a high degree of accuracy months in advance. Even when I'm in the start grid I don't feel confident doing that at O event, even assuming I make no major errors.
But I will say I think we have too many courses for most events and the age categories feel like a school sports day where everyone must get a prize!
- Atomic
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Re: Orienteering and the older competitor
Atomic wrote:However have you ever tried to work out which course to enter when the courses are described as "EWT = "
No, because courses are not billed that way - they are billed as colour codes. In order to be consistent, they need to be standardised against some measure, but as a competitor you don't need to know what that measure is. Just as you don't need to know whether a marathon is measured in metric or imperial units. It is only the planner and controller who need to concern themselves with EWTs.
- pete.owens
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