Updated Event Structure article

[Vidalos]

I've missed out on these lengthy discussions over the last couple of weeks and have briefly looked through the past posting before asking this but how does the new way of proposing the courses on offer indicate the time it might take a competitor to complete ?

I've been trying to persuade people at my running who would normally run 10K in 36 mins to try orienteering. If I was with them I could explain what was on offer and which might be best for them. If they came to an event an saw the way the courses were laid out in these tables out I still not sure they would make an appropriate choice ?

Does anyone know of any clubs that have used a trial or demonstration course i.e. a run led by an experienced orienteer to lead an group of people round a typical course so they kind of get the chance to experience the real thing ? This would be to start at a specific time and advertised as such ?

[seabird]

When we have targetted running clubs we have laid on the now defunct Purple course. TD3 about 7.5k. I guess you would now call it an Extra Long Orange.

[geomorph]

I've missed out on these lengthy discussions over the last couple of weeks and have briefly looked through the past posting before asking this but how does the new way of proposing the courses on offer indicate the time it might take a competitor to complete ?

Graeme is the advocate for using time to win as an indicator for course duration.

My view is that for novices the winning time is not appropriate, and can lead to false expectation, and in the case of your 36min10kers may put them off when they do not achieve 3.5min/km....

Also getting the right type of information to the various types of novice can be tricky. A family group novice (expect to take 30 minutes at a steady child's pace) needs different info from the runner novice (effort/time equivalent to 12k road run, etc).

Add a 'recommendations for new starters' column to Seabird's linked table. Have 5 participant types: Family fun; Independent Child; Adult fun; Adult like to run; Adult got to run. Recommend for each 'yes', 'no' and a 'fair time' for this level of experience (novice) when 'yes' is used.

The matrix does allow planners more flexibility to cope with attracting runners (so that medium-medium and medium-long courses could be included) but these when offered in the past have not attracted numbers that warrant the effort. Seabird has just posted about this too.

[EddieH]

Vidalos has an interesting idea with the guided course for runners. HoweverI suspect there would be a problem with widely varying running abilities. We forget that it is not only the navigation, but also the terrain that differentiates orienteering from running.

I remember running first leg in a Scottish relay, then running a later leg in a non-comp team with a very much better runner than me. The idea was that I would run normally and explain what I was doing as we went. In the event I was constantly stopping to wait for him to catch up as he was simply unable to run in the terrain.

This is another turn off for many road runners who like to get in a rythm and maybe makes it's more likely that we can attract them into urban O where this problem doesn't exist.

[swat]

geomorph wrote:

The matrix does allow planners more flexibility to cope with attracting runners

I don't think the matrix allows any more (or less) flexibility to planners - it's just a way of presenting the information in a simplified manner. It seems to break down when more than the basic info is added - the example with age classes included seems rather cluttered - so I don't think it's best for signage either at the event or in an event details document. We've always had flexibility to plan courses that do what we want them to do, whether they fit in with existing norms or not (eg Aire Long-O's in 2007 and several years earlier).

Where the matrix does look useful could be as a symbol in a listing of events to give an idea of what courses are available at a quick glance - lots of ticks near the top left = good choice for children, lots of ticks on the bottom row = plenty of technical courses, lots of ticks on the far right = long-o event etc. Actually ticks probably aren't good - just filling the blocks in colour would be better for this.

For presenting more details a table format (as seabird's post - plus extra columns added if required) looks best to me.