Variety of Formats

[Knee Deep Mud!]

Rather than worry about the disparity between the two events, I'd be more concerned about the total number of entries a mere 11 days before the event. Historically, that would be a poor turnout for a colour coded event, let alone a regional / badge event.

[seabird]

No need for despondency.

As a club we are committted to providing a large number and wide variety of events.

We are getting nearly 100 to our "one man and a dog" local events (apologies to the "one women") - so it's no great deal if this one doesn't do much better. There will be loads of maps ready for customers.

We'll probably do ok on the day. If not - we can afford to take a hit and will attempt to learn any lessons.

[swat]

Just out of interest, why did AIRE not put on their middle distance event on Saturday 14th and market it as an event complementing the Eyam event. Plenty fo people might have come to make a weekend of it?

If you wanted to make a weekend of it, you could always try the other way round:

Sat 14 Nov - DVO 45 minute score event, Longshaw
Sat 14 Nov - AIRE night event, Harden Moor
Sun 15 Nov - AIRE middle distance event, Harden Moor

[kedge]

To some extent, its fear of the unknown. Even now, many average club orienteers haven't run a Middle race and so don't know what to expect.( In the same way the term 'Sprint' puts off people from going to urban races.) When they see the shortness of the courses at a Middle distance event they tend to look for an alternative event which apparently gives them better 'value for money'.

Earlier this year, WIM decided to use their Gore Heath area, which is technically and physically tough, but quite small, for a Middle race rather than a conventional 'Regional', so avoiding sending people for multiple laps around the path system which is what tends to happen if you plan longer courses,( or rather, courses with longer legs). It was the first Middle race held in the South West and was therefore billed as the first SW Middle Distance Championships.

Pre-entry was disappointingly small, but when it snowed during the previous week and other events were cancelled, we picked up a large number of eod's. Lots of folk came back with a smile on their face saying how much they had enjoyed the technical and physical challenge and asking when and where the next event of the same type would be.

[awk]

To some extent, its fear of the unknown. Even now, many average club orienteers haven't run a Middle race and so don't know what to expect.( In the same way the term 'Sprint' puts off people from going to urban races.) When they see the shortness of the courses at a Middle distance event they tend to look for an alternative event which apparently gives them better 'value for money'.

The interesting thing is that most (but not all!) of those who are most reluctant will normally be running 'only' a 3-5k course anyway, so they can always run one of the longer courses at a middle distance event to get their standard distance: perfectly possible when it's just colours that are advertised.

[Simple Soul]

As an average Orienteer with no knowledge of the sophisticated colour code system that has now proliferated, Middle distance means nothing to me. My recognition of a Blue Course is that of the BOF Guidelines i.e.5.5 - 7.5Km. I see for the Harden Event that Blue is 3.9Km.
There is something crazy about the standards that can have Blue courses with totally different standard lengths. Surely the Harden Blue is a Green course?
If it is the case that the area cannot support a Brown, why not just run a relatively low cost White to Blue range of courses that the regular punter understands? I am afraid I switch off when I see unintelligible jargon with little interest in investigating further.

On the other hand from this thread I am rather tempted to turn up to run the only Black course in my career.

I will add the regular punter cannot tell the difference between a Sprint, Urban or Ultrasprint race, but perhaps that is a different subject

[seabird]

Perhaps we should have advertised the number of controls to give you some idea that the Blue isn't the same as your normal Green Course.

[Scott]

I will add the regular punter cannot tell the difference between a Sprint, Urban or Ultrasprint race

That one's fairly simple:

Sprint - 12-15min winning time; no or very few cars; 1:4000 or 1:5000 map; high control density; area can be university campus, parkland, zoo, forest, whatever

Urban - variable winning time, generally 30-40mins but can be more or less; area probably has some traffic; probably 1:5000 map; mix of short and long legs; area is a city/town/village, maybe with some other bits thrown in

But the main difference is the length.

[Ultrasprint - ~10-12min winning time; no cars; ridiculously small scale map (maybe 1:2000) and very high control density; area probably includes a specially-made maze of fences - but Ultrasprints are still very rare, and the regular punter probably won't encounter one any time soon.]

[andypat]

Thats was pretty clear Scott - how about turning your clarification talent to the middle distance colour query - that one is confusing me still......

[Scott]

Middle philosophy: my understanding - which will no doubt shortly be torn to shreds - is that a good "proper" Middle course should be one where you never get a break from concentrating on fine, detailed navigation - there's no dead running on paths and no long stretches of rough navigation. Hopefully on a relatively technical area and with a 1:7500 (enlarged to 1:5000 where needed) map. As seabird says, a 5km Middle course is a very different beast from a standard Green.

Colour-coding for Middle courses: I can see the thinking behind it - Black (or Brown?) is the longest, Green is the shortest, but they're all shorter than you'd expect - and it makes sense if you already know what to expect from a Middle. But personally I think that some other method of designating courses (numbering? letters?) would be better, in order to avoid confusing people who aren't so sure of what Middle involves and who automatically associate a colour with a certain length (which will include lots of newcomers as well as those who've been using the colour system for years).

[Simple Soul]

Thanks Scott for the clarifiction. This is a night for education - if only I was younger and fitter.

From Seabirds comments - the last Green course I ran had 13 controls, and the Blue had 21. I am guessing that there will be nearer 21 on the Harden Blue.

The difficulty I have is that to interpret the various Event types I go back to the only resource I have which is the BOF website. The guidelines seem way behind what is actually happening in reality. There are some for the Middle Distance Championships. They do not refer to colour identification of courses, just to course numbers. Perhaps I am getting hung up on the description of a Blue course. The more I look into it, the more appealing the courses become.

The average punter will not make the effort, so I guess the conclusion might be that whilst those in the know understand the various permutations of short colours, middle distance colours, classic colours etc, there needs a blitz of publicity to get this over to the average orienteer.

[seabird]

Just to amplify Scott's description.

The Guidelines for the British Elite Middle Distance Champs give the following, which clearly should also apply to any Middle distance race.

Planning Philosophy: Middle distance orienteering requires fast, accurate orienteering
for a moderately long period of time. Even small mistakes will be
decisive. Courses should be planned to be as consistently
technical as possible. Very long legs should be avoided but small
and medium scale route choice is encouraged. The emphasis
should be on high speed running where competitors need to adjust
their speed for the complexity of the terrain. There will be a higher
density of controls than for an equivalent long distance race.

[graeme]

The only reason to use colours is if they are consistent from event to event. If not, then just tell us what the courses are

If the Blue "isn't the same as a normal Green course" (as Seabird says), and "isn't the same as a normal Blue course" (which it isn't, see: http://www.britishorienteering.org.uk/n ... comers.php) then it needs a different name. I'm using "IOF middle" but I do think that is a bit too vague - as far as I can tell, its what we used to call "control picking", but again that's probably meaningless to the outsider.

[SeanC]

I wonder if you would get more people to middle distance events if there was an optional extension, say about 3km with at least one big route choice leg. I suspect the average orienteer wants to be out for 60-90 mins and a shorter course for the main orienteering day may disappoint, and the different format is not a sufficient pull for most?

[Gross]

middle distance events if there was an optional extension, say about 3km with at least one big route choice leg.

Wouldn't be a Middle Distance then... more like a 'here's an extra bit to run coz I don't really understand the concept of Middle Distance very well' type of course