Harvester Relays - Predictions?

[Spookster]

Martin - any more concrete news on next years harvesters would help if you find any. People will be writing articles for their club newsletters and it would be good if they could say something like "the venue for next years event hasn't been confirmed but it's likely to be somewhere up north/south/east/west".

Without wanting to commit anyone to anything, it was mentioned in the pub on Sunday evening that Shuoc may be interested in 2011, and I think SYO has already made a provisional offer for 2012.

[SeanC]

Great stuff. Hope it happens.

[LostAgain]

it was mentioned in the pub on Sunday evening that Shuoc may be interested in 2011, and I think SYO has already made a provisional offer for 2012.

This would be good news, if there is a chance of securing a greater entry it must be with a more central location. Still along way for the Scot's to travel, but must be nearer than South Wales and Kent!

It is a great event, and almost everyone I know who has run it over the years thinks so. There just seems to be inertia to actually coordinate teams.

[Mrs H]

Just got my new light from the very very nice brightbikelight man and am very excited. We had almost given up with only having one working light left in the family and Young Neville seems to be making best use of that. Sheffield area is good for us for the foreseeabe future- so roll of the dark nights

[ifor]

I have come to the conclusion that my big light is not doing my night technique any good. I am sure I used to navigate better than I have recently on the more technical areas and the only reason I can think of is that on the simpler areas the big light has let me get away with being slopy. I don't know if I realy have the commitment to follow this through and start using a smaller light at the majority of events and just saving the big one for big events. We will see next year.

For now I am just starting to get a bit worried that I need to improve my technique before next year after reading the terain description for Jukola. http://www.jukola2010.net/sivut/pages/e ... errain.php

[EddieH]

Well Ifor, Oleg used a mini Petzl at the Britih Night for just that reason - and he came second

[mharky]

most big lamps come with a energy saving low-light option, perfect for training

[SeanC]

It is a great event, and almost everyone I know who has run it over the years thinks so. There just seems to be inertia to actually coordinate teams.

I suggest next years organisers might send a publicity article to all club newsletters around January. Something we've all learnt this year - this seems to work.

[IanD]

Was discussing the Harvester last night with friends from a club who didn't enter because they couldn't find enough people to do the long legs. We came up with the following thought for getting more teams at the Harvester. I would emphasise that this is just an idea, not a proposal, I'm just passing it on so that other people can pick it up and build on it, or reject it, as they see fit.

The idea was that perhaps a Harvester class could consist of something like 10 short laps of perhaps 5km. Most at TD5, but three or four at TD3 to encourage novices. Each person could run either one or two laps, thus a valid team could be ten people running 5km or five people running a total of 10km or anything in-between.

Discuss?

[andypat]

Well Ifor, Oleg used a mini Petzl at the Britih Night for just that reason - and he came second

No way! I use mine for reading in bed at night.......

[SeanC]

The idea was that perhaps a Harvester class could consist of something like 10 short laps of perhaps 5km. Most at TD5, but three or four at TD3 to encourage novices. Each person could run either one or two laps, thus a valid team could be ten people running 5km or five people running a total of 10km or anything in-between.

Discuss?

Personally I'd keep the A course as it is. It has a history and tradition, and for small clubs/ non-elite teams like mine a great sense of achievement to finish it.

The B course could be split into two classes using the same course as now. What we now consider to be competitive teams compete for the existing competitions, what we now consider non-competitive to be put into an "anything goes" competitive C category. Any number of people from any club could run any number of legs. Fancy running all 5 legs? Or both night legs? Or a husband and wife team taking it in turns? Or someone who's already run for another team? The attraction would be that future organisers wouldn't have to tear up the BOF guidelines for the event, it would be an add on, and this would enable maximum flexibility for minimum additional effort for an organising club. Yes, you could also split the longer courses in this C category into two at a spectator control at the cost of extra work for even more flexibility.

[graeme]

The idea was that perhaps a Harvester class could consist of something like 10 short laps of perhaps 5km. Most at TD5, but three or four at TD3 to encourage novices. Each person could run either one or two laps, thus a valid team could be ten people running 5km or five people running a total of 10km or anything in-between.

Seems like a really good idea. Bit of restriction on lap-pair needed to combine gaffling with not running (essentially) the same laps twice, and for the top clubs the best team would still be five people, but why not? Getting people to sign up in multiples of seven has always been a nightmare.

Since nobody has taken it on, a brave ShUOC might decline to put on the "Harvester", rather staging their own all-night relay which perhaps might be accepted in the UKRL. And if ShUOC happened to have a now-redundant farm-related trophy to hand out, so much the better

the A course ... has a history and tradition

Yes, historically, it was the B course...

[Scott]

staging their own all-night relay which perhaps might be accepted in the UKRL

Anybody thinking of staging a high-quality relay event of any kind in 2011 is positively encouraged to let me know so it can be considered for inclusion in next year's UKRL

[NeilC]

The idea was that perhaps a Harvester class could consist of something like 10 short laps of perhaps 5km. Most at TD5, but three or four at TD3 to encourage novices. Each person could run either one or two laps, thus a valid team could be ten people running 5km or five people running a total of 10km or anything in-between.

Didn't OUOC/JOK do something similar this year? I believe they shared the final 12k lap between 3 runners swapping the SI Card over at the spectator control.

Finding people to run the longer night laps is a problem so perhaps allowing runners to share a lap (swapping at the spectator control) would allow more participation - even if such a team were not competitive for the main prizes. I wouldn't like to see the main competition dumbed down too much though.

[seabird]

Without wanting to commit anyone to anything, it was mentioned in the pub on Sunday evening that Shuoc may be interested in 2011, and I think SYO has already made a provisional offer for 2012.

And some of us in Aire are also in the early stages of looking at a possibility.