Relay Tips

[LostAgain]

Does anyone have any tips of how to lose followers in Relays?

If a team draws the same gaffle across all relay legs how do you drop them?
I am assuming that the speed of the follower enables them to keep up with the navigator.

[frog]

How do you know they are following you and not just going the same way because that's the way their course goes too? At the beginning of my relay leg there were a group of us all together , but that's because we had the same controls for a few legs and were largely running on bearings. With short legs there's not much you can do. If they follow you all the way round they can't overtake you. We eventually split up as there were some longer legs/ gaffling took over/ the faster runners got away. If you're of similar speed and make similar route choices there's not much you can do.

[madmike]

Just ignore the follower and do your own thing - else he is getting in your bubble.

If you try and lose him then you will doubtless compromise your own run. If you are a faster smoother orienteer you will drop him if you aren't you can't - learn to live with it or you will probably lose out.

[ba-ba]

I think I know what lostagain is talking about
I think the main way is to not talk to any other teams in the pen so you don't let other people know that they could follow you - this applies to all runners, as what the 1st leg does gives away what the last leg will do when only legs 1+2 are gaffled.
Another way is, if you can see the gaffle number through the bag and someone says 'I'm gaffle #AAB, what are you?', and you see you're #AAB, tell them you've got gaffle #BAA. Then they don't know they can follow you

[madmike]

They should not ask and you should not respond in any way

[mappingmum]

Surely sharing gaffle information in the pen is cheating.

[mappingmum]

Does anyone have any tips of how to lose followers in Relays?

Stop running (or take your foot off the gas) to force your shadow to navigate or make a decision. Once they move away, or start studying the map intently, choose a different route and execute it at speed.

[awk]

If a team draws the same gaffle across all relay legs how do you drop them?

How on earth would you know until after the race? (I'm excepting the sorts of relays where the gaffles are obvious, e.g. Mixed Ad Hoc at the British).

[andy]

ignore them and stick to your own plan of being fast/accurate (and then hope they have a different gaffle so if they do follow you they end up in the wrong place )

[graeme]

Unless you are running last leg, you don't normally want to lose the people you're with.
To do that you have to compromise your own run in the hope of damaging them more.

Obvious things...

run a lot faster for a bit.
run a lot slower and hope they go ahead.
take a route (terrain/path) which suits you, regardless of whether it's really best
take a route through low visibility terrain
given two choices, set off on one route choice, then zag back to the other. Unless the follower is blindly following you they will hesitate, giving you a gap
turn your headlamp off
make a big mistake


... I've done all these in relays/mass start races - they can all work. Since I'm about the slowest runner in my peer group, waiting for a sprint finish is never appealing.


re. gaffles. People have sharpened up on this now, but for years anyone who had your number +-3 was probably your gaffle. Likewise anyone who punches with you at a non-common control was on your gaffle. It was usually worth hanging back on leg 1 to see who was with you.

[awk]

re. gaffles. People have sharpened up on this now, but for years anyone who had your number +-3 was probably your gaffle. Likewise anyone who punches with you at a non-common control was on your gaffle. It was usually worth hanging back on leg 1 to see who was with you.

Yes, all of these can help you identify who is on your gaffle, but LostAgain was talking about identifying teams who had all three legs the same gaffle as your team. I don't think you can work that one out, at least on standard relays (bit different perhaps on others).

[ba-ba]

I think that pens should be a silent area to stop people 'scouting' better orienteers to find one to follow - especially if they know they can have them on a sprint finish. This should be self-policed, but as ever some are open to bending the rules slightly. I think that, when you're up at the sharp end it's important when in the pen to just keep to yourself and focus on what you've got to do.

I do enjoy a good sprint finish

[AndyC]

Not quite the same as I don't run relays but recently I met up with a clubmate who was on the same course at a control (I'd made a mistake which had allowed him to catch me). We then did the next leg in close contact -no real route choice- but split up at the next control as we were both determined not to follow the other and happened to both choose to move from the optimum route to our second choice (happily different) route.
Different in a relay as there you can't really choose to take a slower route as you'd be letting your team-mates down.

[graeme]

I do enjoy a good sprint finish

Me too. Especially when it's rocky, Lorna or Chris Galloway doing the sprinting for us .

[LostAgain]

I've been asked for advice by Juniors who have had for example:
1st leg gaffled
2nd Leg not gaffled
3rd leg gaffled

Once the 1st leg was declared then the 2nd leg and 3rd leg are known as 1st and 3rd leg were run by every team.
In this instance all 3 runners were followed and they asked me what they could have done to drop the follower.

As all 3 runners were pretty much the fastest leg runner apart from being out sprinted on the run in they wondered what tactics they could have used.

Naturally I said "more sprint training" not received with enthusiasm , however, is there anything more?