Lakes 5 Days 2010

[DeerTick]

does anyone know where the main competition prizes can be claimed from / collected / arranged for delivery?
thanks

Congratulations on your success. You must have really appreciated the bonus rest day after your Day 1 and Day 2 efforts.

AP

[andypat]

[Paul Frost]

Also - does anyone know where the main competition prizes can be claimed from / collected / arranged for delivery?
thanks

You could try contacting the organisers, I'm sure they will bend over backwards to help out an appreciative competitor

[mike g]

... although the organisers appear to have fixed the quiz results to prevent him winning

[AlanB]

As this was my first multi-day event I can only compare Lakes 5 to individual events such as those in the Scottish Orienteering League. I found each event to be challenging, held in fantastic terrain and, most importantly, every bit of the operation went smoothly. I am in constant awe of the people who make these things happen and am so thankful that such volunteers are willing to give up their time for our sport.

As for the individual issues raised on this thread:-

Postponement & Cancellation of Day 3 - this was a bitterly disappointing thing to happen, especially as I'd made such a mess of the day before but it must have been so much more disheartening for those who had spent months planning and arranging everything. What is so galling is that it was the car parking issue that was the problem (I assume the course itself was okay). I don't think any criticism should be aimed at the organisers at all, but car parking is perhaps something that could the sport as a whole should be looking at for the future. If we want to compete in the best areas perhaps we are going to have to look at parking remotely and transferring people to assembly by bus in future. This is happening at Aboyne (SOL) this Sunday - it will add to costs but could lessen the impact we have on sensitive areas.

Distance from Cap Park to Assembly to Start/Finish - I can appreciate that this was an issue for those with children and some competitors whose journeys to start/from finish were longer than their course but, at 51 and footlose and fancy free (in orienteering terms at least!), I found the walks and climbs perfect for warming up and down. And I appreciated getting the climbing out of the way without the added pressure of having to navigate! I suppose there is a trade off between wanting to orienteer in challenging areas and the having the convenience of having averything at hand for those who have family responsibilities, etc. A difficult one.

One issue not raised yet - I was a little disappointing this morning to see that the results hadn't been uploaded to the BOF Rankings. As a relative newcomer to the sport I am trying hard to improve and the rankings are a useful, and fairly objective, tool for measuring progress. I had put in a fair amount of training for the Lakes 5, together with trying to improve my navigational skills, and I was looking forward to seeing if there had been any improvement. Also, one reason I entered Lakes 5 was to obtain up to 5 ranking scores to boost my position! Any idea when the results will be uploaded to BOF?

Thanks again to everybody involved!

[DM]

Rankings

I spoke with the person well placed to get the results submitted last night. My understanding is the Lakes 5 events are registered as NWOA events and the person concerned can only submit results that appear on his "list". He awaits NWOA events to be added to his list (by someone at BOF) and then he will do it (and he is communicating with them before anyone suggests it).

[AlanB]

Rankings

I spoke with the person well placed to get the results submitted last night. My understanding is the Lakes 5 events are registered as NWOA events and the person concerned can only submit results that appear on his "list". He awaits NWOA events to be added to his list (by someone at BOF) and then he will do it (and he is communicating with them before anyone suggests it).

Thanks DM. Hopefully I can replace the CAW points from my ranking this weekend at Aboyne before it is actually published.

[AlanB]

One thing I have picked up on is that many people seemed to welcome the opportunity provided by Lakes 5 to orienteer in such wonderful terrain.

Don't get me wrong, I thought every day offered spectacular surroundings, technically challenging terrain and such beauty that shows England at its best; but then i race in such an environment almost every other week.

I do live in Perthshire, though.

[ER]

Just loved it all - I feel so privileged to have the freedom, health, funds and the gift of the hundreds of volunteers hours to take part in beautiful places.

[DJM]

Homer wrote

Basically the only truely fair system is that used at most multi day events abroad: the total time over all the days

It's not even as simple as that as it all rather depends on whether or not each race has the same "weight".

Suppose, for example, that an overall World Champion were to be found by combining the results in the individual Sprint, Middle and Long Finals at a WOC. How would you do it? Simply adding the times together would guarantee that the order would be dominated by the Long result (WT 90-100 mins), with the Middle playing a small part (WT 30-35 mins) and the Sprint (12-15 mins WT) making very little difference.

Presumably, each race has to play an equal part in finding the overall champion (otherwise why have it?), so summing the times simply doesn't do the job. Some multi day events have a mix of race formats in their programme too, and totalling the times at these will suffer from the same issues.

[Gnitworp]

Best to simply avoid having an 'all-days-counting', 'aggregate-times' multidisciplinary event, I think. Keep all the 'disciplines' the same. If it's 'multi', use points.

[Homer]

It's not even as simple as that as it all rather depends on whether or not each race has the same "weight".

Suppose, for example, that an overall World Champion were to be found by combining the results in the individual Sprint, Middle and Long Finals at a WOC. How would you do it? Simply adding the times together would guarantee that the order would be dominated by the Long result (WT 90-100 mins), with the Middle playing a small part (WT 30-35 mins) and the Sprint (12-15 mins WT) making very little difference.

I wasn't thinking about events such as the World Champs. Quite rightly that is a series of individual races and trying to combine the results would be meaningless.
However, most multi-day events consist of a series of classic (long) races. The O Ringen does have one middle distance race now, but as the other days are short classic races this doesn't make much difference and simply adding the times seems satisfactory.

Incidentally, I assume the Lakes 5 was intended to have 5 races with similar winning times each day, although this wasn't stated anywhere. As it happened, the winning times on M45 varied between 42 minutes and 66 minutes. So effectively we had a mixture of long and middle distance races!

[mharky]

Best to simply avoid having an 'all-days-counting', 'aggregate-times' multidisciplinary event, I think. Keep all the 'disciplines' the same. If it's 'multi', use points.

Which is why British multi days are crap competitions, just 5 or 6 good events held back to back with ranking points awarded. Are there any other multi-day orienteering events that use a points system, or is it just us?

[EddieH]

[quote]Are there any other multi-day orienteering events that use a points system, or is it just us?[/quote]

Loads. Sorlandsgaloppen for a starter, (from which the Scottish 6 day format and scoring was initially copied).

Portugal runs all multi race events on a points system.

[AlanB]

The good thing about 4 from 5, 3 from 4 or 4from 6 is that it prevents those of us who are newer to the sport/of less ability (or both ) being thrown out of the week's competition on, say, Day 2 because they made a silly mistake.