London City Race

[Slowtochide]

How have SLOW promoted the City of London Race to non orienteers? Nothing particularly new this year but:
We have a colour, postcard sized, double sided flyer targetted at non-orienteers (it talks about the challenge of navigating through the City) and as has been commented on elsewhere it has an emphasis on running, navigation, adventure and challenge, with orienteeirng being somewhere down the list. 5000 printed for about £90. We got club members to take to work, running clubs etc. Printed 6 months before the event (nuch earlier than last year)
We also had a visually very similar version of the same targetted at orienteers with the emphasis on being a tourist in London. 5000 again and taken to lots of summer O events overseas as well as the usual UK ones.
Logged on World of O as well for the overseas entry

We have 120+ SI Card hire requests this year, mainly on the Open classes so yes it looks like we have got lots of newcomers/casuals in the area that the sport needs. We are very aware that this event offers UK orienteering one of its best opportunities to attract a different audience so it is a conscious decision to focus on this aspect. We'll try and do better next year - but for now I'm worrying about this year's event!

[SeanC]

Nice work.

I don't expect answers to the following questions before sometime next week/month ....

5000 printed for about £90.

That's good value. Did you get these printed commercially? If so who was your supplier. I assume you did your own design and artwork, or was that included in the £90 too? It might be interesting to see the design if someone fancies scanning it in.

With these volumes I guess club members must have felt free to leave cards anywhere and everywhere, rather than worrying about waisting a limited supply (which is what I find with the more expensive BOF print portal cards).

You should definately post on Runners World next year.

[brooner]

I've done most of the flyer design for the city race over the past few years, these are the two flyers I've done this year:

• UK Flyer
• International Flyer

I'd recommend Advantage Digital Media for printing, very cheap and very quick turnaround.

If you are attempting to market the sport to non orienteers, I'd really recommend putting in the time and effort to get the messaging and design right - and this goes for both flyers and when they reach your website (we're lucky, as mentioned before, using a standalone website for the event makes things easier). Then spend some time thinking about the event, and how you can ensure that the image and experience of the event matches those expectations.

While getting people to an event is one massive hurdle, their experience there is what is going to either get them back to another or put them off, and that goes for everything around the event - not just the courses.

[Angry Haggis]

Our focus this year was especially on non-UK orienteers - we have nearly a hundred coming, around double last year's tally, including 20 from Scandinavia. Getting the flyers designed and printed earlier this year was key, so club members were able to take them to the various foreign multi-day summer events they attended. WorldOfO is also a popular website for interational orienteers, it is driving the fifth highest amount of traffic to cityrace.org, after our own club website, the online entries website, Facebook and of course Nopesport.

As slowtochide mentions above we also have had a version of the flyer focused on active non-orienteers, which club members have been able to distribute to their non-o networks, and we have an good number of IND runners preentered too. (Good point about RunnersWorld - we will certainly list on RW next year.) We do have plenty of pre-entries for this year's Newcomers course, and have printed extra maps for this course especially for EOD.

SLOW's other non-orienteering targeting events this year have been the Park Race and the Trail Challenge series, we have had good success with both of these series, as well as our own Street-O series.

Demographics galore to come after the event - the main increase this year (apart from foreign entrants) is the rise of the Supervets.

[andy]

One of these years I will make the time to come to the London City race, looks like it might turn into a really top world class event, hope it goes well

[Spookster]

Demographics galore to come after the event - the main increase this year (apart from foreign entrants) is the rise of the Supervets.

Nothing wrong with more Supervets of course, but what I think we really need is a whole bunch of new runners in the 20-40 age groups.

[graeme]

Indeed.

Despite a full page article in the scottishathletics newsletter and extensive local publicity, the PWT open race attracted precisely one person who wasn't already in an O-club. I suspect these "supervets" are all existing orienteers who have finally realised that urban is great for old runners.

[Spookster]

From the Final Details I see that Matthias Mahr is the planner. Excellent - after the compliments he got for his course planning at Venice 2009, I'm looking forward to it even more!

[Angry Haggis]

The City Race has a Twitter Wall! http://cityrace.org/live/

People with smartphones (iPhones, Blackberrys etc) who are coming along to tomorrow's event - if you are on Twitter, tweet the event with hashtag #cityrace and see your message appear on the wall.

If you take a photo with your phone and post it to Twitter, that should get picked up and displayed too.

If your phone isn't a smartphone and/or you aren't on Twitter, you can still tweet the event - just text "START" to 86444 (not available for T-Mobile) to set up a new Twitter account, once set up you can text your messages in, but remember to include #cityrace in your message.

Everyone who can't make it - watch http://cityrace.org/live/

[Scott]

If anybody is looking for a vaguely orienteering-related way to spend the afternoon in London after your run, this weekend is your last chance to see the British Library's much-lauded Magnificent Maps exhibition.

Free entry, open 9.30-5.00 Sat and 11.00-5.00 Sun, adjacent to King's Cross/St Pancras (about 20mins on the Northern line from London Bridge).

[Angry Haggis]

If anybody is looking for a vaguely orienteering-related way to spend the afternoon in London after your run, this weekend is your last chance to see the British Library's much-lauded Magnificent Maps exhibition.

Free entry, open 9.30-5.00 Sat and 11.00-5.00 Sun, adjacent to King's Cross/St Pancras (about 20mins on the Northern line from London Bridge).

I saw it last week, it is indeed excellent.

Other special events on this weekend that are less O-related but still worthy are:
Watch the City Race unfold beneath you from the roof of City Hall
Visit over 700 buildings not normally open to the public at London Open House
Go just a few hundred metres away to the Bermondsey Street Festival
Go and see robots draw messages at Outrace in Trafalgar Square
Go to Spitalfields (E edge of the map) for the London Japan Festival
A little bit east of that is Alphaville Festival
A bit further west is the London Design Festival
Watch the final stage of the Tour of Britain cycle race - & Waterfront Festival
Watch Tower Bridge lift at 3:30pm and 4:15pm - but hopefully not before then!

[Simon E]

Or why not try Lord's for Somerset v Warwickshire in the CB40 one-day final. James and I will be rushing there straight after he finishes. It's a day-night game starting at 3.00 p.m. Tickets available on the gate at £30 adult/£5 junior.

[madmike]

Great race - very well planned even without going through the Barbican - only got caught out once but had to be v v careful at times. A top assembly area with beer on sale . Really enjoyed today - thanks SLOW.

[Fourth]

Brilliant event, top assembly and finish.

[Fourth]

.