Colour Codes

[LostAgain]

I generally find SYO courses closer to the guide and therefore tough when you have been fed a diet of under-planned courses.

Surely last Autumn's Wincobank and Ramsley Moor events were underplanned? Remember a top elite orinteer should be winning a Brown in 57 mins.
Ramsley Moor won by a Junior in 46 mins
Wincobank in 42 mins

Agree. These are also short, but you could also have picked some which were in line with your planning understanding, some clubs I cannot find any .

I would like to see your understanding of the guidelines more widely applied. But I'm afraid 57 minutes brown winning time is not the current understanding. Distance ratio's are what seems to be whats referred to above.

[NeilC]

Guideline B - Long distance events (2012)

"The Black course, if planned, would equate to the M21L course at an old style Regional Event, with an expected elite winning time of 67 minutes. All other course lengths should be scaled to the length required for this course, which has been allocated a course length ratio of 1.00.

Where no Black course is planned, it is still necessary to determine the length of a nominal Black course with an elite winning time of 67 minutes in order to use the ratios for the other courses. In this instance the winning time on the Brown course by a top standard elite competitor should be 57 minutes."

[Adrian]

2nd example:

http://www.cix.co.uk/~neper/wales10/results.htm

Thanks. That's virtually a park race, isn't it. It's very hard to make the guidelines fit with such areas, so should we even try? Maybe we have to, but perhaps they should've limited themselves to a middle-distance event.

As it is, and although it wouldn't have made a lot of difference, the Blue and Brown should both have been 15% longer. (Or no Brown at all.) Apart from that, the best we can do is make it clear in the event information what the area is like.

Unless I'm mistaken, the problem with this and the LOG event was that they were League events and the organisers felt they had to put on classic races with a full range of courses even though the areas were unsuitable. If this is the case, the regional associations need to change their League guidelines. The WMOA League includes middle-distance and urban races as well as classic races, and doesn't force Brown courses onto areas that can't take them.

[LostAgain]

Guideline B - Long distance events (2012)

"The Black course, if planned, would equate to the M21L course at an old style Regional Event, with an expected elite winning time of 67 minutes. All other course lengths should be scaled to the length required for this course, which has been allocated a course length ratio of 1.00.

Where no Black course is planned, it is still necessary to determine the length of a nominal Black course with an elite winning time of 67 minutes in order to use the ratios for the other courses. In this instance the winning time on the Brown course by a top standard elite competitor should be 57 minutes."

Looks plain enough to me and what I have "tried" to use , so why the mis-understanding or blatant ignoring?

[graeme]

you turn up to run a brown to find it is won in 35 minutes 2nd example:
http://www.cix.co.uk/~neper/wales10/results.htm

Thanks. That's virtually a park race, isn't it.

It's called a "district" event, and it looks like a "middle distance race". I guess you were hoping for a "long distance" race, but (as far as I can see) its not advertised as such. BOF decided that black was 67 mins but could also be a 35 minute race at "middle distance". That was a mistake, and this confusion is the consequence.

[Adrian]

it looks like a "middle distance race".

It might look like it to you, but it wasn't. At least, I can't see or remember any evidence that it was ever claimed to be a middle-distance event.

[LostAgain]

it looks like a "middle distance race".

It might look like it to you, but it wasn't. At least, I can't see or remember any evidence that it was ever claimed to be a middle-distance event.

Neither event put forward as examples were advertised as "Middle Distance Events" and if you look at routegadget were not planned as such.

They are just examples of underplanning, unfortunately (IMHO) this is VERY common. The guideline of 57 minutes Brown winning time, in my experience is missed the majority of the time and quite significantly so. NeilC put in a couple of further examples from SYO. This is not a rare occurence.

[Red Adder]

The discussion that has taken place here seems to confirm my earlier contention that the guuidelines for colour coded courses (not the events that comprise of CC courses) havegone missing with the result that everyone has their own opinion from past memories of what each CC should be.

Perhaps as a matterf urgency the new events group should look at recreating the guidelines for each course stating TD length range EWT etc. They are alluded to throughout the guidelines without being explicitly defined themselves. This is not a good state of affairs and without it I suspect the non-standard courses mention earlier in the thread will proliferate.

[graeme]

It might look like it to you, but it wasn't. At least, I can't see or remember any evidence that it was ever claimed to be a middle-distance event.

That's not the point: there's no evidence it was a long distance race either! I'm not arguing that they did or didn't stuff up in this particular case, nor whether you were confused or the planner was confused. I'm just saying that once "black" can mean a 67min race or can mean a 35min race, it no longer means anything useful at all.
As you found out.
We need to go back to having consistency

[andypat]

I can hardly miss this opportunity to shamelessly remind viewers in Scotland that Clyde's limited (yellow to blue plus black) colour coded, MIDDLE distance race on Collie Nathais (17/3/12) the day before SOL 1 near Oban, closes for pre-entries on Sunday 11th of March. EOD is hideously expensive to encourage pre entries.

No white because it wouldnt be fair to descibe anything on Collie Nathais as white, and no brown because only black reaches the parts other courses cannot reach, and to have a black and a brown would spread the talent too thinly! Course EWTs may vary slightly to avoid courses being crap

[greywolf]

Perhaps as a matterf urgency the new events group should look at recreating the guidelines for each course stating TD length range EWT etc.

Why? would rewriting the guidelines ensure that planners and controllers bother to read them?
The existing guidelines might be sharperned a little - there's clearly some confusion about the indicative lengths given, and some folk appear to be under the (mistaken)impression that these course "lengths" are inclusive of or corrected for height - Adrian there's no reason at all why a Blue course in a runnable area wouldn't be 7+ km / 200m climb.

I agree with Andy C that competitor enjoyment is the most important thing...but i wouldnt want to use it as the arbiter of course length: not sure how honest most of us are about how much we're slowing down, and i think it leads to "vanity sizing" - the majority of courses gradually gettin shorter, and then when a planner does follow the guidelines their reward is lots of old folk moaning the courses are too long when the reality is they've just got slower.

[Red Adder]

Having guidelines doesn't ensure people follow them - not having properly published guidelines makes it certain they will follow their own personal views -it also means that up and coming planners and controllers have nothing to follow.

[Adrian]

It might look like it to you, but it wasn't. At least, I can't see or remember any evidence that it was ever claimed to be a middle-distance event.

That's not the point: there's no evidence it was a long distance race either! I'm not arguing that they did or didn't stuff up in this particular case, nor whether you were confused or the planner was confused. I'm just saying that once "black" can mean a 67min race or can mean a 35min race, it no longer means anything useful at all.
As you found out.
We need to go back to having consistency

Although I agree with you that it's very unhelpful for BO to use the same colour-coded terminology to mean something completely different in a middle-distance race (clearly going against their own policy of making things easy to understand for newbies), only about 5% of races are middle-distance, so despite their worst efforts the meanings of the colours are still well-established.

[NeilC]

When the age class badge events were replaced by colour coded courses, tables were produced advising competitors what the equivalent course would be for their age group. The logic for naming middle races courses the same was that someone of a particular age group would run the same colour as at a long distance race. You may remember that there was/is a strong feeling that many want to run against age peers not ability/fitness peers.

Yes there is potential for confusion if the event is not clearly advertised, however the alternatives are not so clear. A whole new set of meaningful names? Five different shades of Green? Or just calling the courses something boring like A/B/C, 1/2/3 etc. Many clubs of course use the latter for their local events but would they have enough identity to survive nationally ie would a C course always be won by a top M55 in 35 minutes wherever in the country it was held.

The decision was made after considerable thought and discussion and none of the alternatives seemed better. However perhaps the combined intellect of Nopesport will be come up with something that the majority feel is better, if so this could be proposed to the new committee.

[andypat]

Whats wrong with the system used for the Nope Urban league? You can still run up if you want.