Adventure racing

[benshannon]

Hi Guys,

firstly if there is anyone interested in adventure racing from the midlands then a new facebook page has been set up to connect adventure racers for training and races etc.

The main reason im posting here is to see if i can find anyone interested in joining my team for the Adidas terrex sting in stirling in august. its a 5 day expedition adventure race www.adidas-ar.com

due to other team mates travelling the world i've been left with the possibility of not competing. if any one is interested please let me know. my email address is

benshannonpt@gmail.com

thanks

Ben

[ryeland of doom]

How much? !!!

I have seen the future and it scares me.

[Gross]

Maybe orienteering would become more trendy if we charged extra for map bags [for ref.... £2400 to enter & £12 for a box to put your bike in]

[ricardito]

There are lots of threads on here where the question is asked, in essence, "why do people go on adventure races rather than go orienteering".

Ben - you seem to be the sort of person we'd love to have come along. Are you already a regular orienteer? If not, what would it take to persuade you to become one? Seriously... we keep saying we must have a marketing/image problem - you could be very well placed to tell us exactly what it is! (politely, of course )

[benshannon]

Yes it is expensive, but it was completely worth it last time. Best experience ever.
I started orienteering this winter to improve my adventure racing but I have to say that I love orienteering alot. I don't know why more people don't do it. For me though its all about adventure racing. 5 days running, biking, canoeing, abseiling in the scottish wilderness. What more could you want?

[andy]

5 days running, biking, canoeing, abseiling in the scottish wilderness. What more could you want?

you can do all that on your own for considerably less expense (just playing devil's advocate here, if adventure races were cheaper I'd love doing them week in week out like I do with orienteering). Other than hiring safety experts for each discipline I honestly don't see where the cost comes from, orienteering is a pittence compared to AR and events are generally better organisationally.

[plain lazy]

My local club has recently (this week) discussed the possibility of adding a cross country style course to our range of Colour Coded (Level C etc etc) events to try and attract new blood to the sport. People outside the sport don't understand "Long Orange" or technical difficulty levels, but advertising a race of 8km or so with some fixed points in between and the need to do some simple navigation might work...
We can then advertise with all the local running clubs, in gyms etc and see what happens.

[SeanC]

sounds like a trail challenge, plain lazy. SLOW are the experts at getting this format to work so it might be worth talking to them.

[plain lazy]

Thanks for that SeanC, I'll get our new marketing chap onto their secretary!

[Jayne]

The details of our SLOW Trail Challenges are on here:

http://sloweb.org.uk/trailchallenge/summer2012/

We have 3 races in the Summer on Tuesday Evenings (10k and 6k course) plus a half marathon in September and the Surrey Hills Race at the end of May.

All races are mass start with not that many controls, usually about 10. I'd say they're pretty much about TD3 standard.

We get quite a few people (I seem to remember it's nearing 100) and it's really good fun - the mass start helps with this, makes it less daunting for the non-orienteers, but fun for the orienteers if you catch up by better navigation.

I think our routegadget should have some old maps up.

[benshannon]

In reply to andy. I'm aware you can do it on your own accord but it really isn't that expensive.
A dventure race organisers don't make much money from these races really. Forestry commision charges a hell of a lot to use their land amongst other land owners.
Safety crews charge for the water and rope activities.

I 100% guarentee that if you did a race like this then you would love it and wouldn't have questioned the cost.

[SeanC]

I've done both SLOW and Saxons trail challenges and found the SLOW ones technically easier as the greater numbers of runners lead you into a control. At nearer my top running speed (not very fast) I found I made mistakes at the Saxons ones without someone to follow. Easy enough for me to relocate but newcomer runners might not like this, so if you're expecting to get less than SLOW's turnouts it might be worth making it super super easy. Everyone seems to like the route choice aspect (choosing which snake of runners to follow). Big open areas are good as it gives the more confident navigators a chance to gain some time by a straighter route without the less experienced navigators getting lost.

SLOW give maps out at registration which helps. The less confident navigators seem to like to go in pairs so you might want to encourage this in the publicity.

I like the idea of optional short cuts on marked/taped routes across terrain, but with a non taped longer path route. Then you can make the shortcut through marsh/heather/hills etc and market the event as the "<insert place> mud and bash thrash" etc, rather than "Long Yellow", but those with just running shoes can go round the paths.

[plain lazy]

There are some great ideas there, thanks. I'll discuss with our committee further.

As far as the Adventure Racing ting is concerned, my only experience was one of the very first One Day Adventure Races run in Thetford Forest I think it was.

We started with a 3km mystery run (basically a hash) then picked up a map and had to navigate a 7km route back to the transition... then we did 3 team exercises (remove an inner tube from one of our bikes, all climb through the tube, then replace it etc etc), then we had a 1 or 2 hr score course to complete as a team. A few more team exercises at the end and we were done.

I loved the concept, I loved the fact that I spent most of the run with my team racing head to head with Sir Ranulph Fiennes , and I loved the team aspect of it all... but it cost us about £100 for the event between 3 of us which was a lot of money for an event 12 or 13 years ago.

I could never have kept going to the events at that price, I can only imagine how much they are nowadays.

[openadventure]

Ben - welcome to the lions den, guess you feel welcome people knocking a sport that your are passionate about. No doubt makes you want to go and do a bit of orienteering. Fortunately many orienteers take part on Adventure Races so suggest you don't see this attitude as representive.

"Orienteering not family friendly" bet that has a caused a few orienteers to get animated. But if I said that was refering to say the lakeland technical series then maybe its correct. It is a line that has been taken out of context, a headline that when the background is not known can be mis-understood.

So when I see posts that quote the price at £2400 my nose starts twitching! The price for this event was £1800 for a team of 4, it went up to £2000 last year and next week will go up again. The final price which I very much doubt many take is £2400. The price hikes are to encourage people to enter early. From a budgeting point of view our expectation is the average price is £2k for a team of four or £500 each.

Of this the TAX man will take 20% - about 1/2 of our expenses are not VAT reclaimable (village halls / volunteer expenses). I'm not going to discect my budget here.. I don't run a democratic company, but suffice to say - if I'm in the black at the end I will breathe a sigh of relief. There are far too many who have been before me who have run International Expedition Adventure Races who are now bankrupt or certainly not in the business of running events. I don't want sympathy but neither would I like it to be portrayed that we are making a mint - it could not be any further from the truth.

By the way Ben if you want to improve your navigation pop along to orienteering event, great value for money and often well run events.

No worries
James Thurlow

Andrew can you justify this statement "orienteering is a pittence compared to AR and events are generally better organisationally" not the pittance bit (I know its more expensive but not comparing like for like) but the better organised bit..