Seeking some novelty, fun orienteering activity ideas...

[Caz]

I have been tasked with our club picnic event this year. I have only been orienteering a few years so my knowledge of the scope of events is limited.
I am looking for some ideas for my event that take it away from the 'norm'.
I need something that
will appeal to experienced orienteers
be fun
last about an hour
maybe have a corrupt scoring system! (dont want the best orienteer in the club to necessarily win)
and hopefully easy/not time consuming for the organiser!

I look forward to reading your ideas.

[SeanC]

How about.

Plan a single course, maybe 8km long.

- Best runners start at start, slower/less experienced at later controls depending on expected speed.
- Get everyone to synchronise watches.
- Give them 20 minutes or so to get to their start control.
- People start by punching the control they are supposed to start at. Penalities for starting early.
- Relax whilst old scores are settled.

Plenty of scope for giving the advantage to whoever you want.

[Steve]

Pairs score event where each pair comprises 1 good and 1 less good orienteer. They divvy up the controls between them at the start and each has to get all their nominated controls and can get as many extra as possible in the time allowed. Each team has to get all the controls, but can score more points by careful division of the controls and getting extras. Penalty points for being late back. Mixture of easy and difficult controls to allow a range of abilities. Could include TD 2-3 to allow juniors to take part. Terrain height differences could also make things interesting.

How to pair people - get all the competitors to line up in ability order (i.e. roughly ranking order), then the two people at the ends pair up, then the next two, etc. There will be a fun element in the lining up, with dividing the controls, with completing your own set, and with doing extras.

Scoring could be challenging - not sure how this will work out. Self scoring on a trust basis, maybe.

This scheme will almost certainly prevent the best orienteer winning, but by the same token will also prevent the youngest / oldest / slowest winning - although the trade-off is they get to be paired with the club's best orienteers. Even if the best orienteer wins, so does the least best.

This idea is based on an exercise at a training weekend I once attended and it worked well there. The pairing up method comes from my running club.

[graeme]

Mass start, 20 control course, run in order. Miss out as many controls as you like.
Scoring can be a combination of first person to finish and number of controls collected.
Or assign points to each control from -10 to +10, without revealing the number to competitors: winner is whoever gets most points.

[NeilC]

Variation on Sean's course. Mass start 8km course - competitors can miss out N controls where N is based on some handicapping - eg M21s have to do the full course W70s can miss out 7 controls. Competitors get to choose which ones to miss out. Handicapping can be age or ability based.

[Scott]

Peg Relay. RobL has posted an outline description of the format here. Obviously you can tweak the length of the "basic" course, the number and distribution of pegs, and the extra running distance required for the "bonus controls" according to the number and spread of competitors. Personally I've always thought that in an perfectly-planned peg relay everyone should get at least one peg...

[Caz]

Thank you for the ideas guys. Some interesting ones there.

[Kitch]

Clock relay.

Central start point
a circle of 8 or 10 controls surrounding it, evenly spaced around the compass.
Teams of 2
Team 1
1st runner goes to control 1 and back to start,
1st hands over to 2nd, who goes to control 1 and back to start.
2nd hands over to 1st, who goes to control 2 and back to start...etc. around the clock.

Team 2 start with control 2, progress to control 3 and on
etc.

half the teams can progress clockwise round the clock; control 1, 2, 3 etc..
half can progress anti clockwise. control 1, 10, 9, 8 etc..

maps have one leg at a time

[graeme]

easylife clock relay... what kitch said + get runner(s) 1 take and hang the control, then fast teams to continue round the clock again collecting them in. Team who collects most controls (i.e longest time on the "clock") wins.

[Big Jon]

Whatever race format is chosen, get each runner to carry a length of uncooked spaghetti - penalty points for breaking it - proportional to the length that is left

[greywolf]

hold the picnic somewhere inaccessible and organise buses to get there and back