How do you plan an urban event?

[CatherineHughes]

I want to help experienced NOC planners get more confident in planning urban events, so that we can increase the number of urban events we offer for the EM urban league. Any experienced urban planners offer some advice or point me to a source on this forum (I've only registered today) or elsewhere where an experienced planner has documented some suggestions? It'd be useful to know the differences between planning urban and in forest/park etc.
Cheers,

[Jayne]

People do things differently but this is kind of how I do it (in a very broad sense):

Choose where the start & finish will be (generally determined by junior courses).

Look at what the best technical bits are - my style is usually to do some longer route choice legs that end in a technical bit, then do a control pick of at least 3-4 controls in the more technical area.

Are there any major limitations/areas to be avoided e.g. when planning London last year we didn't want anyone crossing Farringdon Rd so the courses had to make sure competitors were steered to the two points they could cross it. This also largely determined the shape of the courses.

Like forest orienteering, changes of direction are good. You still don't want people running against each other on the same leg, but in and out a control the same way I think is less frowned upon.

Try and make every leg have some route choice.

Remember some older competitors don't run as fast but still want a technical course - so something more like a sprint course might be appropriate, they don't like being bored!

Avoid legs where the better route is to run straight across a road, it is always easier to cross if you have to run along a road a bit, and much safer.

Check out who owns land - it's not always the council.

Sure lots of people have other things to add! (or disagree with).

Jayne

[graeme]

BOF has a guideline "E" which contains lots of sensible advice.

http://www.britishorienteering.org.uk/i ... line_e.pdf

The main difference is that good urban planning is almost all about route choice. Classic urban legs often have an "optimum route" much longer than the red line. There's very little map interpretation needed, great legs tend to illicit the reaction "You can't get there from here!" rather than "I've no idea what all those contour lines are doing!"

Other things are:

You tend to have much more freedom to define the area you want to use. There's much more interaction between planner and mapper.

Permissions can be a pain, since there are many different "landowners" (some of whom don't actually own the land, but think you have no right to be there).

Gates have a nasty habit of being locked/unlocked when you aren't expecting it. You need to identify which gates are important for courses, and check on the morning.

Some perceived dangers (traffic interaction) have proved less problematic than others
(kerbs, stepping on litter).

Controls are more likely to get stolen.

[Jayne]

Re. controls getting stolen, clubs have various ways to attach to things, we use gripple (though best if the steel wire doesn't go through the punch hole)

[drobin]

Don't tempt competitors to go out of bounds or to cross the uncrossable. If have a leg where there is barrier which may only be apparent late on to the less experienced, then make sure it's too high to climb, too far to jump, too deep to swim, or involves barbed wire etc!

[Sloop]

> resist the temptation to give people a straightforward tour of places of interest. They'd rather have an interesting tour of places of no interest.
> I don't like controls where a degree in control descriptions would be helpful.
> I don't like controls where exact judgement of where the centre of the circle is makes a real difference.
> If people can punch a control by reaching through an "uncrossable" something, then they will.

[AndyC]

If you intend to require competitors to react exactly to any control descriptions; ALL others must be placed correctly (no "wall corner" on the bench 5m away).
Remember to consider the conditions for all competitors - a canopy after the doors are closed and locked becomes a building so "canopy north side" is meaningless.
If you can ensure the state of doors etc. do so. If you can't and it might be important mark them with a sign as OOB (and consider marshalls if you can).
Watch indistinct paths through OOB- that's asking for trouble.
Runners will have roadshoes with little tread on (unless as RR did recently you warn them) so slippery slopes can be a big issue that wouldn't matter in forest with O shoes on.
Expect people to complain and make mistakes that they blame you for.
Expect people to complain about lack of route choice and dog legs when they missed the options and made the route choice limited or covered the same ground when they could have gone another way.

[Slowtochide]

I have the guidelines that I prepared for London City Race planners which I would be happy to share. I don't want to post them up here (just to avoid clutter). I can email them to you if they are of interest.

[Roger]

Map the running level.

If two running levels are possible, be very careful. You're not allowed to run on top of a building pass-through (often misleadingly known as 'canopy' - the symbol represents the ground level, not what's above your head), so to show two running levels the map will have to use bridges and tunnels. The dotted tunnels can be very hard to spot, particularly when they're short, so unless they're really obvious (e.g. where two clearly-continuous roads cross one another), emphasise them with purple 'crossing point' or 'crossing section' symbols.

For any multi-level problems, give the draft map to someone who's not familiar with the area and ask them what's going on and where it's possible to run. They may come up with an interpretation that's different from the one that's obvious to you.

[andypat]

Some good advice above - definitely read the BOF guidelines.

In my experience (as SOUL coordinator) most common issues that arise are:

1. Women Ultra vet course too long/short/easy. Read the guidelines and dont just lump in with the kids.

2. Kids courses too long/short/hard/not enough info. Becasue the kids courses cover a wide age/competency range, worth advertising a TD for them eg 2/3 to allow parents the opportunity to decide whether or not to pre-enter. Older kids can pretty much do as hard as you can make it (taking account of the traffic restrictions)

One other thing worth a mention if its a mixed urban/wooded area. Make sure you dont assume all your entrants will be TD4/5 competent. You'll have orange standard novice adults who will happily do an urban course, but will struggle without line features in the forest. At least give them advance warning.

[IanD]

1. Women Ultra vet course too long/short/easy. Read the guidelines and dont just lump in with the kids.

Particularly agree with this one.

I (MSV) have a WUV partner, and it's very noticeable that about 50% of her urban courses are very dumbed-down. At a recent event, she had pretty much the same route as me, except that I had a couple of extra loops. On the bits we shared, the purple lines crossed much the same areas, but the controls were different and the "traps" that provided me with the opportunities to waste a lot of time were missing from her course.

For balance, the other 50% of planners seem to produce WUV courses which are least as technically difficult as MSV.

Plus the slower people (eg WUV) don't really like very long legs which are simple to execute once you've picked your route. Perhaps there should be a rule of thumb that a route-choice leg shouldn't take more than 10/12 minutes to execute cleanly, which would of course make it a lot shorter on WUV than MO.