M/W21s not interested in Forest Orienteering?

[alanbrett]

On a totally unrepresentative sample of one (me),I think my 24 year olds have far more pressures on their weekend time than I did in the heyday of orienteering. They won't be able to afford their own transport for the forseeable future, even if they wanted it. So if orienteering was going to hook them back in as individuals (they still come if they're around when we're going) it would need to either be on the doorstep (ie urban/close to town) or within fairly rapid cycling/public transport distance, or offer the opportunity of group transport (as in Carol's experience). It would need to be cheap(ish) too..I don't get the feeling that it's a predominance of older orienteers that puts them off at all, and they both love being out in forests, so it seems to me that it's the the practicalities which need to be overcome.

This describes pretty much why I did no orienteering from 2001 for 7 years when I moved to the UK (university clubs in Ireland generally laid on buses to events). Even as a M35 I still do not drive, but thankfully the informal lift share arrangements among CHIG members means I get to a lot more events than I used to.

[aiming off]

I know an active 21-35 who likes forest orienteering.

Likes forest/technical open areas and competition/socialising with fellow 21-35’s.

Hates small events on low technical quality areas with few 21-35’s.

Number of events attended in UK in 2013: 20
Average distance of these events from home: 274 miles !!
Number of events in 2013 held within 2 hours drive of home: 62
Number of events in 2013 within 2 hours drive of home attracting more than 200 competitors: 0 (with very few > 100 competitors)
Number of events attended in 2013 within 2 hours drive of home: 1

Distance to the home of nearest regular competitor in the 21-35 age group BOF ranking list: about 120 miles.

The problem in this case is the lack of high quality events within easy reach attracting competitors of a similar age.

Its not the lack of high quality local areas, there are many local areas that are high technical quality in comparison to those now used for the majority of orienteering events. These have been dormant for years now, but 25 years ago used to attract over 500 competitors, including many M/W 21s

Its not that 21-35s have given up or can’t afford to compete in sport. Cross-country leagues, fell running, road running and triathlon are all flourishing in the locality. A local triathlon recently attracted several hundred M/W 21s and had to impose an entry limit. It is only thriving because these M/W 21s were attracted from a wide catchment area.

I fail to accept that orienteering is at such an inherent disadvantage compared to triathlon. Over the last 25 years we have introduced sportenglandus quangoensis and are experiencing orienteering dieback, which will spread further if unchecked. It first attacks the teenagers and you then recognise symptoms within the 20 to 40 age group. In this area it has now also affected the elderly, so there is no longer any effort to put into replanting. It has now reached Epping Forest.

[SeanC]

Although experienced orienteers might feel they have gone to Epping 1000 times, I checked the statistics and it's hardly used at all.

2010
Epping South West - District
Epping South District
Epping East CATI

2011
Epping South West - regional
Epping North - regional

2012
Epping NW - Southern Champs warm up
Epping East - Southern Champs
Epping South West - Regional

2013
Epping South - district
Epping East - regional
Epping South West - district

Remember that Epping is not one area but between 4 and 10 depending on how much you divide it up. It could be a tremendous source of growth for London orienteering. it has pubs for socialising after events and it has good public transport linking to the rest of London. We could use the area almost every week for small events, training/coaching and the odd larger event.

It could be a brilliant opportunity for new orienteers in London who maybe have just done ParkRaces. It could recruit a serious number of newcomers from the 3 million or so people who live within half an hour of the forest.

There are two blockers to this, the areas are owned in the orienteering sense by two small clubs who wouldn't have the resources to do it on their own, but nearby clubs could help*. The other is that because the area is considered "good", large chunks get quarentined for regional events, even though it seems that regional events now attract barely more than the bog standard district which doesn't need an embargo.

So in summary, I think we should stop doing regional and championship events there, and use it as a north London development project. There are plenty of other (hardly used) areas in the South East for big events.

* Paid coaches can do coaching without clubs needing to do more than just publicise to their members.

[afterthought]

Agree with Arnold sympathy for CHIG on this, and also SeanC's thinking on strategy (and the SE League.) It is not particularly "M/W21s not interested in forest" as we can find examples of urban events where the uptake is largely older folk and in any case many clubs have hardly any M/W21s.

Older orienteers especially like doing courses - they like doing their own course in fact - which is probably why instead of the brown/blue/green choice when I started we now have black/brown/short-brown/blue/short-blue/green/short-green. (I was surprised to see there was a black offered in Epping in 1988 - was that the start of it all?)

Also, although Epping East with the weather forecast this weekend will be lovely, the calendar is not kind. Just a week after LOK and SLOW deployed everyone for the contrasting Ultrasprint and London City Race, and the clash with Yately and the JIRCs (and also the SHI) is unfortunate.

[graeme]

Just coming back to this from Dave. It's been annoying me and now I realise its because it's nonsense.

Is it challenging terrain?
Is there a good map of the area?
Is it likely to be a well planned course?
How much will it cost in petrol...?

I agree that these are the most important things in determinig whether I enjoyed the event. Along with the point nobody mentioned "will there be lots of fun people there?"

The problem is that, aside from the last, you can't tell ahead of time, unless you're going back to some same-old same-old area. The last four events I went to were on new areas with planners I hadn't experienced before. They proved to be good, and I successfully avoided a couple which were, apparently, not so good (despite being on known challenging terrain and with a previously good map).

So how did I decide?

For Sean's list...

- status: it's a level B (drum roll). - controller - big range of courses (including black). - 1 year embargo. - Ranking points - South East League event (first one of the season).- no doubt a new map survey - South East Galloppen

all of these are known ahead of time, and so all of them will have a positive influence on me deciding to go, EVEN THOUGH I don't actually give a stuff about any of them. That's because each is a proxy for the things I actually care about, the essential message being that the organisers are taking their event seriously.

(Glad to see the MITRE now has over 200 preentrants)

[AndyC]

Can I also suggest that the planner is an important consideration?
There are planners who I know won't produce courses I'll enjoy (they might be someone else's cup of tea) even on the best terrain and planners who I know will get something out of the worst terrain.
(BTB new planners get 2 free chances -after which I'm checking to see who is controlling before I'll take the risk)

[maprun]

So how did I decide?
For Sean's list...

- status: it's a level B (drum roll). - controller - big range of courses (including black). - 1 year embargo. - Ranking points - South East League event (first one of the season).- no doubt a new map survey - South East Galloppen

all of these are known ahead of time, and so all of them will have a positive influence on me deciding to go, EVEN THOUGH I don't actually give a stuff about any of them. That's because each is a proxy for the things I actually care about, the essential message being that the organisers are taking their event seriously.

Exactly my thoughts. I'm glad every year to see clubs put on their annual flagship event because the clubs will select their better planners and use their better areas, to keep the punters coming back year on year.

Do we really need the Mitre, the OK Nuts, the HH trophy etc every single year? Not to mention all the additional colour codeds which have already started to die off.

The flagship events I've been to in recent years have been real crackers, just wish I'd been able to get to more. Please keep them coming!

Over the weekend there will be around 600 at the three events within 35 miles of London. Numbers don't seem greatly down on 20 years ago, they're just spread more thinly across more events. Take away the choice of urban events and local Saturday events and I'm sure we'd still regularly get 500-600 for the flagship forest events, especially as they'd have that bigger event atmosphere that we enjoy, which makes it worthwhile to make the extra effort to get out of or around London.

So let's have less urban events , then hopefully the numbers will pickup in the forest events, not that I'm biased.

[awk]

Take away the choice of urban events and local Saturday events and I'm sure we'd still regularly get 500-600 for the flagship forest events, especially as they'd have that bigger event atmosphere that we enjoy, which makes it worthwhile to make the extra effort to get out of or around London. So let's have less urban events , then hopefully the numbers will pickup in the forest events, not that I'm biased.

Perhaps - but it was the advent of urban racing and other variants which kept me in a sport I was on the verge of dropping out of. Too many bog standard events on bog standard areas with bog standard planning. Then we (OH and I) went to the World Cup weekend in the South East, where we both ran our first middle distance race and our first sprint race. That weekend was a turning point in our orienteering which we still talk about.

Talking to offspring, much of what ifitches highlights applies in this family too.

[maprun]

awk
Funny you should say that, I'm hoping to drag my daughter along to the Guildford Urban event tomorrow, she's done no sport for a few years and is badly in need of a refresher after catching the bug at S6D 2007. There's no way I'd convince her to sit in a car for an extra 2.5 hours for Epping Forest. Guess we can't have it both ways; the benefits of more events and regular regional events with that big event atmosphere.

Or there again..... I wonder if the wife would let me slip off on Sunday morning to Epping as a reward for getting the littl'un to go tomorrow.......stuff the big event!

[DavidJ]

Compare to:

Mitre 2013: 196, of which 5 on black (only one M21)
BKO Yateley Heath 2013: 165, of which 11 on brown, the longest course offered - and only two of those M21

For the record, we had a total of 257 competitors today at Yateley including about 80 EODs (there were 19 no-shows from the pre-entries of 192). We had 24 on Brown including 2 M21 and 1 W21. There were at total of 9 M21s and 6 W21s.

If interested, photos from the event are available at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/103669960@ ... 6015695753

[alanbrett]

CHIG ended up with very similar numbers at Epping East.

Pre-entries (including volunteers) 212
Final entry total 264

Black 8 entries
Brown 12 entries

8 M21s
10 W21s

Juniors were somewhat down on expectations (JIRCs), and the usual travelling contingent from SUFFOC were at their own event today (they had 68 at a Level D, no M21, 1 W21), while I think we had 9 SLOW members (8 M/W 21/35) at our StreetO on Thursday night versus 11 today (6 M/W 21/35). Although next weekend I will probably want a weekend off orienteering after an intense weekend this weekend, so a relatively low SLOW turnout is understandable.

Epping Forest looked fantastic today and despite a few too many errors, I really enjoyed a very rare run at one of our own events!

[King Penguin]

Epping Forest was great today. Both the weather and my run were much better than last year.

[SeanC]

I loved the long leg after the road crossing today (14-15 on black). 2.5km and all but 100m was through the forest (sun lit). I even found the control at the end first time. Unfortunately some of the others were a little hard for me.*

Alan - earlier you wrote: "In particular, it has been evident for a while that Black courses have not always attracted sufficient competitors.".

I can sympathise with this, many of the smaller regionals don't do a black, but another option is to market it differently. I think people do black courses for two main reasons.

a) It's the right course for them and they are competitive... the traditional M20/21/35 so to speak.
b) They're a punter who wants a challenge and don't really give a stuff about the competition or the time.

Challenge events (where the aim is to finish rather than to race) are quite big at the moment (eg Tough Mudder). I think we could use the black course to appeal to those who want a challenge not a race. Eg complete the black course punching all controls under say 3 hours... then you're <insert name of award>. Miss 1-3 controls <insert name of award>. Miss 4-6 <less impressive award> etc. Teams allowed/encouraged but with one SI Card each. Give 'challenge' competitors an early start time in a 10 minute block so they don't stretch the day out for the organisers and are more likely to meet up before, after and during the not race for socialising/banter etc. Make sure everyone gets a big clap/tacky prize for finishing the monster course and much praise in the results.

You would still have the race option for the type a's (ie elite/semi-elite orienteers), but listed separately in the results.

For the less experienced, you could do the same on "long orange" (used to be red).

Would this appeal to some of those who go to ParkRace's etc. but not to regionals because of lack of atmosphere etc?

* hard but fair.