SeanC wrote:Scott - I'm sure you and Atomic don't really disagree
you are quite right - I mostly do agree with Scott, but I get a little apprehensive when people suggest that Orienteering REQUIRES lots of coaching for beginners. To become good requires lots of coaching, but it should be possible for any adult with some basic map reading/navigation skills to turn up and after a 10 minute briefing make a decent attempt round many TD3 courses. Every adult that does that at our events seems to come back reporting positively and either know the area already (their local patch) and runs so wants something longer or is surprised by how challenging it was.
that is precisely my point. If I want to do a cycle sportif I can enter and go, yes I need to be able to ride a bike just as orienteering requires me to be able to walk (or run) and do at least basic navigation* but I don't need coaching. Similarly, I can swim, if I wanted to enter a 1km open water swimming event I could focus my training on fitness then enter. Of course if I want a good time I'd need to get coached but to come back to the point of the thread, lots of "events" with quite high entry fees attract to the 21-50 yr olds who are in it for the satisfaction of finishing not for winning.Lots of people at this level don't really want coaching, they just want to turn up and get on with it, maybe pick up a few tips through car park chat, and are quite happy competing in easyish areas.
(* there's lots of people out there who with a 10 minute refresher have the level of nav skills needed for TD3 - essentially everyone who ever did a DoE award, anyone who walked in the hills before the smartphones, anyone who's been in the services, etc)
maybe - I like a score, but it adds an extra level of thought / strategy challenge, I've found that at least to begin with novices prefer to be given a route. I think your approach of combining score and colour coded courses CAN work at smaller events, but for large events the planner has gone to some effort to think about footfall at controls, direction that people will be entering from and possibly leading others into a control etc and having the randomness of score on top may make that unfair.the easiest way would be to offer score courses as standard.
SOA offer a weekend course. I don't think its seen much demand, which may be just because its poorly marketed but may also indicate there isn't as much interest as you might expect. Some of the clubs in Scotland are actually reasonably active with coaching improver adults in parallel with juniors, so that may also restrict demand.I don't think there's even somewhere anywhere in the UK that a newbie could pay to be coached for a few days as a short break?