Hocolite wrote:Ed
Excuse my ignorance but your reference surely makes it no different to Hambleton. I can see that packs are more likely with a mass start, but surely if planned well there ought to be a number of route options to be considered, also if there are different point values and the course is designed to stretch the elite orienteer (i.e. it's not possible to get every control in the designated time. If the area is smaller then the time can be shorter to set the challenge).
I didn't do Hambledon, but from my understanding that was a mass-start cross-country course with butterfly loops - no score element.
I'm sure Graham could back up some statistics on the benefits of running in packs, but suffice to say that if you set off a mass-start score with whatever area, cunning planning, carefully set time limit and so on, you would still end up with a small number of packs running together (maybe slightly more than two, but I'd quess not many more). Unless someone spots a far better route and has the confidence to run off on their own (and assuming that no-one would then spot what they were doing and follow them), the herd mentality and 10% performance boost (or whatever Graham's latest finding is!) would ensure that most people would be running with at least one other person most of the time.
As an aside, I did a mass-start score event back in February at which many of the German national team were also running (as well as a broad range of other people, although only about 150 in total I think). It was impossible to get all the controls, and there were plenty of possible routes, and I think there were different points values as well. I still ended up running at least half the time in a pack - I only ran alone when I decided to go for controls at the far end of the area despite suspecting that it wasn't a wise move in competitive terms but looked a nice bit of forest on the map and I'd had enough of people around me by that point... and that was with a field where there was probably too big an ability gap for the real big packs to form - I suspect in a British race there's enough depth that the packs would form better.