Warwick today

[Ancient Grouse]

Thoroughly enjoyed the event and the atmosphere. Well done Iain, shame you couldn't be there! Well done OD!

I would have liked to have loose control descriptions as I found it very difficult to quickly locate my position on the map after opening it up to read the descriptions. I understand why they couldn't be issued before the start, but couldn't they have been in the start lanes? Mind you, for those on the A course they would have been a foot (300 cm in new money) long

I bet this will boost the entry for Oxford - I'm seriously thinking of going now!

[Nottinghamshire outlaw]

Yes, I very much enjoyed the event today and overshot the control near the loos at the end slightly.

But my biggest mistake which cost me approx 4 mins was to be overly careful about the entry to the castle so as to be 'legal'. I first thought that the direct way via some steps would be OK but then noticed that there was a purple line across the end of the steps so went all the way round via the road and in up the long drive ... fool! The purple line which I had thought was to stop me going along the steps turned out to be one side of a 'crossing point' overprint and obviously no-one else's eyesight picked that up or put my interpretation on it! My question to the planner/controller would be 'was it necessary to have the 'crossing point' symbol there anyway as it blocked one of the paths?' If OD use Warwick and the castle again I will know better!

[Roger]

I first thought that the direct way via some steps would be OK but then noticed that there was a purple line across the end of the steps so went all the way round via the road and in up the long drive ... fool! The purple line which I had thought was to stop me going along the steps turned out to be one side of a 'crossing point' overprint and obviously no-one else's eyesight picked that up or put my interpretation on it!

Equally, I found the single crosses to mark the 'forbidden' gateways difficult to interpret, particularly where the wall was more less SW-NE so obscured one arm of the cross. Was this short purple line one half of a 'crossing point' symbol? Not what was intended! Perhaps the way to deal with both of these issues would be to use the thick purple overprint for 'boundary forbidden to cross'.

I get the feeling that we're all -- both competitors and planners / controllers -- still learning what works best in these urban races.

[Oldman]

Mind you, for those on the A course they would have been a foot (300 cm in new money) long

Ahem!! Even an oldie like me brought up on chains, furlongs, bushels and pecks (but not cubits - I'm not that old!) knows that 1 foot is 30 cms not 300 cms!

Glad there's such positive vibes about urban events.

[Ancient Grouse]

Whoops - I must be tired!

[awk]

Interesting how the results have come out by class. Not a competition where I found these particularly important - I raced on a course not in a class. Good to see though that the biggest class was M21 - doesn't often happen these days.!

[Simon E]

My GPS route is now up on Google maps. It gives a pretty good idea of the course even if you don't have the map.

You'll see I didn't go to 32 (101): a case of never seeing it on the map in the heat of competition. The number itself is lost in the dark blue of the River Avon. Having tried various options I think I'd now recommend using a white border for control numbers in sprint races, since it makes them much more visible against what is often green, blue or black. In OCAD you select Text Framing and set "Line" to about 0.2mm. Not sure how to do it in Condes.

[Mrs H]

I was just sorting out the washing (and of course no one else would dream of un-pinning their bibs) when i realised that yet again a great marketing opportunity was missed yesterday.

the bibs were too small, the word orienteering does appear - but too small for anyone looking to read and there is no web address, small or otherwise. also was there an orienteering banner on display prominently at the castle so the punters knew what we were doing (there might have been or was I just travelling too fast to see it)!!!

I appreciated the bibs as it marked me out to be in a race and not just an eccentric middle-aged jogger. I'm sure it also helped me get across the busy roads as the drivers of Warwick seemed most obliging but apart from that I'm not quite sure what purpose they served.

They should have been twice the size with ORIENTEERING RACE writ large and web adress in similar style - although I'm not sure http://www.britishorienteering.org.uk or http://www.octavian-droobers.org would fit on!

Two ideas - is it possible for BOF to have an auxilliary short form web address which is instantly memorable and will take you hrough to the main web site (now we are not ashamed of it) and could they be persuaded that some of the marketing resources a large part of which presently seems to be expended entirely on focus magazine and glossy leaflets telling us how well our elites have done (both of which are preaching to he converted) should go on an allowance to clubs staging high profile events to invest in well designed bibs which serve this very important extra value purpose.

It's all very well bringing the sport to the public - but if they don't actually know what they are looking at - it accomplishes very little in terms of public relations.

also - and I apologise if there was one there - again i didn't see it) but would there have been any possibility of an information stand at the castle for OD - or would that have been pushing your luck?

[Liz X]

Thanks everyone for all your nice comments about the race. In answer to a couple of queries:

My only suggestion for improvement, and I know I won't be the only one, separate control descriptions would have been nice.

The only reason we didn't have separate control descriptions was because two of the courses were gaffled. We couldn't work out a foolproof way of ensuring that runners had the correct control descriptions for their gaffle without publicly advertising who was running which gaffle - which would surely have removed part of the point. Anyone have any suggestions?

I appreciated the bibs as it marked me out to be in a race and not just an eccentric middle-aged jogger. I'm sure it also helped me get across the busy roads as the drivers of Warwick seemed most obliging but apart from that I'm not quite sure what purpose they served.

The purpose of the bibs was to allow you entry to the castle - the gate through which you entered was unlocked just for orienteers on the day and we had a marshal positioned there to ensure only runners wearing bibs came in that way. As far as the publicity side of things goes, I don't believe that you could put a website address on a bib in a way that would enable an interested bystander to read and memorize it as runners flashed by... However we did think about local publicity a lot - within the castle, there were a couple of marshals wearing official-looking yellow bibs who were able to answer questions from curious members of the public, and there were colour leaflets distributed in advance at all sorts of likely locations around Warwick. Plus we hired the big inflatable EMIT arch to give us more of a presence in the park and encourage people to find out what was going on. And in fact we got a goodly number of entries on the day from non-orienteers, which was great. The local papers were at the event too and will be writing it up.

[johnloguk]

Loads of photos at http://www.mysportstream.com/tags/orienteering

If that link doesn't work, or is too slow, try http://www.mysportstream.com and type "orienteering" in search

More photos added later hopefully

[Mrs H]

Thanks Liz - yes I had forgtten about the castle entry thing - but i still think this - and events like this - are a fantastic way of publicising the sport - and that's why at least the word "orienteering" needs to be displayed prominently on the bibs - if you google it then BOF comes up (but not in first place). and also a banner at the castle would have been good - afetr all - lots of people travel a long way to visit and won't have seen the advanced or post publicity in warwick.

(I'm not being remotely critical - i just want people to think about Extra Value Marketing)

[Wattok]

Big thanks to Liz Cross and OD for putting this cracking event on. Unfortunately i could not be there (gutted) but other members of the cartel were and said it was fantastic!

from an organising point of view, if this has inspired you, we are looking for planners and venues for next year! We would like to run the series between August and November next year and idealy have a district/National/regional/whatever you want to call them event on somewhere in the area on the same weekend so people can make a full weekend of it. If you are keen and have a venue in mind please get in touch wattok(at)nopesport.com.

[Ant W]

Hi Mrs H

I "designed" the bibs (that is to say, I quickly put something together on Word) and did consciously add the word "orienteering" to the phrase "Warwick Town Race" in the hope that locals would notice. However it was something of an afterthought and we could probably have made more of the bibs as a marketing tool. There was a lot to get on to the bib - 5 logos + number + title, but I just had another go and managed to increase font of "orienteering" by 100% while still keeping all other info there!

Not sure about larger bibs - I think A4 would be too big for comfort, but maybe there is a compromise size available...

[johnloguk]

I would be interested to know if the general public did work out what we were all doing running around Warwick yesterday. I got asked by at least half a dozen people, 2 while I was actually running. To them I breathlessly replied "orienteering", whereas I was able to expand a bit more to the other people that caught me at a better moment (including in the gents! ). I'm sure many other orienteers did the same, hopefully enthusiastically, and that the face to face touch probably did far more publicity than any bibs would. Although I agree with Mrs H that every opportunity must be grasped as hard as possible. The trouble is sometimes us addicts don't notice things the same way as the public do. For instance, was the assembly/start/finish area obviously an orienteering event for passers by? I knew what it was because I knew what I was looking for. There may well have been loads of flags and banners, but they didn't register with me at the time.

My mate who turned up to take photos, said that what struck him about his first orienteering event was the vast age range of competitors, and the fact that families were obviously all competing together. This is a great selling point for orienteering. Surely better than mum and dad standing frozen on the touchline watching little Johnny playing footbalL

I hope that OD get a huge spread in the local press, really ram the event home, and maybe explain what it was to those that didn't work it out on the day.

[Mrs H]

well done Ant
If it's of interest I've just looked at the growning collection of bibs stuck to the bedroom wall of the younger of the Misses H and can confrim that the Warwick bib was larger than the PPJR, the same size at Spey (which I thought was a lot smaller than the previous S6D), the same width as JK, BOC and White Rose but (perhaps significantly) only half as tall (the EBOR one is particularly easy to read) and cosiderably smaller all round than the O-Ringen one. And of course none of those events were show casing to the general public.

I would guess that wider bibs might be a pain but taller ones don't make much difference. I think if you took that extra 5-7cm of height and put the work ORIENTEERING in it as big as it will go, it will be pretty legible from a considrable distance

It is a measure of the success of the event that such a small detail has caught my attention - but as I said last week in another thread - this is the place to thrash out the trivia