Event structure review

[greywolf]

Having a consistent "winning time" for a given colour is important, so
that people know what to expect when they enter

yes, although that only really works for the elite - main point of my posts earlier re: the spread of times was that just because gg or some other superstar would do green courses on areas of greatly varying TD in 30 minutes doesn't mean that the average punter will take the same time on each of these same courses - could be 45 in some open beechwood in the SE, and 60 or even 90 minutes round some really complex and physical terrain in north scotland

it would be nice to get away from the notion that shorter courses are inherently inferior and for the unfit (and anyway i'm sure this contravenes some BOF policy on inclusiveness and positive spin too ) - can't we say that shorter courses are for those who prefer racing to plodding??

[awk]

This is where I started. How are you going to advertise your event so I know what course to enter? I still haven't seen a workable answer.

What colour do you run now?
My point was that nobody 'knew' what courses to enter when the colour scheme came in, or when the JM/JW scheme came in. Well, in the latter case they did, because the courses related directly to the colour courses that all juniors had run on the way to C3s. In the former case, I remember entering the distance that I was used to from running the rather more random Courses A, B, C etc. Worked well enough then, and it still works as nobody knows now who is going to enter what, but we all tend to land up racing each other because we, surprise surprise, tend to like running similar distances (and if we don't then we compete against people who do). So I'd suggest simply entering the colour/distance you're normally used to running.

[Simon E]

What colour do you run now?

M40L or M40S if injured or M21 at sprint events

Let's say I'm putting on an event expecting about 800 people and I want to take pre-entries. Do I advertise this as:

Courses available: White, Yellow, Orange, Light Red, Short Red, Long Red, Light Green, Short Green, Long Green, Light Blue, Blue, Brown, Black.

If not, what do I advertise it as?

[roadrunner]

imagine entering a road race where you don't find out the distance till you finish.

Yes, you always know the distance - but there's a world of difference in difficulty between, say, the London Marathon (laregly flat) and the Snowdon Marathon (anything but). So distance isn't everything, even in that case, and if you've unknowingly entered a hilly course, you can find it taking a lot longer than you expected. Having said that, personally I'd look at the course lengths to decide what to run when entering a district event, but I'd take some account of what the area is like as well (which is usually not too hard to do when you're in the assembly area).

How about naming courses Easy, Medium and Hard, with clues about length as well....

Very easy = White
Short Easy = Yellow
Easy = Orange
Long Easy = Red
Medium = Light Green
Short Hard = Green
Hard = Blue
Long Hard= Brown
Very Long Hard = Black

Simple and easy for everyone to understand

As someone said (I think) a while ago on this thread, that's nice and clear, but adult newcomers are unlikely to be enthusiastic about running a course called "Long Easy".

I have two main concerns about the proposals:

• Here in the South, district events tend to use the poorer (or less recently mapped) areas, and despite lower entry fees attract far fewer competitors than regional events. Clubs often use the latter as their main source of income, so if we're left with one type of event, then it seems likely that entry fees will have to be higher then for present regional events, which may put people off.
• I feel there should be a long TD3 course, the equivalent of the present Red or even longer. Although the Red course often gets few takers, SLOW have shown with their trail challenge series that such courses can appeal to runners if promoted well.

[awk]

M40L or M40S if injured or M21 at sprint events
Let's say I'm putting on an event expecting about 800 people and I want to take pre-entries. Do I advertise this as:
Courses available: White, Yellow, Orange, Light Red, Short Red, Long Red, Light Green, Short Green, Long Green, Light Blue, Blue, Brown, Black.
If not, what do I advertise it as?

I said 'colour' (or do you never run colour courses - I knew there was an overload of regional events in the SE, but didn't think it was that bad )
Well, for starters I don't think you'd be putting on that many 'Light' courses - (a) not many TD5 areas in the SE, (b) I'd be surprised at that sort of demand for TD4 courses if the area is TD5.
Then, it depends what you are wanting to do with the event. If it's a participation event, then yes, I'd leave it as those colours (personally I would want to see course distances in the pre-event advertising, not just a range of colours or classes, which is something I insisted for the National I planned earlier this year).
If you are wanting to run some sort of league, gallopen, or age based competition on it, then I'd put recommended age classes against the colours, which don't have to be 5 year bands. If you REALLY wanted, you could attach L and S class designations, but frankly (as a fairly regular M45S runner), I don't see the point - most S runners I know are after a distance, and are intelligent enough to choose one that suits (anyway, numbers are much lower, and I'm usually comparing against other classes on the same course anyway!). Personally, I think there might be a longer term demand for broad classes (Men, Women, JM, JW, possibly 10/15 year vets bands) on any one course, but not narrow 5-year bands unless very large numbers. Could be wrong though.

If you just put the colours, then if I was normally an M45L runner, I'd probably run Blue on the new scheme, and Green/Short Green for M45S.

One thing we did for the intro of JM/JW classes was publish a 'mapping' table, showing how age classes mapped on to the new classes in terms of distance and TD. I suspect that something like this would be needed to start with. Pretty straightforward given that both sets of guidelines (old regional, new standard) have distance ratios.

[Gross]

Bring back YJM etc

[Snail]

I started in the "should have the same winning time for same colour at every event" camp, but based on roadrunner's post have now changed my view.

Everyone seems to agree that all courses should have a technical designation - I don't really care whether this is by colour, description, latter, or number. (But what I think is important is that courses in say the SE are only ever advertised as TD4 if that is what they are - I see this as the main disadvantage with trying to offer a pre-determined range of colours, eg "Brown" as the hardest class at every event).

Beyond that I now think that just advertising course lengths together with the "expected top M21L winning time" for a specified course (usually the longest) is the simplest approach. The M21L time indicates whether courses as a whole are on the 'long' or 'short' side, and you can judge which course to enter based on that time and the relative course lengths. Many of us already base EOD decisions on lengths anyway - eg those "moving up" or down between Green / Blue / Brown; how we feel on a particular day; whether we are injured, have to leave by a certain time, etc etc.

For events where organisers want age-class pre-entries, then if in addition to (approximate) lengths and target winning time they just advertise default age classes (using whatever split they feel appropriate: 5/10/15 year bands, L/S etc) associated with each course, then everyone has enough information to know which course to enter - ie whether to run with their age-class peers or something completely different.

This approach also gives planners complete flexibility to cope with restrictions or benefits of the terrain - if it only offers a decent course with a 55 minute (M21L) winning time that's all they have to offer; but if it permits - and they think there is demand for - an 80 minute course they can offer that.

It even allows exactly the same framework to be used for the full range of (non-score) events: eg a sprint has an M21L winning time of 15 minutes, a long-O 120 minutes, so the same approach can be used for everything from a local park event through to the 6-days / JK / BOC !

KISS

[graeme]

expecting about 800 people and I want to take pre-entries. Do I advertise this as:

Courses available: White, Yellow, Orange, Light Red, Short Red, Long Red, Light Green, Short Green, Long Green, Light Blue, Blue, Brown, Black.

If not, what do I advertise it as?

Firstly, it depends on whether its a forest race, city race, sprint race, mass Start race etc. Your choice of courses for all possibilities could not (and should not) be prescribed by BOF.

So lets suppose you're talking about a HH February Frolic (or whatever) in a typical TD4 area, you want to award prizes to people of a certain age, and you decide you don't want an elite course. I'd advertise

______________________________________________________________________________________________

White (prizes for first under 10)
Yellow (prizes for first under 12)
Orange (prizes for first under 14)
Red (prizes for under 16, men over 65, women over 55)
Green (prizes ...)
Blue
Brown
Black

and add notes:

1/ Due to the nature of the terrain, courses red-black will generally be of technical difficulty 4
2/ If numbers exceed the available start slots, some courses will be split, with competitors eligible
for a prize kept on the same course.
3/ Please state you age-group prize eligibility
4/ Entry on the day, with £5 surcharge, will be limited by available maps and start times.
___________________________________________________________________________________________


Then, once you've seen your entry and determined your start list, you know whether to split green, blue brown courses.

But again, this is NOT prescriptive, if you are organising this big an event (way bigger than most) then I'm sure you know what you are doing, and can cook up something different but just as clear yourself.

(yes, I know this is a bit inconsistent with the TD4= light red to light black notation, you might have the odd TD5 control somewhere )

[Simon E]

______________________________________________________________________________________________

White (prizes for first under 10)
Yellow (prizes for first under 12)
Orange (prizes for first under 14)
Red (prizes for under 16, men over 65, women over 55)
Green (prizes ...)
Blue
Brown
Black

and add notes:

1/ Due to the nature of the terrain, courses red-black will generally be of technical difficulty 4
2/ If numbers exceed the available start slots, some courses will be split, with competitors eligible
for a prize kept on the same course.
3/ Please state you age-group prize eligibility
4/ Entry on the day, with £5 surcharge, will be limited by available maps and start times.

Sorry for those who are getting fed up with this discussion, but I think we're getting somewhere.

The problem is the proposed Guideline A. It defines 13 courses, and yet when a suggested set of courses is put forward two of them (Red and Green) are not even properly defined in the Guideline.

What is there in the above list that can't be done with the existing District Event set of known and loved colour coded courses, with the addition of the famous turquoise (TD5, CLR about 0.28) and possibly an extra TD4 course?

It would save an awful lot of explaining and document updating if we stuck to the existing definitions, with two new colours added. It also appears we can deal with even quite big events quite adequately.

[The Loofa]

Let’s drag this back to Oldman’s post on at the top of page 6 where he wanted us all to consider the purpose of our event structure. This is absolutely critical in order to be able to judge any proposed structure and evaluate it against the status quo.

When I first started thinking of this a few months ago I came up with these two criteria
1) The event structure should inspire and motivate the experienced competitor
2) The event structure should be clear and comprehensible to an outsider
I rate the second as the more important, because novices are outsiders, and they need to see a progression; local press and publicity are outsiders and there needs to be something they can understand.

These are what I’ve been working by and so let’s see how the main controversial proposals stack up with these criteria. I would encourage you to try this at home – feel free to think of different criteria or have a different opinion to mine on the criteria I’ve set.

OK. Let’s go.

Replacing National Events with area champs is something that stacks up well for me on both counts. Scottish, Northern, Welsh, Midland, Southern all on top terrain in the Feb-June main season window should get the regulars up for it and mean something to the rest of the world. Ticks in both boxes there.

On the other hand Standard Events (or whatever you want to call these colour-coded any-can-run anything-and its all competitive events) fail dismally for me on both criteria. It looks like the plan is to have more of them than present Regional Events. This means that regulars will be more confused as to which ones to target, clubs will have trouble understanding what level to pitch their fixtures at, and no matter how many platitudes are used, more will mean lower quality. And if anybody can run anything and be competitive, don’t we look even less like a proper sport to the outsider. I thought about this long and hard (which is why I’ve taken so long to make a posting) and I would go as far as calling the idea disastrous.

What’s the justification for them? The only one I could find said it was to encourage adult novices, and in one posting that was swiftly followed (and undermined) by an admission that they didn’t know any adult novices. I was an adult novice once. It was 1977-78; I was 23. The plan then seemed to be that you worked your way up the colour-coded structure (club events they were then) until ready to tackle you age group B course. That made perfect sense to me then and it still does now.

I think a lot of the problem is that there are too many Regional Events with the result that too many of them are low standard, and there’s little else to go to for weeks on end in Jan-March here in the South-East. So my proposal would be

- cut the number of classic distance Regional Events by about half (yes that does mean rationing and hard choices)
- Replace the other half with Middle and Sprint distance Regionals that are linked to (i.e. same weekend and nearby) a classic distance Regional
- Use 10 year age groups (delete those ending in 5)
- Reduce the number of adult courses so that each one has at least 60% occupancy on its start times.

So have a lovely time at the EGM. I won’t be thinking of you at all while I’m sunbathing at the OMM. And whatever you discuss there and at the later decision-making meetings please try to evaluate it using criteria you consider meaningful, and remember that measuring the volume of e-mail and Nopesport posting is not one of them.

Andy
(PS To quote Oldman again “Think external not internal”)

[Gnitworp]

cut the number of classic distance Regional Events by about half (yes that does mean rationing and hard choices)

Trouble is, most clubs put on just one Regional Event per annum, which, in The South especially, they name, e.g., November Classic, Chiltern Challenge, OK Nuts Trophy, BOK Trot, etc, etc. I suspect they would be loath to have their own event with its long tradition selectively downgraded by a committee.

[EddieH]

Followng Gnitwopr's comment, maybe England can learn from Scotland. The SOA nominate 7 regional events as SOLs every year. These events thus acquire a status amongst most scots. There is nothing to stop any club putting on any other regional events, but in practice fewer and fewer are put on over time. Tinto Twin is an example with an annual daytime regional (November Classic weekend) - often this is a nominated SOL, but if it isn't it takes place anyway and will receive its own adherants would the November Classic for example.

[harry]

The SOL series is quality. I've only run a couple of them this year due to other committments but normally I'd go to a SOL weekend over most other types of events. They're almost always on really good areas with good planning and reasonable competition, normally they're combined with a middle or sprint race or some training on the Saturday.
7 events spread through the season, with 3 in the autumn season, is about right.

[roadrunner]

Trouble is, most clubs put on just one Regional Event per annum, which, in The South especially, they name, e.g., November Classic, Chiltern Challenge, OK Nuts Trophy, BOK Trot, etc, etc. I suspect they would be loath to have their own event with its long tradition selectively downgraded by a committee.

For many clubs, the real issue is likely to be that if the event is downgraded, the income from it will fall - and for clubs in the South, this is often their main source of income to pay for mapping etc.

[distracted]

Trouble is, most clubs put on just one Regional Event per annum, which, in The South especially, they name, e.g., November Classic, Chiltern Challenge, OK Nuts Trophy, BOK Trot, etc, etc. I suspect they would be loath to have their own event with its long tradition selectively downgraded by a committee.

The point is they are all going to get "downgraded", if you want to call it that. But clubs can also nominate one 'protected' event as well, which will probably turn out to be events like the November Classic. But I would think events of that standing will attract numbers whatever.

I'm in agreement that there are far too many regional events in the south, especially early in the year. However, the money argument doesn't wash with me. I'd be interested to see the general state of orienteering club accounts across the country - my bet is the majority will be pretty healthy. There are also some clubs who don't have an annual regional event, because it isn't necessary. If an event is hosted on a decent area, I would have hoped people will turn up irrespective of its status, especially if the nearby event competing with your club's is also of the same event 'level'.