Discussion: What level should a 17 year old girl start at?

Can anyone give me an idea of what colour a generally non sporty but not totally unfit 17 year old girl should start at?
Thanks

Given you're in the UK (the US uses a different system) either an orange or red course would be recommended, depending on fitness/how long you want to be out in the forest for. These courses will often have an obvious path route but also allow you to cut corners/across blocks of forest once you feel more confident. Once you've mastered the basic skills and are confident on an orange course (can complete one in ~30 mins without any major mistakes), then move up to light green, where you'll need to use some more advanced techniques.

And make use of the help on hand - ask the organisers/other people at the event for advice - most will be happy to help out! Especially if you're new to orienteering maps, which use quite different symbols to Ordnance Survey maps - it's important to know what all the colours signify.

In my similar experience (I started orienteering 1 year ago), there are three important orienteering classes of consideration:

1. Athletic ability
2. Navigational ability
3. Multitasking

The first is obvious - running distance, vertical climb components, and so on. For the second, I refer to the ability to navigate given the information available to an orienteer. This requires both a measure of spatial reasoning (I'm at point a traveling to point b; I will pass these features and travel in this direction for this distance) and the ability to interpret information correctly from the map. Compass use is also important, and I have lumped all sorts of techniques - handrails, attackpoints, route simplification and route choice - into this single, broad category. The third class is the ability to execute all navigational planning, thinking, analysis, and information collection while running through the woods and dodging obstacles, trees, and so on.

From my observation, beginners tend to be able to move faster than they can effectively navigate and multitask. Combining all the activities of orienteering together is non-trivial.

I suggest you start out diligently running easy and intermediate courses until you're excelling on them - not making mistakes, comfortable the entire way, in contact with the map the entire run. You can use this time to build up good orienteering habits - planning ahead, staying in contact, practicing route choice, and so on. Once you're adept at the basic set of orienteering techniques - choosing attack points, planning routes, using hand rails, aiming off, relocating, compassing, moving through woods, and so on - then move up to more advanced courses.

Orange and red courses look to be your ideal training ground to start. Orange are particularly good because they're short enough for you to run them twice at a given meet. In my experience, repeating a course (perhaps slowly to examine what you did) is very helpful to get an understanding of how your strategies worked and failed. You might also consider repeating the course, but backwards. Finally, talk about your course after every meet with more experienced orienteers.

Good luck!

Course selection for newcomers is always a tricky one as it is tough to gauge what navigational abilities they may have. People often wrongly suggest they can navigate because they have done orienteering at school/scouts, they have done nav in the armed forces or are experienced bushwalkers, but my experiences suggest that generally they have little idea of what orienteering (or indeed navigation itself) actually entails.

For this reason our club has a policy of suggesting first timers start on the easiest or next easiest course and work their way up. It is better for them to find it too easy than too hard at a first event. We also allow them to go back out and check the next level free of charge if they felt it had been too easy. (we have a pretty good conversion rate from first timers to regulars)

Don't even consider your speed for the moment as it won't be your limiting factor for a long while. I always advise people to walk on their first course, at least for the first half or so until they are comfortable with the process. Let's face it you are there to learn how to navigate, not how to run.

Like most sports there are skills that need to be learnt and practiced. As Ian suggested don't move up a level until you are comfortably completing ones at your current level. This may be a lengthy process but I've seen people discouraged because they try to move up too quickly and subsequently either leave the sport or never really get a grip on it.

As the others suggested ask experienced orienteers what techniques they would have used on your course. From personal experience I can tell you this is the best way to learn. I was one of those independent, stubborn headed fools that jumped up to the hardest level too early and spent too many years trying to do it myself. A couple of simple questions to an experienced orienteer would have saved me a lot of frustration. (Fortunately I loved the challenge and stuck with it.) You will find that most people are friendly and willing to assist.

Hope you enjoy our brilliant sport!

Short answer - start easy. If the navigation is too easy, you'll be done in twenty minutes and can head out on a harder course. Better to start that way that start too hard, get lost for hours and get really discouraged.

And if they want to continue doing O' over the years, there are lots of techniques to learn on the "easy" courses. I started at orange, and a year later to red (intermediate and hard in the US). It took me years to realize I had missed out on some basic techniques that you learn on the easiest (white and yellow) courses.

I like fletch's short and to the point answer. Definitely start easy. If the person has good innate orienteering ability, she will decide quickly to move to progressively more challenging courses, in future events. Or even do the next level of difficulty in her first event, after doing the easy course.

It's far better to start a newcomer on too easy of a course and have them be successful, than to have them start on a more challenging course, struggle, and get frustrated before they've even really started out in the sport.

In the US, I'd say do a White course first; if they blaze through that and have a reasonable feel for the map, then go out on a Yellow, in that same event.

I did what RL Shadow said and it worked pretty well. I still rely on trails a lot so I think I'll do that for another meet or two and then try orange. I'm also still getting the hang of efficient multitasking. I picked up controls w/ Holly and Kate on an orange course so that gave me an idea of what it will be like.

btw, it was my second time Orienteering (first time I ran white twice, cutting my time 11 minutes, and picked up controls). I'm 18. I'm physically fit, but I dont run very often or far. I do do other types of cardio so that kind of helps. I am still improving my map skills.

Thanks guys! I'm not actually the one starting orienteering, (I'm definitely a sporty person) it's for a friend, but as I'm fairly new to it all (started just under a year ago), I don't really know the difficulty of any courses below orange, which is what I started on. I suppose it also depends on where you do it. My first course was in Ecclesall Woods, Sheffield - more difficult than say an open park.

Also, my friend hasn't done much map reading, so I hope to start her on something a bit easier than orange, so not to put her off!

Thanks again!