in: Orienteering; General;
| # Posted 2009-07-04 00:42:34 | |
| AZ: | Of all the great PNWOF events I found the relay to be fascinating. It was a typical North American "points-based" format with each team having four runners, each runner being worth a number of points based on age/gender, and each team had to have a certain number of points to be eligible. So far not that unusual.
What surprised me was that there was no forking at all. But it turns out we didn't need any forking - the race was really fun and exciting with lots of true "relay battles" going on. [For example, I went out on the final leg in the group of three leaders - I dropped about 10 minutes on the first two legs due to "relay panic" and then settled down. At the fifth control I regained contact with the leader - race on!! But then I promptly ran off the map, dropping my suffering team to fifth place.] I learned a lot from this race - mostly as a course setter! I have been setting relay courses at Barebones for the last several years and spend endless hours trying to figure out cool forking to make the relays fun. I am now pretty convinced I can drop all of that work and simply set four courses. The relay will change from being the most time consuming course to set to the simplest course to set. Relays are important in my opinion for the development of the sport. My dream is to have "real" North American relays which stand alone in importance along the lines of Tiomila or Jukola. This type of event helps to build strong clubs and strong commitment from club members. Thanks to PNWOF organizers for showing how to hold a great relay with minimal fuss. |
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| # Posted 2009-07-04 01:10:29 | |
| hammer: | Back in the 80's the Ontario Relay Champs was a big race...and with what is possibly the best trophy in North American Orienteering the stakes were high. Many of those races were unforked but they also didn't need to be forked either.
I too would like to see AZ's big dream of Nor-AM relays come true but the relay may need to be something different than what we normally do. For example, a few years ago GHO hosted the Ontario Relay Champs and we thought it would be a big success because we have hosted some very large team races (Salomon DontGetLost.ca Adventure Running Series) but it wasn't a success at all because people didn't want to commit the time of a long race but only run for a portion of the time. It would be interesting to brainstorm what the ideal format would be but I agree we shouldn't be worrying about forking. the barebones format worked well because people could run multiple times (less time standing around). |
| # Posted 2009-07-04 01:48:01 | |
| j-man: | Relays are the best events. I love them. |
| # Posted 2009-07-04 02:05:32 | |
| gordhun: | If the two-day total time format is to be no more and we are going to have weekend meets with three events I would gladly give up one of the individual events, preferably the sprint, if it were replaced by a relay event.
Relays in Canada fell out of favour because of the great disparity between teams. The 4-8-12 point divisions used in the States seem to go a long way to overcome that disparity by putting like-powered teams on appropriate courses. We have one other problem to overcome if we are to have successful interclub competitions in Canada- getting the many people in each major area who come out to local events to also travel to out of town events. Of the top ten finishers in Ottawa's Summer Solstice Orienteering series less than half travel to out-of-town meets. |
| # Posted 2009-07-04 02:48:39 | |
| coach: | Generating the interclub competition is key, and something that has waned over he last 20 years. Back in the 80's NEOC actually had trainings for the relays, and they won many!
But the other key I think is having courses which are fairly short, winning times in at most 30 minutes, even 25. This may not give much more running than sprints for gord, but it encourages slower runners to compete. A 5-6 K course is too long for most green and brown runners, so they will not participate. Courses should be on the short side. with the US point system I don't think the various courses should have winning times at the USOF guidelines. For the relay, 50% of those times would be good. So for the 8 pt. course of O,Y,Br,Gr I would suggest winning times of 22,15,25,& 30 minutes. For everyone involved, hanging around for hours and having to have mass starts for subsequent leg runners takes the fun out of it. As for forking, it certainly is a disincentive to a close race. There is certainly lots of following going on in the US format. It does make for a closer race, but maybe not a fairer race. |
| # Posted 2009-07-06 01:36:27 | |
| Jerritt: | I don't have any experience with orienteering relays at all, but what about modeling them after 24 hour mountain bike relays? Set period of time 6, 12, or 24. With e-punching and a large number of controls you could create a large number of variations, re-using only a few controls.
Instead of running just one leg, team members would run multiple legs. Maybe the winning team is the one that gets through all relay legs first. Maybe it is the team that does the most total legs (If a team finishes all set legs, then it begins the whole set again.) This might encourage people to travel for the event, in that your time commitment is greater, but you get to run multiple legs at different times of day or night, and there is definitely an endurance aspect. I have no idea if this is feasible or might be of interest. |
| # Posted 2009-07-06 04:53:15 | |
| feet: | 24-Stunden-Orienterungslauf is pretty close to this. |
| # Posted 2009-07-06 08:55:00 | |
| cedarcreek: | I believe non-forked relays are a step backwards. I've set two relays, and both were forked. I didn't have trouble setting the forks---For me the trouble was all the map printing and bagging and setting up the software for SportIdent.
I did a lot better the second time around: Because we only had about 40 teams (~10 4pt, ~20 8pt, and ~10 12pt), meaning only 40 people in the woods at any one time, I tried to pack the course into a small area and have fairly simple forkings. In a few cases the forkings were sprint-type legs in open lawn areas. I tried to balance the forks to keep the distance and climb similar, so there would be a good chance to keep a pack together if both were navigating and running well. The main idea was just to verify that the runners were paying attention, and not just blindly following. In the past we had a strong incentive to export courses from Condes and print them from OCAD so we could print 2-up maps on 11x17 paper (about A3 size) because we were paying for maps as pages coming out of the copier. This means you have to spend a lot of time writing bib numbers on maps and verifying each team is assigned all the right maps. But now we have about a 1 cent delta between two sheets of 8.5x11 (~A4) and one sheet of 11x17 (~A3), so I'm pretty sure we can start printing from Condes and not have to worry so much about getting the right map in the hands of the right team. (I'm told Condes handles the printing and labeling of maps for relays automatically, so a lot of the manual work is reduced.) The first time I did a relay, we didn't use the relay software from SportSoftware (OS2003), and that was a big mistake. It took us several days working with spreadsheets to figure out the times of the teams who were in the mass starts (This was time after work, so it wasn't like we were doing it continuously for days). The second time we used the relay software (OS2003), and although we could only use one mass start, the software worked perfectly. I'm hoping to set a 3-leg sprint relay with minor forking for a Jr ROTC group of about 100 cadets---It will be a good test for the easier way of printing maps. (Some cadets *need* forking.) I should probably start a new thread for this---sorry Adrian. I have been playing with an idea for a relay format. I've been calling it a "First-Leg Relay", and the idea is that the n+1 runners all mass start when the first n-leg runner finishes. I started thinking about this when we were discussing when to do our one mass start (that is allowed by the OS2003 software). It's probably unfair to allow the 2nd or 3rd place team to be swept up in a fast moving pack and catch the 1st and 2nd place team. So I was thinking (for a new relay format), what would happen if you started each leg when the 2nd or 3rd runner from the previous leg finished? Again, that means the 2nd or 3rd place team is running in a pack. I used to play a video racing game that favored you if you were second---you could always catch the guy in front. We called it "Catch up mode", and if you're in front, it sucks. One of the IOF course setting guidelines for relays is to have low-visibility terrain so a runner who is behind does not have an advantage over the runner in front. This line of thinking begged the questions: "What would happen if you mass started each leg when the first runner comes in?" "What if you just let the whole field be swept up in a fast moving pack?" The only person who knows the score is the team member of the person who finished the last leg first. Everyone else is in the dark. While this does give the lead team an incentive to hold back and not do anything stupid, everyone else is properly incentivized to do whatever they can to beat team 1, and I think it's reasonable to believe the lead team runner will feel that pressure. As the n-leg runners finish and download, these times will be made known to the n+2 leg runners, and they'll have a decent understanding of the team places when they see the lead runner(s) for the n+1 leg finish. You could even have a spectator leg where the n+1 runners could be made aware of the standings as they pass through. The main idea here is to increase the amount of pack running each runner sees. It's a way to take a small relay field and make the experience in the woods more intense. It also helps to drastically shorten the event. In a normal relay, the slower teams are in the range of 200% of the winning team's time---less if there are reasonable mass starts. In this format, only the last leg would be 2x, so for a four-leg relay, the later finishers would be finishing in 125% of the winning team time. That's pretty cool. The obvious problem is that the results would be infinitely easier to produce if the download software can handle this situation. I don't know of any that does. (If someone makes some software to handle this, let me know. I'll use it on the cadet relay. They can only give us a small time window, so without this format, it's hard to get a relay onto their schedule.) {edit} One thing I really like about this format is that the lone lead runner isn't a "target of success" for the following runners. In a regular relay, the following pack has an advantage over the leader which they can sometimes see and use as a way to push themselves. And I don't want to say this is bad---It's part of the game of relays. But I like the idea that the following runners are now with the leader, and they know they have to do better, and they have to do it without a visible target up in front of them. |
| # Posted 2009-07-06 20:49:07 | |
| Ricka: | In the few US Relays I've run, I've usually been a 2-4th runner on an 8 or 12 point team. Pretty much ran each leg solo - just another O' run, little feeling of it being a Relay. Also, waiting 3+ hours for the team to come in is good for socializing, but it's easy to lose contact with the competition (except for top couple 4-points teams). So I like the concept of an earlier mass start - the details are a good discussion topic.
This year, I did run 1st leg Orange at OCIN and it was fun. It was good to 'see' the forks and see other controls. I ran with Peggy D & 1-2 others most of the way. I pushed to keep up, passed her once, she pulled away on last uphill along with 'Texas girl'. |
| # Posted 2009-07-07 04:53:14 | |
| hammer: | >I don't have any experience with orienteering relays at all, but what about modeling them after 24 hour mountain bike relays? Set period of time 6, 12, or 24.
This is the format that some of us in GHO thought would be of most interest. Likely not 24 hours but perhaps 6 or 8 hours that includes some night. |
| # Posted 2009-07-07 05:54:54 | |
| AZ: | If we were to have a North American club relay, how many of your club members do you think would you be able to convince to come with you to the event? l;-)
I'm thinking some categories could be in order, similar to Jukola perhaps with: Women's open (small teams - three or four?) Men's open (larger teams - five or six?) Venerable mixed - similar to current Points-based category system Junior mixed - Each category is intended to attract a certain type: Men's & Women's --> get young, fast new-comers committed to the club/sport, with mix of technical difficulties, but all pretty physically tough legs. Ultimate honor is to be assigned the "Long Night", for example, which is physically toughest. Venerable - to provide something for the bulk of we older orienteering adicts to do ;-) Junior mixed - to provide a national-level competition for kids, with mix of easier legs ...all this for example / for discussion ... |
| # Posted 2009-07-07 06:02:35 | |
| Rosstopher: | I love the idea of the first-leg relay. If you are making it easier to stay in contact with each other you really do force the issue of forking though. I've never put one on ( a relay that is), but most of the orienteering "administrative skills" that I've developed have been really hard the first time and gotten much easier with practice. If making a forked relay is tough, one option is to just do it over and over until it becomes a routine for you and your club.
Of course, really fun relays don't need forking.... they need spectating and crowd participation..... much more important to spend time devising spectator loops and radio control options. Handing out megaphones to the audience might help too :) |
| # Posted 2009-07-07 07:59:30 | |
| j-man: | Or handing out a Ross to the audience and a Greg to do some commentary. |
| # Posted 2009-07-07 11:11:05 | |
| ebone: | cedarcreek, I love the first-leg relay concept, but I disagree somewhat about the need for forking. It seems like forking usually has little impact on the final ranking (not necessarily no impact, as there can be cases of a team/runner that is fast latching onto a fast and competent orienteer), but forking does tend to increase the spread of the teams, which is counter to one of the purposes of the first-leg relay.
Another thing to consider is that, to the extent that some less skilled navigators do hitch a ride in an unforked relay, they'll really learn something about how fast they actually could be orienteering and how the technically better orienteers do it. Also, it will be closer and more exciting for everyone. That said, I agree that the navigational demands may be lessened for some followers, but then again, maybe that's what middle distance races are for. AZ, I love the idea of a North American club relay, but I'm not convinced that most clubs are deep enough (among their traveling members) to field open teams. You'd probably be best off with a points system or with regional rather than club teams. Attendance from my club would depend on where and in conjunction with what other event the relay were held, but I would certainly talk it up. |
| # Posted 2009-07-09 11:10:46 | |
| AZ: | How about the British "Harvester" Relay format? I have never run one, but see from here (http://www.britishorienteering.org.uk/downloads/do...) that they have two courses:
Course A - 7 laps * Men's Premier * Handicap - mixed age & gender * Small club (based on previous results) Course B - 5 laps * Women's Premier * Handicap - mixed age & gender * Women's Handicap - women of mixed ages * Junior - M/W 20 & under |
| # Posted 2009-07-09 16:16:38 | |
| gruver: | The whole relay ethos is based on (a) competent orienteers and (b) enough of them to create the excitement of the pack. Without these, it is just another event with the addition of some maths which give a "team result".
My country has relatively low orienteer numbers, and the majority have weak navigational skills - little wonder that relays are attracting less and less interest. We may as well run pseudo-relays with EVERYONE starting at once, with forking, and with a team result worked out afterwards. This would maximise the competitive intensity for those capable of handling it, rather than spreading the few competent orienteers out over three legs. |
| # Posted 2009-07-09 22:33:31 | |
| blegg: | >>really fun relays don't need forking.... much more important to spend time devising spectator loops and radio control options.
I agree totally. Devising ways to spread the field (forking) seems like an especially low priority, when you are busy instituting point systems to keep the field together. |
| # Posted 2009-07-10 04:20:02 | |
| AZ: | My country has relatively low orienteer numbers, and the majority have weak navigational skills- little wonder that relays are attracting less and less interest
This is obviously also one of the issues we have in North America. But I look at this as not a reason why relays should fail, but in fact one of the key reasons we should be doing them - in order to recruit more runners, keep them in the sport, and turn them into better orienteers. Where I see relays being particularly useful in North America is in potentially building commitment from newcomers to the sport, who might be very strong athletes but who struggle in running the individual elite categories. Often we see these types of runners leaving the sport quite quickly. My hope is that we can better "hook" them to the sport by having good relay events. This would require putting them on (in Harvester terms) a premier team, and providing them with a leg of suitable challenge for their fitness and navigational abilities - ie a long easy leg. Sure, we don't have a lot of depth right now, but what about (again, in the Harvester model) having a Mens' Premier course with seven legs, four or five of which are long and easy. So each club would then have to recruit fast runners to fill the team. If these runners had fun at the relay they would possibly start to enjoy orienteering more, stay in the sport longer, work on their navigation, and eventually aim to take the "Long Night" leg away from the club champion. Possibly this is all an empty dream. But I get a lot of encouragement from looking at races such as Raid the Hammer which manages to attract loads of top level athletes who can't orienteer very well. |
| # Posted 2009-07-10 04:41:34 | |
| jeffw: | Maybe have a leg where there is no navigation at all--all trail running--to get elite level runners out to the event on a team. Maybe they will see how fun it is and want to learn more. |
| # Posted 2009-07-13 11:46:30 | |
| gruver: | Hmm. For years orienteers in my country have paid lip service to this holy grail: "the long easy course to attract runners". We've never succeeded. Because the "long easy course" was never more than about 2/3 of the longest on offer.
I think the jury is out on whether a REAL long easy course would eventually work. What HAS worked is orienteering under another name. Afterwork 3hr rogaines in or near the city sprang up by accident - initially intended as training. The maps are "improved govt topo" and force simple control sites. Running in a team seems to be a positive factor too. Which suggests another idea - orienteering as it is attracts individualists - many people prefer team sports. A relay is hardly a team sport. |
| # Posted 2009-07-13 14:42:37 | |
| simmo: | In Western Australia (5 clubs, approx 120-150 active members) we have not used forking for some years. Current format is at http://wa.orienteering.asn.au/aboutoawa/technical/...
There are 4 courses (only a few controls common, but many close to each other), each team consists of 2 or 3 members (ie most runners run more than one leg). Courses are short, 2.5-3.0kms, but technical. This format came about for several reasons: 1) not enough members to have age classes; 2) previous format took too long for the 'average' teams - up to 3 or more hours for 3 legs; 3) against this, the better orienteers were complaining about travelling for over an hour to an event where they had a much shorter run than usual (eg good M21s would typically complete their course in 30 minutes); 4) organisation much simpler - only 4 variations to set, print and bag; 5) can be run with SI equipment but no software - last year we used just a splits printer and a spreadsheet. Having said that, I quite like CCs idea of mass starting every leg on return of the first runner - but someone would have to come up with some nice software to make it easy to get results. |
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