Discussion: Early Bird Entry Closes Soon. Frazzle Rock Western Australia

Early Bird Entry for the Australian Easter orienteering Carnival closes on 31 Jan 2001. Just 2 weeks to get your entry in and save money. Course lengths for each class, info on the Family Team and daily event start times are all now on the web to help you plan and enter

http://www.aus3days2011.orienteering.asn.au/

The carnival includes 7 events over 10 days the Easter Prologue / Family Teams Event, Be Active Australian 3 Day Championship, Be Active Australian Sprint Championship and the Be Active Australian Middle Distance Championship. As part of the carnival there are 2 World Ranking Events, the Australian Team JWOC trials and last but not least the M21AS Sledge competition!

Orders for the Event technical running shirt and prize also close on the 31st Jan so enter now to be eligible for the $2,000 prize!

Early bird entry fees end on 31/1/11. Normal event fees apply after this date.

Enter and save money today,

Entries updated on the web site

Entries by state

ACT 4
NSW 19
VIC 14
QLD 8
TAS 9
WA 29
SA 5
NT 0
NZL 3

10 days to go to save money. Enter this weekend!

Lots of good info on the web site - well done. The course lengths for the Aus. Middle Distance Champs (final event) make interesting reading. Are the indicated lengths for M17-20E and W17-20E, relative to other classes, correct?
In anticipation, thanks for taking the time to consider my question.

Hi StK66. The Technical Director for the event is spending tonight wandering the wilds of Tasmania. He'll get back to you early in the week to confirm these courses/classes (definitely before Earlybird closing date).

StK66 this may answer your question: OA Rules (16.10 and 16.13) specify 20-25 minutes as the winning times for junior elite in middle distance, while other classes are mostly 25-35 mins.

Thanks grilla, and thanks simmo - your reference to the rules provides a very clear explanation for the course lengths. The time you have both taken to respond is greatly appreciated. Interesting rule - any idea about the history?

Recent history, if there is such a thing, has had them running the same course as 21E - once the experiment of distance cut-offs etc for those that didn't want the whole distance was abandoned. I seem to recall about a 50min winning time at an Easter not so long ago!

I seem to remember a similar winning time at an SA Middle Distance Championships, too, but that was thanks to a map-scale mix-up.

25 minutes is the JWOC middle winning time, right? I had a bit of a chat to Richard last night about this and have forwarded to him the course-class-length combinations we ended up with for the AMDC at last year's Aust Champs. Taking the OA rules and guidelines too literally can cause you to end up with counter-intuitive course ordering, but then some common sense can be used when shuffling them to get the best fit. So it's likely that the advertised AMDC course-class combinations on the Easter website may not be the final ones.

Course/class groupings in the OA Rules are in an appendix, and are only 'suggested', whereas winning times are in the main body of the rules and should be adhered to, especially for group A events. Group A events are probably going to have a larger entry, and therefore the suggested 13 courses in Appendix 1 is probably insufficient.

It does seem odd that OA seems to be recommending 25-35 minutes for M/W14 and M/W16 for middle distance, and maybe these should be brought into line with M/W17-20 at 20-25 minutes. Or is it the case that the younger ones are being given 'more time in the forest' than the shorter but more intense 'technical orienteering' in their development years?

Elite winning times are on Robin's and my list of things to look into - and will therefore require some discussion with elites. So nothing can really change before 2012. But I wouldn't expect 16As to have a longer course than 17-20E; rather that they would be slightly slower (or at least the girls would) on a similar/shorter course.

From 2010 AMDC in SA:

W21E, 4.9km, 35 min
W17-20E, 3km, 23 min
W16A, 2.7km, 26 min

M21E, 6.0km, 31 min
M17-20E, 4km, 23 min
M16A, 3.5km, 22 min

So this wasn't perfect either, but was an acceptable fit.

It's a bit of a sidetrack, but worth noting here that quite often in a middle distance championship the best 16s will run up - this was certainly the case in 2010.

So jenny are you saying with your OA Tech hat on that the setters for the AMDC at the Easter Carnival should go against the current OA Rule 16.13 and put 16A on shorter courses? I tend to agree, especially in light of blair's last point.

It's not actually going against:

16.13 For Middle distance races, winning times for those classes not specified in 16.10 shall be 25-35 minutes, or the winning time in 16.9, whichever is the lesser.

So you can have a 25 minute (although slightly shorter would be acceptable) winning time for 16A, and a 20-25 minute winning time for 17-20E, and in all but the fastest terrain this would automatically mean that the course for 16A is shorter than that for 17-20E, especially since the middle distance format is technically more intense than some 15-16 year olds are accustomed to.

Obviously the controller for the AMDC is the person who will have the final say, but I may as well discuss this with him.

My thought is that if the terrain warrants it or has limitations the times should be a bit relaxed. Obviously the times for my course at Gudgenby were too long but i knew going in they would. We had strict limitations on the map i decided i would rather them see the best and most technical terrain then be a few minutes quicker, having said that i did get the women's times a bit out (i thought they would be quicker!)

Tooms is that easter with the 50min winning times? M21E - 35, W21E - 39, M20E - 34, W20E - 41. A bit off :)

The winning times for Elite Classes are to be reviewed in 2011 especially W/M17-20E as some of these are too short. 25 min at JWOC is not the same as 25 min in AUS.

Still the lenghts for these courses seem to short based on the relative run rates of juni0r and senior elites.

Also the organisers can ask for a a rule variation and I don't think there would be too many objections in increasing the length for the junior elite courses at the AMDC.

@lazydave: can't remember I'm afraid, may well have been Aussies - but can't be bothered searching to see how wrong I am! I'm afraid I'm not a big fan of technicbabble, much as it promotes our sport so well...

Thanks to everyone for their thoughts on the Middle Distance distances and course grid. The issues are now being discussed between the event controller and OA Technical Team
Regards, Richard (Frazzle Rock Technical Director)

Keep the entries rolling in

Come and meet Tooms Two!