Monday, March 17, 2008

Idea for a new Training Event format

I have this crazy idea for making a "treasure hunt" Score-O event. I think it would be very fun to do, but, please, comment. Maybe it is too crazy :)

Here is the idea.
1. The event is a Score-O, meaning there is a time limit, penalties for being late and points are rewarded for each control taken.
2. But only 5 controls are shown on the map! And there are 4 long legs between these 5 controls. (see the picture 1 below)
3. All other controls are set along these long legs, but not quite!
4. There are exactly five extra controls on every leg (see the picture 2 below), so if a runner found all five, he/she would know that this leg is fully taken.
5. I think that mass start should work best for such event, but it is OK to start separately as well.

During such event runners will have to make guesses where those extra controls are, look for other runners around, remember where they are at any given moment and manage their time closely. Plus it will be fun to see the full map at the finish and see where were all hidden controls.

P.S. If 4 legs are too much, it can be scaled down to 4 main controls and 3 long legs.

What do you think?

Picture 1. Every runner gets this map (click to enlarge).


Picture 2. Map with hidden controls, shown at the finish.

3 comments:

BlackRussian said...

sounds crazy, but it may work.
the only suggestion is -- have full control descriptions beforehand, and codes (#s)

this will force a runner to think where one could place next control, and next control, and so on. absence of any information about controls does not teach you anything...

BlackRussian said...

actually, I have another idea. I think I'll implement that on our next training event.

It'll be a modification of Score-O. Some controls in false locations will have negative points. So one will have to be dead sure about the location before punching.

Vaskor said...

Thank you for the comments, Artem. Yes, I agree the the legends should be available. Also I think the controls should be on rather big features.

And I like your idea as well. Kind of similar to the 3 controls in every place you and Mihai did before.

Vladimir