Dick Luckerman asks what lengths to use for his proposed Prologue and Chase at the Monkey Mountain meet on April 6. This format will be used for the advanced courses.

In a Prologue and Chase format, competitors run a short Prologue followed by a Chase in which the start order and times of the Chase are determined by the times of the Prologue. For example, if runner A's time is 30 seconds slower that runner B in the Prologue, Runner B will start at 12:00:00 and runner A will start at 12:00:30 in the Chase. The first to finish the Chase will be the winner.

-- Dick (rneuburger@worldnet.att.net), March 10, 2002

Answers

A prologue chase format sounds fun.

I'd suggest a short prologue (maybe 2 km) followed by a medium-length chase (maybe 5 km).

You might also limit the chase to something like 15 minutes. If someone was more than 15 minutes behind after the prologue, they could just start 15 minutes after the leader.

-- Michael (meglin@juno.com), March 11, 2002.

Dick, You need to get the word out. It will require a change in the PTOC mindset, i.e., you need to register at a certain, be ready to go at your assigned start time, and then wait around til your assigned chase start. Everyone (doing this format) needs to plan for a DAY of orienteering. For the distances, I'd go as short as possible to increase the participation. Those fast guys will be fast no matter what distance. Be sure to have adequate staff to handle the start AND finish. You're making this a race and accurately recording the finsih times is important.

-- mean gene (gmw@ku.edu), March 10, 2002.

While Gene's comments are relevant, I think one of the nice things about a prologue & chase format is that the finish is really easy. The order they come in is the order they place. Time really doesn't matter as much. Of course, it's nice to get the times right, also, but not crucial as in a time trial.

-- Eric (ejbuckley@earthlink.net), March 12, 2002.