Hello everyone,
Here’s a short note about the upcoming Farsta-Relay Saturday June 20th B-meet at McCarthy Woods.
Below is a description of Farsta taken from a US Orienteering website…This event will be an adapted version of this form of orienteering to include the option of a 2 or 4 person orienteering relay…
The course is comprised of 6 loops and two cross over point-to-point sections for a total of 8 legs.
This means you can enter as an individual (for a course of ~9.5 km- all 8 legs), as a team of two (~4.8 km / 4 legs each) or a team of 4 (~2.4 km / 2 legs each). More details about declaring the order of runners will be given in a pre-race email and pre-race instructions.
Each leg is generally at an intermediate level to encourage diversity in team members.
Entry will be done by email to speed the registration, map production and check in process. Your entry will be confirmed with a return email within 24 hours
Please send me (Francis) an email by Wednesday June 17… 8 PM at
bruskikawam@rogers.com
indicating the names of your team members or if you intend to take the full farsta challenge yourself. (If the later is the case and you do not have a newer model SI you may need to rent/borrow one…please indicate if this is needed in your email as well)
Registration will take place from 9:45 – 10:45. At registration you will pay your fees and receive your assigned ordered map kit…
There will be pre-start instructions before a mass start at 11 AM
So…if you are interested start putting your teams together...If you are finding this hard to make a team send me a quick note and I’ll try to match you up with others looking for a team….Alternatively you can put teams together at next week’s special family orienteering day at Pinhey’s Point.
We look forward to hearing from you and seeing you in the woods
Francis Kawam, Meet Director
Brian Graham, Controller
What is a Farsta? Think of a relay. The farsta is a mass-
start event. You do two or more loops. But, instead of changing runners,
the same person does every loop. During the course of the
loops, you will go through some shared controls. That is, on each loop,
you will visit some of the same controls you visited the time before.
But, you will enter them from different controls and leave them for
different controls.
By the time you complete the entire course (all loops), you will
have run exactly the same legs as everybody else on your course. But,
you will do the legs in a different order from most other runners. There
can be 8, 16, 32 or even more different combinations!
The best way to understand is to look at the example below. This
course has two loops. You might start out to control 1A. About half
of your competitors will also be going to 1A. But the other half will be
going to 1B. So, if you randomly follow someone else, you might end
up at the wrong control.
After 1A or 1B, everyone comes back together at control 2. From
there, your next control might be 3C. Again, about half the competitors
will head to 3C and half to 3D. But, you do not know who will be doing
what. The person who just ran with you to 1A and 2 might now be doing
the "D" segment instead of "C". Follow him or her and all hope is lost!
illustration by Mike Minium in ocad 5
Not all Farsta courses are this simple. For example, segment A might
have 3 controls while segment B has only one. Sometimes there are 3 loops
instead of 2. But, generally speaking, we try to keep the lengths of each loop
very close to the same. Within the loop, each pair of segments is usually fairly
close to the same length. Since this is a mass start event, each time you see
a competitor, you can guess that they are fairly close to your pace. So, it is
a head to head competition, but the ability to follow is removed by the
forking. You get the thrill of head to head competition, but still must do
your own navigation.
When the Farsta is used with electronic punching, the computer has been
programmed to match your specific map. It is very important that you pick
up the correct map at the map exchange. If you use the wrong map or just
follow another competitor, the computer will catch you!
Why is it called a Farsta? Farsta is a town in Sweden where this type of
event originated. I believe the Norwegians call it something else, which
they claim to have invented.
Farsta or Motala? A Motala is similar, but once you start a loop, you are
doing the same complete loop as other runners who have started the same loop.
In a Motala, you generally do not visit the same control in more than one loop.
For a Motala, maps can be prepared in batches. For a Farsta, each map (or a
very small number of identical maps) must be prepared individually. Motala is
also a town in Sweden. Don't start with the chicken and egg questions. I'm
not even going to speculate which came first!
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