Typical number of controls at a colour coded event

[AndyNash]

I'm planning a colour-coded event (C4) and wondered what a typical number of control sites for such an event is. I'm trying to reach a balance between sharing sites for economy, and avoiding overloaded controls or too many instances of the same leg occurring on different courses.

Anyway, my first draft of the 8 courses I intend to provide (the usual ones from White up to Brown) uses 58 control sites. Is this fairly normal or does it seem a lot?

Andrew

[RS]

Sounds OK to me but then I'm not an experienced planner. Why not ask your controller or someone in your club? Surely, as a first time planner, your club is supporting you? (I am summising you are a novice planner).
Good luck anyhow

[Ed]

I managed 43 controls for 11 courses on my last outing - the longest course at 11.99km had 25 of them (courses on routegadget, if you're interested, although one or two of the controls look like they've been wrongly positioned in RG). There were no worries about overloading controls though, since we were expecting <100 competitors, and only 2 control hangers, so I did quite a bit of optimisation to minimise the number of controls.

There wasn't a real TD 1 (white) course at that event though, so 58 doesn't sound particularly excessive - the more different levels of TD, the more controls you're bound to need.

[graeme]

Depends a bit on the area, but if you're doing a standard colour coded you'll need about

10 TD1 on white
10 TD3 on orange
25 TD5 on brown

If you're doing it properly, you'd need another 10 TD2 for yellow and 15 TD4 for light green. In practice for a small event people tend to use white/orange controls and make up the TD2 difficulty on the legs rather than controls. Similarly with orange/brown for TD4.

You might want a few controls on green and blue which aren't on brown either.

So if you only use 58, you're almost certainly compromising the courses a bit to minimise your workload, and therefore also minimising the danger of making mistakes.
That's the compromise most people reach.

If you get down to 27 (Nev Baker on Shotover), or use a white control on the elite course as TD1 and TD5 , then you're kind of showing off.

[Adrian]

Aim for fewer than 50 controls at level 3 events. Controllers appreciate it! Half of your Green controls (and therefore some of your Blue/Brown controls) will be TD4 so can be used on Light Green, and the Yellow course can mainly use the White controls. So it's possible in fact to get the total down to 40 controls, which is sometimes necessary, for example if it's a small event, you're short of manpower or the terrain is very tough.

One advantage of using Condes is that you can see which controls are underused and play about with substituting/omitting them.

[PKJ]

Earlier this year I used 58 for an 11-course CS Cup round, with around 400 competitors. But that had 6 TD5 courses (OK, TD4 at best) and I try to avoid 'everyone going into the same block is going to the same control', so for an 8-course event it would have been a bit less.

And don't underestimate how long it takes to put them all out.

[Gross]

You can get away with 3 controls for an elite course..... 1 long leg out, a turning leg to avoid a dog leg and a long leg back to the finish.....

And if there's a road close to the 2 far away controls then the planner don't need to go too far

[I know.... I've done it:) ]

[Bin Man Pete]

You can get away with 3 controls for an elite course... ]

Trying to think of a UK area where that might be possible - any suggestions anyone?

Re-colour coded planning, please try to avoid more than 2, maybe 3, common legs in succession on TD5 courses. This and advice above should still not result in more than 45 controls, given that very few areas can offer 25+ TD5 control sites in the right place to get good courses.

[Gross]

go further north than the northeast edge of the map

[ifor]

You can get away with 3 controls for an elite course... ]

Trying to think of a UK area where that might be possible - any suggestions anyone?

Probobly get an interesting elite length course on the longmynd with that setup and carefull choice of the start finish.

Ifor

[Mrs H]

I usually chuck all our maps away - there is only one I keep on my desk and look at from time to time from Day 5 at last year's O-ringen. The course was just 3.6km long with 5 controls the last of which hardly counts as everyone is going there. Control 2-3 is 2km long across a piece of typical marsh and low lying contour features without a path or similar in sight. I felt totally elated to nail the control in the middle of that wilderness.

[Red Adder]

Sounds about the right number for 8 courses CC event. I usually aim to finalise around 50 for a 7 course event. If you keep track of the numbe of expected visits per site you soon realise that for your average event very few will be overused. In EA you can generally reuse sites (but not legs) on WYO, and LG/G/Bl/Br have to make use of the TD4s available. Its excellent advice to gaffle the TD4s so that no two courses have consecutive identical legs. Many competitors get narked if the Green is just the Light Green plus an extra loop, or the Brown is a similar extension to the Blue. Also avoid bingo sites like the plague, there is nothing worse than loosing 5 minutes looking for a pit in a thicket only for your exit from the site to give it away to the next 5 runners at no cost.

[Red Adder]

Sounds about the right number for 8 courses CC event. I usually aim to finalise around 50 for a 7 course event. If you keep track of the numbe of expected visits per site you soon realise that for your average event very few will be overused. In EA you can generally reuse sites (but not legs) on WYO, and LG/G/Bl/Br have to make use of the TD4s available. Its excellent advice to gaffle the TD4s so that no two courses have consecutive identical legs. Many competitors get narked if the Green is just the Light Green plus an extra loop, or the Brown is a similar extension to the Blue. Also avoid bingo sites like the plague, there is nothing worse than loosing 5 minutes looking for a pit in a thicket only for your exit from the site to give it away to the next 5 runners at no cost.

[Knee Deep Mud!]

Number of controls really depends on the terrain you've got to work with. You need more controls if you need to add loops to fit a long course into a smaller area, or need to keep people off the paths to prevent a fairly dull course.

For our club's southern england areas I'd typically say ~60 controls for an 8 course colour coded. ~90 for a full badge event. That said, I have done a four course event with 7 controls.

[besty]

I think that the number of controls that you use will depend on the area that you are planning on.

Then it's a question of using your control sites efficiently.

I was taught by Robin Stansfield (now a member of Borderliners) that you should count up the number of controls on each site, add them together and divide by two. You should use no more control sites than that number i.e on average each control site is used on at least two courses.

Obviously some of the control sites on White will only be used on White and probably some of the control sites on Orange will only be used on Orange so you will expect that some controls on the TD4 and 5 courses will be visited on three or more different courses.

Nevertheless Robin's rule seems to be a good guide to how efficient the planning has been.