London City Race

[Angry Haggis]

On one leg, I still can't see the best route now: how on earth did someone do 131-110 (Roman wall to a tree) in 01:12?!

It is possible to do this leg without going back up onto the highwalk - by going south, then east up the access ramp, then north down a small flight of stairs into the square. Then you can pass under the N-S highwalk and go straight to the control.

Some people may have taken an even shorter - but illegal - route by going straight into square by hopping over the uncrossable wall (thick black line) to the east of 131.

131to110.png (80.7 KiB) Viewed 8055 times

[Knee Deep Mud!]

I'll second all the praise for this event. Really good fun, and whoever organised the weather deserves a few bonus points too!

The multi levels in the Barbican were made better use of this year than last. Quite confusing at times - i.e. you can see the control below you, go down a set of spiral stairs, and find that you are still one level higher than you need to be.

On one leg, I still can't see the best route now: how on earth did someone do 131-110 (Roman wall to a tree) in 01:12?!

It is possible to do this leg without going back up onto the highwalk - by going south, then east up the access ramp, then north down a small flight of stairs into the square. Then you can pass under the N-S highwalk and go straight to the control.

I went the route suggested by Angry Haggis (its only about 300m long), though lost some time working out where I needed to go, as whilst I could see the route on the map, I didn't see the set of stairs down at first, even though I had stopped to scratch my head less than 2m from the top of them! I admit I had made the assumption that although there were two forbidden to cross walls shown on the route, that the underpass symbol between them indicated that the forbidden bits were on the upper level and the ground level was passable. How things like this are mapped possibly needs looking at, though I'm sure that multi-level mapping will always pose problems with how you clearly represent different things on different levels.

Really looking forward to the event centred on Bankside next year - there's some excellent street-o potential round there.

Well, I'm glad it wasn't on Bankside this year, as when I left the event I walked through there, and there were so many people it was hard work walking, let alone running. You'll need a new map symbol to indicate the likely 'runnability' of the streets!

[greywolf]

A great event, thanks! - definitely the toughest urban race i've ever done - I managed to make all my usual mistakes plus a couple of new ones: misinterpreting the two overprint lines from 1 (153) to 2 (122) as "there and back" & running through an (unmapped) open gate only for it to close automatically behind me muppet!
I thought I'd done OK through the Barbican until i saw the splits and realised i'd (like most of us) missed the low level route from 17 (131) to 18 (110)...but in the Temple I struggled to work out what was passable and what not : when a particular black line is very short i find it difficult to tell whether it's thick or not.
1:4,000 would help of course, but not sure everyone would be in favour of a bigger sheet. An alternative might be: where there are narrow covered passageways, just to shade them grey and not put any black line across the ends at all. Open passages would therefore be clearly open. Don't know if that would violate ISSOM in any way, although I'd've thought it was not really much different from the omission of small pavement edges, etc for clarity, as was noted in the final details.

[Spookster]

Great map, great course, great event - thanks to all concerned!

When I set off my main thought was "must keep checking each leg route choice to ensure it is possible." I failed to do that, and got caught out (like many others apparently) in the law courts area. The Barbican was a good challenge again, but at least this time I knew what was coming...

Looking forward to next year already.

[Jayne]

I think I did 131-110 by going south to the road then that went underneath the other levels and round to where the road to 110 came out. It's not good that even now it's still "I think"!

[graeme]

Missed it

I see London has no contours: I'm confused about contours between buildings. Where are they meant to go? on the wall? where the ground was 1000 years ago? in tiny segments across the road? Probably doesn't matter in London, but it does in Edinburgh!

GW: Edinburgh citymap has the ends of alleyways open: I think it helps.

[madmike]

is it against the rules to use an escalator

Maybe a 'fast run' staircase symbol is needed

would need to have a direction of run function though Gnitworp; i.e. it could be very slow run

[Spookster]

I see London has no contours: I'm confused about contours between buildings. Where are they meant to go? on the wall? where the ground was 1000 years ago? in tiny segments across the road? Probably doesn't matter in London, but it does in Edinburgh!

The University of Sheffield Main Campus street map has contours that are visible everywhere other than under buildings, or covered walkways. I think that works well.

You probably need to use plenty of tags on contours where they are only short, on roads surrounded by buildings.

[roadrunner]

You'll need a new map symbol to indicate the likely 'runnability' of the streets!

It's already been done - for Venice, light brown shading means streets that are full of tourists

An alternative might be: where there are narrow covered passageways, just to shade them grey and not put any black line across the ends at all. Open passages would therefore be clearly open.

I like the idea of this - the thin black lines don't seem to add any value.

On the leg 131-110, I'd just worked out the best route and was about to post it when I discovered Angry Harris had beaten me to it. Needless to say, I didn't spot this way in the event. I went up as far as street level and along the pavement under the building on the crossroads, then was a little surprised to realise that I could run straight along the road and turn right towards the control - apparently crossing an uncrossable boundary, which of course was one level higher!

[NeilC]

Re contours personally I prefer it when the contours pass through the building. Although meaningless I feel that it makes it a lot easier to get a feel for the overall topology of the area. At least that's what I did for my campus

http://www.southdowns-orienteers.org.uk/routegadget/cgi-bin/reitti.cgi?act=map&id=40&kieli=

I doubt that any mapper would use contours to map relief on a building's roof.

[Slowtochide]

Yes it was a concious decision not to have contours on the City of London map. Although there is a general but gentle north south slope it isn't enough to impact route choice etc and there is already enough going on on the map. On street maps I have used in Spain and Portugal they have a tendancy to put a contour line with tag at the sloping entrance to underground car parks. Whilst this can be technically correct it just seems like unnecessary clutter to me as the car park will be out of bounds and the slope is pretty irrelevant whilst the short contour with tag is hard to read. So I would definitely recommend people to avoid that.
The idea of leaving off the line at the end of a canopy in a narrow alleyway looks to me like it has potential to improve clarity
In the CoL map we have deliberately lightened the grey for buildings for clarity.
Actually the most important colour is OOB Olive and that often suffers with local rather than professional printing, ending up as yellowish or dark green - one to watch out for.

AL

[Simon]

A few photos from Saturday

Thanks to all those involved - an enjoyable event.

[DJM]

Spookster wrote:

The University of Sheffield Main Campus street map has contours that are visible everywhere other than under buildings, or covered walkways. I think that works well.

It works OK where there are biggish gaps between buildings but doesn't work at all well where there are narrow gaps, tags or no tags. This is why the convention is that you map buildings as if they had zero height and interpolate contours across them. See http://wmoc2008.fpo.pt/cgi-bin/reitti.cgi?act=map&id=1&cID=9&kieli= for an example and try to visualise how the map would look if contours were omitted across buildings!

[drobin]

131 to 110. There was an 'opened' gate in the (low) uncrossable railings surrounding the house to the east of 131. I got the impression a runner had cut the corner off by crossing the paved forecourt to exit north of the house. I believe the house resident had earlier voiced his disapproval at other runners in the area.

[awk]

Some people may have taken an even shorter - but illegal - route by....

Route Gadget shows that a number certainly took an illegal route between 6 and 7 on the Open, although in mitigation it may not have been too obvious to them that it was illegal as the thick black line (across the end of a covered alley out on to the Strand) wasn't that long. A couple of others obviously turned back, and I certainly had to make a last minute adjustment and take another route (back past 5) to avoid it, having only spotted it as I crossed the square leading into the alley.