WOC selection races

[andypat]

Planners comments:
Just wanted to acknowledge the help of the 20 volunteer control tenders last night without whom it would not have been possible to set the courses we did in the complex residential terrain of erskine. Patrick did a power of work to create this map from scratch in around 8 weeks ( bearing in mind the area that needed mapped was about twice the size of that eventually used!). We were still making minor map adjustments at the start of the week leading up to the race, in addition to having to tweak some of the controls. The original 3rd control was changed late on when I discovered that a local resident was using that bit of grass as a parking space, completely blocking the obvious route in to it.

This was the first selection race that I'd been involved in as an official and I'd been told to anticipate some criticism due to the pressure on the participants. I have to say this didnt materialise and the comments in the main were positive about the challenge posed by the courses and above all the area, which is very complex to run round at speed. The main problem was how to utilise the various different parts of the terrain within the contraints posed by the EWTs. We just about managed this - ideally I'd have liked to take another 150m off the womens course but it would have meant adding in a lower quality leg, which in the end we rejected.

You can always do better, and on the morning of the race, we noticed a coutour partly obscuring an important part of black green at the 3rd last control on the mens course. This hadnt looked as prominent on the pdf version used for checking, and should have been noted by me and the map could have been tweaked. As far as I know most people took the low route into the control which wast affected by this. Apologies to any who were (including the winner).

Any other comments welcome on here.
Andy Paterson - planner

[Gross]

For all those racing in the test race at Creag Mhic:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNAqsHWGVF0

Good luck

[Big Jon]

Results from Oban - Women - 1st Grace, 2nd (+3seconds) Helen P gap of ca 1 minute to 3rd (don't know who)
Men - 1st Scotia, 2nd GG, 3rd Jon D

Congratulations to all - sounded like a fun race in a lovely area.

[SIman]

Full results from the Sprint, Middle and the Long are on WinSplits. Linked from the BOF home page.

[Pippa]

Thanks for a great race - one of the trickiest sprint races I've run! Really good long legs, great change of technique needed in the forest sections, and then it got harder again at the end!

Duncan was one of those manning a control, and after a bit of curtain twitching they came out to talk to him and ended up bringing him a cup of tea! I heard similar stories from others, and in general had a really positive experience when encountering the locals (i.e. kids!).

Well done for a great map too - I hope you get a chance to use the whole of the area that was mapped, and maybe get the locals to have a go!

Pippa

[rocky]

Yep, I'd echo Pippa's sentiments. I've spent the last half hour or so going over my sprint course, I've spotted quite a few routes I missed in the race which is pretty unusual for me!

I'd be back if you host an open race on the area!

-m

[andypat]

Thanks for the positive comments Pippa/Murray. I cant take all the credit - although I was/am prepared to take any criticism. I'm pretty sure that the reason I was asked to plan (apart from being local) was that I was prepared to accept that there would be various stakeholders all wanting an input into the race. As it was I was lucky to have a very supportive and constructive controller (Ross McLennan) and organiser (Jon Cross) who advised me on control sites, legs, keeping it to the correct distance etc, but in a positive way. Definitely a team effort. Gareth Candy gave us a useful set of guidance for what to try and fit in (I assume with an eye on Trondheim) which we did our best with - although we didnt really have any parkland to speak of!

Murray - I'm not surprised you found a few routes you'd missed. The three of us did a run through the week before to check the map on all possible options and pretty much could take three separate routes to every control (more for the longer legs - in fact we still dont know what was the fastest route to 14 on your course - did you take the long way round?). If only you'd found a second from somewhere......

[rocky]

Routegadget?

Re no 14: I went up the stairways just right of the line all the way to the light green woods. But from there I cut left to the clearing and then down to the road and into the control from the left. Looking at it now I wish I'd gone straight on through the woods and approached from the right - can't remember how thick the forest was though, but from the map it looks like I'd have saved more than a second!

[Paul Frost]

After a chat with Jon Cross & Gareth Candy we decided that the RouteGadgets should be on the clubs that own the maps RG sites. I'm just waiting for the files from him and I will then upload all 3 and post the links here.

[andypat]

Routegadget? - I think someone did ask Jon about it but I can remember what he said and I suspect hes a bit busy tonight......
Beyond my limited tech ability and I dont have access to the results files anyway.

I reckon once you got to the woods, straight on through and into the control from the right might have saved you a bit, although your way is pretty direct too. (Jon Cross thought you'd take the long way round to the west - so nice one for proving him wrong on that one!) The woods were pretty runnable (once I'd cleared out the mattress, shopping trolleys, cider bottles etc earlier on in the week!). I took a total of 19 bags of litter (mainly cider bottles) one mattress, two shopping trolleys, several road signs, traffic cones etc, a grit box lid and two carpets from the woods as we didnt want people to go away with the wrong (?right) impression of Erskine!

PS Thanks Paul for answering the routegadget question!

[Paul Frost]

RouteGadget for the Sprint (Erskine)

RouteGadget for Middle (Ardnaskie)

RouteGadget for Long (Creag Mhic)

[Paul Frost]

It's interesting watching the RouteGadget animation of Scott & Graham at the Middle at Ardnaskie.
Graham was in the lead up to 22 then Scott overtakes him on the steepish uphill to 23.

We spectators at the finish could see this leg in full and it was encouraging to see that even the best were slowing down (to a walk in some cases). Some people tried to take a higher route that would smooth the climb, but it meant finding a very narrow gap in the vegetation, it didn't look like a good option.

[DJM]

Paul,

Any reason why, when I try to slow down the animation for the Sprint race, the runners go backwards?!

[King Penguin]

I have seen the same problem on a coupls of other events in the past. On some others the speed buttons seem to have no effect at all, and on one a single click on "+" made the icons move as fast a a demented duracell bunny.

[Paul Frost]

The animation speed can go backwards if you hit the minus button enough times, it's a feature
The reason it seems very fast is that the distance involved is very small compared to a normal O event. I have the opposite problems with mountain marathons like the LAMM & OMM where it looks like snails racing, but I have tweaked the code by a factor of 10 to make those move faster. The problem is that it applies to all the events in that gadget, so no good if there is a mixture of lengths.
The size (dpi) of the map image also affects the speed.