Filey Urban Event

[Roger]

Courses came south out of the ornamental park, crossed the road, and into the other park. It's a 1:5000 map, so already smaller than a normal 1:4000 ISSOM, and in order to squeeze four parallel thick lines in, the inner ones have been thinned slightly.

Surely the last candidate for thinning is an uncrossable barrier... particularly when it appears to the runner to be completely absent. I wouldn't have disqualified you for this transgression.

Between the two park buildings is a very short length of thick black line.

My rule of thumb (from an inexpert cartographer but experienced urban competitor) is that for such a line to be visible it must be at least twice as long as it's wide. If this means moving or squashing buildings, so be it. The ISSOM line width for uncrossable hedges, fences and walls is 0.4mm. This means that the lines should be at least 0.8mm long, equivalent to 4m on the ground at 1:5000.

Another invisibly uncrossable barrier that I've found was a series of 'flowerbed' strips separating rows of parking spaces in a car park. The strips were a fraction of a millimetre wide on the map and about 50cm wide on the ground. To scale at 1:5000 they would be 0.1mm wide, but the edge-of-paved-area lines are already 0.07mm each. Most of them contained bare earth and the kerbs were only 10cm high. I really couldn't tell whether they were mapped yellow or olive green. To be 'safe' I crossed where there was a gap, but I still have no idea whether or not crossing them was permissible.

Uncrossable features must be clear to the competitor at race pace. Exaggerate to make them so.

[Mrs H]

The map as reproduced here seems clear enough but I'd have been flumoxed to arrive at the gate and see no barrier and assumed it was a mistake. I think a hash over print on the road is probably the only answer - but even that caused problems at Edinburgh last year when people were unsure whether they could run on the pavement or not.

Any chance of someone scanning in that actual section from a race map?

[yted]

I wasn't the controller I'm pretty sure no one was disqualified - some people honourably and honestly disqualified themselves once they realised what they had done.

[Scott]

I think a hash over print on the road is probably the only answer - but even that caused problems at Edinburgh last year when people were unsure whether they could run on the pavement or not.

I reckon graeme's suggestion of making the road olive green might be preferable to purple hash - as you say, it can be difficult to tell on the run where the boundary of a hashed area is, particularly if the boundary is on a diagonal, but I think with a block colour it would be clearer whether or not pavements were also OOB (and you could always slightly exaggerate the width of the pavements).

[andypat]

The map as reproduced here seems clear enough but I'd have been flumoxed to arrive at the gate and see no barrier and assumed it was a mistake. I think a hash over print on the road is probably the only answer - but even that caused problems at Edinburgh last year when people were unsure whether they could run on the pavement or not.

It caught me out too the first time I saw that at Perth (and probably Edinburgh too since I didnt notice it) but there have been events since where it was clear enough and I think if it became the norm I think it would work. Olive green on a road I think would confuse me more.

[IanD]

Olive green on a road I think would confuse me more.

Me too! Olive Green in an obviously public road at the City of London race last year caused me no end of confusion, during which I ran through the area I was supposed to be avoiding.

We have several different out-of-bounds markings for several different purposes, e.g.
- olive green for flowerbeds and private areas which are not to be entered/crossed
- red/purple stripes (or hash) for public areas which are not to be entered/crossed (typically roads).

It's confusing enough as it is, using the 'wrong' out-of-bounds symbol would make matters worse.

Remember the object is to help people navigate around not-to-be-crossed features, not to trick people into them and then disqualify them. (And for the avoidance of doubt, I'm not suggesting that anyone involved with the excellent Filey and London events was trying to trick anyone).

[andypat]

On a different (although similar)note at the recent Scottish night champs held on a municipal golf course the greens were marked as OOB on the map. However because it was winter, the actual flags were on the winter greens (unmapped and presumably crossable pieces of fairway adjacent to the actual green). At least one person said after the event they "just avoided anything with a flag on it" presumably therfore not avoiding the actual greens. Another unintended confusion between what is on the ground and what is on the map although I understand the golf course was happy with the outcome so no harm done!

[graeme]

ISSOM is unequivocal about this. You should use olive green symbol 528.1. Here's what it says about red stripes:

709 Out-of-bounds area (i.e. red stripes)
Out of bounds areas are mapped with the symbol (528.1 ).
This symbol (709) shall only be used for last minute updates to the competition map (e.g. for areas that may be dangerous for the competitors during the competition, or very late changes to the competition terrain).

I accept that we've been doing it wrong for so long that it might confuse people to do it right. And I might still be bitter at getting overruled on using olive green at PWT/Perth. But I still think we should do it right.

If the edge of OOB is important (i.e. can you run on the pavement?) then using a symbol without a well defined edge is a bit stupid. If it is also the wrong symbol then...

[Scott]

We have several different out-of-bounds markings for several different purposes, e.g.
- olive green for flowerbeds and private areas which are not to be entered/crossed
- red/purple stripes (or hash) for public areas which are not to be entered/crossed (typically roads).

It's confusing enough as it is, using the 'wrong' out-of-bounds symbol would make matters worse.

graeme has beaten me to it, but I was just about to point out that if you read the spec then that is quite explicitly not what the purple stripe OOB marking is for. Unless you only found out at the last minute that the road shouldn't be crossed, purple stripe is in fact very clearly stated to be the 'wrong' out-of-bounds symbol. It may be what a lot of people think it is for, but that's a different matter...

[graeme]

On a different (although similar)note at the recent Scottish night champs held on a municipal golf course the greens were marked as OOB on the map.

Yup, in the real world, if the landowner asks you to make something out of bounds, you just make it out of bounds. Realistically, on a night-O the odd person is going to stray onto the odd green, just as walkers, dogs and golfers due in the day time. You might feel you should penalise them, but you know you never will. As long as it's only random, lost, people, and not on a good line, no damage will be done to the playing surface, which is what really matters.

I'm not a golfer, but I assumed the point of winter greens is to keep people off the summer greens?

And yes, I did use green OOB to show the greens, even on ISOM.

[seabird]

I reckon the big route choice leg on the A and B courses was about 50-50 - 10 seconds difference for me.

I took the long level route to the west. I had been running just ahead of a small clutch of runners for the previous few controls. They all took the beach route. I heard SYOmember being quoted as saying to the group "seabird has gone the wrong way".

I took the best part of 50 seconds out of them! Perhaps they lost all the time pondering my route choice!

[andypat]

I'm not a golfer, but I assumed the point of winter greens is to keep people off the summer greens?

And yes, I did use green OOB to show the greens, even on ISOM.

I think correctly yes you did - I think my point was that it was a similar situation in that what was on the ground ie the winter greens wasnt quite what was on the map - summer greens - which could be confusing. I think some one else has made the point that if a road is mapped as a road but has red overprint, then its still a road you just cant run on it. If its olive green then you have no idea what it is. While accepting what you say about the use of the symbols may be correct, I dont think its the clearest way to show it. But I suppose it must be since IOF are always right arent they?

[Scott]

if a road is mapped as a road but has red overprint, then its still a road you just cant run on it. If its olive green then you have no idea what it is.

You never "know" what an area of olive green is anyway, but people normally manage to work it out. I reckon that (once people had got over the initial shock) everyone would be able to cope with a strip of olive green with two narrow strips of paved area down either side being an OOB road with two in-bound pavements.

One place where I really wish people would use olive green instead of purple hash to mark roads OOB is when you have an major OOB road with a compulsory subway underneath. With purple hash, a purple crossing point symbol and purple lines to the controls either side you often end up with an illegible purple mess.

[Ant W]

Weren't the roads around Borough Market marked as olive green on the London City race map?

[andypat]

graeme has beaten me to it, but I was just about to point out that if you read the spec then that is quite explicitly not what the purple stripe OOB marking is for. Unless you only found out at the last minute that the road shouldn't be crossed, purple stripe is in fact very clearly stated to be the 'wrong' out-of-bounds symbol. It may be what a lot of people think it is for, but that's a different matter...

At the risk of this turning into a yeah but no but scenario....

If you look at the specs for Olive green symbol I think its also fairly clear that its not meant for that scenario either.

In fact, having read again the script for the purple line I think its much closer to that than olive green.
I think you are focussing too much on the "last minute" qualification. I think a road which may be dangerous to cross on the day of competition is a candidate for purple overprint. Its not as if its permanently OOB - it would be perfectly safe to cross if the traffic was stopped for example in which case the olive green would look pretty daft.
So I'm firmly nailing my colours to the mast of the purple overprint gang! Whos with me?