Sheffield City Chase

[roadrunner]

Roger (and others),

Results have now been reviewed by the controller, and there are a small number of re-instatements due to some of the issues with SI boxes. But there are still a lots of DSQs in the Chase...

They're still here at present, but I'm sure Rob F will put them on the Shuoc page very soon.

I've also put the splits on Winsplits. Routegadget coming soon (but that will need the planners to re-plan their courses in OCAD to remove the legs that aren't in the splits).

For the Chase, the WinSplits data shows some people with start times around 1130 but most at around 2330 Many of those with the times around 1130 were ShUOC members - come on, a 12 hour headstart is a bit much

Must be a bug of some sort, can anyone explain it?

[Rockaldo]

Having said that, the occasional tweak of control siting wouldn't go amiss (e.g. no. 7 on course 2, which was used by others as well, which would have been better on the inside corner of the wall rather than north east side of the wall.

The control was not on the inside corner of the wall as there was nowhere to hang it from there. There are 3 reasons why it should have been obvious where that control was.

1. The wall ran from NW to SE and its on the NE side. No other wall ran in this direction.
2. Due to great planning, what would be the point of such an easy control it is most definitely going to be on the hardest side to get to.
3. It was a glass wall and you could see it from the previous control!

[Spookster]

Must be a bug of some sort, can anyone explain it?

Version 6 and newer SI cards store times as 24-hour clock. Older SI cards use 12-hour. So that is probably the reason for the differences.

Then the question is why did everyone appear to start at 2300!? I think that's because of the way you need to enter a base time when you upload splits. I put 09:00:00 in, because that's what I use when I program SI boxes, but now I see that Winsplits has added 9 hours to the real time (GMT) that people started at.

Strangely there were three instances of competitors appearing to punch controls that simply weren't out there. That I cannot explain, other than to guess that chains through the SI box in some way are distorting the data transmission?

[awk]

The control was not on the inside corner of the wall as there was nowhere to hang it from.....

Fair enough! Personally, I didn't have a problem with the control description or position, and thought it a good leg. As you said, there wouldn't have been much point hanging it on the south side! Discussion after the race indicated that one or two people found it less clear, which is why I used it as an example!

[JennyJ]

The description may have been correct but it was misleading!

[Rockaldo]

The description may have been correct but it was misleading!

Why?

[NeilC]

Obviously I'm a big fan of the Chasing Sprint format, urban races in general, and using the best format for a given area. But I still feel that change of pace an important challenge in racing (i.e. getting into oxygen debt on fast easier bits), and so I don't believe that any single-technique race can be as hard (though it might be as much fun).

Like this you mean?
http://www.southdowns-orienteers.org.uk/index/events/detail/brighton-central

[EddieH]

That looks like a brilliant innovation - I hope it works for you.

[MAPS]

Routegadget is FINALLY up!

Here:
http://www.syo.routegadget.co.uk/cgi-bin/reitti.cgi

Sorry for the delay.

[Dave]

The description may have been correct but it was misleading!

misleading in the sense that it told you the control was on the NE side of the wall , which was only accessable from one side and not on the SW side at the bottom?

[roadrunner]

Routegadget is FINALLY up!

Here:
http://www.syo.routegadget.co.uk/cgi-bin/reitti.cgi

Sorry for the delay.

Looking at the routes on the "C" prologue, I think some people have been a bit forgetful. According to my map, there were three controls between those numbered 8 and 9, only one of which was missing (at the time I ran, anyway), and yet some people apparently ran straight between them

Clipboard01.jpg (43.36 KiB) Viewed 4395 times

[Dave]

2 of those controls were taken (the one on the canopy in the garden area and also the one on the canopy outside the car park to the south of the building. so the splits before and after each of these had to be removed for fairness, so I'm guessing thats why they haven't appeared on the routegadget, becuase the split data doesn't exist any more.

[Spookster]

As Dave says, two controls were removed, so 4 legs were removed from the race (on your map the legs to controls 9, 10, 11 and 12. In order to make Routegadget work properly, I have therefore "re-planned" the course to go directly from 8 to 12 (but of course it is now numbered as 9). The split time for that is zero, so in the RG animation the blob will jump instantly from 8 to 12 (9), regardless of where people have drawn their route, or how much time they actually spent in that section.

[graeme]

so 4 legs were removed from the race

A couple of years back there was a lot of huffing and puffing about this, and controllers who took legs out got told they were doing the wrong thing . The BOF rule says

"2.7.4 Attempts have been made to compensate for problems in the middle of the
course by removing the times for the legs to and from an affected control. This
seems reasonable, but it should be recognised that many runners may stop
competing seriously after an obvious problem on a course, and their subsequent
times may not be a true reflection of ability. It may also be found that this method
gives unexpected results, since it can alter the relative positions of runners who
were not affected by the particular error it is trying to address.
2.7.5 If there is a serious problem with a course that significantly affects the fairness of
the competition, then the course should normally be voided."

As well rehearsed previously here, I think this rule is daft and ShUOC did the right thing. Have the "void or nothing" brigade finally given up, or do you still get grief?

[Scott]

The other option, of course, is just to take the times at the last control before the problem as the results for the course, which avoids the "competitors giving up after obvious silliness" issue - although clearly this is less meaningful the earlier in the course the problem occurs. It was done at the Southern Nights last year, when a control about three from the end on M21L was hung on the wrong random gorse bush - I don't recall anybody complaining.