frog wrote:I did miss running round the alleyways of the old town as I love those areas. Having said that I enjoyed yesterday's course and it's good to go to new areas. It would have been nice to have fewer dog legs, but I thought the planning was quite clever as I had to take off my glasses several times and stand and stare closely at the map to work out how to get somewhere, if I'd just ran in the general direction of the next control I'd have found myself stuck and had to backtrack.
I wonder if some people look at the lengths of urban courses and decide they aren't long enough so go for the open course, although the final instructions clearly stated that distances given are control to control by straight line and not optimal route. My 4.4k middle course was 9k long according to my GPS.
If you aren't planning to do a whole series of urban events then there's no reason why people shouldn't just pick the length they fancy. Edinburgh's a nice city to explore and some folk like to get their money's worth.
I learned that lesson very early on! From then on I made sure to spend a few seconds to find the best approach to the target control and then work back from there.
And 9k you say? I feel quite pleased with that.