SYO used optional timed-out crossings for a busy road at their Norfolk Park Urban event this weekend. Kites and SI boxes were placed at either side of the road in three different locations along the road. Runners could choose which crossing point to use. Time to cross was excluded, up to one minute, as long as you punched at both boxes.
I like this idea and thought it worked well, certainly as far as the quality of the courses were concerned. Mandatory crossing points are one of the principal constraints on courses planning, while legs that exploit uncrossable boundaries for route choice are frequently a cause of contention. I see this as a plausible means of overcoming these constraints and would like to see it in use more often.
What do people think?
Optional Timed-Out Crossings
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Re: Optional Timed-Out Crossings
Parkino wrote:What do people think?
Good idea in principle, as it helps give more route choice.
But in future I think the road-crossings need to be marked as pairs of controls (on the map and on the CDs), to ensure it is clear to competitors that you have to punch twice in the process of making the crossing. They weren't marked as such on the SYO map (but event details described what runners were required to do).
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Re: Optional Timed-Out Crossings
But in future I think the road-crossings need to be marked as pairs of controls (on the map and on the CDs), to ensure it is clear to competitors that you have to punch twice in the process of making the crossing.
Yes, that might have been a better way to represent the procedure.
(It was pretty clear to me from the instructions given before the start, but there a number of runners who neglected to punch twice, and some not at all - none were disqualified, in this instance.)
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Re: Optional Timed-Out Crossings
I thought about various ways we could do it. My reluctance to use control circles for 2 reasons - In most cases the center of the circles would only be 10m apart and if they were circles people may be less likely to see them as choices. We included the text '1 Min Timed Out Road Crossing. Use Any Crossing Point. Punch Both Sides' on the descriptions.
With hindsight we should have put more instructions in the final details rather than just the start lanes. We had anticipated that people may get confused and miss them and had decided that if anyone missed them then we wouldn't disqualify them but they obviously wouldn't get the timeout. We also had one control on the blue quite close to the road which some people thought was the first of the road crossing controls.
The reason for doing it in the first place was for safety as we felt the road was quite busy. If I did it again then I might be tempted to not make the rest of the road out of bounds. You don't have to have to use one of the crossing points but you have the option of using them with a timeout to allow you to cross safely.
More comments / suggestions welcome.
With hindsight we should have put more instructions in the final details rather than just the start lanes. We had anticipated that people may get confused and miss them and had decided that if anyone missed them then we wouldn't disqualify them but they obviously wouldn't get the timeout. We also had one control on the blue quite close to the road which some people thought was the first of the road crossing controls.
The reason for doing it in the first place was for safety as we felt the road was quite busy. If I did it again then I might be tempted to not make the rest of the road out of bounds. You don't have to have to use one of the crossing points but you have the option of using them with a timeout to allow you to cross safely.
More comments / suggestions welcome.
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Re: Optional Timed-Out Crossings
Selection of control sites must depend on them being clearly depicted on the competitor's map. In the case of a compulsorary road crossing this may mean that controls have to be set back from the road.
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Re: Optional Timed-Out Crossings
It was quite straightforward really. You had a choice of three crossings. To prove you had visited you had to punch at the SI box hung at the crossing; if you wanted time excluded you also had to punch at the other side.
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Re: Optional Timed-Out Crossings
The information below was included in the information in the start lanes. Perhaps we should have indicated on the diagram where the kites would be placed. As you can see from the map there isn't much of an option to set them back from the road especially as you want the distance involved in the timedout section to be fairly consistant.
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Re: Optional Timed-Out Crossings
Parkino wrote:But in future I think the road-crossings need to be marked as pairs of controls (on the map and on the CDs), to ensure it is clear to competitors that you have to punch twice in the process of making the crossing.
Yes, that might have been a better way to represent the procedure.
(It was pretty clear to me from the instructions given before the start, but there a number of runners who neglected to punch twice, and some not at all - none were disqualified, in this instance.)
Totally agree. It sounds like a good idea, but I thinks its critical that the map delivers sufficient information to be able to follow the rule without having to rely on final details.
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Re: Optional Timed-Out Crossings
Parkino wrote:SYO used optional timed-out crossings for a busy road at their Norfolk Park Urban event this weekend [...]
What do people think?
I wasn't there but it sounds like a really great idea to me. Well done to whoever thought of it. Needs to be explained clearly and depicted on the map clearly, but those are details.
You could similarly have a choice of crossing points for walls on a classic O. It could solve the sort of problems we saw at last years BOC at Brown Clee - enabling courses with route choices, and collecting evidence that every runner actually went via a valid crossing point.
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Re: Optional Timed-Out Crossings
Crex wrote:Parkino wrote:SYO used optional timed-out crossings for a busy road at their Norfolk Park Urban event this weekend [...]
What do people think?
I wasn't there but it sounds like a really great idea to me. Well done to whoever thought of it. Needs to be explained clearly and depicted on the map clearly, but those are details.
You could similarly have a choice of crossing points for walls on a classic O. It could solve the sort of problems we saw at last years BOC at Brown Clee - enabling courses with route choices, and collecting evidence that every runner actually went via a valid crossing point.
i think I might have tried to think of other solutions for BOC- but it can definitely be done.
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Re: Optional Timed-Out Crossings
It could solve the sort of problems we saw at last years BOC at Brown Clee - enabling courses with route choices, and collecting evidence that every runner actually went via a valid crossing point.
I was thinking of that too. Optional crossing point controls. It was used at Holme Fell last year, I think, and apparently at the DVO Chatsworth event in 1986!
Time to bring it back.
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Re: Optional Timed-Out Crossings
Does the software recognise the controls as pairs? Or could someone clock in with one, then quickly run along the road to the next pair, and check out there? Especially if the road would not be marked OOB.
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Re: Optional Timed-Out Crossings
We were using Michael Napier's Colour software and had set it up to just take a single code either side with alias codes for the other two boxes on each side. Michael provided me with a spreadsheet after the event so I can see which boxes people punched, mainly so I could see which route people took. In theory yes people could have punched a different pair on one side than the other but didn't. I don't think that it wouldn't take much to modify the software to specify particular pairs to only get the timeouts. No idea if autodownload supports it.
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Re: Optional Timed-Out Crossings
Parkino wrote:It was used at Holme Fell last year
Yes! I knew I remembered having a choice of controls on crossing points somewhere recently, but couldn't remember where. I thought it worked well at Holme Fell, and nobody seemed to have any problems with it.
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