British Nights weekend

[EddieH]

Routegadget shows up just how inadequate it is not to mark fences that must be crossed properly. We had the clear instruction on the description list to use crossing point between 5 and 6 on course 6, yet there was no marking on the map.
The fastest running on the ridge led along a path to a low bit of fence that could easily be stepped over. Looking at routegadget the majority ignored the instruction.

This could easily be the differnece between British Champion and not. Is it really acceptable? This topic has been discussed here many times and slowly we are seeing an increasing use of proper marking of not to be crossed fences, but not enough.

[frog]

Is there a reason the only age classes without a short course were the M/W 16?
If my M14 son had been with me he'd have loved the event as he enjoyed the Scottish nights but the M16 course was longer and tougher than mine. It's a shame the shortest course couldn't have had M/W 16B tagged onto it as well for small, keen juniors.
Well done to Alexander Chepelin for taking the M16s on.

[Mrs H]

I thought there was some kind of insurance issue over 14s doing night events.

[frog]

They do local night events, and we had down to M/W12s at the scottish nights, albeit in novice and open classes rather than formal age classes which started at 16.

[NeilC]

Routegadget shows up just how inadequate it is not to mark fences that must be crossed properly.

An example though of how poorly understood the required symbol is was seen at the Welsh Champs / FCC race on Sunday. Here the uncrossable boundary symbol was used as part of a special symbol for a mountain bike trail. Unfortunately the organisers didn't tell us about this in advance so that those of us that knew what the symbol meant were avoiding crossing these trails whilst those in the know crossed and ran along them at will.

[EddieH]

I'd be furious if I'd travelled miles for that

[frog]

Do you mean the purple line or a road with a load of crosses on it?
I'd avoid anything like that after warnings of disqualifications in the past.
There's minimal time to read the map legend during an event (? should the map legend be scanned into the event details) so if you use strange symbols etc during an event and don't publicise it in start details in advance and probably on the start line as well you're setting yourself up for moans.
We toyed with the idea of having purple shading on our new SOL map for the dense heather (mainly because it would look pretty) but were told it would confuse people so we had to stick to standard markings.

[andypat]

Taking Eddies comments a step or two back - whats the reason for insisting on a crossing point if the fence can easily be crossed - sounds like something the planner could comment on? Was there a restriction by the landowner? As Eddie says its pretty clear that many people managed to cross it OK in the dark.

[EddieH]

No Frog the legend is NOT something to require people to read - what experienced orienteer ever looks at it? Thus I never read the inaccurate legend at the sprints, and therefore happily crossed the dark green that the IOF symbols say you can cross even though the legend said otherwise.

We have controllers for these events - surely they are there to prevent such things happening.

[Homer]

Eddie, I agree with your point.

At one point I stopped at a fence, checked my desciptions to see whether they mentioned a compulsory crossing point, and then diverted along the fence to the crossing point. I note from routegadget that some of my competitors did not.

Overprinting in purple would have helped.

BTW, there was a TV camera at the crossing point. I wonder if they have any footage of people crossing the fence illegally?

[EddieH]

Ah but was it truly illegal. Should the officials take it for granted that people actually look at the descriptions - I often don't, or indeed the next day I got confused as to which number i was going to and read the wrong description.

Had I not noticed there would have been nothing to tell me it was illegal.

[frog]

It may be they went through the crossing but didn't remember that when doing routegadget if the paper map wasn't in front of them. Some of my routegadget routes are very sketchy. I remember the bits where I got lost or did really well, but sometimes have minimal memory of certain legs and as the crossing points often aren't on routegadget it could be easy when looking at the map on screen to forget you used one.

[andy]

I probably should have added the 'purple bits' (crossing points, out of bounds etc) to routegadget, but the process is both fiddly and new to me (not to mention my being short of time in the run up to the event) so I didn't bother, apologies.

I will endeavour (and encourage others) to do this in future

a good article from Paul Frost here:
http://www.routegadget.co.uk/index/admi ... ssable-etc

[Bill]

I'll comment as planner:

Firstly, the competition map is correctly marked in respect to the crossing point referred to by Eddie, there was no difference between descriptions and the map. Routegadget does not show crossing points so this may have caused confusion?

My planning objective was route choice. I didn't want to constrain route choice by putting crossing points into the course unless necessary to get over high fences or safety. The final details explained that most were optional but a few were compulsory. I marked this one as compulsory because I felt it was fairer to mark a clear crossing point than leave competitors to spot the short stretch of crossable fence on the map.

With hindsight, perhaps not the right decision. However, the difference in leg length on course 6 between using the crossing point and hopping over the lower fence was 16m, so I can't get excited about it.

On classes offered, the BOF guidelines for the event specify M/W16 as the lowest age class and I think this has always been so. While a few 14's entered M16, only one ran, in the end, and was out for 68 minutes. Well done him, but too long in my view. There are smaller night events that can cater for younger runners but I think it is sensible that BNC does not offer courses for the less experienced.

But thanks for the feedback. I have been spending some time on Routegadget to see how things went.

[EddieH]

Bill I beg to disagree the competition map was NOT correct as the fence is clearly not mapped as uncrossable - it should have been overprinted with a purple line.

Regarding the extra distance, that is trivial, but the terrain difference was not. The easily crossed fence on the ridge was fast flat running. The crossing point (which needed to be clambered over, unlike the low fence) was on a steep slope in rougher grass. Indeed it is because of this that I was using the faster running on the ridge and therefore saw the easy illegal crossing point as I expect almost everyone will have done.