southern champs

[andypat]

My preference is for timed slots but a punching start at bigger events and a punching start (turn up and go at 1min intervals) for smaller events and I cannot see the downsides of this.
We need to make it easier, not harder for people to turn up and have a go at our sport.

[NeilC]

As Homer and others know my experiences of organising timed starts at a World Cup and at a JK have made me question the insistence of timed starts at Level A events. Yes they can be organised properly but they do add an extra level of complication. There are two common arguments that I've heard for having timed starts:
i) To prevent competitors hanging around before punching.
ii) To prevent competitors deciding to start at a time different to their allocated time, in order to gain an advantage from other runners or the weather.
The latter can easily be dealt with by setting runners who turn up late off without a punching start - thus they will be timed to their allocated start time. The former is a more valid argument, even without intent the difference between runners starting could be 50seconds rather than a minute. Not ideal for the WOC sprint final but for a British event, even if a championship? We already have seeding in place to separate the top runners. EddieH quotes 30seconds - that is an awful long time to wait before punching and would be so obvious, why would anyone want to do that? Perhaps to lose less time to a later runner whom they intend to follow around the course? There are rules against that - albeit difficult to enforce. I'm afraid that I need convincing that timed starts are worth the extra hassle, there are so many things that can go wrong and I've been at events where starts have had to be delayed, or briefly stopped mid-event, to deal with unforseen circumstances. With a punching start it is easy to stop a start for a few minutes if a clock fails, or if 10 horses come up the track and through the start. With a timed start it is so much more difficult to recover.
P.S. We used punching starts (without permission) at the age class sprint chmapionships last year. Not only were there no complaints but I have also not been struck off the Grade A controllers list.
P.P.S Really enjoyed my run yesterday - had a pretty clean one and can only stand in awe at those that took almost 15 minutes off my time.

[graeme]

Also, punching starts allow the start team to prevent two people starting on the same course at the same time, as happened yesterday with james on LG/W14. On the other hand, at some point fairness should trump convenience, and Championship races are probably the right point.

[Gnitworp]

I've had a look at the first leg splits of all the leading competitors on the championship courses, and can find no evidence of any of them starting a minute early.

[Duncan]

UK Cup scores are now updated for JOK Chasing Sprint and Southern Champs at http://www.ukcup.org.uk/.

Let me know if anyone spots any mistakes (particularly people incorrectly identified or not identified as veterans or juniors; and women who have got married in the last year and changed their surname, so I can link to their results from previous years).

[Clive Coles]

I think we are mixing the arguments for the need for managed starting lists at major events with rule that suggests that punching start should not be used.

Eddie is right ~ you do need to manage the start lists to ensure correct start intervals between runners.

But.... I believe, once the start official has confirmed that you are in either the correct box or that you are starting in a vacant time slot that provides the correct time interval between runners on the course, it makes sense to make full use of electronic punching between the start and finish line.

So Andypat ~ I'm with you on this one.

[Brian Hughes]

Well done TVOC. Great event, map, terrain and super course with route choice.
I was appalling and then mispunched, so this is praise indeed!
Brian Hughes (M60 HOC)

[denzil53]

I also enjoyed the event immensely, despite the km overdose. The "big match atmosphere" gave the event added aura.

[MacMan]

I've had a look at the first leg splits of all the leading competitors on the championship courses, and can find no evidence of any of them starting a minute early.

I had a little look - the following charts show the start time of the quickest leg for legs 1 and 2. Courses with only one runner have been removed. Draw your own conclusion if you think the problems at the start prior to 11:10 had any influence - this "analysis/snapshot" pays no attention to the person's overall final position

http://www.southernnavigators.com/web_images/leg1split.jpg and
http://www.southernnavigators.com/web_images/leg2split.jpg

[entries-sec]

A really good event. As an unfit W55 I usually do two hours on a long course and I did about six minutes under that, so I was pleased. (I also generally run Blue in colour coded events so wasn't bothered by the course length; I'm used to being out for two hours plus.) If I hadn't mucked up one control, it would have been even quicker ... grrr! The map was superb too - not a thing wrong anywhere on my course.

Christine

[AlanB]

A really good event. As an unfit W55 I usually do two hours on a long course and I did about six minutes under that, so I was pleased. (I also generally run Blue in colour coded events so wasn't bothered by the course length; I'm used to being out for two hours plus.) If I hadn't mucked up one control, it would have been even quicker ... grrr! The map was superb too - not a thing wrong anywhere on my course.

Christine

That made me laugh! Being an unfit 50-something does have one advantage - you do get more exercise at an event!

[Roger]

I had a little look - the following charts show the start time of the quickest leg for legs 1 and 2. ...

Interesting. I started my jog round light green (first run for four months) with a start time of 10:54. I started the Garmin at minus two; the GPS trace commences at 10:52:02 and I start moving at 1m58s. So the 10:54 cohort was bang on satellite time and there were certainly people in the box ahead. I couldn't say whether or not this constituted a full set of the notably rapid 10:53s.

The start officials did seem to be struggling though. Most of the problems seemed to be caused by EODs and a person dedicated to dealing with these people (needing to be handled in a different way to the rest of the starters, and also often inexperienced and requiring help) would have relieved a lot of pressure.

[Knee Deep Mud!]

I'll add another thankyou to TVOC. A thoroughly enjoyable course & event.

Though reading other people's comments I'm wondering if I should feel short changed that the long route choice leg on my course was a mere 1.6km rather than the 3km on some of the other courses?

[Steve]

The map was very legible, even for me at 1:15: the white background helps, and I guess its never been through a remap for 1:10?

We don't use Hambleden very often. Either we lose access or we are saving it up for something big. There has never been any kind of low key event on the map, so a 10k map of a reduced area in greater detail has never been needed.

It's good that you as an O/45 found the 15k map legible. Before the latest round of mapping it looked more like an original 10k map and could be hard to read at 15k. The mappers have significantly simplified the map - indeed so much has been taken off that the mappers were almost weeping with grief at removing all that hard-won detail. The simplification seems to have worked, the map now looks like a 15k and the 10k looks like what it is - a blow up of the 15k.

[Paul Frost]

On the discussion about punching/timed starts there is an important factor for large events, commentary.

Unless you have a wired start control feeding back into the results computers the commentator can't trust the times. This was a problem at the last Scottish 6 Days when we tried punching starts, and the reason why we are going back to timed starts for Oban.