Nopesport Urban League - St Andrews

[andy]

Live Results today - http://www.live.o-results.net/

Early mispunch from Oleg Chepelin opening the door for some others, some other good benchmark times set on the Open courses, Craig Nolan on MOpen and Helen Bridle on WOpen

[Spookster]

Enjoyed course 2 today. A good mix of challenges, including a couple of interesting long legs and some intricate stuff in the city centre.

Were the courses a bit short though? With such a big area mapped I thought an extra 20-30% would have been about right.

[andypat]

Also enjoyed today immensely. Its a great area with some really tough wee alleyways to work out. Never managed to think more than a control ahead.
St Andrew's is so flat that its full on all the way. The ESOC method of attaching SI units should be the gold standard - no faffing about trying to find the holes this weekend!

Re Martin's comment about distance - last time at St Andrews Mvet was the same course as Mopen. I could have managed a K or so more too.

[graeme]

Were the courses a bit short though? With such a big area mapped I thought an extra 20-30% would have been about right.

Don't know what the oldies expect, but I failed to notice that the quoted lengths were actual distance, rather than the normal straight line. Quoted 7.4k is normally enough: should have read the small print and done course A.
... and I should have noticed the B939 when I crossed it too ...

[Spookster]

Don't know what the oldies expect

It's not just the oldies I was thinking of. Mens Open and Mens Vet were won in under 40, and Mens Supervet won in 25. Similar picture in the Womens classes. I just think most people might expect winning times in the 40-50 range at Urban events.

[Scott]

The ESOC method of attaching SI units should be the gold standard

Aw, c'mon - you can't say something like that and then fail to give us gripple fetishists any of the gory details

[andy]

The ESOC method of attaching SI units should be the gold standard

Aw, c'mon - you can't say something like that and then fail to give us gripple fetishists any of the gory details

Not grippled, just cable tied and all down to Clive the planner. Very securely done with 2 cable ties at each end of the unit against something flat like a post or fence. I'm processing the video of today's race at the mo so you'll see from that in the next couple of days.

[Mrs H]

Don't expect such mollycoddling in Malvern.
A. we have more hills
B. we have more chavs
c. we have more esoteric control sites

[andypat]

If Andy can get a still of a control from his video on here that would show how well done they were. Possibly down south you do this already but its the best I've seen up here (from a competitor viewpoint)

There were no chavs in St Andrews Mrs H you are right. On the contrary i ran past a couple of students actually wearing their gowns...

[andy]

here you go:
http://www.esoc.org.uk/documents/standrews_control.jpg
(video still processing, haven't even started upload yet! should really do it on my desktop)

[IanD]

Really enjoyable weekend. Urban event had good variation of leg lengths and lots of route choice. Nice to have an event where I personally didn't encounter any problems with gates being unexpectedly open or closed - although I did tangle with an unexpected bicycle rack, and I certainly needed map contact be confident that there was a gap behind the white van.

Like some others, I had difficulty seeing the short purple lines marking non-to-be-used gates, and nearly ran up the east side of the "white van" building. I can see why you want to use purple rather than the traditional black, but it actually increases the chances of me running through an out-of-bounds gate by mistake. Maybe make the purple line extra thick?

Also agree with the comment that the courses were too short.

[Spookster]

here you go: http://www.esoc.org.uk/documents/standrews_control.jpg

Unfortunately those wouldn't last until the end of the race in some parts of Sheffield (knife or screwdriver is all that's required to quickly vandalise them).

[andy]

as promised http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O53IO_vX9kY

[Urbanite]

Excellent events on both days, thanks to all those involved. Special thanks for giving the juniors longer courses, made it all the more worthwhile travelling the distance for my W14/16s.

[andypat]

Just to clarify something in the BOF Urban guidelines as the planner mentions in his report he used these to plan St Andrews http://esoc.org.uk/home/results/st-andrews/

The BOF guideline distances are straight line lengths eg 6-10k for Men Open.

I would expect a 10k Men open race to produce a 14k or so running distance so i suspect the planner maybe has made an error in the use of running distance rather than straight line distance for the units given he mentions he used the "upper" end of the guidelines but the running length is given as 9.8k for M open. Not a criticism since it was a nice change to be able to run an urban full on for the entire race!