London Ultrasprint + London City Race

[mikey]

I found that attempting to do one leg on the Men's Super Vets by map memory significantly increased it's difficulty. It taken me almost 24 hours to force myself to look at the results but have decided to draw my route for others' amusement.

On course specifics I had spotted the trap into 3 when looking at the maps in the start lane, so was prepared for that. I thought that I had spotted a gate on the way to 5 - there wasn't one! 8-9 just needs forgetting. Missed the steps close to 11 so went too far round. Plenty of time on the longer legs to spot route into park.

Overall I enjoyed the variety of terrain, including the beach leg. As Ollie pointed out there was route choice and I probably lost a couple of 5 or so second blocks by going the wrong way round. The event was well run and fully deserved its now iconic status. I'm now trying to remember if I've ever (virtually) overtaken almost 60 runners in the 2nd half of a race before.

I also aimed for that 'gate' on the way to 5 and took some time to recover. It was there the first time I looked at the map.

[afterthought]

So you, an experienced and enthusiastic orienteer, attend a well-organized and colourful race, with great weather, in a spectacular setting. It's a big event: the elite and open classes have the most runners you've seen for a good long while, and a significant portion of the runners are from
overseas. You run your heart out, deploy masterful punching technique, pace yourself precisely, the watching crowds and your fellow runners admire you clattering across bridges, bounding up steps, hurdling fences, sprinting through arcades, all with fierce concentration on your map so you spot the tiniest gaps, choose the optimal routes, and hey, you don't lose any time at all. Congratulations - you couldn't have gone any faster with streamers to mark the way and a professional pacer - it's your best performance ever.

Your first thought:
a) I've done really well.
b) It wasn't hard enough.

You talk to:
a) Anyone and everyone, especially new people.
b) The usual.

As to Men's Open being "much better" than MSV (M50+). The guidelines do advise against that (for obvious reasons) don't they, I'm surprised such a good controller didn't pick it up.

[awk]

Little surprised to hear that people were unhappy with the M50+ course - this was actually one of my favourite courses

Thanks for being prepared to discuss the courses. I think what this shows is that you have a fundamentally different philosophy to mine when it comes to urban races. Fair enough, but maybe I should therefore be prepared explain why I thought differently.

Looking at the top 6 M50+ people that have posted their routes on Routegadget for 15 of the 22 legs, there were at least two different routes taken by these top 6 people. In some cases, all 6 went different ways. Sometimes, 5 of the 6 took the longer route. In one case, none of the 6 took the shortest route! Most of the remaining 7 legs were short ones use to "set up" another big route-choice one. This course also had a good mix of long and short legs.

Just because we took different routes, doesn't mean we were making different 'choices'. When routes look equal, you simply opt for one. it's not a positively different choice though. Also - I don't always opt for the shortest route, but the one I think is quickest for me. A round route may be longer than the straighter one through a more complex area, but by being a lot simpler and involving a lot less changes of direction, it can be quicker.

However, looking at the legs in more detail, based on my thinking in the race.

1) Round one way or the other. Bridge route looked shortest. Straightfoward to easy site.

2) Variations trivial; avoided southern route with small diversion giving extra distance underneath light railway. Plenty of time with this and (1) to work out the traps on 3. Look ahead at 4 and 5 too. Easy site.

3) Good leg made easier by straightforward 1 and 2. Minimal difference between route choices.

4) round the outside.

5) Good leg, with route choice where optimum route (to west) not necessarily obvious.

6) Longer leg with one trivial micro-choice (through or round park), otherwise dead running.

7) Either/or route choice leg with limited navigation; the eastern route stood out as being shorter but risked being slower with bridge crossing and more changes of direction. In the event think it was still quicker.

8 ) One of those shorter legs setting up?

9) Choice of either a bit of winding through, or right angle round the outside. Not much (if any?) difference, with right angle making it easy (unless you missed the turn!).

10) Solid leg with another easy end location; equal balance route choice if you spotted gap in fence to south.

11) Longest leg on the course, and 5-6 minutes of pretty much dead running. As with 6, I struggled to see the point.

12) Good leg, made easier by having plenty of time to look at it.

13/14/15) Straightforward short legs which didn't do much to break rhythm, but could have prevented sufficient planning of 16 (but did that back on 11).

16) Good leg, but route to left always looked the shorter, and gave chance to suss out all of 17 and exit to 18.

17) Straightforward to easy site. Setting up?

18) A straightforward long leg. Either through the middle, or round to the left. If you chose the middle route, some navigation, but I chose left as it kept it simple near the end of a fast race, and didn't think there was anything in the distance. Made planning legs at end easy.

19-20-21) Shortish legs where just needed to check which sides of walls/fences controls were placed, and then routes straightfoward (choice on 20 was an even non-choice). I think I looked at the map once briefly to check an exit after the approach to 18, otherwise just ran them.

On the basis that, except for very hilly areas or very technical areas, the basic "challenge" from urban orienteering comes from route choice, and Routegadget clearly shows plenty of different route choices being made, I'm unsure exactly what more could have been done!

This is where we part company philosphically. i don't agree that route choice is the basic 'challenge'. It's just as much about reading the map and information accurately at high speed. Incidentally, a choice where the choice is evenly balanced and the navigation is neither here nor there once chosen, doesn't make for a 'good' leg, or a series of them a good course. Routegadget also underlines that the longest leg, 11, had no real route choice.

What more could have been done? FWIW, my suggestions would include more shorter legs in places to help disrupt pace and rhythm - and series of them, not just the odd one. The short legs didn't really do this, the only ones really being 13-15 which were pretty straightforward and on easy through lines, and 18-20, with a planning leg into them and not a lot to worry think about for afterwards. For me legs 6 and 11 were too long in relation to the course to be left as they are. I would also look at the siting of more controls to force competitors to navigate into them, rather than leaving them as visible as such a high proportion were from a long way away or in very easily spottable locations.

But, and it's a big but, this may all be down more to a difference in philosophy than issues of how 'good' the course was, as exemplified by our difference of opinion about the role of route choice. I hope I've managed to explain why I differ!

N.B. The map shows lots of interesting looking private housing estates (mainly in the south-west and east of the map) that weren't used, as we didn't have permission for these. I opted not to olive-screen or purple-screen these because it would distract from the overall look of the map.

Fair point: as I said in my first post, we the competitors cannot know the full context.

[Simon E]

One thing no-one has mentioned is that having such a big map and remote start probably makes things harder for the planner since it reduces the scope for changes of direction. It is very noticeable that the MSV course that people are discussing is 6.0 km without a single crossover. That's a course shape that would work with pin punches in a forest 20 years ago.

[graeme]

Perhaps on M50, you should look at the race.

James Crawford has the most fastest splits, but is taken out by errors at 3,7,9. Steve Webb led for a long time, then blew it at 15. I got my nose in front, only to forget to go to 19, and so Quentin, with a clean run, took the victory. It's hard to reach any conclusions other than that good navigation won the day, and there were sufficient opportunities to mess up. Nothing is easy if you're running hard enough.

[cbg]

Graeme,

Is your route into #11 drawn accurately?

[awk]

Perhaps on M50, you should look at the race.....It's hard to reach any conclusions other than that good navigation won the day, and there were sufficient opportunities to mess up. Nothing is easy if you're running hard enough.

I think it's very easy to reach another conclusion: that Quentin produced the best combination of running and navigation suited to that course. So Quentin had the cleanest run amongst those who were fast enough runners to be in contention on that course. That doesn't make any difference in the discussion on the technical side. Indeed, a more technical course (one with more 'opportunities to mess up'!) might have enabled more of those capable of navigating cleanly at their fastest speed to be in contention. (There again, given Quentin's technical ability, maybe not!).

I'm not arguing that the M50 course was a 'bad' course; I'm explaining why I found it disappointing. It's a matter of what you want out of one, and if you were happy with it, then you obviously want something a bit different to me. Fine - but given the disparity between a large number of comments at the finish and yours and Ollie's (and I'm sure others), then some explanation of that disappointment is surely worthwhile.

[Arnold]

When I finished I was in a similar state of mind to awk - bit disappointed that it wasn't harder. But I've changed my mind a bit since then - OK technically it wasn't that challenging BUT, as graeme says, I think we need a different mindset for City Races. Yes it's about the technical challenge, but it's also about the views, the surroundings, discovering new areas, the DLR ride to the start, the buzzing international event centre, etc.

I for one am happy to accept a slightly "easier" race in London if it comes with all of the above. And I think we need to stay realistic - if the race is going to move around London, there will be some harder bits and some easier bits - I wouldn't want to run in the Barbican every year as I'd rather get some variety.

Also there's no such thing as "too easy", only "too slow", as I found out after having completed my practically error-free run!

[andypat]

No doubt all the critics (who have every right to share their opinion) are already well into the planning stages of their own club's Nopesport Urban league events for 2014 and taking account fo the deficiencies they noted in theis year's London event? .
I'd be interested to know if this year's planner kept a note of the number of hours he put into the event?

[roadrunner]

Well, I ran the men's vet 50 course and enjoyed it. Yes, it wasn't as technical as some we've had before, but I still thought that controls 3, 5, 10 and 16 were good legs. The only leg I thought was a bit disappointing was the long one to 11, which would have been better if there had been a sensible choice between two bridges (though the need to split the map in two makes that difficult).

[roadrunner]

Can someone explain why the Winsplits results seem to have a spurious first control (which almost everyone reaches in zero time), and a spurious final control (where, even more strangely, they have actual times given)? I've never seen this before, and it doesn't appear in the split time results on the web site.

[awk]

I for one am happy to accept a slightly "easier" race in London if it comes with all of the above. And I think we need to stay realistic - if the race is going to move around London, there will be some harder bits and some easier bits - I wouldn't want to run in the Barbican every year as I'd rather get some variety.

I welcome the movement around, and think the Isle of Dogs was a great venue. I'm arguing on the philososphy behind the planning that has appeared to creep into more urban races in the past year or two.

Also there's no such thing as "too easy", only "too slow"

And that is exactly what I'm disagreeing with!

[Angry Haggis]

Can someone explain why the Winsplits results seem to have a spurious first control (which almost everyone reaches in zero time), and a spurious final control (where, even more strangely, they have actual times given)? I've never seen this before, and it doesn't appear in the split time results on the web site.

Fixed now. There were some problems with file formats (a new version of the XML specification?) so I've reverted to using the tried and trusted OE CSV. This also means I am able to upload the results to BOF, so they've just gone up now.

Everything linked from http://cityrace.org/files/2013/results/

[Spookster]

This also means I am able to upload the results to BOF, so they've just gone up now.

Thanks, but as it was a UKOL race, in order for the UKOL database to calculate and include the points you need to rename the relevant courses slightly in the file you upload to the BOF website. Let me know if you don't have the info about that, and I can send it to you.

[dustytoo]

When I finished my course (Mens Ultravets) at the city race, I too felt that it was a little undercooked, and I heard plenty of comments that agreed with that view. However, when I had chance to study the map and course at my leisure when I got home, it wasn't that simple. There was plenty of decent route choice on most of the legs, so it took me a while to work out why I felt slightly disappointed. The problem was that with just a couple of exceptions there was plenty of time to plan the next leg, sometimes the next couple of legs. There were no clusters of very short legs that required instant decisions, abrupt changes of direction, and little or no time to plan head. Although such clusters are more common in out and out sprints, I do think they are important to break what all too easily becomes a comfortable flow.

I did enjoy the event, but to respond to another point that has been discussed, I was only there for the race. The other delights of London were irrelevant to me. Running alongside the Thames and seeing the Cutty Sark over the water was nice, but that pleasure was additional to the race, not an essential part of it!