JK 2017

[housewife]

Many thanks to whoever suggested Easter eggs for top 6 in the kids courses. Double the number of thrilled kids heading home asking when they can go orienteering again. Big thumbs up.

[Homer]

Thanks to all the officials and volunteers this weekend, I really enjoyed both races I did (middle, relay). I particularly enjoyed the planning, mapping and the weather

I'd like to echo Andy's thoughts. I ran days 2, 3 and 4. I was also involved in organising day 4 last year so I know well the amount of effort which goes into putting the event on. Thanks to everyone involved.

I wonder if we're going to be asked for feedback? Maybe on the Sprint/Middle/Long format versus the Sprint/Long/Long? Or anything else?

There were many many really good aspects of the event (far too many to mention) but I did feel that the standard of mapping on Day 3 fell short of the otherwise high standards. Maybe there was a good reason for this? IMHO the quality of the map is probably the single most important aspect of any event and we've come (maybe unrealistically?) to expect the best at our premier event.

Otherwise great weekend. Thanks SEOA and good luck WMOA for next year.

[NeilC]

If anyone is interested - Plan A for JK2017 was to have Day3 on an area very close to Day2 and the relays on the bottom part of the Day3 area. We had an organising and planning team set up for Day2 but despite over a year of negotiations we were unable to obtain sufficient assurances that we could use the area on the day in question. Thus we swapped to Plan B in which we decided to join several areas together to provide Day3 on the intended relay area and moved Day4 to Pippingford. This change not only meant that the venues were more spread out than we had intended but also necessitated a shuffling around of major officials. Hosting Day3 on this new combined area proved to be very problematic and even a month or so before the weekend Plan C was being considered. Only a few people know of the massive amount of effort put in the Day3 team to pull it back to the stage where the event could actually happen.

From a personal perspective I swapped from being a day organiser to a relay planner. My philosophy was to try and set up fast and furious head to head racing with good spectator opportunities. Technicality was kept fairly low, but enough to punish small errors. A few people commented on the amount of climb - particularly the up and down to/from the spectator control. The up was necessary to provide the opportunity to visit the cow and wave to your teammates, the down was simply a short leg to set up the only half-decent long leg that I could plan on the area.

[Snail]

feel that the standard of mapping on Day 3 fell short of the otherwise high standards

.... we swapped to Plan B in which we decided to join several areas together to provide Day3 ... this new combined area proved to be very problematic and even a month or so before the weekend Plan C was being considered

Given the issues described by Neil perhaps the Day 3 map was better than it might have been! I found it reasonable (although my course didn't go into the St Leonards area). There were a lot of unmapped small paths in the north-eastern part - but if they had all been added to the map it might have been difficult to read. And not sure what happened to the helicopter, which isn't on the competition map (but is on the Routegadget version)? I lost a few seconds there because it was specifically mentioned in the final details as being mapped, and I initially thought I was in the wrong place.

[housewife]

I made no comment on the day 3 map. I suffered from the confusion at the unmapped paths in the north east corner, but thought the rest of the near start map was good. Who'd want to have to map all of those rhodis?

[Snail]

@housewife Sorry - not sure what happened there. I just used the quote button and it seems to have inserted your name rather than Homer! Now edited to be correct.

[Slowtochide]

Ah yes, the helicopter.
We seem to have had an issue relating to pdf extracts from the OCAD files and different layers. I'm not sure of all of the technical details but the net result was that, right near the end of the process, the helicopter (black cross) was hidden on the 1:10,000 maps, although not on the legend. However, the 1:15,000 maps were unaffected(!)
Apologies for that.

[Slowtochide]

Regarding an earlier comment about there only being a single control box at the finish of Day 1, a quick look at Rob Lines photographs of the event will show that there were in fact 2. This was the same as on Days 2 & 3 but maybe we should have allowed more for the Sprint race?

[SeanC]

So were the two regional events cancelled by GO and MV in the last few months cancelled because of all these land access problems and consequent gigging around of areas and jobs?

Sounds like a tough few months and a great effort by lots of people.

[Arnold]

Yes thank you to all involved! Day 3 looked difficult enough to organise (remote start, multiple maps, wide spread of controls etc) even without all the hassle NeilC mentions!

Personally I disagree with the comments on map quality. I thought Days 2 and 3 were excellent (was it all James Crawford? There was no mapper credited on my Holmbush map even though SimonE got a credit for layout!) The maps were certainly miles better than previous versions. But then sometimes I just "get" a map and other times I don't - this time I did.

[greywolf]

Regarding an earlier comment about there only being a single control box at the finish of Day 1....

the comment was that there was only a single control box at the final control, not the finish

[Slowtochide]

Slowtochide wrote:
Regarding an earlier comment about there only being a single control box at the finish of Day 1....


the comment was that there was only a single control box at the final control, not the finish

My mistake. Yes, I can take the point on that

[ifor]

So the one question I have seen many people ask in there training logs is about the validity of a route on the long leg on day 3.

A lot of courses had a long leg across from west to east the best looking route looks to pass in front of the finish and onto the track between the olive green and the field. The overprinting here is not at all clear in indicating legal, where a marked crossing point would do the trick or illegal where extending the overprint purple line around the olive field would make everything clear. As it is the overprint line goes on top of the track or is it the fence making the track inbounds or the fence making the track OOB?

Most people took it as OOB and took the route through the field up the hill but many people I think were taking a very good look at the map to try and work it out.

[MacMan]

To help answer that question maybe it will help by posting my response to a runner who emailed me the following question

"Dear controller

On course 11, on the long leg to #16, I took a route along the south side of the fence which formed the south border of the assembly area. Then left the field through a gate onto the forest road which goes along the south side of the big OOB area with the vertical black hatching. I am now not sure that this was a legal route.

On the day, with heart pumping and sweat in the eyes, I thought the forest road extended into the field and so formed a legal route between the purple uncrossable boundary line and the olive OOB screen. Looking at the map in the comfort of my living room I am no longer sure – my eyesight, even with 3x magnifying specs, isn’t good enough to tell. Looking at the zoomed-in routegadget map I think my route may have been illegal, at least if the routegadget and competition maps are identical."

My response ... FYI

Thank-you for you observation, I had already looked at this leg on the day of the event having discussed the course with one of my club mates, when I asked him if he had seen the route through the assembly area and he replied “No”.

At the end of March we had originally drawn up the maps as shown in the map 2 below and as you can see I had highlighted to the planner as part of our discussions possible routes on this leg, which included going through the assembly area but then crossing the fence that the estate management didn’t want us crossing. This resulted in the change to clearly show that the far fence was also uncrossable. However, as you can see from the zoomed up version of the final map that went to the printer in overlaying the “uncrossable overlay” to the fence I missed that we had obscured the legal exit from the field via the forest road. So I think if you exited the field via the forest road you should not be DSQ and in fact overcome my mistake by seeing what was a valid route. In hindsight .. and maybe with a bit more time a more accurate representation in this area would be given by map 3 extract.

So in my view, you took a legal route and the fault was in my checking to quite see how well this would appear on a final litho printed map

map1.jpg (71.66 KiB) Viewed 12339 times

map2.jpg (130.26 KiB) Viewed 12339 times

map3.jpg (182.75 KiB) Viewed 12339 times

[Parkino]

Thanks, Ifor, for raising the issue of the 'legal/illegal' route across the front of the assembly field. (Day 3, course 9)

I chose that route but then, as I descended towards the field, realised the track was completely obscured by the overprint. I stood for an embarrassing number of seconds at the hay bales studying the map with the magnifier, trying to decide if it was legal or not. I decided the intention had been to deny the route and, as I saw no one heading in that direction, I 'baled' out and ran up the hill in a bad mood. (time loss +1mins)

Given everything else that was going on with the map, I can see how this got missed. BUT shouldn't the overprint of an uncrossable boundary be off-set from the feature on the map in order to allow for the feature to remain legible. In this case, if it had been off-set to the north, the space for access to the track would have been apparent regardless of printing issues. (Adding a crossing point, as in example 3, is also a solution.)

I'm wondering should I risk it next time, potentially antagonize a landowner, spend the rest of the day litigating a protest against a DSQ or wrestling with my conscience for having gained an unfair advantage?