British

[Tatty]

Be interesting to find out how the control was discovered/thought to be in the wrong place??!!
Know of a few W21's who also found and punched the control when it was in transit, having wasted several minutes looking for it. Surely the course should be voided - it was completely unfair for those few. Wonder what their anger level was once they'd "discovered" it, compared to those who ran later and had no problems. Doesn't seem right.

[graeme]

At JK 1991 day 2 (Shining Cliff), a control was put in a small unmapped re-entrant, 50m, one contour and one clearing lower than it should have been. H40L and H21E, which encoutered the control too soon and then had a long leg out, were voided;

Nope, M21E wasn't voided either. One person protested, when others complained we were told the protest was being dealt with. Then the original protester was "pursuaded" to withdraw his protest because "the best people won anyway":!:

There was a scottish champs where a misplaced control on M21E was corrected mid race and the course wasn't voided. Uncharacteristically, the planner (gross) was rather vociferous that results should stand on that occasion.

I cant comment on the course quality - I only made it to #5 - but I'm pretty smug about my predictions for M21E ...

I couldn't read the brown-on-beige contours (even with a magnifier) and had to navigate by the more visible blacks, blues, other competitors and control descriptions. When I ran here at Croeso 04 I used contours all the way - the shrunken map required a totally different navigational style.

[FatBoy]

I was one of the first few M21L's through this control and I met the controller on the way out going to sort it out (I was polite...). I did think it was probably going to be voided at that stage, although personally it was just another 2 mins of hunting in the circle compared to the many that day. For once though I was certain I was in the right spot! I don't know how it got reported originally though - I guess the first W21E back?

I would like to say I didn't have any problem with the reduced scale (original map was definitely 1:10,000), and I did appear to be able to read it fine, but I did make an uncharacteristically large number of in the circle errors. Could just be co-incidence though - I'm not too proud to say I just had a bad one.

I would agree the runnability varied tremendously in "rough open". I do think we should use the green hashing in this country for things other than brambles! Also I agree to use the 100% yellow "open" symbol for any runnable open, not just fields. This would improve fairness on areas like this.

Relay planning was set to make the courses faster which was great, although the first few legs took the Men's Premier in the same basic shape as both M21L and M21E from the previous day which could've been better.

Overall a pretty enjoyable weekend, so thanks to all involved. Please take above as suggestions for the future rather than grumbles.

[distracted]

Be interesting to find out how the control was discovered/thought to be in the wrong place??!!

Someone had obviously reported it by the time I got there, as I also passed the controller on his way out to the control (most likely after he'd just spoken to Fatboy) on the next leg and showed him where I thought it had been positioned.



Here's the control in question. When I arrived there, we had 5 of us around that site and a tape had been found there. At least one had gone on, relocated off the depression with marsh and boulder to the WSW and come back to the same spot. I then went slightly east, saw another dip in the ground and stumbled across the control on the side of another depression, which I am fairly certain was the one shown by my blue route line going off to the ESE of circle.

[FatBoy]

Yes that was me - thanks for finding it for me. I'd been to the marsh/boulder/depression (did one of the W21s do earlier?) to confirm before heading back to where you'd found it. It was either in the depression you've marked or perhaps a small unmarked one (although wasn't that small) perhaps 2/3 of the way to it from the correct one.

[mike g]

[RS wrote: Does this affect the results then?]

It hasn't changed the winner of M21L, but second and third have swapped round.

[Simon]

Some photos, taken by Barny, from the relays and prizegiving are here.

[deebee]

I wasn't there but if I understand it correctly, the courses affected by the misplaced control have had leg times removed but the results stand. Today I've received belated details of the March Rules Group meeting - one of the points of information was that it is not acceptable to remove leg times if a significant number of competitors are affected, the couses MUST be voided

[david_rosen]

I had been looking forward to running on a very interesting area. Unfortunately, I found the map had a lot of shortcomings. It felt to me like uncorrected photogrammetry. Lots of the small contour wiggles were not really there and should have been removed. The contours had not been adjusted to properly show the shape of the ground as the competitor sees it. Form lines had been added, but they often failed to give a proper impression of the size and steepness of features.
The shortcomings of the map could have been partially circumvented if the planning had taken account of that. But many of these minute features were used as control sites. One extreme example was 163 on the relay which, when I found the flag, just appeared to be 'on the hillside', higher up the hill than was shown and nothing like the sharp reentrant it was mapped as.
Some of the small depressions were classic bingo controls. I lost 3 minutes at 102 in the individual which was incorrectly mapped as being 10 metres away from the valley bottom and a contour up the hill. In fact it was pretty much in the bottom of the valley and invisible until you were within a metre of it.
Not enough thought had gone into considering whether features made valid fair control sites.
I enjoyed the weekend and I'm grateful for the hard work by those involved, but technically it was disappointing for a British Championships.

[RJ]

..... One extreme example was 163 on the relay which, when I found the flag, just appeared to be 'on the hillside', higher up the hill than was shown and nothing like the sharp reentrant it was mapped as.

Yes.... totally agree. No shape visible there at all.

[candyman]

If a control is found to be in the wrong spot fairly early on in an event, after some but not most of the competitors have already been through, is it fairer to leave the control in the wrong spot or to move it to the correct position?

Is it fair for the earlier, affected competitors, to feel like they will be ruining the race for the other unaffected competitors if they protest?

Are there guidelines for organisers to follow if this circumstance arises?

[jondub]

I ran M35L so wasn't impacted by the moving control. I was able to attend due to a last minute business trip, so the event was a real bonus for me. I did have a few disappointments, however, the biggest disappointment was with my (lack of) physical condition. The weather was great and the organization seemed to be flawless. A big "Thank You" to the organizers.

I ran on the area on 2004, when it was my favourite area out of all the areas used. Unfortunately my course seemed to avoid most of the technically challenging areas and had quite a bit of hard slogging across heather, bilberry etc, which was ratehr disappointing. I suspect the more interesting terrain was used for the relay, but I was flying back to Canada by then.

I would agree with the comments about the heather etc. The animal tracks made a huge difference to runability, if you happened to find one, but I'm not sure what could be done about that. I think that finding then, and recognizing that they might be worth looking for, is just part of the sport.

[awk]

I thoroughly enjoyed the event, and felt the M45L was really well planned. So a big thank you to the organisers.

The map certainly raised a number of question marks for me. I agree with David - in too many places the map simply wasn't the picture it needed to be. Interestingly for me, it was exactly the same experience I had as planner at Guisecliff a few years back, when I had to spend a lot of time sorting out obviously uncorrected pg plot work. So when I read the map credits, a lot of things fell into place. Another case of a map done to a price rather than to do a job? I suppose that's always going to be the risk of professional mapping, especially when tendering is involved (I don't know whether that was the case at Pwll Du).

The question of printing also raised its head. Even at 1:10k the map was remarkably difficult to read in places. Some of it was due to the drawing, but part of this was I feel due to the poorer resolution of laser printing compared to offset litho.

Incidentally, I gather there was a misplaced control in the relay too, affecting quite a few courses. First/second controls on some of the M40/50 legs (don't know the number). But then there was in the JK Relays too......

[freaky_phil]

We all enjoyed the weekend, well done Wales & West Midlands, 3 comments I would like to make though:

1. agree with Dave on 163, ran straight past the supposed re-entrant, there was nothing on the ground!

2. Relays - looking at the maps from our family, each map is a different shade of brown as a background, infact one is very reddish brown. How can the print run be so different for each course.

3. Now the controversial one, I noticed Sarum were 3rd on the M14 but had a girl in their team? Is this allowed? as there was a W14 course so it wasn't as if it was a M/W 14 course. So on the same vain couldn't the Womens Premier have 2 men and 1 women in a team? If a club can't get enough members to satisy a course requirement then there's always the Adhoc and Junior adhoc, that's why we have the Adhoc courses. I know I may seem mean here but if you've got a very good W14 then she may well beat M14's on her course leg and that will then effect the overall results.

[freaky_phil]

We all enjoyed the weekend, well done Wales & West Midlands, 3 comments I would like to make though:

1. agree with Dave on 163, ran straight past the supposed re-entrant, there was nothing on the ground!

2. Relays - looking at the maps from our family, each map is a different shade of brown as a background, infact one is very reddish brown. How can the print run be so different for each course.

3. Now the controversial one, I noticed Sarum were 3rd on the M14 but had a girl in their team? Is this allowed? as there was a W14 course so it wasn't as if it was a M/W 14 course. So on the same vain couldn't the Womens Premier have 2 men and 1 women in a team? If a club can't get enough members to satisy a course requirement then there's always the Adhoc and Junior adhoc, that's why we have the Adhoc courses. I know I may seem mean here but if you've got a very good W14 then she may well beat M14's on her course leg and that will then effect the overall results.