Day2, Jack Creek,
http://rg.cascadeoc.org/rg2/#266:
We extended the map from some years ago and accommodated the burn that took place in 2017. The estimated time for fastest runner was something around 10min/km, which Eric Bone almost achieved in Blue, finishing 9km course in 1:36h. Dave Enger reached finish in Brown at 1:07h, a bit over the planned time. Green and Red course winning times were larger than I hoped for (1:27 and 1:52). We again missed AliC which would have very likely pushed the Red course to approx 1:20 to 1:30h .
The calculation used for course lengths:
1) with reasonable elevation 10min/km is achievable, make sure Blue gets correct time.
2) move to flat equivalents (distance in km + (elevation in meters)/100) (~11.65 for Blue course)
3) Design Red as 0.75 of Blue (AliC's speed is 0.85 of EricB, winning time is a bit less for Red), Green as 0.43, Brown as 0.32 of Blue.
The distances drop quickly - Red was 6.6, Green 5.1, Brown 3.3 km.
Other course design limitations.
- Finish close to road - since only one access point, then finish is fixed.
- We wanted to use the new areas of map: this kind of dictated the start location. The big hill of N part was not really usable unless we wanted to just add some elevation there (next time?), so starting controls to the south part of area were all rather short. We also wanted to avoid trails as natural route choices for advanced courses (failed at Brown though).
- Match the long legs of all courses (success):
https://attackpoint.org/raceleg.jsp/event_46444/ra...and
https://attackpoint.org/raceleg.jsp/event_46444/ra... (Nina beats Will, btw).
To increase Blue course distance we pretty much used all available controls, effectively making it a very long middle distance course.
With that in mind Red and Green were probably the nicest courses around, providing the best balance available for short legs and longer ones.
For Brown - delivering people to south side spent enough distance to make South side rather unused. Same for smaller courses.
For white the struggle was to find anything simple, which kind-of limited us to the small trails around + a very long (and marked in miserable cold on Friday evening) marked route out of their CP1 to the road.
Yellow noone used, but Orange had a winning time of 1:13h - so a bit long. This likely needs to be rethought, but I hope everyone had good time there.
Small issues and fun facts:
1) We planned to have the run-in start at the same altitude as checkpoint start, but due to no communication to start volunteer, the race started at the road, adding some 20 meters of climb. oops.
2) There were some interesting checkpoints that more people had trouble with:
- #3 on blue (also #3 on red) was hard to distinguish in nature - the subtle spur is non-distinct from West and the vegetation is non distinct. Some good amount of errors there. (
https://attackpoint.org/raceleg.jsp/event_46444/ra...)
- #7 on blue (#6 on red) was not well placed - in the small reentrant, but inside thick bush, hard to see - some folks correctly pointed out that it was a bit of a bingo control;
3) quote heard on road from a green course runner, figuring out whether to go straight across Rye creek or not (from 5-6) - "F* it, I'm going around". A reference to all the bad leafy bush being full of water.
The saddest part of both days - I didn't get to run the courses.