Discussion: When do you say when?

In ARs with rogaine sections, or remote checkpoints, or hell... even in orienteering meets... when do you give up on a control? This season has seen a few misplaced controls / botched clues and I always seem to linger longer than I should in hindsight.

When do you guys say when?

(Lets leave the rogaines in AR debates to another thread!)

Your confidence in locating yourself determines this.

Also your confidence in the course setter. I've DNFed on a misplaced flag so after I've looked where it's *supposed* to be, I will also look in places where it might have been put by mistake.

I'm more interested in what Bash is thinking here. Lets assume we're confident in our location and it's the course setting that we're questioning. The control is either in the wrong spot, the description is botched, the map listing is incorrect or any other such thing.

I find myself knowing something is wrong, but I can't help but linger hoping that I'm wrong or that I'll find it basically by accident going on the assumption that the RD's mistake was minimal. So far this isn't working out. I'm leaning towards getting out of dodge the second I know something is wrong.

It's hard to predict how the RD will score though.

I think most races have pretty clear-cut rules on how to handle this sort of thing. In our race booklet we lay it out explicitly: in a nutshell, search a 50m radius and if it's not there we'll throw it out of the race results etc. If it IS there and you were NOT in the correct spot, you can back to get it . . .

That being said, we've not had a misplaced CP in a race for 5 years (knock on wood -- and I know it can happen to anyone!) but it's always important to have a policy.

There's no one right answer, unfortunately, and my response depends on what I know about the event and the course setter. Sometimes it's not as simple as a "mistake". Sometimes the map doesn't properly support the control location. An example would be a control with the description "outflow of creek into lake", but the lake has expanded due to beaver activity. The map and the UTM are both wrong in this case, and a good course setter would move the control to a different location during the course testing phase. But not every course setter is that conscientious so as racers, we have to get inside their heads a bit. Some course setters rely far too much on GPS and not enough on maps. They should always use the same tools that the racers have.

Not everyone has a policy - and they should, as Untamed points out. However, (and this discussion has taken place on Attackpoint before), there is no policy that can make a misplaced CP fair for everyone. Some teams are lucky and stumble across the flag in the wrong place while other teams spend time searching. Some RDs have a pretty broad definition of what a correctly placed CP is, and nobody wants to take a chance of DNFing.

I was in one big event where a long trek was removed from the race results due a CP that was misplaced by hundreds of meters - close to 1 km, according to some racers. But this didn't help the navigator (currently racing in Spain) who happened to find the CP staff in the wrong place, assumed that the error must be his, then did several kilometers of fruitless bushwhacking under the impression that he had been at the UTM provided by the RD. Even though that team's trek was thrown out, they were exhausted and demoralized after that.

So keep up the good work of putting CPs in the right place, Untamed!

I leave if I know where I am and the control is not there. If random or luck is part of the equation, then I have all I need to defend the team's position.

That's what you would hope. But it doesn't always work.

Another classic AR control description where you rarely have enough info to know exactly where you are: "Intersection of two ATV trails not shown". Given that the UTM represents not a point but a 100 m X 100 m square (as I've been told any time I've mentioned something like this), it can be a long search to prove the CP is misplaced or missing.

No but it is still what I do. I only have the information I have to make a decision and I'm good at knowing the tells of "well maybe just a bit further..." or " they could have put it in the building..." stuff like that doesn't have a formula for solving. Arg knows I'll just stand there eating in the forest while other teams run around grid searching. I'll listen and hear when it is found:).

Yup, listening can work pretty well! :-) Also watching to see if teams are looking stressed or relaxed as they run past. But much better if the course setter doesn't put us in these situations.

This issue has cost me two wins this year, maybe a third.

What I've done this year obviously hasn't worked, so I think I'm moving to Urthbuoy's philosophy for '11. When the confidence is there but the control isn't, then I'm busting. This year I spent too much time searching parallel features or other reasonable error locations.

I've always hated watching other teams, especially on larger events when you can get three or four teams combing an area, inevitably one team always calls out 'got it!' followed by 'nope... not it' just a few minutes after you leave your bearing or current task. Also, I hate collaborating, but that's just me.

More than that, we all need to let RDs know that we take this issue seriously (as Untamed has indicated he does) so that this type of discussion is limited to controls that are stolen or blown away. Even *those* cases are influenced by decisions of the course setter, e.g. placing a control on a hilltop instead of along a busy hiking trail.

In many cases, most teams find the misplaced CP. The lucky teams seldom bother to complain - I've been guilty of that. Some people even feel that misplaced CPs are part of the challenge in AR.

As I mentioned above, it's often more subtle than that - a map that doesn't support the chosen control location or an inadequate control description like "River". Orienteering is a different sport but there are some very good lessons that can be transferred to AR.

Most RDs I know take this very seriously but we racers need to do our part too. Let's pat RDs on the back when they do a good job and offer suggestions for improvement to the RDs whose navigation and map skills aren't as strong. One of the most useful things we can do is encourage independent course vetting. We might even offer to help test a race course for an event that we can't attend.

Typically it's no secret when an error has been made in my situations, and I'm never really angry. It happens, and it's the same for all teams regardless of how FUBAR the situation gets. I haven't misplaced a control yet, but no doubt I will and I can only hope for the same understanding.

Inadequate control descriptions are touchy ground though. It depends on the RD on whether or not I'll offer some advice / commentary. Usually if I won't bother it's because the constructive criticism wasn't well received the last time.

When it's happened in races I've been in, it's seldom had the same impact on all teams, which is why there's been no fair way to deal with it. I did a race within the past year where a control was supposed to be at a lookout but it was actually placed randomly in thick bush well down the hillside. Depending on how the top teams approached the hill, they either lost a ton of time or not very much. We lost no time because friends on the the lead teams told us about it as we passed by. Other people who didn't know anyone on those teams weren't as lucky.

It never has the same impact, but the potential for disaster is the same for every team. It's impossible to truly compare. It'd be an interesting discussion debating whether experience can prepare for such things, but I figure that it can't.

One that stands out in my mind was a race where two controls had the clues switched. We spend many hours searching for a bridge in a portion of a park that didn't exist when it was really in the other highlighted portion. We attacked that part last and alone where the majority of the field did it together at the beginning and managed to figure it out (by mistake no less.) Yet another time I spent way to long in an area where I was certain there was a mistake.