Discussion: West Point A-Meet- good, bad, otherwise?

For the sake of future meets, I thought that getting some input from everyone would be a good idea to help us improve the meet to make it better for everyone.
Was it good/bad/ok?
What did you think about start, finish, the courses, registration, or download?
Anything is better than nothing. I could squabble with the team about what WE thought was good and bad, but I believe that a good outside opinion is important too.
Thanks for the help!

The only thing I really didn't enjoy was the start/finish walks across rocky ground. The walk TO on Saturday wasn't as bad as Sunday because at least there was a well-used path most of the way. On the way back to Camp N.B. Saturday, though, it was not fun. I have enough trouble crossing rocky ground (on the course) as it is and would have preferred to hike along Rt. 293.

The courses I did (Brown and the OBG sprint) were excellent, though, with accurate (yay!) control placement and intriguing sites and route possibilities. Enough water was available, at least when I was there. Download went well, and so did packet pickup and registration.

Another thought about the registration is to provide a sortable table of registrants/start times so people can compare to others in their class/course. I think you can set it up in Excel and export it in HTML. [Separate pages on a pdf are very difficult to copy/export into spreadsheets.] But that's just a nicety, not a requirement.

All in all, though, excellent weekend and a great meet! Too bad you couldn't control the fog for those early starters. :-)

The courses were fun and challenging.

I love how friendly and polite all the cadets are! It's really nice.

I wasn't there Saturday, but heard that a lot of people liked the presentation on technology.

I think this was perhaps the best West Point A-meet I've ever been to - and I have been to several in the last 18 years. I was very (very) impressed by the courses I ran - lots of technical challenge, no bogus control sites, everything in the right spot, not many dead legs. About as fine a job of course setting as one can expect these days in North America. So you guys (course designer, consultants, and people who hung the flags) did a lot of things really well. Bravo!

Some other rambling thoughts:

I liked how the Blue runners were very well spread out in the middle and long start lists. I often wondered why in so many other meets I need to be starting within 2-4 minutes of another elite runner. Here, we were about 10 minutes apart, and that generally served well so prevent any running together or encountering of other competitors while on the course.

Coming from running in O-Ringen, where a 4km walk to the start is not unusual, I didn't mind the walks to the start. However, it's much less fun for everyone if the finish is not in a place that spectators will want to be hanging about (in North America, unfortunately, that seems to mean "parking lot"). But I understand it's not always possible to do that, and I would rather you have great courses rather than sacrifice course quality simply for the sake of spectators.

The maps - well, you already know they are a bit "over-generalized" compared to current-day standards (and certainly compared to the WOC '93 maps). I understand they will be improved upon at some point in the future, and that will certainly be a real treat! Yes, the laurel has expanded slightly, but that's to be expected. And we were warned, so that's how it is.

There were a couple of downhill scrambles that seemed a bit breakneck and I was wondering if people were having trouble with that. Hard (but probably not impossible) to avoid those when setting courses in this terrain.

Nice job having clothing return (would have been miserable without it, especially on the middle distance courses).

Fast and easy download - though some would suggest you should perhaps make it impossible to miss the download and funnel every finisher directly to the download area. This avoids people finishing but forgetting to download, which happens from time to time and is a real pain for organizers - though perhaps you didn't suffer from this.

Very nice use of the sprint area. Good course setting there.

Middle courses a little bit long, but would have been much faster without the fog and wet rocks. Hard to predict in advance.

Water placement in the classic was nicely-spaced, at least on Blue.

Nice to have a version of the start list at the starts that lists people by course (or class), in addition to the "alphabetical order by name" version.

Toilets closer to the starts are sometimes also nice (again tough to do in the locations chosen).

Ok, those are my rambling thoughts for the moment.

Thanks again for a great meet - I will certainly come back for more.

There wasn't a particularly large difference between the Red Middle and Red Long courses in terms of length, and the Red and Green weren't that different either. That said, I thought the Red courses were quite fine, and not having run the Green, I can't comment on those. More than quite fine, in fact, I thought that the Red courses were excellent, and I had no particular complaints about any other aspects of the meet (though as Wil notes, I'm one of those people who recommends that finishers be funneled directly to download).

I agree with Wil that this was one of the best WP meets, and I've been attending West Point meets since the early 80's. I think the courses (at least Green Y) were very well done...challenging and fun. Pre-meet information was helpful, as was the meet brochure. It was very clear what was happening and where. My only suggestion would be a more crowd-friendly way of hanging/displaying results. The results-on-the-porch approach on Sunday was difficult. Although, to your credit, you realized this and made a mid-course correction.

Overall, a very nice event. Kudos to you and good luck with the Intercollegiates next year.

Interscholastics, I think.

Great feedback, thanks alot for the info

And on a somewhat off-topic note:

A small group of images from this weekend (some by guest photographer Eddie Bergeron as well) are up on:

http://orienteering.smugmug.com

Sadly, my start times (and the urgent need to start my 16 hour drive home on Sunday immediately after the race) precluded good coverage of this meet - sorry!

I have to say these were probably the best runs i've ever had at west point! I ran the green-y and the OBrG sprint. They were all very nice!!! Challenging but not to the point that i felt discouraged like i did last year.

I will say though I agree with Janet that the walk to the start on sunday was a bit rocky. I normally use the walk to the start as my warm up jog and there was way too many rocks on that walk. However it looks like it needed to be to have the best courses. As well as the walk back to the Camp on saturday, I was very happy i got a ride back! There was enough rocks on the course and i heard the walk back was quite rocky.

I also have to say there where two legs, one on day one and one on day two, that were extremely steep and rocky. That was not at all fun trying to come down those. Although i might have a bis there as that was were i hurt my finger day one. and probably no way to avoid it.

The courses were really great, and the results management was good.
I did hear a few comments about controls on Saturday being buried in cracks in cliffs. Particulialy #4 on Green X was in a rock fissure of what most people would see as a cliff, but no cliff was on the map.
Putting a control behind or within an unmapped feature is really just hiding the control.
I liked the middle, sprint classic format.

Great weekend, thanks. Middle, sprint, classic works great.

Personally, I was delighted to see that awards for the old folks were being dispensed with in favor of a donation to the JWOC team.

I really liked the middle blue course. It had a good number of tecnical legs and was easy on the climb, which made it a faster course despite tricky footing. On the long Red course I only thought that the placement of the next to the last control wasn't ideal only because it had to be attacked from above, a tad risky in the area with huge wet cliffs. Otherwise a very fine couse with a cople of classic long legs. Looking toward the next year, thanks for the nice meet.

I was delighted to see that awards for the old folks were being dispensed with in favor of a donation to the JWOC team.

Yeah, this seems pretty enlightened. If I could take the cost of my box of medals, and multiply that by everyone else's box of medals, and channel all the economic output used to create these into something worthwhile, that would be a good thing. Not sure how to get there, but perhaps this precedent is a start, and other clubs will take note and follow suit. Heck, if we could just take that USOF 2K championship hardware budget and channel it elsewhere on the planet, that would be good also.

Wish I could have been to the meet, sounds like it was excellent.

FYI, the winsplits are up for the meet if you wanna check em out
Classic WinSplit
Sprint WinSplit
Middle WinSplit

I agree with all the positives mentioned above and even liked the treks to and from the courses as allowing good warm up/cool down time that is normally ignored after o-races. We liked the courses: I ran the Green X and my wife did the Brown. We both had fun. And I learned a lot about the ISSOM mapping standards for paved/unpaved paths/roads.

This was one of the best weekends of O we have had in these parts. The little things like plenty of water and a supply of nibbles at the finishes were taken care of.

And the idea of the prize donation was a fine innovation.

Look forward to returning next year.

I ran Green-X, and thought that the course designs were excellent. Just a very mild criticism, supporting what Jeff said -- the Saturday controls didn't need to be tucked so tightly away. Once one navigates to the correct feature, the control should be visible from a slightly wider angle than was the case in a few places.

Everything ran well, the courses were very good, all the controls I saw were placed accurately and the hangs were tough but fair. There was adequate drinking water on the courses. The meet notes and website contained all the pre-meet info I would have wanted. I'll also add that the USMAOC bid came though sanctioning early and they were very cooperative in securing written permissions for use of the areas used at the request of the committee.

Kudos for the late night registration table on Fri evening. I can think of only three improvements:

1) Use flagging streamers that are a different color than the leaves.

2) Echoing Wil and Sergey, that 2nd to last leg down the rock-choked gully was a downer. Best to end a course on a good note instead when possible. I went tail-over and landed on my head in the rocks twice in the 200m below control 17 on blue.

3) A number of folks got tangled in and/or cut by concertina wire in the sprint. Although we were warned that it was out there in the meet notes (a good thing), and accepting that we were all guests on a military reservation, some streamering of the wire along major routes of the sprint (in particular) would have saved some bloodshed. I'll note that a particularly bad spot was marked promptly after it was reported at the finish.

I have to agree though that this was the best West Point meet I have yet attended. Extra attention was paid to the course quality, and thats what its all about in the end.

As a non-attendee I was interested in how far the walks to the start were? Were they steep or just rocky?

I have another suggestion :-) Could you post splits by course, too? Thanks.

The Day 1 walk was quite steep; it was advertised as 1 km and had about 100 m of climb. It was on an old trail that was quite rocky. The walk back from the finish was a similar length, with no climb, and was half on an old road and half through rocky woods. The Day 2 walk was maybe about 1 km as well, partly on a paved road, and partly through rocky woods with a little bit of climb. I didn't find any of the walks to be a problem, although it wasn't clear why the Day 2 start was in a place that was so inconvenient for the meet crew.

-There were a few wires on red middle distance that I wasn't aware about from the meet notes.
-Sunday starts were a bit too early in the morning.
Excellent meet, I really enjoyed the courses and Nutella at the finish was definitely a nice touch :)

Nutella!!! Was that advertised??

No, but we'll have even more next year!!! I ran registration this year and I was curious as to whether anyone had any suggestions specifically on how start times, changes to start times, on-the-spot registration, SI rentals, etc went. I'm ready and willing to accept your criticism and/or compliments!
--Michelle

I think registration and the starts went extremely well (at least from my point of view)--I noticed no problems. You all did a great job!

Having the color coded start listing was neat, esp if changes were desired as the empty slots pop right out.

I agree that it was one of the best if not the best West Point meet we have attended and we have attended a number of them. I tried the brown on saturday but had to bail out as I was not up to it after not feeling well on friday night. I really liked the challenge of the yellow on sunday for the level of the course. Not just a walk along the trail from control to control. I'm so glad that there was no one taking pictures on the yellow course sunday between control #5 - 6 as I had to get into some not very flattering positions to get accross the very rocky, slippery and well moving creek.

I was totally suprised and very please to hear from one of my bunkmates on friday night that the adult awards was to be a donations to the Juniors. Thank you so very much for this and I will let everyone know that I asked that it be a donation to the College O fund for the WUOC team going to Estonia this summer as they are short on cash and since WP is college level this seems very appropriate to me.

Thanks once again to West Point for again supporting the Juniors in letting us raise additional funds. The Silent Auction raised well over $600 and I have not had time to settle out the concession stand fund but since we ran out of hamburger, sausages and had very few Hot dogs left I'm sure we did very well once again.

I did not like the walk back to NB from the finish on saturday. I would much rather had walked on 293 even if it was longer. I DNF because I was not feeling that great and that walk all but did me in and I did fall on the rocks at least once and was not to pleased.

I did mention to the Campbells, Jon and Tori that when advertising the barracks that you should make sure that it is very clear that there is NO linen service. Those of us that have been coming for years know this but for first timers it doesn't seem to be clear as I know of a couple of incidents in the last few years where people have arrived TOTALLY unprepared for staying in the barracks. There is a young man from GA that is very glad that Denny and I had not left home yet when Corinne called asking us to bring him a sleeping bag, pillow, and towel as he didn't realize he needed them and he was already traveling north with the Ferguson's and Corinne.

Finally, I will totally humble myself by letting all of you know that I did not lose my keys, like I thought. They were home on the dining room table waiting for me to come home to them.
I was absolutely postive that I had had them on friday, so chalk it up to insantity, lost of memory or just plain old old age whatever it was I very happy to find them at home.

Thanks for a great weekend.

We really enjoyed the courses this year. I was also very happy with the organization. Thirdly and most importantly, I was very impressed with the service that one always hopes they don't have to use. Zach slipped on some rocks and cut his knee pretty severely when he landed. He was able to get up and make it back to the finish area, where the medics / ski patrol volunteers (sorry I don't remember their names) did a wonderful job of tending to his wound, keeping him comfortable, and arranging for us to get to the base hospital so that he could get stitched up.

I really enjoyed the Green-Y courses both days as well as the sprint. I liked the format, thought the courses were well designed, and I was happy to see plenty of water available at the water stops. I thought I might be over extending myself as I usually drop down a level at WP, but this ended up being of the most fun & enjoyable times I have had there. Also thanks to all the cadets who helped me track down my jacket in the lost and found on Sunday after I completely forgot about it when the sprint was finished the day before :-) One thing I did miss was the usual shuttle service when I had to get up several hours early to drive friends over on Sunday for their earlier starts. Though I suppose this is not different from any other meet, it was always convenient in the past that everyone could come and go from the barracks whenever they wanted.

There are plusses and minuses to the shuttle service. The plus is as you state, allowing members of a group to come and go individually. The minus is that parents trying to split child-watching duties have even less time to make the switch-over when a complete round-trip of the shuttle is added to the mix. (I.e. if mom runs first, dad can't get on the shuttle to head to the start until mom returns from the finish on the shuttle.) Having the car-park within a warm-up jog distance from the start-finish, as was done this year, is ideal for these families.

Since I jumped in with this, I'll add that I also felt this was one of the best organized WP meets I've been to. It seems to me the whole level of the USMAOC has risen several notches in recent years, with not just an excellent A meet, but some very good results being turned in by your members at other meets, too. Congratulations to all of you on both accomplishments. Keep up the good work!

And I guess I have to dissent on the comments about the fog. For me it would feel like something is missing if it wasn't there. I've run at WP in fog, heavy rain, snow, and occasionally even warm sunshine. But there's just nothing like traversing the top of that high ridge on top of the Popolopen map in the knee-high grass and a heavy fog!

I only competed on Sunday but would agree with others that this year's meet was probably the best WP meet ever and I've been to over twenty of them. I keep coming back because I've never had a bad experience at WP. Occasionally in the past I've encountered cadets who, though polite and helpful, were not quite sure what running a meet entailed. This year I encountered nothing but efficiency and professionalism.

Also I did not mind the occasionally rocky walk to the start. I much prefer walking to having truck transportation to and from Camp Buckner. Parking at the meet sites was a definite improvement.

One way to enhance the event would be to post not just total time results but also splits as is done at some other A meets.