Discussion: Commentary and Assessment

We hope everyone had a great time at the A-meet this weekend. As much as organizers know about their event, participants have a fresh perspective that is helpful for assessing quality and weaknesses.

Please give us feedback and comment on any aspects of the meet so we can improve and revise our organization for future meets. Thanks!

The course setter should write more comprehensive notes, including distance/expected time to starts and from finish back to registration. And if there were general map corrections (e.g. vegetation, boulder sizes) that might have been made but weren't, that should be pointed out, too.

Saturday's maps had a flaw wherein the north lines were printed on top of map info. Contols 35 and 45 (cliff and boulder) in the north half were only visible using magnification and good light which show them partly under the blue north line.

I found the controls okay, but was glad I checked my descriptions.

I was not personally affected, but I think there may have been a slight fairness issue in how the maps were printed. There is an option in Condes and OCAD to print the course so that features such as rocks and trails are made visible. I don't think this option was used, at least not for Day 1. In that case, it's very important to open the circles and cut the lines to reveal features that may be important for navigation.

Great event for the most part, with plenty of refreshments and water. Unique prizes; I like how the 2nd day prize complements the 1st (for those of us winning prizes both days).

While the technologically advanced results boards were cool and innovative, the font size made results hard to read unless you stood right up close. The boards were close together so only a few people could look at them at a time. Imagine if you had twice as many people.

Some basic good practice guidelines for course planning - not sure if these exist over here or not? I was stung by the three controls in a very long almost totally straight line issue in the prologue, as was Balter. A bigger bend in this line for number 6 would have prevented this, especially as 6 was not very visible in the green.

For those who weren't there, this is the map (Thanks to Cristina). This is blown up, and much clearer than the map during the race!

http://sprintseries.org/doma/show_map.php?user=cri...

Saying that, every other girl on the course punched it, so maybe I am just a muppet. When you're doing high speed racing formats like this though, I think things like this should be avoided at all costs.

There were some issues like that at the WOC 2009 Sprint Qualifier for the women. This map is a little hard to read, but perhaps someone can post a single course map that makes it clearer.

For my part, I enjoyed the courses and the control placements, particularly. Reading descriptions to do precise navigation into tricky locations is fun; I didn't do it categorically well this past weekend, but the placements were fair and appropriate.

However, I will note that I think the courses on Saturday were far too unique for their own good. In other words, blue, red, green, etc., were completely different: different routings, controls, legs, everything. To each their own, but I will submit, that all things equal, this sort of approach to course setting is to invite mistakes and is less than optimally efficient. It also is not necessary.

1. Loved the meet "arena". Great to hang out, chat with friends, commiserate about bobbled controls, etc. However, if the weather had been a bit cooler or wetter, would have turned into a major drawback with no nearby shelter available.

2. Provide a street address for event site / parking. I've started using my car GPS as a navigational crutch while driving, with little in the way of backup (such as downloading and printing off directions from the meet website). Without a defined address, resorted to entering a nearby street name in hopes that it would get me close. Worked on Saturday, not so well on Sunday.

3. Better (any) flagging/marking from Saturday parking to the meet site, or have a reception person stationed down there, or prominently post a map pointing which way to get started. Other than a faded control flag hanging from a street pole, no indication to "Park here for Orienteering".

4. Ensure control description matches both what is on the ground and what is on the map. Green-X, day 1 - control 6 description was dot knoll, bare rock. Challenge was that there was no dot knoll in the circle, just 2 boulders and a barely-discernable-under-good-light section of bare rock right next to a chunk of green forest. Turned into go-to-the-center-of-the-circle-and-find-the-feature-with-a-flag-by-it. Similarly, Green-X, day 2, control 9 control description was foot of the rock face. Again, couldn't see a rockface within the circle - might have been hidden under the blue north line. In both these cases, there was other detail in the area that didn't make these fatal flaws, but they were annoyances.

5. Some selective control circle and connecting line cutting to not mask key details.

6. Liked the high-tech results display and near real time updates to them. If they'd been 2' - 3' higher and had a larger font size, so several layers of folks could see them at once would be a good enhancement.

Challenge was that there was no dot knoll in the circle

I think this was another manifestation of what JanetT mentioned regarding the north lines. 0CAD has a notion of color priority, where some colors rank higher than others and clobber them. It looks like the order in the color table was different than it should have been in a few cases. One was the blue north lines that had higher priority than even black trails, and another was the fact that bare rock took priority over brown, thereby making gaps in contours and masking away the dot knoll that I assume was under that bare rock. This was less of an issue in the days of offset-printed maps, and requires attention if the maps are going to be laser-printed, especially on an overdetailed map like this one.

I'm not sold on the video display for results, although I can imagine that this might be the way of the future, and somebody has to be bold enough to try a groundbreaking step. Among the hitches: as far as I could tell, it didn't work at all for the Saturday final results, and it seems to have set a new record for minimizing the available area where people could stand and see the results (I'm a fan of the kind of cards-on-strings format that really spreads things out). Having the results switch every few seconds made it hard to take in a screenful of info before the next category came up (might have been better if it were slowly scrolling). I will say that the Sunday results format seems to have been rearranged with a larger font, which did help. I also have to wonder whether results boards might largely go away at some point, providing instead a wifi signal so that people can just look at the constantly updated results on their phones (not that I'm necessarily looking forward to that sort of thing).

Looking at the ocad files for saturdays map, the blue north lines are on top of everything. It looks like this was deliberate, as they are broken around some features. The bare rock is on top of the brown contours, but under the brown form lines.

On day two at baldwin hill, I increased the font size and changed the distribution of the classes on the monitors. For people who had issues reading them on saturday, was this better on sunday?

Certainly better than being used to have the start times taped over them in the afternoon. Would then have been nice to tape results over them during the finish period so we didn't have to wait until web access sometime later.

Still the most sensible segment was the two elite classes as finally set up Sunday, with no cycling. If this is to be a new standard. Plus provide more separation between screens. The font remains small for old eyes however. See JJ's comments for a preferred, but probably limited in the future, solution.

I liked the size of the type on the monitors on Sunday which I could read without my glasses. :) Most classes were readable in a single viewing, but the M-20 which had 15 or so competitors, was difficult to analyze because the screen changed after about 10 seconds and then you had to wait about a minute for that group's results to appear again. I was wishing I could freeze the screen long enough to look at the entire group.

All in all, both events were terrific fun and seemed well-organized. I'm working on my cryptograph towel tonight. Very devious, Larry Berman.

1. Love the 2×Middle format. Perhaps it's not the best fit for all courses, but is great entertainment for MF-21+. I don't quite care if it's Qual + Final or add-two-times like it was in the very old days (say 1995). Last year at CSU's event the Qual + Final was only for MF-21+ and despite all pessimism, people stuck around to watch.

2. Great try at proper Baltering, Boris, the hand of the master is felt. Still a ways to go to what Emily can do.

3. Looking at Cristina's GPS, looks like there's a warp in the south by the reservoir. Vladimir Zh indeed commented that the map may be skewed in that area. He said he left the photogrammetric trails/lake edge undisturbed for fear of causing greater problems (the base was pre-lidar).

4. I heard there was a protest at the Qual regarding too-close controls; not the first one upon the subject this year. IOF Rules state controls "shall be" no closer than 30 m for distinct features, and "should be" no closer than 60 m for similar features. USOF Rules require 100 m for similar features, no word on distinct features (I'm pretty sure it used to be 50 meters and got lost in one of the Rules revisions, perhaps deliberately). It's high time USOF Rules were brought into harmony with IOF Rules in this department. By the way, I agree with the resolution of the protest (the protester was awarded credit for the mispunched control). The course setter wishes to be on record as emphatically disagreeing with the remedy enacted.

If the jury agreed there was a foul, the whole course should have been thrown out, otherwise the MP has to stand or all the results are suspect. Was each and every competitor that had either of those controls asked if they lost time due to the close proximity? And even if you ask them, how can you be sure they are right?

If the jury agreed there was a foul, the whole course should have been thrown out,

Well, USOF Rules don't say this for every type of foul. They say

17.5 When in response to a protest the Jury determines that any of the following conditions have existed for a substantial group of competitors in a class, then the class or course shall be voided.
a) A control flag is missing. (Section 29.1)
b) A control flag, the start, or the finish is not within the marked circle or triangle.
c) A control flag is on the wrong feature. (Section 29.3)
d) The code at the control is different from that on the control description sheet. (Section 29.7)
17.6 When in response to a protest the jury determines that unfair conditions affected a substantial number of competitors and probably had an impact on the results then the class or course shall be voided.

(Aside: A very common problem in the U.S. used to be that 17.6 was interpreted by Juries as if 17.5 were never there. If the Jury thought that a "substantial number" was not affected, a course was almost certainly not be voided even if there was a missing or wrongly coded control. There haven't been missing or wrongly coded controls lately. This was an aside.)

In this case 17.5 does not apply, so the question is down to whether there was a "substantial number". One person was clearly affected and one person certainly does not constitute a substantial number. I think the Jury took notice of whether other people on the same course complained.

So according to 17.5(b) all the courses should be thrown out as the finish was no where near the marked circle! And that does affect everybody, so shouldn't be dismissed lightly.

All in all, a fun event, and well worth the travel. My comments:

1) I generally agree with other comments on the video results display (font size, screen spacing, pace of class changes).

2) The one problem I had with Saturday's map was that small areas of bare rock surrounded by green were virtually invisible.

3) I'm surprised nobody has mentioned it yet, so here goes:

The quailification (morning) and W/Y race maps should have been returned after the last start, rather than held until after the final. I can't believe doing so would have had a material effect on the final outcomes. I do believe that having the maps during the long wait between the races would have made the time go by more quickly. Also, did I miss it, or was the holding of maps not mentioned in the event notes?

I'd argue that inserting one person who didn't check his codes substantially affects everyone else's results. The jury is trying to have it both ways. By awarding credit for the MP you are effectively saying that 17.5(d) has taken place (for one - and only one - competitor).

Back to the nits to pick about the Fells map... the keep-out area around the lake should be the purple 709 Out of Bounds instead of the olive 527 Settlement. Settlements are not automatically out of bounds, as we have been amply reminded this summer.

agreed.

From West Point:

The start triangle marked on the ground for the qual should be in the right spot, It was 25m earlier on the trail then shown on the map.

Generally prefer a shorter time in between the two events (I know, I know, we are young).

A warmer place to go and hang out (like Sunday), especially if the weather is poor. Getting out into the sun was quite nice, possibly the event could have been out of the tree cover?

Having the streamer for the field for the classic race designated on the map.

Cutting the control circles, course lines as needed to provide important information beneath the purple while running at speed.

General mapping complaints as addressed above.

The qual feeling more 'middle' like. I thought it was a difficult sprint for the majority of it with a few exceptions.

Good distance choice for the qual vs the middle.

The hot chocolate and shower availability was awesome on day 2, as well as the warm place to socialize.

All of these are pretty nit-picky little things that would make this great meet into an awesomely-amazing meet. Thanks for everything!

Suggestions/comments --

1. More info on the web page, and much sooner. (Note that post-event web stuff -- results and photos -- were great.)

2. I think the general preference of M60 folks is to be on the same Green course as M50/M55. Though perhaps it was a numbers issue with a short start window?

3. A much shorter time between events on Saturday, maybe starts on Saturday from 11 am to noon? Might need a waiver from some rules?

4. Do some more experimenting with the results display. It will be the norm in the future, so good for trying it. But there can be a much better way of doing the display.

5. Is there a way to make the Saturday maps more readable? Different printing? Lots of people would love something better here.

6. Perhaps there was a reason to put Sunday's finish down at the lower fields? Because it seemed like the finish could have easily been put close to the start, just down the edge of the parking a little, and all would have worked better.

7. We made a quick decision on Sunday morning not to hold maps at the finish until all had started. Seemed like the easiest/friendliest thing to do. Was this OK?

8. Very nice having Boris as announcer on Saturday, though needed a little better sound system.

9. I very much enjoyed my courses. And both terrains were great, even with the forest damage on Sunday at Baldwin Hill, that is still a great place.

10. Bravo for arranging the indoor space on Sunday, also all the things to eat.

11. Thanks to both clubs for a very fun weekend.

though needed a little better sound system.

Yes. The small (<30 cm largest dimension) speakers were frankly quite awful. They are deafening if you get close, and you can't hear much if you are more than 20 m away no matter what the volume level. And they have to be close to the results, otherwise nobody will hear anything at all. So, you have to endure the dilemma; either see the results and risk hearing damage (or simply discomfort if the volume is down), or not see the results nor hear the commentary.

A rule of thumb is that satisfactory outdoor results can be obtained with speakers that are about 70 cm in largest dimension. A meter is great, more is perhaps an overkill. With speakers this large, don't place them too close to the results. It is not reasonable to expect a club to own such equipment, it is almost always rented (for a charge on the order of $100/weekend).

To PG's i.5:

The map is much more readable and overall looks better in 1:7500 scale. When I set the courses I used the 1:7500 scale. Just before the maps were printed I proposed to have the maps printed in 1:7500 scale but this proposal was rejected mainly because "it's against rules to have 1:7500 scale for a middle event sanctioned by USOF". I had to submit to majority but in my personal opinion it was not a wise decision. I'm sure there were many other rules violated during the event so what would be the difference if we neglect another one in favor to common sense?

And it worth to mention that USOF rules were not updated for quite a long time so it's not always wise to blindly follow them.

I have found the Fells map hard to read the past two times I've run on it, but I am not really sure why.

Last year, for example. I missed a control on this course:


But a similar situation existed on other ones:


Anyone want to guess which one? I was quite annoyed, but at the end of the day, "I was sucks."

The colors look decent, the resolution fine, but it is still hard to read. Is it all that green? Would offset help (I have to imagine it would help just a little, but I'm not sure it would be worth it.)

For last year's maps, I think there was almost too much cutting of lines and circles.

To Alexaza's point: I don't know what the rules are on this, but I think you ought to be able to print a map like this at 1:7.500. But, I think you would have to get special approval from sanctioning.

On Saturday, I would have liked to see less down time between the first and second race. Hanging out is fine and fun but several of us wanted to visit Boston but instead hung around for a few hours waiting to go out again. Several hours of sightseeing potential were lost. Still, a fun weekend!

I thought it was a great weekend of orienteering. There were small problems with the mapping (and map drafting/printing) on Saturday, but I thought the map was quite readable. [Alexei, symbol 113 here.]

I thought the sound quality was ok on Saturday... Boris could be heard as far up as the start area.

On Sunday I was surprised how runnable it was, really nice orienteering.

Re: time between starts - we were initially constrained by USOF rules for minimum time between starts, and later constrained by how quickly a start list can be drawn up for the second race - I don't know how it works, but apparently it is not a trivial task. Not sure of a solution yet, but I do like the format.

Can the second problem be solved by doing it manually and getting people to punch the start? Also, there are some experts in my club back home who I'm sure would be willing to give advice - they run a highly successful chasing sprint every year, in chilly and wet British weather, so no one wants to hang around!

The small (<30 cm largest dimension) speakers were frankly quite awful.

Getting them up off the ground would probably have helped a lot as well, maybe more important than getting giant speakers.

constrained by how quickly a start list can be drawn up for the second race

Oh, come on. With all that computing power? We managed to generate complicated chase start lists for the 1000-Day two-part "Sprint" many times, with much less delay, and we're not nearly as smart as the brain trust that CSU had.

There were two issues though - the start clock was offset to the computer time, which wouldn't have been too much of a problem until a ridiculous number of people were late for their starts. This was a nightmare to sort out!

On Sunday, we had two display clocks available, one very old (25+ years), the other that said it was radio controlled, and therefore presumably accurate. Except the latter seemed to be faster than the time any of us had on our own watches.

We had first synched the old clock with the radio controlled one, but at the last moment (8:55) decided that having everyone start a couple minutes before they expected it was not a good thing. So the radio one got put in a box, the old one set back a couple minutes to what we all thought the time was. And things went very smoothly.

Just a little common sense?

So are the times listed on Attackpoint for the Qualifier actually a minute faster than what people ran? I believe mine is.

I think all the splits to the first control (and the total) are a minute fast.

j-man: #5?

I used the start box for the qual, and I think the printout I have is a minute longer than Attackpoint split. Do you think whether or not the box was used makes a difference?

No, but that is a good guess. In addition to the colors, these courses were also (by necessity) convoluted, which introduces some other issues.

No, my problem was #23. No good reason--the control number was actually pretty easy to read (as opposed to #8 on green) but with so much on the map, and careful cutting of the lines and circles, I just found it hard to pick out.

Getting the Fels printing right strikes me as a really tough problem.

Every time on attackpoint is one minute too fast, which makes the first split wrong. People who started on the clock started one minute early, and people who started on the start boxes were correct. We "fixed" it by changing the times of the people who started on start boxes as there were less of them, and we just needed to get something in the correct order. The results submitted for rankings will have everything corrected properly.

There were a number of issues in getting the final start list prepared in a timely fashion.

Since we were allowing day of registrations for some reason, I did not know the number of people that would end up in the A final vs the B final, and since it was a tight start window, how the classes were laid out within it was very dependent on the number of people in each class. By 10AM, when qual starts ended, we did know the numbers and could start the layout of classes, but not people. If this had started then it would have made everything much easier, but I was distracted with some download issues, and with the start time issues. I guess the lesson is to have more people trained to the level that I trust to take over download duty.

Once everyone had finished, and we knew the rankings, it was just a matter of slotting them into the A or B start lists in the predetermined locations for their class. There were few issues here, but it still seems to take way longer doing it under pressure in the woods than it does when you try it out on your couch.

I think now that I have done it once, the next time will go much smoother. Only doing this once a year though, means that there is some re-learning that has to be done each time. Maybe we should run some local meets in this format?

I can fix the AP splits if you send me an updated file.

Re: time between starts - we were initially constrained by USOF rules for minimum time between starts

What is the minimum time between starts of two different events? I just looked at the USOF rules, and I didn't find anything.

They took it out. It used to say

Each subsequent course should start at least three hours plus the time limit after the last start on the previous course.

It was somewhere in 24.6 (Wayback Machine be with you; fails me). I didn't write it, it was there before me. But I agree with it.

If the start of the Final were significantly earlier than it was, you'd be testing recovery out of proportion to navigation and running speed. I personally made sure I was well recovered by going to a warm place immediately after the finish of the Qual, and staying there as long as possible, eating oatmeal and other fine recovery foods. If emphasis is placed on recovery, olderfolk like myself *may* be disadvantaged (in my personal case I specifically train recovery, but I doubt many others do since these 2× events are not that common, I train for other things).

On the other hand, the races were short enough, and (many of) the classes small enough, that there was no need to put out significant effort in the qualifier -- it was really just a model event. Recovery was probably a non-issue for at least half of the field if they understood the format and dealt with it appropriately.

As a sanctioned event, the qualifier counted for ranking purposes, even if not for final placings at the event.

that there was no need to put out significant effort in the qualifier

That's if your group isn't competitive. If it is, then starting later puts you into the "flow" with the faster (on average) people. If you catch up to someone 2 or 4 minutes ahead of you, this person is likely to be faster/a better navigator, and if you benefit at all from the catching up (and there are benefits even if you are completely within the Rules and don't consciously lead or follow, just observe what the other person is doing), the benefit will be greater if you start later.

If you catch up to someone 2 or 4 minutes ahead of you, this person is likely to be faster/a better navigator

No, it was the other way around. If you caught somebody, then they were behind you in the qualifier, and could be just a speed bump.

Well, what I am trying to say, there is a benefit for the faster runner from catching up with the slower runner (obviously also the other way round, this is not subject to dispute). And the faster that slower runner is, the greater the benefit.

Ed,
You/we need more people trained to your level. You did a great, no Phenomenal job, but depending on one guy is just asking for trouble.
Heck, when you went to take a pee, the processes seemed to stop.

Right, it's better to be surrounded by better orienteers, no question.

Re Clem's above, Pine Hill is cartographically "dense and dark". With courses that cross themselves numerous times, MPs or missed controls are accidents waiting to happen or boobie traps etc. Proceed cautiously & check codes is one type of reply.

1 to 7500 scale seems like a workable solution. Maybe to try next time...

Any intent to load the courses on Route Gadget? Would be interesting to compare my brain lapses with others.

According to the twitter feed on the neoc website (http://www.newenglandorienteering.org/) RouteGadget is now up for the Fall Foliage Festival. Thanks, Jim Paschetto!

Direct link to the Route Gadget page:
http://www.newenglandorienteering.org/rg/cgi-bin/r...