| Organiser’s
Comments Planner's
Comments
I have been planning for
some forty years. The mantra has always been to
avoid dog legs and to look and see if you have
some pseudo ones. Thanks to my Controller Roger
Hargreaves who explained that we need to
introduce more route choice the dog leg is
positively encouraged as long as you avoid contra
flow accidents. Fortunately OCAD 10 makes a list
of these potential danger points so that you can
check these conflicts.
So if you stood at one
side of the lake trying to decide which way round
we have succeeded as planner. The distance round
the pond was in fact equal both ways. It was Dale
Paget who suggested the solution just go the way
you first thought of - you will waste more time
thinking about it. And in Sprint racing seconds
can count.
Most of you seemed to
have enjoyed your two runs. Well if you made a
mistake in the first run at least you had another
try. One or two interesting comments about the
cartography. The contours passing through the
buildings and the index contour in the thick
green. Alan Halliday from Print5 thinks it is a
combination of laser printing and OCAD trying to
emulate offset litho printing to get the right
colours. I will ask my colleagues on BOF
Map Group to find a solution.
The 6 and 9 problem
where they look like one another when upside down
caught out one or two of you. In normal Foot O
the numbers are much further apart but of course
in Sprints they will often be much closer. One
solution might be to use a different font other
than the default Arial in OCAD Course planning.
We live and learn - sorry for those that made the
mistake.
I spent a lot of time
editing the courses on the maps to cut circles ,lines
and move numbers to make them more readable. Just
one or two had problems in the crowded area just
south of the Sports Park.. Controls 60 and 70
seemed to be the problem - future planners might
like to make a note.
One last thing OCAD
calculates the distance used on the control
descriptions in a straight line between the
controls. It is obvious if you have to run
round a few buildings it will be further .
But how much? Can we
find a % to recalculate the distance?
It would help if as
many of you would work out the actual distance
you ran and let me know. I will then pass it on
to future planners. Remember the courses are to
be won in12 -14 minutes. Send me your
calculations at erik.peckett
(at) talktalk.net
Subject “Sprint”, put the distance ,
the Course and your age class.
My thanks to Roger
Hargreaves for his considerate input.
To the helpers on the
Day especially Helen and Adrian Taylor who
managed the hectic starts and to Alan Simpson who
reorganised the SI programmes to calculate the
afternoons reverse seeded start.
Most of you will know
that the original venue for the JK Sprint was
Exeter. It seems now almost a bit of serendipity
that we could not go. The building work that was
annoying for our event would have been horrendous
for the larger numbers for the JK. Sometime the
sun does shine on us as on Sunday.
Thanks to you
all for coming.
Erik Peckett
Controller's Comments
I was
pleased to be asked to control this event as I
had taken part in, firstly, a night event here,
at 1:7500 which certainly was difficult. I
then tried the trial event (or was it 4 events
that day?) and really appreciated the potential
at this venue.
Sadly, the
JK here didn't happen - but what better use for
the site than the 2nd SW sprint championships.
Erik,
firstly as mapper had to contend with the
available site constantly changing. In my
visits to the site the most recent map I had was
always out of date. The Erik as planner had
to acclimatise himself to the different concepts
of sprint race planning. It isn't the same
as traditional cross country orienteering.
With a few iterations we got it right I think
even on this relatively hilly site. The
difficulty in gauging course lengths I hope is
appreciated - the M16s were really quick and even
broke the 12 minute barrier - just - well done to
them. Other class winners were often in the
15 minute bracket which was also acceptable.
In the lull
between the A race and the B race I was pleased
to overhear several positive comments and even
experienced "sprinters" on comparing
routes found that the alternatives presented were
used and viable.
We just
needed some more competitors. Do you think
the term "sprint" is a turn-off?
Roger
Hargreaves
KERNO
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