St Andrews Urban Results and Comments
Results available now.
Controller
Just as racing an urban race is quite different from classic orienteering, controlling an urban race is quite different to controlling a forest race. In St Andrews my focus was around fairness, mainly ensuring that gates were open!
Initially I had been concerned that Clive was both mapper and planner but as soon as I’d had a shot of one of the courses I knew this would not be an issue. It was awesome. In fact, I’m not sure I changed any of the courses - Clive had really done a great job. This really was Clive’s baby and he put in a tremendous amount of effort and expertise into it. However, nobody’s perfect, the map is massive and brand new so I know of a couple of very minor corrections which we missed, hopefully these did not affect you.
I commend ESOC, and in particular Clive, for putting on an excellent race. I really enjoyed my trips to the beautiful town of St Andrews - I hope you did too.
Cheers
Ross McLennan
(FVO)
Planner’s comments.
I tried to ensure that most legs offered at least two of the following challenges; multiple route choices, a requirement to plan the leg backwards, a requirement to estimate route choice lengths, a decision on ‘short but technical’ or ‘long but simple’, complex detail in the circle and the importance of reading the descriptions (‘on top’ or ‘under’, which side of the wall). In addition I wanted to show off the best bits of the town but avoid the busy shopping areas and roads. Routegadget shows me that many runners fell into the traps. I’m glad no one ran onto the Old Course or orienteering would have been banned from St Andrews for eternity!
Clive Masson
(ESOC)
Mapping Comments
The biggest challenge were the gates, wynds and doors off the street. These could be open or closed on the owners’ whim. Some were route choices while other important navigational features. I chose to map them as open but apply a purple line to indicate that they may be open or closed but were also out of bounds. Common with all urban areas the terrain changes by the week with construction work and landscape gardening. The use of ‘uncrossable’ / ‘forbidden to cross’ was also relevant. A few walls and fences were marked as ‘forbidden to cross’ even though a reasonably agile runner would have no difficulty getting over them. This was done to respect the wishes of the landowners who don’t want the top stones of their walls knocked down or their rabbit proof fencing damaged. The key message is that ‘forbidden to cross’ is not for debate. It would be far too confusing to overlay all these walls, fences and hedges with purple lines and not viable to employ marshals for what was, in effect, a local event. The downside was a fairly large map which was not ideal on a windy day. As a point of interest the map has 41,031 ‘objects’, ie bits of drawing. Compare this with a big forest like Tentsmuir which has just over 5000 objects.
Clive Masson
(ESOC)
Organiser’s Comments
Once again there was a magnificent turnout by ESOC members to help on the day.
Thanks to all those involved for their help, including Clive Masson the planner and Ross McLennan the controller. This event used a totally new map used only by the European juniors the day before at the JEC Sprint event. Generally, competitors seemed to enjoy running around the streets of St Andrews and feedback about the map, the courses and the event has been good.
On the day the event ran alongside the Sports Fair for the St Andrews University students. We knew about this in advance but exact detail was not clear so precise plans could not be put in place to accommodate what was going on. Being alongside masses of students had good and not so good points. Good in that there were lots of students around and about and there was a lot going on around the Registration area giving a good atmosphere and buzz to the whole day. Not so good in that the route to the Registration from the car park and from the main Finish to Download was partially obscured by poorly parked cars and a horse box! Also, the route to the Start crossed an area used by University sports clubs to a advertise their clubs to new students.
Nevertheless everyone seemed happy to deal with these relatively minor issues and enjoy the buzz of the place on the day. The whole area was very compact so nobody was ever likely to be delayed in getting to their start or warming up. Most of the main competition area was outside in the town of St Andrews which is always busy with visitors and students alike. Competitors at all Urban events have to cope with crowds so no surprise there.
We did have an injured competitor and are particularly grateful to Peter Cheetham who gave up the latter stages of his run to help her. Peter was very concerned about her wellbeing and remained at the Finish area until we could confirm she was either ok or at least in good hands on her way to hospital. Many thanks for this Peter and I know Sheila, the injured competitor, has also sent her thanks via ESOC.
We only had limited interest from St Andrews students which was a bit disappointing, especially as Clive had put on a small event on the previous Wednesday to try to encourage students to give orienteering a try. Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be a lot of interest in orienteering at St Andrews Uni at present but hopefully this will return and events like this one definitely advertise the sport in a very positive way.
Clive as planner and Ross as controller had a lot of work over 2 consecutive days and carried this out with humour and efficiency. Thanks go to both for all their effort. I’m also very grateful for the enormous amount of work carried out by Club members. Again, this was done with good humour and great efficiency.
St Andrews is not especially easy to get to but there was a very good turnout and we look forward to being able to put on another urban event there in the future.
Margaret Dalgleish
(ESOC)
Posted on 25th Sep 10
by Andrew Dalgleish - Webmaster
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