Pentland Hills CSC/CST, 16th Mar 2008
(Robin Strain and myself have checked these results and believe they are final, but there is always a chance we have missed something, if you spot anything please let me know by tomorrow night (Monday) at the latest - )
One competitor raised an issue of why someone wasn’t scoring for their team - the answer was that they had 13 other scorers with more points. We can make them count if you really want but you’d end up with less points ;)
Routegadget (map isn’t tiny so give it some time if it takes a while to load)
Thank you to all who turned out today - hopefully the weather held up during your run!
Planner’s Comments
Planning orienteering courses the North Pentland Hills, was always going to bring with it certain points of inherent inevitability.
Firstly, with a high proportion of the more interesting and more technically challenging areas of the map tending to be steep, posing problems with keeping climb within the recommended levels.
Secondly, the flatter parts of the area tend to be open and therefore tricky to locate control sites so as to avoid the kite being seen from some distance away. In addition, the flatter areas, (with exception of the paddocks near the finish) could prove to be slow going for shorter and older competitors.
On account of the above, I had predicted that the going would be slow. So courses were planned to be a little bit on the short side. As it turns out athletes on the day coped well with the terrain giving times slightly faster than expected.
Feedback I received from competitors was generally very positive. I was particularly glad to hear that efforts at controlling the climb had worked when a number of people mentioned their surprise at how little climb they had on their course compared to what they had expected in the NPH’s
Judging by RouteGadget data a few of the controls in the open were slightly too visible, but, others proved to be just as challenging as I expected (eg 114, 124).
The very few complaints were limited to
a) Mapping of fallen trees in the way to the first control on senior courses [Having been through here countless times , I had not thought these extensive enough to warrant mapping]
b) Control no’s 112 and 121 being close together [These were on distinctly different features and I had checked over for such incidences but unfortunately missed this particular one. So apologies if anyone was confused by this].
c) Difficulty of Brown course. Some elite athletes felt a slight lack of challenge, particularly in the middle of their course. [In hindsight this course possibly called for a little more inventiveness. Possibly butterfly loops or map changeover etc. Something for me to bear in mind for next time]
Although as planner at this level the first time, it was a lot more work (especially in non obvious ways) than I expected, Overall, I still really enjoyed the actual planning this event.
The support and encouragement given by Margaret and Rab, Crawford and Janet in their various ways made a big difference to me; and the massive team of ESOC helpers on the day meant the event felt like a smoothly run operation.
Thanks to everyone who helped and supported, and thanks to the large number of competitors who turned out to run around the North Pentland Hills on a chilly March day.
Martin Quirke
Planner
Controller’s Comments
Keeping climb within what most competitors consider reasonable, which may be less than guidelines, will always be to the fore when planning in areas like the Pentlands. Comments from finishers indicated that Martin appears to have achieved this with his courses.
The range of times on all courses show that none were too long and a few could have been increased in length some 10%. If, however, the weather on the day hadn’t been so kind then this may not have been the case. When I was out checking control sites on a day when the Forth Road Bridge was closed to all but cars it certainly was a completely different experience than when checking controls on the weekend of the event.
I would like to acknowledge all Martin’s work in planning the courses and trust that this was appreciated by competitors. Hopefully the courses were enjoyed and studying routes on Routegadget confirms that route choice options were available on the long legs and what looked like easy controls could still result in small errors that may have meant the difference of a few places in the results.
Thanks to Margaret and the experienced ESOC team for the smooth running of the organisation before and on the day.
Congratulations to the teams who will have the honour of representing Scotland at the Final later in the year and I wish them every success.
Rab Philp
Organiser’s Comments
ESOC decided last year to take on the organisation of a separate event for the SOA round of the Compass Sport Cup/Trophy and chose the North Pentland Hills. This area is easily accessible from the transport system, has good parking, is good for spectating and is fine in terms of providing good runnable courses.
The only down side is the fact that this is MOD land, used for training purposes, and we usually have to adhere to a few rules to get permission to use it. One of these rules is that we must provide suitable toilet facilities, another is that we pay a fee based on the number of users of the area – no get-out via access laws. Nevertheless we have a good relationship with the army. These factors, along with BOF/SOA levies, were however major influences in determining the entry fee.
Sometimes it seems difficult to comprehend the rules laid down by the army since the area is also part of the Pentland Hills Regional Park and all that entails in terms of heavy public usage. Other sports as well as orienteering, use the area and we all seem to co-exist pretty well regardless of restrictions - this was reaffirmed on Sunday.
The weather over the Pentland Hills was, at times, challenging in the run-up to the event and we kept our fingers crossed there would be no repeat of this over the event weekend. Fortunately the weather was quite kind during the week beforehand and much of the standing water in the car park, Registration area and run-in had dried up. On the day we were all well and truly soaked and frozen in the early morning – rain & hailstones - but things improved significantly for the competition later.
Thanks to all the club contacts for putting together their club entries and thanks to all who came to run.
Margaret Dalgleish
Posted on 16th Mar 08
by Admin -
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