Congratulations to all our new Scottish Sprint Champs for 2013! Medal winners
Hope you all enjoyed today, even if it was in a hair-shirty kind of way when you realised how you’d been caught out and mispunched?!
We had a much larger entry than anticipated but still managed to pull off the Chasing Start with your co-operation, so apologies if you had to queue for a while to get your bib but at least we provided you with a legitimate reason to stare at each other’s chests and make lots of new friends. Wonder what the passing motorists thought was going on? Some sort of multi-coloured, extreme recession soup kitchen maybe?
Comments are open for this post so tell us what you thought, warts and all, and if anyone has any good photos give us a link please.
Rachel
06-04-13-SSC2013-Results (final).pdf
06-04-13-SSC2013-SOUL2-Race1-Prologue-Results.pdf
06-04-13-SSC2013-SOUL2-Race1-Prologue-Splits.pdf
06-04-13-SSC2013-SOUL2-Race2-Chase-Results.pdf
06-04-13-SSC2013-SOUL2-Race2-Chase-Splits.pdf
RouteGadget up and running as well
Race 1 Prologue Winsplits BOF results with ranking points
Race 2 Chase Winsplits BOF results (no rankings points as Chasing Start)
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GRAMPIAN ORIENTEERS 
I had difficulty reading the map in the campus area on the prologue (not the reason for my MP though), control numbers written over the grey of buildings are impossible to see if you are colour blind although I heard those with normal vision also complaining. A small white clearance around the numbers or a different colour of red has worked in the past.
The chase was the most enjoyable orienteering event I have taken part in for a long time although I have to agree probably not appropriate for the Scottish Sprint Championship.
Glen Dye yesterday was a complete contrast and again very enjoyable as I barely seen another competitor during my course.
Great event on Saturday, thanks.
I really enjoyed the second race, but then i didn’t make too many mistakes and missed the worst of the carnage 🙂
I’d agree that standard emit’s not up to the job, but i’m not convinced SI would have been much better – folk will still stop and struggle to dib accurately. A few years back there was an event on the same area using emit where you just had to slap the brikke against a 30cm square board – this would have been ideal yesterday.
Contact free EMIT controls would have been much better, I agree, (or even just more controls at certain pinch points) but by the time we realised just how many of you were coming it was too late to get them hired and control numbers on maps changed etc. etc.
When we initially started to talking to people about this event an awful lot said they wouldn’t make it as they were off down to the JK and staying south or on family Easter hols for the week. Given that plus the 2 or 3 hour drive north which would put off many of the more casual orienteers from Edinburgh/Glasgow, I assumed the worst and thought maybe topping 100 competitors would be good (sorry – that sounds bad – should have said “exceeding” not “topping”!!)
By the 23rd, one week before the event, we had 62 entries which seemed to back up that theory. Then…. BOOF! 85 more of you waded in including 17 on the 30th and 11 late entries that I didn’t have the heart to turn away. So nearly 50% more than anticipated and that was obviously just a little too many for comfort. Whoever picks up the baton next year will hopefully factor in the increasing popularity of the Sprints and make provision from the word go.
Rachel
I thought the sprint was great, even if I was in the select (?) group of mispunchers. Everything was really well organised…apart from the slip-up of using emit rather than SI!
Glen Dye was lovely. Thanks for a great weekend.
I thought the handicapped second sprint was the most fun format I’ve done in years. But I agree with Eddie that with the queuing it’s not really best for a Championship.
Admittedly, I avoided the carnage at the end by chucking in my biggest error for a year – just goes to show how hard a sprint can be when your brain doesn’t have any spare oxygen to play with!
A very enjoyable weekend! Glen Dye was at its best today! The Sprint O was a lot of fun even for a physically slow person like me. The queueing at the last few controls was an issue I could see for some. Luckilly my 19 stone seemed to stop the Elites trying to q-jump me! Lol!
Well Done to all involved in the events!
I really enjoyed the event despite disqualifying myself and what would have been 2nd 3rd and 4th on M55! Thanks to all for a great event – in fact with Glen Dye a great weekend.
I do not however think that the inverted chase was a good idea. Queuing to punchy in a sprint is not fun. Also it inevitably causes large trains. I met 10 runners in an A course train head on on 3 occasions and I was truly scared quite apart from having to stand aside to let them pass. Heaven knows how a frailer child or adult would find it.A reverse order start at 30 second intervals seems far better – you still get good racing the event is still over quickly but you are far less likely to suffer significantly from these problems
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An interesting experiment, but not one I’d like to see repeated for the Scottish sprints. Many people expressed a similar view to me.
Eddie Harwood
The reverse chasing format was a suggestion made when we were initially discussing the feasibility of amalgamating the SOUL and the SSC. Before taking up the challenge, I looked at the results from 2012 to gauge what sort of densities of runners to expect if we set you off at 30 second intervals versus going the whole hog down to the second.
The bulk of the starters (apart from a few whizzy Juniors) would have been started in fifteen consecutive 30-second intervals. Looking at the most populous courses, B and C, 9 of those intervals would have had at least 3 B or 3 C runners so mini trains building up there. Worst case scenarios were 2 intervals with 6 B, one with 8 B and one with 7 C – starting to get a bit InterCity.
Remember these numbers are with ~150 more competitors than we were expecting. (Haven’t had a chance to look at Saturday’s to do a similar check.)
It’s also been said to me that 30-second intervals takes the edge off the competitiveness for some folk. Say you know you beat someone in Race 1 by a few seconds but that few seconds means that you’re in one interval and your rival is in the following interval, then if they catch you up you know that they’ve made 25+ seconds or so on you which is going to be extremely hard to claw back in such a race.
Given the extra complications involved in computing and generating start lists for Race 2 in a short turnaround time (to avoid keeping competitors hanging around too long between races), I decided not to go the 30-second interval route and try the simpler true reverse chasing start.
I don’t think 30-second intervals are the answer. Either provision of duplicate controls, or contact free methods, or no chasing start in any format and just two normal starts but then you lose the excitement, psychological pressure and spectator-friendly Finish rush we were trying to generate with the reverse chasing start which some people seem commenting here seem to have loved.
Rachel
Enjoyed very much the first race, but a very different experience during the second – not only because of my fall. I think the way to avoid scrums at controls at chasing sprints is to use the SI. Or to have a confirmatory beep in the Emit unit – then people will realize that they don’t need to place their brikke on the unit and wait for two seconds – just a touch is enough. Yes, there is a flashing light, but it’s useless in direct sunlight. And we do want sunlight at our chasing sprints!
Emit should be faster. You only need to wave the brikke over the control for it to register, although if you want the security of the back-up punch you need to lay it on the unit for a moment. With SI you need to aim it for the hole which I definitely find slower and more fiddly, although the beep is an advantage. On two or three occasions on Saturday I did have to wait behind people who were laying their brikkes on the unit for long enough to make a cup of tea, but maybe they were just unfamiliar with Emit.
Great events – thoroughly enjoyed both, despite a major loss of concentration on leg 4 of the second one.
Really enjoyed the courses – well done. But EMIT’s not really up to the task. I’ve had 2 failed brikkes in a week – and they seemed a relatively common occurrence at the JK.
Well done to GRAMP for putting on a really good event today – great fun. The weather was nice compared to recent weeks, but all the same, the courses were fun and challenging and it all worked really well.
Thanks!