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Planner's Comments
About this time last year, flushed with
the success of planning the OK Nuts
loop-race last year I volunteered to plan the OK Nuts for 2005.
We hade a vague idea
about doing something interesting with the format, maybe
something loop race-like
again.... a few ideas were emailed around and then it all went
quiet. Then about 3
months before this years race the suggestion was made to approach
the ACS Cobham and
see if they would allow us to orienteer in their school grounds -
we knew they had
been mapped for orienteering although suspected that it might
need some updating.
After a very productive visit to the nice people at ACS we were
feeling very pleased
with ourselves having secured use of the grounds for orienteering
and carparking;
and the school gym for assembly and download. We knew there would
be some complexity
in having a combination of 'classic' orienteering on Esher and
'sprint' orienteering
on the ACS but felt that this would be a novel and interesting
way to make the best
use of the areas and the 'green light' was given.
Planning for the 'classic/sprint' combination OK Nuts was
underway when the idea of
Micr-O was floated. Initially we thought this might replace the
'sprint' with
everyone doing micr-O at the end of their courses but it soon
became apparent that
the technical dificulty of Micr-O wouldn't be suitable for many
courses, and that
the school grounds were not 'feature-rich' enough for Micr-O. So
it was suggested
that a strip of the main Esher Common map be remapped at 1:5,000
for the Micr-O and
that only M/W21L would take part in it. After some humming and
haring by SLOW it was
finally decided that we would be the first event in the UK to
include Micr-o in an
orienteering event. So with 7 weeks to go before the event
started we started
remapping the ACS, updating the Esher Common map and mapping the
Miro-O area; and
the course planning could start up again!
In the end the complexity of 3 maps, 2 planners, 2 starts and 2
finishes (combined
with the fact that I work in Newcastle for half of the week and
was getting an
extension built on my flat at the same time) nearly blew my
brain; but we made it.On
the day everything seemed to go remarkably smoothly - we had one
control at which,
for reasons of it's own, the SI box decided to go to sleep but I
believe everyone it
affected punched with the clippers on their map so we were able
to verify that
everyone had been to the control. I know a very small minority of
people didn't like
the 'sprint' tail to their course and I'm sorry that it wasn't
mentioned in the
event flyer. The other alternative was a long-ish walk back from
the finish to your
car which I never think is fun. We also had many lovely comments
from people - both
people who emailed after the event, and people who I spoke to on
the day - saying
how much they enjoyed the courses and how the sprint orienteering
end of the course
really made a fun change to 'normal' courses - thank you to
everyone who took the
trouble to let us know their thoughts on the event.
The whole event could not have been achieved without the help of
everyone who gave
their us their time, advice and enthusiasm. Particular mentions
from me go to Keith
Tonkin the controller - I don't think he realised what he was
letting himslelf in
for when he agreed to control this event - thank you for
everything; Mike Garvin the
organiser - who was always cool, calm and collected even when I
was running around
trying to get equipment off him at the last moment; Chris Fry for
all his help with
the equipment - particularly the co-ordination of the kit we
borrowed from other
clubs and the sorting out afterwards; Mike Murray who made the
splendid bridge for
the crossing between Esher and the ACS; and last but not least
everyone who helped
tag control sites, put out and collect in controls (special
mentions to Don McKerrow
who gave more time that anyone to ensure that the controls all
got out into the
forest and came back again, my boyfriend James Morris who did
great work with the
tagging, and my sister Ruth King who put out controls on both the
Sat and the Sunday
- when she turned up at 7.45am having only got an hour and a
half's sleep - now
that's committment!!). .
Controller's Comments
I volunteered to control knowing I was probably going to face some innovative event, thinking like Nicky it was to be loop races or similar. There then seemed to be a process during September of “project creep” as one thing after another materialised to increase the complexity – it turns out it was to be a regional ranking event, then it included the inter services competition, then the school option was included throwing in an extra dimension on starts & finishes, then to cap it all Micr-O was added. During this time the courses “evolved” into the mix that you experienced, and despite the extra work that arose, I enjoyed controlling the event.
Once the car park was selected to be within the school grounds and it was agreed the very short courses would need to start & finish outside of the school, we knew the white course would be a little short. The path network just did not appear to allow anything of the correct length. For almost all the other courses I think we erred on the cautious side and lengths were a little short. This was partly due to an underestimate of the target length for M21, which derives all the course length ratios for regional events. We guessed this at about 10.5km - around 6.5 mins/km which would generate a winning time of around 69 minutes. However, faster than I recall and I was recovering from an operation so couldn’t test run any of the terrain. I was also hesitant about how adaptable orienteers might be at swapping mid course between maps at different scales so erred towards shorter courses. My caution was completely misplaced as the comments I heard and a quick scan of split times seems to indicate little slowing of speed at the transitions.
Whilst it may not be to everyone's taste, I believe there is plenty room in our sport for variety in the type of events we compete in, so the efforts of SLOW at experimenting with formats should be applauded. Perhaps the mix of classic & sprint formats was not for you. Personally I am not sure about having a Micr-O in the middle of a long course, but I would have loved to have given it a go as a competitor. Hopefully there will be an opportunity to try this at a future event, on a shorter course, where you don’t have to run 10km to try it! If you did participate in M or W21 courses, David May is seeking feedback on the format and there is an online survey you can complete. If you want to see what it was all about there is an all controls Micr-O map & a table showing participant punching accuracy. I would like to thank SLOW on behalf of the competitors for putting together a successful event.
Note to self:next time it would be nice to control an easy one.
Keith Tonkin
Micr-O Planner Comments
Having been a fan of at least the theory of Micr-O for quite some time, and being a member of the IOF Commission responsible for setting the IOF Rules for Micr-O also, I jumped at the chance to help my club when I heard mutterings about SLOW offering Micr-O at Esher. It would be an ideal opportunity to put some current thinking into practice and should be good fun too.
Then came the problems - we had no suitable map, some of the SLOW powers-that-be began to get cold feet about the whole idea, we had to get agreement from the Controller and the SEOA to deviate from various BOF Rules, and time was fast running out too. All these somehow were solved and I owe massive thanks to Jon Musgrave for breaking his busy schedule to find two days to make a new map, to Keith Tonkin and the SEOA Committee for having the courage to agree to my irresponsible suggestions, ditto to SLOW Chairman Don McKerrow and most of all to the proper Planner, Nicky King, for backing me all the way and accommodating all my interferences with her courses!
Oh, and to many others too, including Gavin Andrews who took on the challenge of writing software especially for the peculiar demands of Micr-O.
Well, how do you plan for Micr-O? Firstly you need parts of the terrain which have a high feature density, extensive enough to make around 1000m of course. Esher has maybe three potential areas for this, Oxshott Common, possibly the Mole scarp slope, and the nameless ridge we used in the end, which had the advantage of being the cleanest and most runnable of the three. The map at http://www.wcup2005.org.uk/page.aspx?id=15810 shows part of the final map and the control layout used. Taking each leg in order:
First: this I thought was the most technical section of the map, partly due to the variable visibility. The men had the harder control as they needed to run through the whole cluster to find it and about a quarter punched in one of a pair of similar-looking re-entrants some 40m short of the correct one instead.
Second: partly an over-or-round route choice leg (especially for the women) and partly a read-the-control-description-properly exercise. The navigation was straightforward and the block of thickets very obvious on the ground. The men had the north side of a thicket which also had a flag on the south side, seven of the 92 on the course being fooled by this!
Third: I chose the same site for both men and women here, one of several parallel small re-entrants, which I'd anticipated would be attacked from the path to the south. Those who went straight seemed to have more difficulty as few attacked from one of the two obvious dot knolls to the north. Curiously, the men had a 63% success rate on this tricky control whereas the women were only 33% correct for the same site (am I allowed to mention this?!)
Fourth: another cluster of re-entrants with the men having the first and most obvious, whereas the women had to go further into the cluster.
Fifth: spurs this time, with the men deliberately having the last in the cluster. Perhaps I shouldn't have isolated it so much as those who had sufficient confidence in their navigation to ignore all those they saw on the way had only one to choose from in the end.
At the time of writing I've had 54 replies to my online survey of those running the course and the overwhelming response has been very positive. One or two disliked the whole Micr-O idea but a very large majority enjoyed it, thought it was technical and thought it was fair as well. I plan to report more fully on the feedback in due course.
It was hugely gratifying to read that so many competitors enjoyed the Micr-O experience and would also like to see it repeated in future events. I wonder which club will be the next to take up the cudgels and keep the Micr-O flame burning?
David May
Results Team Comments
I knew it was going to be a complex event
with two starts, two finishes, MicroO, Sprint, people getting
awards in two categories, hardware failure, running out of toner
in the LASER printer, two failed controls... and the list goes
on! In the end there was a glitch; All MicroO result slips
correctly showed the controls visited with an asterisk for
incorrect controls but the penalty under some circumstances was
not correctly calculated. I have fixed this bug now and issued
the preliminary results. Thanks for your patience; I think we
awarded the prizes to the right people!
The MicroO courses have their elapsed time adjusted for the
number of penalties x 30 seconds; the splits are just the arrival
time at the controls.
Gavin