Thanks to eveeyone involved in yesterdays event. Great to be back. Nice mix of parkland and town. Nicely planned with no obvious route. Really enjoyed it.
I gather the winning strategy is to clean up one colour then see what you can get on the other colour on the way back. I have done loads of this format but never tried that idea.
The age handicaps are really generous aren’t they? I don’t think I deserve mine.
I think we’ll have to do better at social distancing though. We were too close to each other especially afterwards. I had to get close to people to download.
I went for most of the light blue then swapped with about 20 mins to spare. Left a handful of 10s and 20s near the end and was able to clear them as I passed the finish with 10 mins to go.
I got a bit worried about time as it approached 20 mins to go and decided to swap 1 control before the plan I’d made on seeing the map. As it turned out, I could have got that last one and scored an extra 40 points.
I wonder if we need a different handicap scale for this type of course?
Agreed on the social distancing. We had planned to have the download box on a stake 2m out from the tent, with marked queue up to it. Unfortunately, the place we were allowed to set up the tents was straight onto the hard path and prevented that.
Comment received from @craddocktaunton:
Problem with rain as we were putting up the tent, download, and start! We tried to keep the presentation of trophies away from the download, but we are such social animals after such a long period of not meeting up! More of a problem was keeping away from the general public on the footpath. Many thanks for the helpers at the starts, finish, first aid, presentation, and results. Congratulations to the winners of the Senior award, Angela Modica, and the Junior award, Andrew Page. Especial thanks to Jim Mallinson and his team of helpers for putting on a rare SI event!
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I’m looking at the names of past winners on the trophy and can see only 6 women (exc. juniors) have won in the last 28 years. So I’m guessing the BOF handicap system is trying to address this issue.
Angela
By giving a generous handicap to women suggests BOF is encouraging us to compete.
Challenging course and liked lots. The hardest decision was after I’d punched the first control (to easy to ignore) and had to decide which way to go next - it was 180 degrees in the other direction ! I stayed on the same colour for so long because I couldn’t find an effective switch point which maintained my points average until the end !!
Angela
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Really enjoyed the club champs. It was great to see everyone again. Unfortunately we didn’t have too much opportunity to chat as Ben had football in the afternoon. Excellent set up and loved the course, thanks Jim. I really liked the need for constant decision making as I knew that I would only get around a limited number of the controls in the time. If it makes anyone feel better re the handicapping, an average 21 year old lad is atleast twice as fast at running as I am! Thanks to everyone involved.
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Well done Angela. The heady mixture of fast running and not getting lost works well!
BOF’s handicap system was designed to counterbalance the effects of traversing rough terrain? So with it being a street series, the scoring system I devised for last season’s Maprun series league scoring was based on age group athletics performances. I feel it was justified by the way we had different handicap winners from various gender/age groups each week. If it had been used at Longrun, it would also have produced a closer finish than you had and I believe, given more hope to certain runners who might otherwise feel they didn’t have a chance. https://www.quantockorienteers.co.uk/info/about/types-of-event/maprun-index/maprun-league-scoring