Discussion: Mishung

Some of the masters had the wrong knoll circled for #5. Looks like you got one of the bad ones. 15 was definitely mishung - off by almost 200m. Uncharacteristically rough for a Dave Welsh course, but I don't think anybody lost too much time on either of those. Visibility was good enough that people could adjust.

I never did see the mis-placed control 15. Lost a good bit time looking for a similar feature further downstream it might have been mis-hung on. I should have just told myself, 'its not here, tough, move on.'

Only found the mis-placed control 5 by guessing it might be somewhere else, not visible at all from the lower knoll.

Maybe thats why the 'hidden' controls bothered us a bit, Bill? We may have been thinking 'Is this another mis-hung control? - will we be wasting our time climbing into this pile of rocks and see if its actually somewhere in here?', esp. since there were a lot of similar features in the area.

I wasn't performing to my abilities/expectations so the mishangs were more of an added frustration than a major problem, but they did add some hesitation to my navigation. Especially in the green on the eastern border of the course.

#5 bothered me because it was right at the beginning and it threw me off my stride. Mostly because it wasn't a subtle location. I should have just gone on.

#15 involved the luck you've mentioned before. If you were coming at it from #3, the control was pretty close to the redline and easy to stumble across. I came at it from #14 and wasn't looking up the hill at the right moment so I missed seeing the bag, if it was visible from my route. I ran into somebody else at 15 who spent more time looking than I did. And then the punch was missing.

#22 was another location that I questioned. The marked reentrant was fairly subtle and there were several similar reentrants in the area. The reason I thought it might be mishung is that I went past the control and hit the small rock faces to the south. On the way back, I hit the control sooner than I was expecting and due north of the rocks. It is possible that I mislocated the control on my map.

My own errors cost me far more than the misplaced bags, but having 2, maybe 3, in the first 9 controls introduced some uncertainty. And with the bags that were close to the ground or somewhat hidden, it surely added some hesitation. When a control wasn't readily visible, my first thought was "I'm in the wrong place" which then required stopping to look at the map. Then, after making sure I was in the right place, I went into easter egg hunting mode and started searching.

Just to be fair to Mr. Welsh, 15 was the only control that was actually mishung. 22 was right (although I don't think I would have used such a subtle feature in an area of low visibility). 5 was my fault in mis-copying the masters. 34 was wrong on the master given to me, but right on the other master. None of this is to make excuses - they should all be right - but it's not like David doesn't know how to hang a control. The real lesson from this is DO NOT WAIT UNTIL THE WEEKEND BEFORE THE MEET TO SET THE COURSE. Being rushed is a sure way to screw something up. Sorry you guys got burned.

My situation was very similar to Bill's. I needed to build some mental toughness and focus, and the venue served that purpose. Hopefully, we were the most frustrated of all the orienteers out there, new and experienced. At worst, it can get us all thinking about how to improve, and thats what its all about. All the work people put into the meet certainly is not diminished because of a couple of minor glitches.

Absolutely. It was a good meet. It's just that with a little more care on our (DW & Me) part, it could have been a great meet. The miscopied masters was the part that bugged me the most. I had planned to print masters out of OCAD after having DW check the file. That way there's no chance of misplacing a circle. Unfortunately, my large format printer died and I couldn't find a replacement in time. So, I ended up having to copy the controls by hand. I thought I checked them all well enough, but obviously messed up on #5. Ideally, of course, DW would have checked them as well (and caught the problem at #34), but he had already left on vacation. Unfortunate convergence of events and the lesson is as stated above - do things enough in advance and these little snags can't bite you.

The effort of putting on a meet is definitely appreciated and as Rudy said, not diminished by the minor glitches.

And actually, Eric, for me the glitches (mine included) illustrated a lot things you've said in your blogs about how a mishang, bag placement, a miscopied control circle, etc can affect a run. While I didn't have a good competitive run, it was a great learning experience.

For me, its becoming not so much competition as 'professional' pride. I would like to have good runs for that reason. Mark G. jokes about the 'gods of orienteering', but there is kind of an 'esprit de corps'. Even if we are not running together, i feel in that sense we are working together, to better ourselves, the others and orienteering, and i respect the others for that. All the details go into that.

I agree. And I derive satisfaction from competing with myself as well as with others. The external competitive aspect is a good way to measure progress with regards to getting better at the sport. Eric and Dave are good consistent benchmarks to measure against, but I'm not competing with them. You, Rick, Mark, Rob and others are the 'competition' that drives me, in part, to (try to) get better.