Discussion: Rutty

Let's face it, BO was determined not to win the rock again and you played your part admirably.

Going around white, WTF? I could understand me being confused with all the MTBO I do where white is illegal...

Sorry, just read Rachel's log and sounds like one of the organisers led to the confusion of white and OOB.

It wasn't really made very clear exactly what the rule was at the briefing but it was also printed on the map "use tracks only in Bush areas" although I didn't notice that until after I had finished.

That's dumb.

My first leg 4th control (the depression on the SW side of the campus) was in bush with no marked tracks to it, so...hey, let's leave it to the competitors to determine what's a track or not, that never ends in controversy. :)

I just ignored Mike's ramblings and ran it like a normal sprint event.

So long slow distance and lots of huffing and puffing?

BO's implosion is a whole separate issue.
I had a control where I had to go into the white to punch it. If I had gone directly through white in and out of that control I would have been substantially faster. Liam had a control on a wall end where he had to cross out of bounds garden bed. It is like the organisers don't understand what "out of bounds" actually is. I would not put any blame on any competitor in this event for whatever interpretation they made of the "white" as out of bounds as the Mike's spiel was very ambiguous and the organisers contradicted themselves by putting controls in out of bounds.
People think setting sprint events are easy but they do need to put more thought than usual into making sure the setting is fair. Apparently people also had issues in this event in the area where there are multi-levels. Again something that should be resolved at a setting / controlling level to make sure it is fair.

Wouldn't be the first time I've seen CP's in OOB in a sprint. Pretty sure I did a once-over for someone else's event where I had to get them to move a fair chunk of controls out of OOB.

Rachel - yeah, I know of at least one control that was placed directly under the edge of an overpass, and described so that it could be on either level.

Tooms - up yer nose. :p~

ECU requested we not go into bush areas, and particularly to stay on paths in the accommodation area. Mike asked my advice on what to do about this 5 days before the event - too late to change the map (not sure what we would do anyway, as it would be confusing to show them as garden, purple stripe would be ugly, not show up in small or thin areas, and/or might obscure detail). I suggested that they just cover it in the briefing. It seemed clear enough to most people, particularly after HP asked a question and I clarified by saying that you could go through white areas on a path or yellow.

There was a yellow way into the depression, and I'm assured by someone else who had the same wall end control as Liam that it was not actually in the garden, even though the map showed that it was.

Must admit that I went to the wrong level at 140, but the circle was appropriately offset and I should have gone to the correct level (the pressure of sprints, and especially relays, has a way of making you do these errors). I gather there was one other control where access from the West led to the wrong level. Earlier versions of the map had the underpass symbol, which now seems to have been removed.

Yeah, the version on TBT describes the lower level as much as possible:

at the cost of obscuring that you can go from the northern courtyard to the western overpass - it's always been the setter's responsibility to avoid this junction in most directions because it's basically impossible to draw the multiple levels without any ambiguity. The underpass symbol works somewhat, but even at 1:4000 I found it unclear, and someone always misreads it at speed.

There was also a map error at this building corner:

where there was a control. The path continues on to the north, but I'm not sure if it's a dead end or not. Nearmap suggests it's always been there, so we should probably fire the mapper. :)