Discussion: Relay results

In a rare lapse, OCIN has waited TWO WHOLE DAYS to post relay results. Inquiring minds want to know! Can anybody who was there at least post the medal winners?

4 pt
GHO (non-eligible)
DVOA
HVO
QOC

8pt
DVOA
CSU (non-eligible)
??? (non-eligible)
WCOC
SLOC

12pt
CTOC
OLOU (?)

from memory, apology for any errors

Sorry for the delay. Randy's posting is correct, except Team ??? (CAN + ROM) beat CSU by a second or two.

I think the results crew was not using the Relay SI software and had to manually add the times. Also, teams kept registering and/or changing lineups until a few minutes before the start; some (I guess ??? included) never bothered to put in runners' names. I, the announcer, did not get the (still incomplete) start lists until Leg 1 finish.

I do not know what the 12-pt competition situation is. The OLOU team, announced and awarded as 2nd, apparently mispunched, so 2nd allegedly goes to Central Ohio. I really think this category is not needed, given that only 6 teams started, of which 5 were complete, 3 were eligible, 2 actually finished, and only one managed to escape the CUMS.

Congrats to DVOA on two club victories.
how about that yellow course? yellow?

Evalin finishing that course may have been the performance of the weekend ...

That was impressive - I think Evalin beat my father by 6 or 8 minutes on that course. My theory is that the relay yellow was making up for the sprint yellow/white, where the winning time was under 9 minutes, rather than the predicted 12-15.

Yellow was not really yellow! Some short legs where way too advanced. Evalin's performance was the sunshine of the day :) So nice we have young girls interested in the sport!

I am with Vlad on 12 pts team category. Without competition it is not worth to have.

OCIN should have used Relay SI software. So nice to have results posted right after the leg finish. Makes handling of the results flowless.

Several of the teams running 4 and 8 points didn't realize they could have chosen to run the shorter 12point version unofficially.

I don't know what's taking so long. We've had raw results (in an ugly form) since Sunday night.

Before eliminating the 12-point option, check the results for the past 2 Relay champs. Here's 2005.

In 2005 in Colorado, there were 19 12-point teams (11 seem to be US official) and 17 finished. With a 'respectable' team, we (SLOC) finished 8th overall, 6th officially. Of the 5 club teams ahead of us, CSU and WCOC 'moved up' to 8-point this year. Three west coast teams (BAOC and 2 COC) brought few members to Cincinnati. SLOC's juniors aged up this year, costing us 2 points and Dave Frei replaced Beth Skelton, so we also moved to 8-point. Last year it was fun to be competitive (4th was within reach!) in 12-point - we would not have been competitivie in 2005 8-point competition.

Last year, only 8 of 12 8-point teams finished.

With the Sprint in the morning and the warnings about the Relay terrain and courses, I wonder how many 'seniors' just chose to skip this year's Relay. The length (Greens) and difficulty (Yellow) of several 8-point and 12-point legs this year caused the large number of Relay DNF's. Some 3rd and 4th leg runners had no interest in mass starting late or they went out recreationally.

12-point teams do provide a good incentive for family teams and for recruiting juniors for the Relay teams, "We need your points."

The more we can do to recruit families and juniors the better!

As a family, we are 11 points and will not increase or reduce that number in a few years. If we had two sons we would have 4 less points and be placed in the same category as most of the elites. I still suggest changing the points to 2-6-10. Where is next years relay champs?

Yes, in the current point structure, a family pretty much needs 2 kids to reach the 12 point category. (or a grandparent!). On the other hand, you are going to have a very competitive 8-pooint family team for a long time (unless someone starts showing their age!)

Yes, I agree that 2-6-10 has appeal at both ends.

BTW, isn't it interesting that all proposed criteria have been even numbers? Hmm, think of the discussion and cosmic dissonance that 3-7-11 would cause!

One consideration against running through the start during the relay would be that it was full of people, and you would risk both getting somebody hurt and having to slow down.

Then again, I agree that with 20-20 hindsight, it looks like a much better idea than
descending early like I did.

Having run through the start, I have to say that I was not slowed down at all and if I were, then those split seconds could have been lost by walking (and not running) any climb further on.

Relay results are posted at ocin.org

Sorry for the delay. As Matthew mentions, originial results were ugly & in some cases had mistakes that made them just plain wrong. The many teams who waited until the last minute & even made changes on the fly definitely made it a challenge to get the results correct.

I want to compliment Vladimir's announcing and the list he wrote up from memory the next day. When everything ws finally processed he turned out to be exactly right on the 4 and 8 point team's eligibility and positions.

We had 37 full teams and several partial ones.

Besides Evalin, 2 other young girls: Masha Velichko and Katie Williams also deserve congratulations for completing the yellow leg of the relay. Although it was a tough yellow, it does not appear to have been a stopping point for any team with young kids, although an adult and a high school boy each mispunched on it.

On a related note, I've heard a couple complaints that an older orienteer "shadowing" one of the young runners was actually running ahead of the younger orienteer at times. Doesn't shadowing imply staying behind? There weren't any actual protests, but there was definitely some concern about fairness expressed by parents of other young orienteers.

Mike

For such a challenging yellow course on a relay, I cannot fault a shadower for occasionally leading a young child. The unfairness was in the course.

I don't think course difficulty justifies outside help.

Yellow course wasn't yellow at all.

Maybe one of the lessons is that the goal of forking everything be relaxed to allow for appropriate difficulty yellow and orange legs. You lose more by having too difficult courses than any increased "fairness" brought about.

While I liked the red course, and thought green was OK, there was probably not enough gradation in difficulty between yellow, orange, green, and red.

"I don't think course difficulty justifies outside help"
Eddie, have you seen the course?

A yellow course should not be entirely through the woods like that. Yes, it can have short off trail routes, but it should also have an option to take a trail around. I also think the re-entrants, gullies and hills were too steep and difficult for a 10 year old. We want to encourage the participation of the young crowd, not discourage it with difficult courses. In the future, set a course that invites kids to participate. Besides Evalin, Masha and Katie, how many kids were there under 14?

As for shadowing or leading, I think we can all be guilty of following at one time or another during a relay.

I have gathered that the yellow course was overly difficult. The question is "does an overly difficult course justify cheating?" or should it simply merit a protest based on the difficulty issue? If half of the competitors got help from their shadows and the other half managed it on their own, thats not fair. Period. If everyone struggled on their own because the course was overly tough, at least it was equally tough for everyone. A grievance can then be filed afterwards arguing that the yellow course was actually a green course or some such and they could make a ruling. It was my understanding that help from a shadowing adult is strictly prohibited by rule, but maybe thats not correct.

Second time forking used in relays and same complains about too difficult courses for juniors. Forking makes it almost impossible to design easy coursed for white/yellow levels. May be forking should be done on advanced legs only (orange through red)?

Just a note for future relay planners.

Eddie, are you accusing someone of cheating? First the Atak pants and now this.

Now you're just putting words in my mouth. Please re-read the above posts. As you may be aware, I wasn't even at the event. I merely replied to dness' comment with my own opinion.

In Sweden it is quite common practice in 'mixed relays' to leave the white/yellow courses/legs unforked but still fork the longer and more advanced legs. This means Sergey is thinking along the right lines in his post above.
Another thing - with a "guarantee" of normal easy courses the issue of shadowing or not shouldn´t arise at all. If you´re not ready to do a white/yellow course on your own you´re even less ready to do it in a relay and shouldn´t start at all...
On the other hand there is the occasional youth relay where shadowing is allowed! (white/beginners level relay).

A note on forking: yellow was forked only with orange. Advanced courses forked only with other advanced courses. The orange on 4 point teams was unforked. So, if this yellow was really too tough, the blame is not on forking with advanced courses. I'll try to post some maps later today.

Was the course too tough? Well, it definitely used some steep area, and it definitely was not white, but I am going to disagree & say that it was an appropriate yellow course (you should have seen it before the consultant and I hacked at it).
Take a look at these decriptions (and map when I get it posted).

Control 1: small clearing less than 50 meters from a road Y, with road route available all the way.
Control 2 (both forks) were within 100 m of, and visible from the campground road. From 1 to 2A, bounce off the road, from 1 to 2B cross it, counting campsites & water pumps as attack points.
Control 3 was on a very open spur sloping gently down from the road circle at the end of the campground road. Visible from at least half that distance.
Control 4 at path crossing stream. Off trail navigation from 3, but straight down dry ditch/reentrant to major trail & large stream, then follow trail.
Control 5 - trail to the hilltop, then right a few meters to the gully top.
Control 6. - trail stream Y. Follow trail. Turn right up stream.
Control 7 - rootstock next to the stream. Just go downstream until you hit the rootstock. Major path & stream are just beyond it as catching features. Yes, the streambed was a little rough in places
Control 8 - downstream for a few meters, turn left on trail until it crosses major stream. Turn right on trail for 100 meters, looking into the dry ditch easily visible to left of trail.
Control 9 - 250 meters east cross-country through open forest to the campground & the spectator control adjacent to the start/finish. This would have been tough, except the woods were so open, you can easily see the campground loop, cars & download truck from almost the beginning of the leg.
Control 10 - clearing - a campsite & fire ring maybe 20 meters off the road.
Control 11 - (both forks) both upper parts of reentrants about 100 meters off the campground road. Arguably the toughest controls on the course. Picking the right place to leave the campground by carefully reading the campsites & the water punps was necessary. A trail between the two controls provided a relocation feature.
Control 12 - gully end less than 50 meters of open forest from the campground, and streamered to the finish. If you passed it; you could follow streamers back.

It was definitely not an over-easy yellow (no all-white legs), but the individual legs and locations were all yellow difficulty, borne out by the 30-40 minute finishing times of the three 10-14 year old girls.

Mike

The ideal shadow says nothing, stays well back, and might as well not be there unless the kid needs to be rescued. Having been a shadow many times myself, I can say that in practice, there are occasions when it's appropriate to say something to a kid who is frustrated, along the lines of, "Okay, where are you? What can you see? Where are you trying to go? What's your plan?". The kid still solves the navigational problem, but once in a while a little brain organization is called for. And occasionally there's a question that it's reasonable to answer ("What's a cairn?" "What do these purple stripes mean?"). At a local meet, I've even found call to lift a very short kid up off the ground a foot or so in order that he could see something that would be obvious to a taller person.

But being ahead of the kid? That's something I don't understand (except for maybe running ahead briefly for a photo-op or something).

yellow map is posted at:
http://www.ocin.org/flying_pig/pigX/results/yellow...

you right, yellow map isnt yellow at all. i would say at least brown level. and some places could be red.

To you folks who know the right way to shadow (preferably J-J's right way, but minus the lifting): I need shadows for at least three kids on white this weekend at the NEOC meet. Any volunteers?

Div - brown/green/red/blue courses are defined as differing in distance, not technical difficulty.

No doubt about it...that is one tough "yellow" course.

I've been waiting to comment until a map was posted. This is clearly a yellow course. In almost every leg there are linear features to follow to an attackpoint and a short attack into a control.

There are two questionable areas:

5-6, where the trail is more indistinct than mapped, and should have had a flagging tapes placed on trees to show the trail.

The finish loop, where the little control picking is out of sight of the campground loop somewhat.

Looking at the splits (which I see have a few issues to take care of tonight), I don't see an excess of mispunches. One obvious one is 199---was that a problem with the unit? (Our SI guy left about halfway through, and I vaguely remember a comment about it not registering even after two tries.)

Physically, it's a little harder than I'd care to set, but both major descents and both major climbs are in relatively safe areas. An aggressive cross-country route from 5-6, (or a route that misses the trail I mentioned), has about 2 contours of pretty steep descent.

I judge difficulty by DNFs, mispunches, and complaints. On this course, I'm completely happy with the very few mispunches and DNFs. I'm concerned about the complaints. I'm also aware of one DNF on yellow who only made it to point 2 (2A on the link), and then went NE toward 3, then slipped in a gully and lost the SI card.

Mike and I in the past have had discussions about the white, yellow, and orange courses. He doesn't like it when I say, "That was an A-Meet yellow." I use that term because for our local meets, I tend to have white legs in areas I worry about for the local ROTC and other school runners.

Except for anomalous course setting fiascos (white courses with long compass runs, etc.), the hardest yellow course I recall is one from DVOA's Return to the Water Gap in Nov 2003. (I think---I'm still looking for my nephew's map.)

This is only my second A-meet as course setter, so I know I've got a lot to learn. My personal problems with these relays are related to the length and climb of the advanced courses, and the problem with the winning times (which I thought would be lower than they were). I'm surprised that this yellow course is considered as hard as people are saying it is (although I do wish I'd taped that trail).

On the contrary, I think 6 is a perfectly valid yellow leg. 5 is a little dicey. 7 would be hard for an orange runner. 9, 11 and 12....I've seen easier controls at WOC. Closeness to an attackpoint or linear feature does not equate with easy all the time. Even 2a and 3 look scary to me.

6-7 is a pure linear feature. That's a white leg. (Okay, a hard white leg, and you have to know what a rootstock is.)

From 8-9, you can see where you need to go---the woods are pretty open, and the white tents and the building are visible.

The north lines are 250m apart, so the points on the finish loop are quite close together.

A wise orienteer recently rhetorically asked why the yellow course didn't use the yellow course-suitable terrain around the camping areas. I think it is a valid question as I think it would be easier to set a yellow course of appropriate physical and technical difficulty there.

No disrespect but, damn. That's an orange course at least - bordering on brown. 2A, 3, 4, 5, 7, and 11 all have plenty of ways to go wrong. Worse, they are "trap" legs where you are tempted to go straight at them rather than take the safer around route. Yellow courses should encourage staying on the feature.

I think most yellow runners would struggle mightily with this course. They would probably finish because the big features allow relocation, but they wouldn't feel like they were doing very well. Yellow is supposed to build confidence. Why would you worry about "ROTC and other school runners" at local meets but not at an A-meet?

Uh oh... we may need to have a course setting clinic :)

I am sure you were joking about 6-7 being a white leg. It isn't.

I wasn't joking.

But I do think it's a yellow leg. I qualified it.

OK - I can agree with that. But, I still am curious why that particular terrain was used. It is arguably not the most suitable for beginner courses. It seems like it might have been possible to keep yellow up on the flats while not compromising the advanced courses, which were nice and appropriately challenging. Just a thought...

from BAOC site:

Course-by-Course Details

White course

White is designed for beginning orienteers and young people under 12 years old. All controls should be on trails or handrails (fences, streams) that are easy to follow. It is often recommended to place controls at decision points on the course, but there should only be ONE route choice. Climb should be kept to a minimum.

Avoid the temptation to set a challenging White course. The White course can never be too easy; remember, these are first-time or young orienteers who are just learning to read the map and associate it with their surroundings.

The distance should be 1.5 to 3 kilometers, with shorter distances in our steeper or more rugged parks.

The distance should be 4 to 8 kilometers, with shorter distances in our steeper or more rugged parks.

Yellow course

Yellow is designed for advanced beginners who need to follow handrails (preferably not trails) to the area of a control but are ready to leave the handrail near the control. Controls should be on or within sight of handrails. Controls do not need to be placed near decision points. Leg lengths should not vary much. The fewer trails you use as handrails, the better-prepared Yellow orienteers will be for intermediate courses.

The distance should be 2 to 3.5 kilometers, with shorter distances in our steeper or more rugged parks.

Orange course

Orange is designed for intermediate orienteers who are ready to begin going cross-country. There should be two route choices to each control. One route should be a direct cross-country route, and the other should be a longer handrail route. Normally, the cross-country route should give the better time for the more advanced intermediate orienteers.

Leg lengths should vary. Orienteers should be encouraged to use compasses and simple contouring to cut corners. Cross-country routes should have large features that can serve as attack points.

The distance should be 3 to 5 kilometers, with shorter distances in our steeper or more rugged parks.
Brown, Green, Red, and Blue courses

The advanced courses are designed for orienteers able to make full use of their maps, compasses, and the terrain. The navigational difficulty is exactly the same for all four courses; the difference lies in the total distance and climb. The Brown course should have a minimum of physical punishment; the Blue course should be the most physical.

These courses should be completely cross-country (minimal use of trails) and should encourage orienteers to interpret complex contour and feature details. Legs should vary in length. Control sites should be on point featurs far from obvious relocation points. Errors can result in large time losses for the longer courses.

There are several reasons I didn't use the campground.

Completely by chance, I picked the relay start and finish in a spot that went right through Mike's sprint courses. (In fact, I'm pretty sure I stole the long white spur area for my finish loops---I think he planned to run the sprint down that (because I found some of his tapes there).)

Until I knew he had picked this area for the sprint, I had planned sort of a three-leaf clover course arrangement (i.e., two spectator controls).

When I found out he had the sprint here, I decided to minimize my use of the campground "sprint-type" terrain, and only use it to set up for long legs, and get people in and out of the event center.

The other reason I didn't was because the area I did use had enough trails and other linear features to use for a white, if I'd needed one. It was the obvious place to put it.

Looking at the campground, there are actually not many loop trails there, so a yellow would have to rely on the paved roads more than I think a yellow should.

Here are the white-yellow definitions from USOF; which I believe I have met with this course:

http://home.comcast.net/~rshannonhouse/CS-Local.ht...

The reason I worry about ROTC and other local runners is we're not confident in the knowledge they have from their leaders. I make it a point to explain what a white and yellow course are. When someone knows that a yellow course is "following a linear feature to an attackpoint, and then an attack to the control (and often a return to the linear feature)", they start to see the map that way.

You're very brave to set yourself up for - hopefully - constructive criticism, Mr Creek.

Quotes from the USOF rules you link to.
2. Easy Course. Yellow should still be an easy course.
5. ... Avoid using reentrants or other contour features for control points. All control features must have nearby attack points on handrails and catching features.
7. Catching Features. There should be an obvious catching feature shortly after the control when approached from the attack point.

Particularly problematic in view of these are 2A, 3, 5 (attackpoint?), 9, and 11A and 11B.

It's a great course for a relay. It's just that half of it is a great orange course and half of it is a great yellow course.

To Flying Pig organizers, please accept this discussion as constructive one - this is not merely to argue against the courses or level of competition at the Flying Pig (which is of fine quality and always enjoyable) but to provide a feedback to the course setters to help with future course designs. I am personally always looking forward to participating in annual Flying Pig due to the good maps, challenging courses, and highest possible competition.

Speaking about yellow courses at this year Flying Pig I have to note that each of them had one or two legs of great difficulty for yellow level competitor. Looking at Masha's results Friday and Sunday, she had one major error of 30-40 minutes each mainly due to this. These legs required use of the precise (or so) bearing or confidence in reading contours. At yellow level we should not expect kids to master this kind of skill. Relay yellow course was probably the easiest of all 4 :) I agree that there should be transition in difficulty from white to yellow but, please, make all legs conformant to the requirements.

When setting my first A-meet courses 10 years ago, a very effective east coast course consultant was quite adamant that my Yellow course should not require 'reading of contours' or ' 'compass work' (in particular bearings). I liked those guidelines, redesigned my Yellow course, and it was much more appropriate. (I'd argue that using compass to keep map north IS a Yellow skill - not sure.) He and I only disagreed on whether a large steep re-entrant at Babler qualified as a 'linear feature' (my point of view) or as 'reading contours' (his point of view). I still disagree, but I did eliminate that leg too.

I claim that 2A, 3, 4, 9, 11AB, and 12 stretch his guidelines. Each requires a pretty good sense of direction and/or contours without linear features to use as guides.

I find 5, 6, and 7 as fair but challenging Yellow legs: 5 and 6 due to length; 5 and 7 due change of direction.

OCIN relied heavily on "open woods", "visibility of control", and "visibility of campground". The problem with the first two is that often other controls were visible from the campground - thus requiring a sense of direction. The problem with "visibility of campground" is to see uphill and recognize the CG and to put together 'where I am', 'where CG is', and 'where I'm going' - exactly what I blew going to my last (yes, Yellowish) control on the Relay (exhaustion).

Also, if 'general direction' or 'downhill' doesn't work on controls 2A, 3, 4, and 11AB, drifting is easy and relocation is hard (at the Yellow level). Most of these use reentrants as their catching features - sounds like Orange legs.

Matt stated, "In almost every leg there are linear features to follow to an attackpoint and a short attack into a control." For Yellow (and Orange), "almost" is not good enough. Too often an otherwise strong Yellow or Orange course is spoiled by 1-2 "almost" controls - either due to what the terrain offered or due to the course designer wanting to 'challenge' them once or twice.

It is true that A-meet Yellow orienteers are often quite adept - they're adapting orange level skills - but we are not allowed to rely on that. In course designing, I find Orange hardest to design (avoid Green legs) and Yellow next hardest (not White but not Orange either). Of course, for the Relay, most runners on the Yellow leg were not Yellow age group - but we need to make it inviting for the few.

In advance, I dreaded the 6.1K Green Relay leg (8 pt), but once on the course, I actually enjoyed the route choices. Neither the climb nor rose was as brutal as anticipated - nice job! (but on a Relay, I'd still prefer Green to be 5K max - especially course #2 on Sat). I haven't run many Sprints - I enjoyed course #2 - under 19 minutes - unheard of for me!

I agree with Sergey, on all accounts. I really thought all the courses I ran on were really good, as were most of the other ones I saw. With so many things done well, I hope this harping about yellow courses doesn't drown out the credit OCIN deserves (which happens all to frequently.)

My argument for all six of the controls you mention is the knowledge that the hilltop is a flat plateau. For 2A, 3, 11A, and 11B, if you start to go downhill, you've hit the catching feature. (Did you hear that the hills are pretty steep?)

The attackpoint for 5 is the point on the trail when you reach the flat plateau. (The placement on 5 is a little too hidden, but just a little.) 5-6, again, is the big problem I have with the course because of the difficulty of following the trail.

9 is where all the people are. I think it's basically trivial.

I'm really interested to hear what the people who ran it think was difficult about it. And again, I think the results speak for themselves. (When we get them posted, hopefully tonight.)

I agree with Ricka's observation about orange courses -- they are surprisingly tough to design, and, along with beginner courses, may dictate the placement of the start and finish.

Uh oh -- I think you might be asking for it :)

I'm leaving the keyboard for awhile, so to wrap up a few points:

I agree with Ricka mostly, but I don't like blanket statements like "no reading of contours" and "no compass work".

Another thing I'd just throw out is the difference between what a yellow leg looks like at 1:10000 v. 1:15000. If you make them look similar, the 1:15000 leg becomes a very long attack from the linear feature. This is 1:10000, and the attacks tend to be (just looking here) about 50m, #3 being about 100m.

Probably the trickiest last leg of all was 37-199. That's probably the one that got Ricka. It's tougher than it looks.

I completely agree with Sergey that is is a constructive discussion. One last thought: I was trying to make a yellow course that would be easy enough for beginners and still challenging or interesting for people who normally run orange or advanced. It seems fair to me that an advanced runner should be able to choose an advanced route and benefit from it. Also, they tend to be going much faster, and that adds difficulty, too. It appears I may have failed to make it easy enough.

I'm really glad to see all this discussion of yellow course design. It's awesome that OCIN has provided this opportunity! Thank you!

Sometimes it is really hard for an advanced orienteer to step back and design the white and yellow courses. It's sort of like not being able to fall off a bike once you know how to ride one. Things that look so obvious to us are not obvious to the kids/beginners.

Yellow should still be an easy course.

One white course at last year's Scottish 6-day had an unfortunate leg; I know of 3 kids who broke down in tears because of it. A wall (that was clear on the map) disappeared and only reappeared inside some thick vegetation. I think you have to actually walk the whole course with the right mindset in order to see the potential problems.

I totally agree that Yellow and Orange are the most difficult courses to design - particularly for people who spend almost all their time on advanced courses. That's why I like the tenor of this discussion. I think some good ideas have come to light. It's helpful to actually find a kid lost and crying in the woods to drive this point home.

Again, if you have a group of people who consistently mess up (like the above mentioned "ROTC's and other school runners" - and I'm not slamming ROTC's, just noting an example already cited) you should burn them into your head every time you look at your yellow course. Ask would they mess this up? If the answer is yes, throw the leg out entirely. If it's maybe, fix it. If it's no, they wouldn't, then you've got a nice yellow leg.

Finally, while not against the guidelines, I don't personally like the argument of "you can see the control from the linear feature." We're trying to teach them to read features. I think it's better to use a feature that is MUCH more visible than the control bag (without, obviously, hiding the bag to achieve it).

... still challenging or interesting for people who normally run orange or advanced. It seems fair to me that an advanced runner should be able to choose an advanced route and benefit from it.

It doesn't seem fair tho, at least to me. The handicapping system of the relay seems predicated on the premise that an X point junior is the same as an X point master. The above philosophy has made the X point master more valuable. With X != X, I'm incented to recruit masters over juniors, and I'm not sure that is a good thing.

The attackpoint for 5 is the point on the trail when you reach the flat plateau.

Umm... that's clearly not appropriate for Yellow, in my opinion.

The hardest A-meet Yellow I know of was in Tennessee in 1974. I've seen a copy of it, but it's not online as far as I know. The White course from that day is, though.

lol

I guess that course in Tennessee made everybody here quit orienteering... Not too many orienteers in Tennessee now :-(

So here's the Yellow from Tennessee --

No Matt, my last leg was really easy, it really was Yellow. The 'difficulty' was lack of oxygen to brain - after the spectator control, I relaxed and began to shut down. For my last leg, the safest route was 'up the trail to the campground, turn left, control 20 m or so away from CG', and it was also a fast route. And that WAS my plan. So, half way or less up the trail, I nonchalantly turned left - no reason, no plan; then checked out 2-3 controls as I stumbled to mine. A true Yellow leg - and I bombed it. Lost my team 2 more minutes (I also had trouble finding the lake 2 controls earlier (Orangish leg) for 2 minute error). Two late errors only slightly spoiled the elation of running 14 of 16 controls clean - great Green course!

I find that absolutes such as "thou shalt not kill" or "thou shalt not covet" are still handy, even if often 'bent' a bit. :)

Except for PG, Tennesseans are still asking:

"Well, did he ever return?
No, he never returned
and his fate is still unlearned. (What a pity!)"
.
.
.
"He's the man who never returned.
He's the man who never returned.
E'tu you Charlie?"

I don't see the problem with this Tennessee yellow course. It's only got about 200m climb. 300m if you take the manly route from 2-3. And it's all white forest! Or is that stone? You can almost see every control from the last one.

You might want to add a smiley face to a comment like that. Personally, I really like the way they added the two cliffs to the hilltop NE of #6. Maybe I'll see if I can arrange my drive home from the 1000-Day next summer to pass through Tennessee so I can try out these two courses for training.

Here's the terraserver of that Yellow:
Terraserver link

They did some map corrections, such as the cliffs and the trail.

And the Google Maps:
Google Maps link

The Google link has bad photo coverage, but it might be useful for getting there. It's near Hilham, TN, which is about 10 miles south of Dale Hollow Reservoir.

I can't seem to do smileys. It's going to get me in trouble, I know.

Well, you got me laughing pretty good, and I didn't need the smiley to clue me in.

Poor Mats - he has no training partners because of this course in 1974 :)

Relay maps showing all courses and forks are now posted at ocin.org Relay splits are also posted.

I think Randy's point should be underscored as the signal to noise ratio is getting a bit low here. On any given course, a runner of that skill level should be able to run the optimal route. A leg that requires advanced skills to run the optimal route is not a yellow leg, even if there exists an inferior route of yellow difficulty.

Very well said.

I disagree with Eric. On a Yellow (or Orange) course, if a feasible 'Yellow' (or Orange) route exists on a leg, I don't believe that the existence of an advanced optimal route deems that leg unfeasible for a Yellow course. For example, if cutting between linear features or just cutting corners is faster (which I'd consider an Orange skill, not a Yellow skill), I wouldn't throw out the leg. In fact, that is a way to give a Yellow orienteer a route choice; "Do I take the safe way or am I getting good enough to take a chance?" Which is analogous to choices I constantly make on Green courses; "Can I pull off the faster elite route?"

If Randy meant, don't throw advanced legs onto a 'yellow' relay leg in order to make it 'challenging for advanced orienteers', then I agree with him. Is it fair that an advanced orienteer be able to beat a young junior on the leg? Only if the point structure reflects that. I feel that young juniors are 'under-pointed', thus leading to the recruitment of 2-point M50's and F21's over M15's for example (OCIN's Feb proposal addressed some of these numbers).

On this latest point I'm definitely on Rick's side of the fence - MOST yellow courses that I've seen do have routes that aren't fully yellow that are slightly better than a competent Yellow orienteer would do.

Often this is fairly subtle, but it's there - for advanced orienteers out there, if you have ever run a Yellow course (since running Red), you may have found it easy, but also you may have taken non-"Yellow" routes.

This is especially true in places with open forest - you could have a slightly curvy trail that goes from near-control-A to near-control-B - the Yellow-level orienteer sticks to the trail whereas the advanced orienteer picks up bits and pieces of it while following a compass to cut corners...

Maybe there are shades of grey here that wereb;t spelled out in Eric's point from this morning? Very similar to Eric's point, I think that the "Yellow" route shouldn't be _substantially_ inferior to the Advanced route. As one example, the Pig Relay Yellow 5-6 is a case where a Yellow orienteer could follow the trail, perhaps cutting corners when they could see ahead to other parts of the trail, whereas an Advanced orienteer would probably go straight line. I'd call that a reasonable Yellow _leg_ (ignoring the end-points issue for a moment), even though the "best" route is advanced.

The real issue, which Randy seems to be alluding to, is "Is it fair to have Yellow level runners competing against Red, Green or Blue runners?" Advanced runners can sign up to run Yellow for any other competition only in an Open class, not against the age-classes. So why is it fair in the case of the Relay?

The point system is supposed to make this fair at the TEAM level. If a team runs a 1-pt M45 on Yellow vs. a 3-pt junior, the 1-pt will usually win, but that team should lose (more?) time on other legs. But if on average, you'd prefer a 2-pt M50 or 2-pt F21 over a 2-pt M15 on the Yellow leg, then the point system seems skewed.

Just remember that it's not a handicapped event -- all teams are not supposed to finish at the same time. A team with good runners in their age/sex groups should beat a team with less good runners. Isn't that the way it should be....

It's the job of the club is to figure out the best team based on the expectations for the course (how difficult the terrain is, whether or not there will be forking, what other teams may be doing). Which DVOA seemed to do a masterful job at.

In the BAOC course setter's guidelines (that div posted above), it is very clear that on the orange course, the 'advanced' route should be faster than the 'safe' route, in order to tempt the runner to stop relying on linear features.

Taking a straigh line to a LARGE attack point is an orange-level skill, not advanced. Sticking to the linear feature is yellow and should be punished on an orange course. Cutting across a short stretch open forest to a linear feature feature is a yellow skill and should be rewarded on the yellow course. I stand by my contention that the optimal leg (or at least something very close to optimal) should be doable by the level of runner the course is designed for.

My education about course-setting came from some NEOC document that may now be lost to the ages. I do remember that it was written by Jim Scholten (who similarly hasn't been seen in a very long time), and it used to be in the NEOC meet-director's binder.

Since I never ran Yellow courses (I started with Orange), I considered Yellow to be the hardest course to design when I was first setting courses (White being somewhat more clear in terms of what is expected). Perhaps for that reason, the parts of Scholten's guide that stuck in my mind have to do with Yellow course design. I generally think of Yellow as being a course that (ideally) follows non-trail linear features. This differs from what I have heard from other people, where Yellow follows trails, but the controls are a little way off the trail. But there are two fine examples from Scholten that I remember well, and I think they do describe what you can expect from people on Yellow:
- Going through a couple of hundred meters of white woods to pick up a major trail
- Climbing a trackless hill to a control at the very top

The relay Red 4pt map showing variations had a broken URL, which has been fixed. It is on this page:

http://www.ocin.org/flying_pig/pigX/results/result...

The point in the lake (99) was put there because if you have three forks in one part of the course, Condes requires you to have three everywhere. You can put in nothing, but that meant we might not catch it if we accidently picked that variation... So, I put in a fork that we'd be more likely to notice...

Valerie graciously posted the relay results to Winsplits.

I was trying to figure out if there was a high percentage of booms on any of the Yellow controls, and winsplits shows possible booms in red, although the "boom criteria" is adjustable, and the default often indicates booms for people who are just slower (it "falses" on me a lot, especially when I walk up hills...).

Again, maps are here.

Counting up booms (and I didn't count some that looked like reasonable times to me):
S-1: 1
1-2A: 1
2-3A: 2
2-3B: 1
3-4: 5
4-5: 4
5-6: 2
6-7: 5, including 1 split over 1 hour
9-10: 1
10-11A: 3
10-11B: 1

There were 26 competitors that I know of (25 with splits, 1 lost card). One of the DNFs was a huge string starting with the 3-4 leg, which I didn't count in the numbers above.

I really don't know how to interpret these results. 3-4 on paper looks like a pretty easy leg. 6-7, the longish leg down the stream to a rootstock, has a lot more booms than I'd expect. The big surprises are 5-6, which I thought was pretty challenging due to the difficulty of following the trail on the hilltop---It did take some people 8 minutes or so, but only 2 really long times. 9-10, one of the big complaint legs due to the lack of linear features had only 1 boom, which tells me it was appropriate. The finish loops, which are forked, turned out to be quite challenging. Some of the most obvious lost-time incidents are here (like 1 minute v. 7 minutes). I don't remember a lot of discussion about these loops during planning. The distances are so short, and the campground is so close, I think we assumed they were just trivial. In one case, there is a fallen tree that obscures the approach, and that's probably the biggest problem with the loops. I probably should have spent more time making sure the placements were *very* visible.

Apart from the Yellow Course issue, I've been wanting to ask people about several things related to the relays:

1. What did you think about the forking? Was there too much or not enough? Because of the fairly small field of competitors, I thought going nuts with the forking would take away the head-to-head competition, and make map printing really complicated. I also tried to have the different point courses (Red 4, Red 8) have "forks" where everyone on 4pt would go one way, and everyone on 8pt would go another. On the advanced courses, there are 3 main forks for 4pt, and the 8 pt courses pick 2 of those. The forks are somewhat balanced in length and climb, but we didn't prerun them to verify the times.

2. What did you think about the start-finish-spectator control area? I looked at photos and maps from big relays like WOCs/Tiomila/Jukola, and decided that spreading out into a huge field would not only be unnecessary, but would also spread people out. I thought a small, intimate area with everything going on nearby would be more exciting, and more social, especially for the expected number of competitors we had.

3. I know we had a lot of problems with timely results, and at least one problem with someone grabbing the wrong map. We had to delay the start 10 minutes, and we were close to delaying it more like 30 due to late bib number assignments and some things like bringing one brand of stapler with another brand of staples. (Thanks again to everyone who jumped in to help.) I guess my question is: Other than the obvious "be more organized", what would you have done differently?

(9 days to Tiomila!)

Not being there, I can't comment on the later questions, but the booms on 6-7 don't surprise me at all. It was one of the first legs to jump out at me as being "orange-ish". Long legs on yellow are a problem, even if they do follow linear features.

I would have preferred spectator control placement so there wasn't so much walking between the spectator area and the area to see the last loop runners coming in for the finish. I totally wore myself out doing that 50m 50 billion times :-)

(Of course, logistically that may not have been possible)

We had my [M65+] father do Yellow and my 13-yr-old son do Orange (only his 2nd Orange course), but I think it backfired on us. My father had big booms on 4 and 7 (3.5-4 minutes on each) - I think because he didn't try to run it with a "Yellow" mindset, and use the linear features (however obscure) to his advantage, so I can't say he didn't deserve the booms, but I didn't expect any.

The forking seemed to be sufficient - there were no "trains" and very few pairs, even at the first spectator control, probably due to the vast difference in the first leg participants.

The cozy start/finish/spectator control area was great. Now if only USOF would let the winning times be a little shorter for more excitement. The relay at the NEOC meet was MUCH more fun in that regard.

I'll just reiterate the one other change that future relay hosts should push for (early!), is a change to 2/6/10 point categories. The top US championship team should be able to include 3 open men and 1 open woman, or 2 open men and 2 masters (no pts for 35-39 - give an extra point to pre-teen boys, instead). Note: I have no vested interest in this, given that our goal is just to not be mass-started on legs 2,3,4.

Since we seem to be addressing course setting in general and not just courses at OCIN, I wanted to put out a general comment. With all the talk of making yellows being too hard, I also want to caution against making yellows too easy. They should "still be easy" but it is just as important that yellow not be a long white as it is to not be a short orange in order to help kids make the transition to more complex map reading.

At the same time, one 'orange' leg on a yellow course can make the course too hard while one white leg is just an easy leg.

Also, thanks to OCIN and the several photographers for posting so many pictures on the website!!!

I feel that less forking would have been fine. Doing 8-point leg 3 (Green) I saw very few runners: followed Olga (I think) into 1-3; saw Pavlina and Olga as I left 6; plus a few random encounters with others. (It felt good to see Spike zoom pass me and boom our #10 (?) - only days later did I realize he was then on his way to our #4 :) - he made up 16 minutes on that course over me). Seems that forking is most required for all Leg 1's and for elite teams (who are more likely to form a pack and also to prevent blind following by a 'runner'). If forking adds to challenge of setting Yellow (or other) course, perhaps no fork needed?

The spectator control was a lot of fun, but next time please reomve the "turn off brain" switch that you left lying around there. Runners who chose to run the road to spectator control (not me) ran into a lot of spectator traffic - could have caused a collision.

I was surprised that everyone did remember to punch at the 'remote' Start triangle.

Giving the Relay hosts either shorter or a much broader "expected winning relay time" seems to have consensus. Any reason the USOF Board would not be amenable to that?

I ran the yellow course from a competition in Tennessee 1974, posted here by PG! Had a good run in close to race speed and completed the course in 53 minutes.

I found some fossils from other extinct species in the forest, but no Tennessee orienteers.

Map with GPS track

53 minutes for Mats! Yikes! What was the winning time for F-14 back in 1974? 53 hours?

What is the length of the course? And how was the climb into 3?

4 km, or 4.4 km if the lake is uncrossable.

So that's around 12.0 to 13.3 min/km...

Oh, wait, there appears to be a bridge, so 4 km, 13+ min/km.

What? You think there were F14s back then? We barely have any F14s now! No, back then what they had were Marines, and men were men and competed on manly Yellow courses that took 24-30 hours or so to complete.

Is it really accident that the world's most notorious "fun run" is competed in Tennessee? If you're thinking, "Well, maybe," then think again. Yes, it was undoubtedly this Yellow course that unmistakably was the spark, the genesis of what has become the infamous and much dreaded Barkley.

My GPS said 4.5 km, as I ran the course (and I actually cheated by starting and finishing on the bridge over the lake). I probably ‘lost’ a couple of minutes in the area around the second control, because of dense forest (post-1974 clear-cutting), so going up to the third control (140 m climb) was probably faster than going down the slope from control 2. Some more dense forest on the way to the fourth control and on the way down to the last control, which made me take a route to the right (and according to the GPS a missed the control, but I think I actually was rather close to it at least). Nice forest most of the time however, but physically challenging!