Discussion: Meet feedback

Hope you had a good weekend. Any feedback, good or bad, would be great.

Thanks for a great meet, guys! I had a fantastic time, and really enjoyed the red Y courses. Your terrain is fantastic, and while it never fails to beat the crap out of me, I think that's the point =)

Some constructive (I hope) criticism:

- Not sure how you estimated climb, but it was off by about a factor of two, and staring at the map I can't quite figure out how you'd complete this course with the advertised climb. This is fine, but sometimes it's nice to know the level of epicness you'll be facing ahead of time!

- I think the participant numbers were small enough that you could have combined red X and Y. I for one really enjoy comparing my times against the men, because while the women's field is strong, it's not super deep, and having the M40s and M45s to race against ups the ante a bit. Personal preference, really, and I understand all the reasons to split the courses, but in this case I think it would have worked just fine to have one red course.

- Map clarity wasn't great. I'm assuming this is because of the printing process, but I found the black stuff was a little blurry and hard to read, even after the race (when it's smeared with mud, blood, and peanut butter). There were also quite a few instances where cutting the line or a control circle would have given some clarity to underlying features. Small stuff, but legibility is important =)

Please don't take those comments wrong. Overall, it was a great meet, and I especially loved being able to camp onsite, and the time-o course. Next year, mass start time-o!

I know some people were not used to 1:7500 for brown but as an M75 I thought it was great - nice to see the map features again.

I also really liked the 1:7500 map. Much clearer for me.

I was a very satisfied recipient of some excellent first aid at the finish line. Cleaned me up very nicely. Thanks!

Very nice West Point. I enjoyed the meet, the dinner, the venue, everything.
thank-you.

I will agree with Alex about the climb though. I did Green X and on Day 2 it was about twice the advertised. That's not to say it was excessive (it wasn't), but it certainly wasn't as flat as I thought it would be.

Not sure if you will get any feedback about the long, steep climb to the start both days. It was fine and certainly not unusual for folks that have done O' in Europe. However, there were a few "older" folks, that probably would have appreciated a ride.

I really enjoyed this meet. Thank you, West Point. I have nothing but positive feedback. I felt that the courses were fun and technical on both days. I also felt that the timing of the meet (April 12th and 13th) was excellent - there was no longer any snow on the ground, but the woods were still very open and runnable. The maps, in my humble opinion, were of excellent quality. Registration, start and finish were all well organized and efficiently run. Finally, I thought that the venue - Lake Frederick - was very nice, beautiful and with convenient accommodations.

I think this was my favorite West Point ever. I really enjoyed the courses, found them to be well-planned, and there were some cool control locations too. (The Spiderman-esque climb up between the cliffs on Green-Y 7 to 8 was a bit extreme, though the view from the top was worth it!) At least on my courses, I felt the lengths and climb were appropriate to the terrain. In past years there have been some courses that felt like constant long slogs up hill or through green. This year everything was fun and engaging.

The Time-O was a different twist, and the Maze-O was neat both to watch and to do.

The great weather helped too, along with the late spring lending wonderful visibility in the forest, although those are beyond anyone's control.

Staying right at Lake Frederick was great, although the large numbers of people did lead to lukewarm or downright cold showers. That might be my only complaint!

Are results (other than AP splits) posted anywhere?

I'd second all the positives, and add compliments to the course setters for creating challenging, not-too-physical courses. As an aside, it was interesting how different Green X and Green Y seemed to be (going on memory of the Y maps I saw.)

Very enjoyable meet.... Thanks West Point! The courses, maps, organization, dinner and presentation were all great. Even the weather was outstanding and the laurel didn't seem bad in this area.

Contrary to what Tim said, it was a lot more physical than I expected (call me crazy). When I counted up the climb on my course (Brown Y) and Ed's (Green X)I have to agree with Alex that the climb as advertised may have been off by a factor of two. I'd be interested in hearing from Mike Hendricks on that.

Anyhow, despite being wickedly out of shape and having foot problems, I survived and finished both days... an accomplishment for me. Thanks again to all the cadets and everyone else for putting so much effort into hosting a memorable weekend.

On the note of the climb calculations, it comes down to on overreliance on technology and then getting overwhelmed with last minute coordination issues and not doing it the ‘correct’ way. We got initial climb data from OCAD based on our elevation DEM for planning purposes. This just gives the elevation climb delta between points. I think they were pretty close for Day 1 since there was not much up and down between points, so I got complacent. Day 2 as you all now know has almost a washboard effect and Tom made some great courses that took you over these areas. So… there you go.

To answer another question, last year we got jammed on RED so we split it into RED X and RED Y. It appears we didn’t need it, but we didn’t want to change our process at the last moment. I guess too many are aging up.

Tee-shirts are amazing. Both the front and back designs are great. Shirt color is cool. The front graphic is wild. It borders on spooky. I believe this is the most creative tee-shirt design I have seen in a very long time.

Having anticipated a great weekend of orienteering I was not disappointed! In fact expectations were exceeded. I couldn't have asked for a better season opener! Well worth the drive South.

I was happy dragging myself up the hill to the start, reflecting that at least I wasn't on the clock. The courses were excellent, glad to be up in that fine area.

One thing that I'll mention here, in case future organizers (from any club) are listening: it would be my guess that positioning the download a long way from the finish, positioned such that you walk past your car on the way there, is an invitation for people to forget. Maybe people are used to having to download by now, and maybe the attraction of the results, the food, and the extra stuff like the Maze-O was enough to compensate, but it wouldn't surprise me a bit if at least a few people spaced out in circumstances like that. (Best place for download: immediately after the finish line, such that you can't get past without downloading.)

This event was one of the best West Point events ever, if not THE best. We loved staying in the A-frame and being able to look out and see the lake, as well have all the other amenities just a short walk away. I would also like to encourage a shuttle for the older or disabled orienteers who still love getting out in the woods but find the long and arduous walk to the start a drain on their energy reserves.

I thought the courses were exceptionally well-designed this year; not just my Brown Y, but the Green X and Blue (the only others I looked at). I'd like to suggest a new item for all events: add the course setter's name to the map (at the end of the clue sheet?). Today's printing methods would make this a simple addition. The course setter plays a key role in the experience and it would be interesting to keep track of this info and give credit to the persons who design the courses. What do others think?
Thanks for a great weekend of Orienteering and thanks to Mike Hendricks for helping the WP cadets achieve such success.

Continuing with JJ's thoughts on the download, I would have guessed that the army might be particularly well set up for transmitting data by radio link from one computer at the finish to another remote computer down where the results were being displayed. Perhaps other clubs have worked out something like this?

In any case, from my perspective the meet was well organized and highly enjoyable. In advance I had been a bit skeptical about the Time-O, but in fact it turned out to be lots of fun, and I'm very glad I tried it out.

I'll be very sorry to see Colonel Hendricks leaving West Point, since I think that in the era of the Campbells and Colonel Hendricks the quality of the events, the maps, the cadet orienteering skills has been soaring. I hope that this continues on into the future, but the new leader is going to have some pretty big shoes to fill.

I liked the terrain and courses, and the map update by Bob Burg was well done.

I will mention though, that the course drawing was not as best as could be done. Virtually none of the circles were broken to show nearby features, the numbers obscured nearby detail, and the lines between the controls could be set to default to several mm from the control circle.

The maps are tough to read these days with all the detail, please try and minimize the effect of the purple.

Saturday night's dinner presentations were very good: the history of Lake Frederick & past decade of orienteering at WP.

Map - I would have preferred a 1:10000 map for the Brown course. It took several controls on Saturday to adjust to the scale, admittedly my problem. I did not find that this scale helped. In fact because the area was enlarged so, the coursse came very close to the margins on both days creating nice possibilities to go off the map into ya-ya land. This cropping of features also removed important terrain features that would have been very useful, especially on Sunday in the southeast section heading towards control 5 on Br-X. Heading east one is faced with a long string of cliffs that are not apparent from the available map. Hesitated quite a bit before accepting that the compass may be correct - this time.

Still the courses were a great challenge both days as was the overall organization and of course, great job on the weather.

The brown Y day 1 maps also cropped out a viable route choice of the road from 11-12 (not that I would have gone that way anyway, but some fast runners might have).

I was glad of the 1:7500.

I expect there is a reasonable split on those that liked it and those that would have preferred 1:10,000.

I really liked Saturday's BrownY course. I liked the general flow of Sunday's BrownY course, but thought that a few control placements could have been altered to make it a tad friendlier. For example, put #4 on one of the rootstocks below the cliff; you could see the control from the rootstocks, why make us climb up to the cliff and then right back down again?

I agree that a little more attention to circle and line cutting would have been good. It didn't matter on the 1:7500 map so much but it was an issue at the green course maps I've looked at.

These are just minor quibbles. Overall, it was a great event with the usual cadet friendliness and great organization.

Any hope of Routegadget being available?

RG is up, finally...
http://vmeyer.net/gadget/cgi-bin/reitti.cgi

Delay was me having a mental block with a file. Just got it figured. Let me know if there are any issues with posting your routes.

This is the java free version. If you are uploading gps tracks, you may need to move the time slider a little one way or the other to get things to line up, especially if you started your watch early or late.

Excellent maps and GreenX courses. Well done. It was great to be able to match the map features to the actual features along my route choices. Well run meet. The walk to the start was not a problem, knowing that that allowed a better part of the map to be used.

Facilities were in a good location: It was also great to be able to stay at the start area overnight.

The dinner was great including the talks. I missed some of the historical talk because I couldn't hear the speaker very well - my fault I should have said something at the time.

I remember that the talk was filmed. Is that going to be on youtube?

Just wanted to say that I thought the cadets were the best hosts. Smiles from then anytime I passed anyone whether at registration or on the way to or from the start, and bit all were involved in the meet. It just felt like a very friendly place. And I was so impressed at how the jackets were so nicely laid out at the finish.