Discussion: route choice legal or not?

I ran a race recently and took a route choice which it seemed that the route planner had never thought about:

https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=C09E5929CBA7...

Olive green (ISOM 527) is stated as forbidden to enter in this race, so I am not sure is my route choice legal or not:

I have asked different people whether this route choice is a rule infraction, but they have different opinions:

1. There is a small path (ISOM 507) passing through the olive green. Does running on the path violate rules?

2. The small path joins a minor road (ISOM 503). There are crosses (ISOM 711) on it, but I didn't run through the crosses, but the portion outside them. Does running that part violate rules?

3. There is a railway track on a bridge. The railway bridge is forbidden to enter and marked with olive green, but I purposely ran under the bridge. Does this action violate the rule?

You ran off the map. It's highly unlikely that anyone would have thought of that route choice. My views:
1. Legal
2. Ordinarily illegal; doesn't matter on the positioning of the crosses because it's not feasible to put enough crosses on the road to cover every bit of it. Generally the crosses would be at the start and end of the points of access to show that it's forbidden.
3. I reckon if they wanted you to run under the bridge, there'd be crossing points marked. Given you ran off the map, this wasn't thought of.

Based on the map, from my view legal. The issue is that the map does not show that as an option so the organizers/course planners messed up. They should have dropped a maroon x over the path or added to the map.

1. Ok to run on a path that goes completely through olive green.

2. Not okay to run on a road that has crosses on it (ISOM symbol 711 Forbidden route), though I think the placement of these crosses is weird.

3. It looks like the railway is mapped as a bridge where you ran under it, so that is okay. And if you were under the railway bridge the whole time then you were never even off the map.

I think that if this was not supposed to be allowed as a valid routechoice then there should have been a bit more purple on the map, though it does look like the intention was to keep you from using that road.

Crosses on a road don't necessarily indicate the entire road illegal to run along, just the section marked, I believe, such as from some intersection to another. There's a short section of the road between the intersection with the trail and the railroad, so one could conceivably interpret the crosses to mean that the route is forbidden on the west side of that intersection, but not the east, since the trail is not marked with X's. However, the section is so short that there's not a lot of room to put an X there to indicate that that section is also forbidden, so it could be claimed to be ambiguous. Nonetheless, the organizers could have put an X on the trail to clarify, if intended as forbidden. The upshot seems to be that course setters may want to be quite explicit in such things.

1. Currently OK. There's a proposal in the ISOM map revision that would have path underlaid with white if legal.

2. I never understood this symbol "Forbidden Route". Obviously its not OK to run along that bit of road, but I believe it should be OK to cross it - this is a not uncommon stipulation from landowners. If crossing were also forbidden, the symbol would mean the same as OOB, and therefore be pointless.

3. OK to go under the bridge. Not OK to go off the map (you might argue the boundary is unclear if you stayed under the bridge of if there was flat woods out there).

However, I think if this route was legal, the organisers would have made a bit more effort to show it. So as a runner I would choose a different route, but as a juror wouldn't disqualify you.

One terrain on the upper peninsula of Michigan indeed was surrounded by flat open woods, and mapped as such. And it was a valid route on some legs.

Since the road is mapped as olive green on either side, it wouldn't be possible to cross it in this scenario. I think it's mapped this way just to say hey there's a road here but you're not allowed on it. If it was mapped without the olive green then I'd be inclined to allow crossing also.

Check the date of the post guys. This one seems to have sucked in a few more than the Swedish one.

So anything posted yesterday is a hoax then? I guess I didn't really climb any stairs yesterday either. I'd better go and do them now.

No wonder no one's commented on the course setting submissions. I'd better repost today. ;-)