In 2010 the Bendigo Club inaugurated the Golden Leg Award for the best leg of the year. The award is chosen by club member vote at the end of year event. All contenders are pinned to notice boards and members vote by placing coloured stickers on their choice. With over 30 forest events a year, there are many to choose between. The award intention is to encourage course setters to look for good route choice legs in their course setting. [We also vote on a noodle award based on the best mis-navigation of the year. Some years the winner received a club shirt with the noodle map on the back and advice not to follow the wearer. This amusement alone justifies the club subscription to Livelox]
Some observations:
1. Not all terrain lends itself to good route choice legs. If a course setter can split the runners in flat red line terrain, they are doing well.
2. Set the long leg before the rest of the course. With courses only up to 7 k long, you might need a third of the course to get a good long leg.
3. Check if you need each and every control. One of our award winners can be put down to fortuitous control elimination. The event was a National League. The last leg (prior to the finish chute leg) was set for a two option route choice. The course setter discovered he had one to many controls on the course compared to the number available. As event adviser I suggested removing the second last control as it wouldn't make much difference to the two possible route choices. Come event day, the three leading runners arrived at the second last control as a pack. Only then did it become clear that removing the control had created a viable third route. The three runners split between the three route options. The one who chose the optimal route won.
Here are some of the recent contenders.
Making route choice in unhelpful terrain.