Discussion: Flying Pig - Race Details

Race Details page has been updated. Most course length and climb information is now available. Please take note of special parking requirements for Friday's event.

Also, please note that we will be following the new Orienteering USA Rules on control proximity, allowing controls closer together than previously.

Online Registration will close shortly after midnight Pacific time Monday night / Tuesday morning.

Mike: Were you really updating those Race Details at 3am this morning?? I guess that kind of dedication is what has made "The Pig" consistently one of the best O events every year. Thank you.

Thanks, Clark!

If you're having any social gathering Saturday evening, you may want to consider a television for the basketball games, since three of the Final Four teams have campuses within 100 miles of Cincinnati. And you'll be in Kentucky, which means that 100000%* of the local population will be tuning in to that first game at 6:09pm.

* a rough estimate

Mike, would you recommend running the sprint in shorts?

Does that mean restaurants with TVs will be hell on wheels for those of us who DON'T have any interest in basketball?

Yes, but being Kentucky that means the non-TV restaurants will be empty except for 'tourists'. Of course, you might hear the TV from the kitchen.

You also might want to wear green to avoid getting heckled or high-fived.

I would probably not do the sprint in shorts. There are forested portions and if you decide to cut through, you may find some thistles or multiflora rose.

There is a Saturday night dinner, with a guest speaker.

Another post at nearly 3 AM: After 9.5 hours of near-constant work, we have a start list. Guy is auditing it (yes at 3 in the morning), and we should get it posted soon.

A couple notes: Large numbers of people including USMA and a couple schools asked for early starts on Sunday. If your start time is before 10, it is early. We will try to have the start area set up before 9, so if you are at the start early, there is a chance you could go out earlier if you like.

It was very challenging to match all the families and groups who wanted starts close together or split start times. If you did not get what you want, don't panic - we will try to be flexible - just show up at the start early. School teams, please note that we have tried for a consistent minimum separation, so if you miss a start time, it might be a long wait.

On Friday, the last scheduled start is at 4 PM. But if you are delayed or arriving late, we will try to start you. We will plan to leave the start set up until around 5 PM. But be advised that course closing time is based on 2 hours from the last scheduled starrt at 4:00. Control collection will begin at 6 pm.

You may have seen notes that parking will be very tight on Friday. Please carpool if at all possible. There simply is not much space to park and the nearest lot from which we could run a shuttle is a long distance away. Those of you who grew up in the 60's might remember trying to see how many people you could fit in a VW Beetle. We're going to have to do that same act with a very small parking lot.

Cell phone reception is lousy at Middle Creek (Friday) and Big Bone Lick (Sunday). You can usually get a text to go out if you are patient and hold your phone just right, but voice communication is close to impossible. Saturday's park (England-Idlewild) has much better reception.

From Cincinnati airport to Friday's site, take I-275 west about 3 miles to exit 8, and take KY 237 south about 4.4 miles to KY 18. Turn right on KY 18 west for about 8 miles. "Middle Creek Park" does not get you to the right place on Google maps. Try directions to "Dinsmore Homestead, KY". The Dinsmore Preserve is on the opposite side of 18 from Middle Creek.

Start List is posted.

Katniss Everdeen is on the startlist. Have the organisers thought about safety? Somebody might take an arrow in the knee...

So are Gale Hawthorne and Peeta Mellark. District 12 High may have a formidable team...

I think the Rules Committee might still be debating whether someone can bring a bow and arrows on their course. There has been some sharply divided discussion on banning them, since, if anybody could figure out how to use them as navigational aids, it would be Katniss!

BTW, Don't forget Coach Abernathy!

If arrow head is made of strong magnetic material, then with proper skills and knowledge of physics one can use it instead of compass, and that is against the rules. Sorry, Mike, I could not help it :)

I'm not sure that would be against the rules. It wouldn't be instead of a compass, it would simply be a (rather awkward) compass!

Route gadget is up for Friday Middle distance at Middle Creek:
http://ocin.org/patspages/gadget/cgi-bin/reitti.cg...

Hopefully the entire state didn't burn down overnight....

They could use some controlled burns in the green areas...

Thanks OCIN for a fun weekend.

Playlist.

All of the courses are up on OCIN's instance of Route Gadget. Draw your courses. Check out the routes of others. Watch and be amused.

http://ocin.org/patspages/gadget/cgi-bin/reitti.cg...

Agree with Hammer. Thanks for a really fun and very well organized O weekend! Nice with various challenges on the four different courses. 99 controls in three days is definitely a record for me and I was happy to see every single one of them. This was my first Pig, but it will definitely not be my last.

Thanks to all the organizers for a great weekend! The variety of venues, terrain, and weather was enjoyable.

The contour interval at Big Bone Lick State Park was reported as 2.5 m, but three pieces of data suggest otherwise - my gpx track, google's terrain map, and my experience. I feel a bit absurd asking, but is it possible the contour interval was reported incorrectly?

For example, consider the climb along the field at the eastern edge of the map. The map shows nine lines (9x2.5 = 22.5m) between the flat area by the river on the north edge and the crest of the ridge immediately along the field edge. My gpx track shows a vertical difference of 53 meters - though I understand gps elevation calculations are unreliable. Google maps shows a difference of four 40' lines between the river and the crest, or 160 ft = 49 meters.

The USGS has two different contour intervals covering the park. Map

Re playlist: One of those songs has to have the word "Drunk" in the title.

As to Ian's comment on the climb: My 305 gave me 70 m climb on Saturday's middle versus 182 m on the Sunday middle (and 227 m on Friday). If trusting the 305, the main "error" was thus the official climb on Saturday's middle, which seems to have been greatly overstated, but I consider that a very minor flaw in a great weekend. At most competitions in Sweden, you don't get any climb info at all, besides very rough statements like "hilly", "very hilly" and "not so hilly" in the terrain description.

That's because Sweden is flat.

The USGS has two different contour intervals covering the park.

Nevertheless, if it's 150 feet from bottom to top, or 45 meters, and there are 9 lines on the O' map, sure seems like the contour interval is 5 meters, as Ian says.

The USGS has two different contour intervals covering the park.

I was just stating the fact so someone else could do the math. I was way too far gone last night to think.

As feedback from afar, if you were aiming to have national-level Middles, the courses could have been a bit shorter, aiming more for a 35 minute winning time. Otherwise you end up in short-classic territory.

Thanks for the feedback. I remember when we first started mapping Big Bone Lick that the GIS data split down the middle of the park. The eastern part of the park had better (or a least a more detailed) contour interval than the west.

I remember being a little surpised when I saw that the contour interval on the finished map was 2.5 meters - we normally ask for our maps to be made in 3 or 5. And yes, I even thought, "Gee I should grab a USGS and see if this is really right". But, it was one of those things I never got around to doing. And I was also thinking that if it really was wrong, that it would just be a change from 2.5 to 3 at most, which probably wouldn't be all that significant. But 2.5 to 5, that is huge and I surely should have caught it. So, I take full responsibility - my mistake. It caught my eye as something that just seemed like it might be incorrect and should be verified. But actually being in the park course setting, nothing ever seemed far enough off to inspire me to the point of feeling anything was so far wrong that it actually needed to be verified. So I never did take the time to do what should have been done early on and compare with another source.

Nice. Makes for a good story!

Now I await J-J's account of seven other occasions where this has happened before.

The nice thing is that if anybody is grumpy about it, just send them to me and I'll repair their map with a pair of scissors. :-)

I used a Sharpie.

1- Green Lane Nature Center (DVOA).
Same mapper?

2 - It happened at the 25-mannarelay in Sweden a few years ago. Contour interval was advertised as 5 m but was actually 3 m. Or was it the other way round? Can't really remember.