Stephen Wilson, from CLYDE says: "We seem to have left a folding chair at the event (don't know quite how we managed to do this but it definitely didn't make it back to Glasgow!). I don't suppose you have any idea if anyone picked it up after the event?"

If anyone has any information, please contact Stephen at s.k.wilson@strath.ac.uk

Planner
Organiser
Controller

Planner's Comments

I hope you enjoyed your visit to Tentsmuir, for many of you giving a third competitive run there this year. I wanted to use the best bits of the forest and was therefore happy that the Scottish Champs, being based in the north of the area, had not had any courses visiting the coastal strip used on Sunday.

After considering using forest north and south of the car park, with a spectator control mid-leg (what self-respecting relay event doesn't have this arrangement?) I decided to keep everyone to the north of the car park and run competitors all the way up and down the very nicest, most intricate section of the area. Going south of the car park as well would have resulted in Tartan and Light Green courses either being too long or failing to take in the best bits of terrain.

I spent a good while looking at the 'light green' (slow run) forest at the northern end of the competition map, but it seemed to be 'green' (walk) in many places. I even taped one or two sites for tartan but decided these could prove unfair and probably ruin the competition.

Restricting most courses to the 200-350m wide corridor of 'white' runnable forest did mean that you needed to visit a lot of controls to keep you zig-zagging across the tracks, although I didn't feel I kept you off them as much as I'd have wished. In particular, I know I didn't do as well as I should have for Orange runners - you needed your control 4 moving further south. In the SW light green area (used by Green courses only) I had hoped to use the shallow re-entrant north of 183 and 190 for all variants of the course, giving a bit more incentive to run straight from the block over to the penultimate control on the ditch. However, after taping the site (or possibly something unmapped!) and failing to find it on a return visit, with the controller having a similar experience, we realised it wasn't an option and had to settle for a lack of route choice out of this block, the run-in beginning effectively 800m before the finish. Sorry about that, but it did provide some good spectating for the rest of us!

At the northern end of the map is a semi-open area with many knolls and small hills. I planned courses using sites in there, but was persuaded that a lot of other unmapped knolls would lead to confusion, so agreed just to run courses through it.

On the day things seemed to go well. Running speeds were very high, with Oleg Chepelin going sub 5 min/k on Tartan. Green was slightly slower due, I presume, to the lower visibility & slow run section near the end. I took comments about poor mapping of vegetation in some places - we'll try to get this sorted for next time. Certainly up to date mapping is needed on an area like this, with small bushes mapped as white a few years ago rapidly turning to darker shades of green as they grow up. The purchase of OCAD by KFO allowed us to do as much as we could, as we prepared the courses. I enjoyed planning this event, although the usual mad rush leading up to the printing deadline was something I keep promising myself not to repeat. I'm very grateful to Ewart, controller appointed at short notice, for his meticulous attention to sites and courses, and to Phil for excellent organisation of the event. Congratulations to EUOC for their victory and thanks to all teams for making it a good race.

John Emeleus (CLYDE and KFO)

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Organiser's Comments

I was much indebted to Lindsey Knox and John Tullie from Roxburgh Reivers who prepared a very comprehensive report following last year's competition which also gave a number of pointers for the future. RR introduced a number of innovations in 2004 and I decided to keep the format, forms and processes very similar to avoid a brand new learning curve for everyone. I think this concept paid off.

The biggest timesavers for the day were the use of the 6 Day Company SI card stock for everyone and the submission of most of the Team names by the Team Managers prior to the event (even Saturday night changes). This support enable the population of the computer db so on the day we just had to cope with changes and the gaps. Last minute changes are inevitable.

One thing I felt needed doing was to provide a simple "easy read" race progress display that was bigger than a size 10 computer printout. Les and Heather set their minds to produce what you saw on the day and just about kept pace with additional timing detail to expand on the basic concept. Thanks to all for helping provide the times. I hope the display was useful and any comment would be gratefully received.

I also noted the almost complete absence of juniors taking part in this competition last year. I'm not sure how we encourage their participation, but we decided to put on a White CC to try and give the family an active day. 11 people made this worthwhile. Would a harder course bring more people? We had one spare team set prepared for the day for the Relay, but perhaps if we had advertised this and organised something on the day, there might have been an opportunity for more people to have a go. I am not aware of anyone not able to have a run. Again, comment would be welcome.

The weather window promised by the Met. Office appeared on cue at 8am (too late for the planner and controller to stay dry) and lasted the day. At least it did for the Relay event. Strange though it may seem, this was not the case for the String Course some 200m south of the Relay! Brian Smith who was managing this aspect got soaked so went to his car to get a waterproof to discover no rain at all. On his return to his post, he got soaked again. Strange world…….

Being a small club, we had to plan to manage with a team of three Officials and seven others. Robin's ever present assistance at these events was much welcome. Two extra bodies appeared on the day so we were able to supervise the incoming and outgoing SI units and so abandon the Leg 4 waiting area.

In checking the results, I am happy to report no 'flying starts' and only 4 mini-massers. The individual leg times in the results will not add up to the elapsed race time due to the gaps between the incoming and outgoing runners clocking in/out. However, the winners of the fastest changeover with a time of 6 seconds were: -

There were a number of changes on 7 seconds. One of the aims of the Team Manager is to have all Leg 4 runners appear at the same time to tag out Leg 5. The least accumulated 'waiting time' winner with 4:15 was: -

Thanks go to the Forestry Commission for retaining some of Tentsmuir in runnable condition and to St Andrews Ambulance, Glenrothes for attending and I am happy to say doing nothing else. Thanks also to the 6-Day Company for allowing the free use of the SI card stock, thus saving the clubs a bit of cash. We got them all back too!

Thank you all for coming and your on-the-day comments. It was an enjoyable day.

Phil Smithard

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Controller's Comments

Controlling in Tentsmuir, I found to be an interesting and enjoyable experience.

From receipt of material from John, and a visit to the forest, I could see a lot of very good basic work in the courses, and in necessary corrections to the map. Checking sites reminded me of some difficulties mapping such an area with 2.5m contours, and how to interpret the ground, then how to represent the detail on the map. We made several changes. For example, where a re-entrant was originally shown, when going up into the re-entrant, you then went down!

The light green area on the south west section of the three green courses proved awkward. One control site was unsuitable, and contour detail inaccurate, given the fact this area was probably mapped in the late 70's when there were very little slow run areas in Tentsmuir. Replanting has brought some thicker areas. When collecting these controls, the tracks on the ground could clearly be seen, indicating competitors had navigated using the contour detail as shown.

I wasn't entirely happy with a small semi open area to the north. Some features were clear and obvious, other features were difficult to interpret because of number and size. John changed a few courses so no controls there. The area for the rest of the courses was excellent. A little more mixing and changing of course combinations, meant final courses showed few changes, from John's original planning.

One aspect I was thankful for was a copy of the map at 1:5,000. This helped a great deal to give clarity when in the forest. With Ocad, I know the trend is to use computer ink jet prints for planning. As I get older, the ease of reading a map printed this way compared to laser printing is very significant.

I had never been to an 11 Person Relay before, and thought the type of event great fun, continuing to show the positive spirit of Scottish orienteering. Many thanks to Phil for asking me to control Tentsmuir, memories of lots of mapping there in the winter of 1977/78, to John for making the task very straightforward, and to KFO for running the event so well.

Ewart Scott ESOC

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Last updated 30/09/2005
Results processing by Dave Ellison