Final results for this Sunday’s urban race around Gloucester are now published on the Results page, and Routegadget is available for route upload.
Lost Property: JK 2025 Unisex Medium top, and a pair of glasses, +1.5, Tortoise shell/pink frame. Email equipment ‘@’ ngoc.org.uk to claim.
Thanks to those that came along, for Greg and Adrian for the hard work in planning and controlling the event, and to Gloucester Llanthony Secunda Priory for allowing us to use their superb location and set of facilities for assembly and download. And, of course, for the team of volunteers who make these events possible!
Planner’s Comments
Thank you all for coming to Gloucester. As planner, organiser, mapper and permissions man, this has kept me quite busy lately! Fortunately, my controller Adrian has given me a lot of valuable support and advice, for which I am very grateful. I have heard a lot of favourable comments about the courses from competitors, which was pleasing to hear. It was a great shame that we lost access to a large part of the docks at a fairly late stage, which meant quite a bit of re-planning, but hope you enjoyed yourselves nonetheless on a lovely sunny day.
I have had the pleasure of becoming very familiar with the ins and outs of Gloucester over quite a few months. First job was to extend the map in a couple of new directions and then to review and update many parts of the existing map. Then followed the planning stage, where I tried to use the most intricate and interesting areas and to create legs of differing lengths that required route choice and decision making. I look forward to seeing on Routegadget which way people chose to go.
There are a lot of potential pitfalls with planning an urban course. You try to think of everything that could go wrong and spend lots of time scrutinising the position of lines, circles and control numbers on the map. Even so, issues still can still happen….
For those on courses 1 and 2, I can only apologise that the previously short and runnable grass had suddenly become rather jungle-like! I should have checked this some time before instead of only finding out while putting out the controls early that morning!
Unfortunately, we heard that quite a number of people had used routes through the out of bounds on the way to control 175. Some people have used the excuse that there was an open gate there. However, if it is marked as olive green or dark green on the map, this is not a permitted route and must be respected. We have decided to void legs to this control on courses 2 and 4, so that these people do not benefit from their illegal shortcut. It is regrettable that we had to void a leg due to the number of people clearly disregarding the well publicised rules over impassable barriers and areas. Planners should reasonably be able to expect runners in urban races to know the rules and plan courses accordingly!
There were also a couple of grumbles about the placement of the flag at 199. I believe that the flag was 4 or 5 metres away from where it should have been and a little hidden for which I apologise. However, we have decided not to change the results in this instance, since it was on the correct feature and only a short distance away.
I have also been made aware that the number 33 on course 1 obscured an uncrossable barrier. Again, I apologise to those people who may have lost a few seconds because of this, but again our decision is not to change the results.
Nevertheless, I hope these small issues did not spoil your run or your fun.
Greg Best
Controller’s Comments
It was great to see so many happy runners today – Greg’s courses were interesting and picturesque (despite the late refusal of the central docks to give permission for our use) and his map is excellent.
There were comments about the mapping of the levels in a couple of locations – the mapping is correct but I agree with those who find the mapping conventions somewhat confusing – that’s what 10 years of improvements can get you 🙂
The most serious issue is the legs to control 175 – it’s clear that a number of competitors ran through dark green or olive green. Since this event is part of a major league the decision has been taken to void the legs. Although the runners who cheated (or simply made a mistake) should be disqualified, in reality it’s unreasonable to expect the organisers to compile an accurate list.
Adrian Bailey (HOC)