Discussion: Short/Long Champs

I've posted the maps from the U.S. Short and Long Champs held this weekend near Albany, NY. Course shown is for F21 and M45 (and also M20, M35, and M40 on the Short day).

US Champs were John Fredrickson and Pavlina Brautigam in the Short, and Eddie Bergeron and Samantha Saeger in the Long.

Fine event organized by EMPO, including weather that was off-the-chart perfect.

I ran off the map to the south. I may have run through the forbidden area although I'm not certain (so I don't want to disqualify myself without further analysis). I ran through 2 deep reentrants that I had a hard time crossing, then hit a trail that I took to the south because the stuff in front of me was pretty green. Eventually I cut through and found a creek. I thought I was too far south and kept going north. I didn't find the control, but eventually I found some trails that looked like the ones on the map crossing reentrants. I took them East, crossed one more reentrant, and finally got into the correct streambed.

I was with another runner for part of this, but he stayed further north - I'll let him decide whether or not to voice his thoughts.

Thank you to EMPO for a great meet and a great weekend!

I'll join the chorus of thanks to EMPO. As to Mikkel's and my adventures on Sunday's leg from 2 to 3, I lost map contact in the edge of the unfieldchecked area and turned north when we reached the much deeper and steeper sided than I expected to see reentrant, partly because I was getting worried about the out-of-bounds though also because it was sinking in that I would likely have better luck reestablishing map contact where Mark had visited. I'm all but certain I did reestablish contact on the hilltop north of the out-of-bounds area before managing to make another smaller parallel error so I'm confident in retrospect that I stayed on the map and probably in bounds, though not by a large margin. For what it's worth, I don't think Mikkel was clearly out of bounds, heading out of bounds or emerging from out of bounds anytime I saw him during that leg.

Excellent weekend even for spectating! As PG mentioned the weather couldn't have been better and the long Champs had so many people criss-crossing back through the start/finish area it made for a much more interesting day to be injured than I thought it would be.

Great organization, very well planned courses, just perfect for the two Championships. Tough but enjoyable terrain. Now, can we get that map printing a tad better... maybe... ? Not any particular club... the quality seems uniformly down across the board with the abandonment of offset.

Not that I am picking on any particular method. None is as good as spot-color offset, but some come close and can be used for orienteering maps, even at 1:15,000. But, before someone hauls off that CD to Kinko's... here are questions that I hope were asked... most definitely should be asked:

(1) Has anyone else used this particular printing method?

(1a) If yes, what did the competitors think?

(2) If your club hasn't used this method but another one has, and the competitors thought well of the latter, are you sure you are doing *exactly* the same thing?

(3) Have you printed off a test run of the maps? How do they look in daylight vs. offset?

(4) Have you tried running with those maps? Is everything clear at competition speed?

The items that are particularly worth attention...

(5) Can you tell the three green colors, which one is which, without the legend?

(6) Are black features well defined?

(7) Do the contours show well inside the medium and dark green?

And, the gold standard remains 1-point Arial (map scale 1:15,000) black text, printed at 1:15,000... if your printer can faithfully reproduce it, I think it's a definite go-ahead (but with attention still required to the legibility of the colors).

It just pains me to see an excellent mapping job and rigorous course setting getting deemphasized because the runners, especially those in their later ages, cannot interpret the map because of poor reproduction...

Thanks for coming and thanks for the positive comments; we'll take the critiques, too, and think how we can improve next time.

Results (thank you, J-J and crew!) have been sent to the EMPO webmaster and will be posted as soon as she can handle it (probably later today). I'll announce their presence back here when I hear from her.

Jon - I guess I'm still confused about the time we hit a trail running along the W side of a ridge, with green stuff in front of us. That's when you went N and/or E and I went S and then E. Any idea where we were at that point? We met up again on the other side in a streambed where I went N up along the stream and you went E or S.

I thought that was just after crossing the stream nearest the NE corner of the out-of-bounds, slightly more than 100m upstream from that corner. I'm not completely satisfied with that explanation but I can't come up with a better one.

I think it might have been the ridge just NW of the corner of the out-of-bounds, although the path curved further E than mapped. I didn't see any streamers when running down the path, so in that case I must have cut through the green before going too far.

Maybe I wasn't off the map after all. :)

Something in that vicinity seemed distinctly not right to me, in terms of the relationship of the trails, contours, and private property signs. I got confused, retreated to a known spot, headed east again, and though things seemed to make no sense, I did get to where I was intending.

Let's call that part of the map "the Bemuda Triangle" - I counted an extra reentrant there on my way to #2 on Red-X

Yes, I counted an extra reentrant too, which is why I thought maybe I ran off the map to the South. (Only way to find an extra one if the map is correct...)

Results are now available on the EMPO Website:

http://empo.us.orienteering.org/events/06-ameet/

Thanks again for your patience!

I didn't have any problems with the boundaries: Joe's tutelage over the course of two 24-hr rogaines can make anyone a semi-expert in sensing out property boundaries, at least their characteristic look in the Northeast US.

On the map belonging to another runner, the text "Area Not Field Checked" looked exactly like a bunch of brown U-depressions and gullies. The map was that way out of the start, so it could not have been flaked-off toner. Actually as I looked at the maps closer, I saw dot screens for areal features, so it most likely was not a laser process. An inexpensive 4-color digital "offset"? maybe.

My point is not to criticize. It is to make a suggestion to future event organizers from all clubs. I think all agree that navigating through terrain is a part of orienteering, and straining to decipher an illegible map is not. I would like to suggest that these items be kept in proper perspective...

Here are some pics from the Short and Long champs. Some of these are parts of panoramas that haven't been stitched yet. (also some assembly pics of my bike and a few shots of our practice weekend early in the morning in Gettysburg so just ignore those).

There are some more pics from the event here. I'll try to get some onto EMPO's website as well. Sorry no bike parts though :-)

Route Gadget available!

Draw your routes on Route Gadget, thanks to vmeyer.

RouteGadget basics when electronic timing isn't used:
Select "Draw your route", pick a course, & type your name in.
At minimum, enter your finish time in MMMSS.
Enter splits, if you have them - cumulative time in MMMSS.
If you don't put splits in, ones will be assigned automatically based on the length of the leg. Draw your route, type in any comments, and save.

Hi Carol - please send me your splits & I'll fix them for you in RG. They needed to be in MMMSS and cumulative... Valerie