Discussion: Thank you, NEOC!

Another fine weekend in the woods is in the books, and I thank all those involved in the weekend's administration for putting it on. The terrain was subtle and course designs were excellent (at least for Brown), with controls in their proper places. And it didn't rain (not that we would have blamed you if it had)--always a plus!

Agreed, really fine weekend. Could have done with a bit less mountain laurel, but the map was great, the courses excellent, the weather fine, and the company delightful. Glad I made the trip.

As president , I want to thank Ian, Michelle and the course setting teams, and all the others who worked, for a doing a great job at NEOCs A meet for many a year.
We will be back with more.

Great courses! Really enjoyed the weekend.

One thing that was a neat surprise was the M21 and F21 first place prizes: three-dimensional colored contour maps with the actual courses laid on (these sort of have to be seen to appreciate how cool they are), made by Ben Gallup.

There are some photos here. I was hoping to get everybody, but I only got about half of you, because I'm easily distracted and kept wandering around. Feel free to steal these photos and use however you'd like.

I have already pointed out to Ed just how awesome I thought he (and Jim P) handled the tech aspect of the event ... super cool!

F-21 Award goes to?

Pavlina. She should have hung around to pick it up. :-)

We had to leave early. Ian did give us the choco-medals though.

I was wondering if everyone liked , or not, the chase start format. It is a signature part of the NEOC Troll Cup, and common at events in Europe, but not done much at events in the USA.
Should NEOC continue with the Troll Cup chase start in future events?

I wasn't even there, but I hope so!

I wasn't there either but I also hope so too. In fact I'd argue this should be the championship race format in North America too. Saturday middle distance time trial and sunday long distance pursuit (with the odd butterfly loop). I believe Ottawa OC's O-Fest next autumn will have the same format as the Troll Cup.

That's correct Hammer. We used that format in 2013 and it was hugely successful and, I think, popular. We will be using that same chase format in 2015 and I anticipate it being O-Fest's default format for years to come.

I love the chase format and looking at the Troll Cup after the fact I wish I had made an effort to make it down!

Yes, keep the chase as part of the Troll Cup "tradition". And, if it's used at other multi-day events, that's fine too. But, I'm not sure I would be in favor of using it at Championship events to determine, for example, the Long Champion based on the middle result.

Logistically the chase start would seem to be much more difficult to orchestrate from the organizers standpoint. I mean there seems to be a lot that needs to get done between the finish of day1 and start on day 2.

It's actually really easy now that I have figured out how to get OE to generate the start list automatically. Once everyone was finished on day 1, the day 2 start list was automatically generated with no work besides setting when each courses chase started, how long the chasing start block was, and what the interval is after the chase block.

Yes but, wasn't the start clock also sequenced to beep for each starter? or is it just because I happened to start on the even minute? Also, I noticed my map had my number on it and I didn't do that so someone must have. I also thought all the maps were in order of start so thought that the different course maps were all intermixed but placed in the right order. I wasn't paying that much attention but afterward thought that there was quite an effort put into making sure folks started when they were suppose too

Great organization! I really enjoyed the courses, not the laurel but it was mapped so that I actually used it to navigate in places. Lots of fun!

Back in 1979, I thought that the greater NEOC land (i.e. eastern US and CAN) needed an A-meet in the spring to complement our traditional fall New England Championships. To make it different and excitingly man-to-man competetive, I suggested chase for the second day. And the Troll Cup was born; held in W. Hartford, CT, 1980. A web search shows the last (?) previous one was 2002 in Amherst, MA. We had shining silver cups as awards with some Troll magic. Polish one twice - and it became a brass cup!

Great to see it revived. And a fine meet it was, thanks.

Carl:
True, all that had to be done, but a lot of that was just good preplanning to make the starts work easier. The start clock was rewritten before the meet to read start times from a start list xml file, so all we had to do there on the morning of the race was load the start list into it. The map numbering was done be Ian and I in the evening after the day1 race. By getting the maps all numbered and in order, the start crew just had to hand them out down the line.

I think a chase start can seem intimidating to organize, but with enough forethought, it really wasn't that hard. Without proper organization it would have been a mess, but I'm really happy how it turned out, and would do it again.

For those of us who weren't back from their courses in time for the award ceremony (I suppose that might well be only me!), I was wondering if there was any listing somewhere of the combined two-day times by either course or class? I suppose that if I were really motivated it would be possible to create that information from the individual two days of results listings on AP, but it seems likely that someone has already done it and that my computer search skills have been too weak to find it.

In the same regard, I wonder if there is some sensible way to treat the really slow "competitors" that finish the first day well more than an hour (in some cases more than two hours) later than the first person on their course, so that neither they nor the event organizers are left waiting around for a couple of extra hours on day 2 for the stragglers who started the second day an additional 45+ minutes later than the early starters to finally make it in. Maybe by having the unbelievably, incomprehensibly slow folks start at minute intervals a few minutes BEFORE the regular chase start, rather than after everyone else? While I don't really mind (actually rather prefer) having the woods to myself out there, I do feel a bit guilty about holding up the finish crew and delaying the removal of the controls from the woods when I come in very late at the end of an event.

@NEOC#1: I still have a few of those silver Troll Cups from the 80's. Great format.

The chase start has a few advantages: chief among them is that the start window is smaller than is typical. We organized our chase start as I have seen at Oringen: competitors more than 45 minutes behind the leader on each course were started at 1 minute intervals. With enough courses, a 60- or 90-minute start interval is possible.

I don't think chase starts should become the norm, but they are a neat novelty. I think they could be even more interesting if butterfly loops and forks were introduced. Ed's clock software, the OE Pro suite, and a very competent start crew made the chase start very smooth.

The Troll Cup has a great tradition, and we hope to continue it for many more meets. They probably won't all have chase starts, as the "Troll Cup" brand can transcend formats.

@eldersmith: comprehensive combined times will be posted shortly.

The chase start could certainly be modified. In the past, I believe there has been a "rolled-up" chase start: the leader on a course would start first followed by the first finishers, but simultaneously, the last finishers on a course would start near the beginning of the window. To me, this seems undesirable because there are two speeds of competitors out on the course simultaneously; with our implementation, the people starting in your neighborhood had similar finish times from the Day 1 course.

Even with the conventional chase start we implemented, the total course time can be very short. The course is open for the duration of the start window + the course closing time. For the NAOC Long (e.g.), this is a 3.5 hour start window + 3 hour course time = 6.5 hours. With a 60- or 90-minute chase start window, this can be shortened by 2 hours.

For us old-times, the Troll Cup brand is synonymous with a chase strart on day 2. What else does that brand connote (having been brought out of retirement)?

I, too, appreciate a few cups from the 80s, with their inimitable patinas.

I would like to see the New England Championships revived; and circulate (flexibly) among the five NE clubs. I understand that the NEOC board nixed that way back (???). The TC should keep the chase.

The "traditional" Troll Cup chase start was called a "folded chase". There was some amount of time after the leader for which it was a normal chase start (for argument's sake let's say it was an hour), and beyond that, the start times went the other way. So if the leader took an hour, and had a 10 AM start time on Sunday, then somebody who took 1:59 on Saturday would start at 10:59, someone who took 2:01 would also start at 10:59, and someone who took three hours would start at the same time as the leader. For some people, "making the fold" was a big deal.

I think the concern about people of different speeds being on the course at the same time is misplaced. So what? That happens all the time with a regular start, and to be honest, the slower people who are starting early are essentially spectators as the faster packs run by.

Better than NE Champs would be an East coast league, collate the results from the A meets plus billygoats and traverses on the east coast... ...

The folded chase made the finishing window most compact. Right JJ, better orienteers passing provided educational values for slower ones. ND: Would be good. In the other hand, NEC is tradition and was open.

Thanks Mika for the Trail-O. Well done!

Folding good.