Discussion: Thanks QOC!

At least judging from days 1 and 2, extremely well organized event. Unfortunately will not be able to make day 3.

I'll second that. Day 3 also was excellent. As was the evening get-together at the Marine Corps Museum.

I've posted maps of the three days on my training log.

I agree. Excellent organization, good courses, good maps, very good terrain on day 2, a little grottier on day 1, but certainly an A effort. In a sport where there is so much detail, any little mishap of which can damage an event, QOC sailed through with a superb job.

This was a very well organized event, all details thought out, from excellent courses, great maps and speedy results to web site, parking, signs, facilities, concession stands, kids string-O, and the fancy reception at the marine Corps Museum. We had a wonderful weekend. Thanks, QOC!

Kudos to QOC for excellent organization and fun courses (especially Friday and Sunday).

Outstanding effort. Thanks, QOC!!!

You did a stellar job of running a large and complex event, Nadim and team -- a top-notch effort from start to finish. Tom and I had a great time -- thanks, QOC!

Excellent event and well worth the drive from Canada. Also appreciated the late registration of one of our party who seem to have made a mistake in the online entry sytem. Happy Birthday on your 40th.

Indeed, a very well organized event. Great job done by all involved. The cabins were excellent!

I agree with all the compliments above and will also add that, as someone who was helping out (albeit in a very limited capacity), I was really impressed with the level of support the volunteers were given. I think much of the success stemmed from the fact that people were asked nicely, given clear direction, and then left to do their jobs without any micro-management. Not an easy feat for any manager. For Nadim to pull that off with such limited experience directing A-meets is truly astounding.

Get some sleep, dude. You deserve it.

Wow! Thank you all on behalf of QOC. The volunteer staff are the real stars. They tried to make it fun and flawless. They took their jobs very seriously. A lot of great ideas came from both within the club and outside of it too. We got a lot of support from people like Sandy Fillebrown, Mike Minium, Mark Dominie, DVOA, RMOC, the USOF Juniors, a local radio club, girls scouts, Shenandoah Mountain Rescue, the National Park Service, our jurors at large (Eileen Breseman, Brad Whitmore, Eric Buckley, Rick Armstrong as Alternate), Race Timing Unlimited, REI, The Marine Heritage Foundation and more.

From within the club, there were the usual stars as well as many unsung heroes. The vetting crew was largely unseen as they moved both ahead of and behind the competitions. They were still working while the awards were going on. I was very touched seeing people like Sid Sach's, a veteran of many decades of orienteering, schlepping clothing from the Day 1 starts back up the hill to the finish. The Harrison brothers kept the parking going for many hours at the expense of preparing for their competitions. The FUMA cadets, some dressed only in shorts and t-shirts all day filled-in gaps at parking, start/finish lines, and clothing transfer too. People like Melissa Wirzburg quietly kept our registration operations going. Mark and Patti Mace couldn't attend but created our awards stands and giant control centerpiece. Lots of the unsung heroes hadn't even been to an A-meet before. Even after their spectacular performances, QOC members Iliana Shandurkova and Lachezar Iliev picked up controls so long on Sunday evening that it was completely dark when they returned. We had just started to send out a search party to drive along the roads looking for them when they returned with a car full of controls and at least 12 full gallons of water that they didn't realize could have been emptied.

Among the many club stars without whom we would not have this discussion, were Tom Strat (Registration, Hotel, Cabins), Jon Torrance (Chief of Vetting, map updates), Valerie Meyer (Finish Line/Results), Don Davis (Supplies & Logistics, Parking, Vetting, USOF Advisor), Diana Todd (Initial Meet Director, permits, mapping), Greg Lennon (Park Relations, map coordination, Fab 40), Kathleen Lennon (Fab 40, Gear Bags, sprint map coordination), Ken Walker (web site), Vic Culp (sponsorship, brochure), Tom Nolan (Starts), Chris Ruhmor (Safety), Dave Onkst (Sprint course setter, vetter, announcer), Francis Hogle (Day 1 Course Setter, vetting, map updates), Keg Good (Day 2 Course Setter, volunteers coordination for radio, and child care), Jan and Dasa Merka (awards, photography, model vetting, String-O), Peggy Dickison (model course setter), and last but certainly not least, Heidi Onkst (Start Team, volunteer coordination, signs, and just about anything else that came-up or could have gotten left behind). Many of these people decided to give back to the sport so much that they gave-up their own chance to run and contend for the championship. I can't begin to tell you all of the hurdles that they overcame.

Though several had told us otherwise, we regret that the terrain had not been more enjoyable on Day 1 for many. There were course adjustments made during course planning to avoid the worst of it. With the leaves off when vetting, the thorns were more avoidable, the features stood out more, and the running was easier.

It certainly is different seeing a meet from a management point of view. I have a tremendous amount of respect for the many who have done this year after year or even once in the past. If you thought this event was a success, let it be a lesson to you not to miss your own club's board meeting; otherwise you too could be volunteered to lead a position in an event like this next time.

Awesome event QOC, volunteers, etc - excellent challenge, and thanks for the good advice on not missing a my club's board meeting Nadim! =)

Thanks, QOC, for an excellent event! It made the trip across the Atlantic completely worthwhile.

The whole weekend, I kept noticing little things (like great signage, bits of information provided, and other minutiae) that had been done to make things better for the participants. It would have been so easy not to attend to all these details, but QOC went above and beyond expectations, all while getting the core technical parts right, too. Thank you!

I'd like to add my thanks also. I was only able to be away long enough for a day trip Friday to do the Sprint, and it was well worth the trip. The course was great fun, and everything else was so smooth and efficient and stress-free. There were a lot of things contributing that just kind of flowed by and later I'd think, "wow, that was a great idea." Like the results structure and the start chutes and the model maps included in the packets. Just wish I could have experienced the whole meet.

It really was a wonderfully run meet in all ways. While this may set a new standard of really fine meet organization, it is an occasion to reflect on how far our sport has come in the last XX years. I think back to the benighted days of the late 80s and early 90s, when it was common for A-meet courses to be protested and thrown out, and not uncommon to have results unavailable the same day. QOC deserves the highest praise for this meet, but it also seems to me that all our meet directors and volunteers are operating to a high standard these days. I've been to four A-meets this fall, each of them run perfectly.

I would like to particuliarly commend the OCAD course cartographer. This was the first meet in a long time where the person, or persons, drawing the courses knew how to use the feature well.
The lines were broken to show features along the line, and the control circles were broken to show the features clearly around the controls.
It makes such a big difference when you can see all the detail that you need to navigate.
I hope future course cartographers see how it should be done.

speaking to cartography, anyone know what happened to the yellow that should have been on powerlines near the end of Saturday's RedY course? Two different powerline features - one a powerline by itself, and perpendicular to that a double row of veg boundary with no powerline in the middle and neither of them had any yellow in them even though on the ground they were identical intersecting features. I wasn't going to bring it up, but I note that the RouteGadget version of the map has yellow on both and is just the way I would have expected it.

We're still trying to figure out how the yellow got left off on the power line ride for the 1:15,000 maps. It was on the 1:10,000 maps. 1:15,000 maps were offset printed and 1:10,000 maps were printed digitally. It has been suggested that the difference had to do with how OCAD codes data files for offset printing and the ordering of color. Normally, digital and offset printing should have the same color output result. However, a non-standard version of yellow (for better visibility and contrast) may have been used that had a lower order of precedence and had gotten "hidden" underneath the other colors. Our review period was shortened due to other production issues so we regretfully didn't catch this difference between the 1:10,000 and 1:15,000 maps.

As the primary "mapmaker" for this years US Champs, I'm primarily responsible for what was right ... and what was wrong. [So thanks Jeff for noticing the control circle and line breaks; many were suggested by the course setters, and I added a few more.]
The reason the powerline lacked a yellow: it was a color rarely used, and while it was indeed defined correctly as a CMYK color, it hadn't been assigned spot color values and I had accidentally overlooked it when checking the spot color builds. We were sanctioned to print all maps using a high-end digital printer, and we spent a lot of time tweaking the CMYK builds to get output similar to IOF colors. We even printed a full set of Saturday Blue and Red maps digitally, but after the Course Setter and I compared the digital map to the offset (with spot color) proof side-by-side, we decided that the offset was just a bit better (even though ridicously expensive per map). Neither the course setter nor I caught the missing yellow color in time to correct it ....