Croy Hill SoSOL - Sunday 9th November 2014 - including Scottish Student Individual Championships
Near: Cumbernauld. GoogleMap
Race report
A South of Scotland league event on a new map of Croy Hill near Cumbernauld. It was a beautiful sunny day.
Results are available in Winsplits and Splitsbrowser and Routegadget.
Controllers report below
Results
Lost property:
Small purple Adidas hoodie, Black Craft thermal, Umbro water bottle. Contact Clyde to retrieve!
Controllers report
First of all thanks to everyone for coming. Please don’t deduce from the rapid descent into map sharing that we weren’t pleased to see you!
On behalf of CLYDE thanks also to everyone who helped out, either in specific roles for the event - Arnis (planner) Alastair (organiser) - or all of the many folk who helped out on the day on the start/finish/registration/download etc. Several people went without a run to help man the finish/first aid/put out controls etc. Its probably worth reminding ourselves that bringing even a relatively small event like this to fruition takes between 100 -150 volunteer hours of work, of which less than half is actually on the day of the race. Thanks also to everyone who took the time to thank any of our volunteers, or to pass on some positive feedback about the event to the team. These positive remarks really are much appreciated.
In terms of the race itself, I heard a lot of positive comments about Arnis’s courses. Croy hill is quite a varied wee area but it can be tough in parts. Arnis gave most of you the chance to experience several different sides of Croy hill, while trying to keep you away from the bits that fight back.
We had a few visitors for first aid, all fairly minor. Once or two bramble scratches and a couple of barbed wire contact injuries. We did try to tape those bits we found that looked dangerous but clearly we didn’t manage to find them all - hope everyone is recuperating well.
Although we didnt get any complaints from anyone, I am aware from our control collectors that control 126 spent some time without a kite on it! We aren’t sure how this happened but hopefully this didn’t impact too much on anyone. Some competitors on yellow look like they had trouble with control 7 (106). I thought this was a pretty good control to test TD2 skills, but when I brought it in it was sitting quite low, making the kite a bit harder to spot than it might have been. As controller, I’d to make a decision early on to stop control checking and sort out the issue with control 125. For some reason yesterday’s heavy rain had almost no effect on most of the area, but the marsh to the NW of this control turned into a small lochan, making the control unsafe to approach from any direction but the south. We took the decision to keep the control in but to tape around as much of the marsh as possible and give some competitor information at the start. Apologies to early starter Martin Dean who missed this and must have wondered what on earth all the tapes were for!
The main talking point of the day, apart from the fantastic weather, was that we ran out of maps fairly early on. It would be easy to just apologise for this and say that we made a mistake. First of all I’d like to thank Lynne and Chris on registration who took this in their stride, and dealt patiently with almost 60 concerned EODers, most of whom were very patient (thanks!) and worked hard to prise maps from the hands of competitors who had completed their runs. In the absence of the controller (who was on his way back from taping the marsh) they took the sensible step to start recycling maps. Although this can pose questions about fairness, we didn’t receive any complaints about people map reading on the way to the start, and I think it was the correct approach to an unfortunate situation. The background to this is that the organiser initially made an estimation of maps required based on pre-entries plus a margin for EOD. There were a number of requests on Monday for maps to be reserved so entries were reopened for a day and some additional maps ordered. We had a further half dozen or so requests for maps to be reserved between Monday and Saturday. Possibly due to the fine weather about half again of the number of pre-entries came to enter on the day. So while it’s fair to say we underestimated the numbers, I’m not sure any club would work to a 50% extra maps margin for potential EOD for a SoSOL. I’m certain that if the weather had been like it was for the GUOC sprint relays the day before we’d have had next to no EOD. I hope those who had to cadge a map or who got a run on a different course than normal still enjoyed their day. Sorry especially to the person who turned up at the start to run orange but found no map. We think someone took an orange map by mistake earlier on.
Thanks to everyone who gave up their maps to allow someone else to have a run. I believe we discounted those who ran on a borrowed map. We took details from some of the donators to send them on a map that we will have specially printed. If anyone else who gave up their map, or indeed who pre-entered but could not run, would like a map posted out to them, please contact us via the website by 16 Nov giving your name and address and what course you ran.
cheers
Andy Paterson
Controller
Directions:
Approach from the M80 - if approaching from the west, take junction 4A exit, follow signs for B802 to Kilsyth/Croy - if approaching from the east, take junction 5 exit, follow B8048 to Kirkintilloch then B802 to Kilsyth/Croy. Turn left into the first entrance to the Croy station park-and-ride car park. If arriving by train, registration is across the road from Croy Station (clothing can be left here).
Registration, download and toilets:
Registration, download and toilets will be at the Antonine Sports Hub, opposite Croy station. Both the start and finish will be approx 20 mins walk from the parking area.
Scottish Student Individual Championships eligibility:
To be competitive you must enter the following courses
Championship Mens - Brown
Championship Womens - Blue
Novice - Light Green
Downloadable Documents
Final details (pdf)
Terrain description
Croy hill has the Antonine wall passing through the centre of the map.
More information about the area…
Remapped in early 2014 with a hugely improved basemap the area now has the map it deserves. Lots of interesting detail and ideal for sprint and middle distance races.
Posted on 09th Nov 14
by Alastair Dunlop - Treasurer