Tayside Orienteers invite you to participate in the 2011 Scottish Sprint Orienteering Championships, at North Muirton in Perth, on Saturday 5th March.
Results now available:
Many thanks to all who came to the Scottish Sprint Champs and a special thanks to all who helped, especially Robin Sloan who interrupted his run to report the missing control, and Robin Strain who helped us promptly replace it. Thanks also to Tiso for sponsoring the event with a voucher for the winner of course 1, the Riverside church for letting us use the church as a venue and for providing much needed food and drink, especially the soup.
Only a few of our members go to non-traditional orienteering events like sprint, urban, middle distance and night o. We had an old, long unused map of Perth Riverside though and Dave Prentice thought that if the housing complex adjacent to it was added it would make a good sprint map. Some on the committee were concerned that it wasn't a safe area to leave controls, but with other clubs attaching padlocks to controls for sprint and urban events and with our sprint map of Scone palace having been popular, and the recent success of PWT, we decided to ask Jegor of Scotia maps to map it for us.
Davie Frame agreed to plan the courses as he's one of the few Tay members who goes to sprint events, and thought it would be a challenge. Control siting was limited by us only wanting to place to controls at structures to which they could be padlocked. We originally thought of having 2 time separated courses, but David thought the map wasn't big or complex enough for this. We also thought about adding in an ultrasprint but finding a venue to hold the event took longer than we thought and we ran out of time to do the additional planning, plus work out how to do an ultrasprint on the computer.
On the day we could have done with more time in the church to set up the computing stuff and arrange tables etc but got the main courses started in time, but unfortunately didn't have enough time for early starts for some club members. Many thanks to those club members who missed their run so they could help. Davie and Gareth had left putting out and checking controls until the last minute to minimise the amount of time they were left unattended.
Unfortunately control 101 which was near the beginning of courses 1 and 2 (i.e. all the over-16 courses) had been stolen by the time the event started. This was rapidly reported to us by Robin Sloan, and luckily Robin Strain was still at registration so was able to show us how to programme a replacement control. When the first finishers came to download, we learned that control 107 which wasn't beeping or flashing wasn't working, and so a replacement was found for that. Luckily no-one had lost much time with the second problem, and Gareth was able to man control 107 until the replacement came. This control appeared to have been badly shaken.
Initially when giving provisional results Robin changed the autodownload setting so if you hadn't punched 101 and 107 it didn't matter. Medals were awarded to the winners according to these provisional results.
Several people did complain of people cheating when punching a couple of controls near the school by punching through the fence. The planner and controller had thought the gaps in the fence were too small for this. All maps had legends with the explanation of sprint O symbols on them and legends were posted at reception. The controls near the fence were moved away slightly where that was possible and people were encouraged to disqualify themselves if they had punched through the fence. This seems to be a recurrent problem with sprint orienteering, punching through a fence not being illegal in cross country orienteering. A previously locked gate was also left open in the school grounds and not spotted when the controls were put out.
The final results were amended with the disqualifications. We debated whether or not to delete the legs either side of the missing control for all competitors. Graeme Ackland, the SOA Competitions Co-ordinator, played with the results and found that if we did this then none of the people who had failed to punch control 101 would win a medal, but it would reverse the positions of some unaffected runners where the winner had just been particularly fast over those legs. It was felt that re-awarding titles in these cases wouldn't be fair, and as this was a Scottish Championship race awarding titles to the "correct" people was more important than some people losing a few BOF ranking points and positions lower down the results being changed.
Angela Dixon
23:00, 1st March - Final Details and Start Lists are now available as PDF documents for downloading and printing:
North Muirton is a complex urban housing estate in Perth, with an adjacent open riverside area.
The event centre is the Riverside Church - carpark, toilets available. Tea and coffee, soup and rolls will also be on sale at the Church.
There will be a brand new ISSOM-standard map.
SportIdent electronic punching will be used.
Provisional course details are as below. Distances are optimum route distances, and are planned to give an estimated winning time of 12 -15 minutes for the fastest on each course.
| Course | Length (km) | Recommended Age Classes |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2.9 | M/W 18, 20, 21, 35 |
| 2 | 2.7 | M/W 40+ |
| 3 | 1.9 | M/W 12, 14, 16 |
| 4 | 1.6 | M/W 10 & Novices |
M/W16s should run course 3, which avoids road crossings, to comply with BOF insurance requirements. Over 16s may run other courses but will not be competitive within their class.
Course 4 is traffic free and avoids the houses all together, so for juniors should not present anything too unfamiliar!
Starts from 1130 to 1230 - start times will be allocated, but there will be a punching start.
Those wishing to shadow juniors should do so after their own run or be non competitive.
Entry online via Oentries.com is preferred. The closing date for pre-entries is Sunday 27th February.
Limited entry on the day will be possible, while maps are still available.
Entry fees:
Results will be published on this page as soon as possible after the event.
Organiser: Angela Dixon (contact adixon @ watt64.freeserve.co.uk)
Planner: Davie Frame
Controller: Gareth Bryan-Jones (Forth Valley Orienteers)
Make a weekend of it, and enter Scottish Orienteering League Event 1 on Sunday 6th March, hosted by Interlopers at Dalrulzion, near Bridge of Cally. More information from: SOL 1 details (PDF) and SOL1 online entries.
You may also be interested in Tayside Orienteers' Woodland challenge - visit some nearby woodland and use our new permanent markers for training or practice.