On the 15th of June we were treated to a wonderful OST event at Lovely Banks by the amazing course setters Jeff Dunn and Sally Wayte. If you were anything like me, you enjoyed the technical courses and running through the spectacular frost covered gorges (and I definitely didnt fall face first into a massive pile of mud). So please enjoy this analysis by Jeff and Sally about their course setting endevours.
Lovely Banks Course Planning:
Really tough, tricky courses set themselves on this map. The winding gorges and feature-littered gorge walls are a gift for route choice options.
There are challenges with the map:
- one obvious arena site (the one we chose) is stuck in a corner of the map
- lack of features between the arena paddock and the gorges
- it is hard to reduce climb
- little scope for easy courses (we had to remove some vanished tracks from the map, and the remaining tracks were faint even after driving up and down on them)
Course lengths are based on expected winning time, and as usual we estimated by reviewing previous finishing times on this, or similar, terrain. Our course 1 was maybe a little short – no surprise, given the quality of competitors. We worked hard enough to provide some far-flung controls (and drinks station) and we still had to send course 1 in circles. By the way folks, let’s ditch drink stations and carry our own water.
Those who tackled courses 3 and 5 know they were much too physical. Length was OK-ish relative to other courses but was based on a quick visit to the clifftops and then a wander home through the paddocks. But while at the cliffs, wouldn’t it be fun to have another control, and another, and another. We got carried away! Sorry about that.
We paid particular attention to two groups:
- Novices and kids on course 7 and 8
- People who are over scrambling through rocky, steep and scrubby terrain – course 6.
We would have preferred to make courses 7 (Moderate) and 8 (Easy) less difficult. To do so for 8 would have a required a lot more pin flags. Without an obvious linear feature to follow, a child-size person should be able to see the next flag from each control, and it should be obvious which direction to look for it. At one point we achieved this with a tape arrow on the ground, pointing the direction. Just a few pin flags leading the eye towards a visible flag could also work. We started these courses from the trailer to encourage parental discussions, and quick lessons, before kids headed out. Shadowed or solo, most people got around these courses and many learnt new skills.
We did better with course 6. The 29 minute winning time was short of the 40-45 minutes target (but who thought David Marshall would do course 6?). No-one complained about it being too short but many people appreciated that it was not too rough underfoot and had few hard climbs.
Livelox told many stories...
It was a struggle to give every course a unique first control, but not all of these were mere formalities. Course 4 runners were hit with a very long but fairly simple first leg.
Leg 1 for course 2 looked simple but actually required careful choice of attack point:
