Trailblazers Round 6 – Planners Report
The final round of the Trailblazer Series took place yesterday and rather than competing I took on the role of course planner. Since this was the last event of the series I had the longest time to prepare the course over pervious planners and this gave to an opportunity to fully explore the back roads and lanes around North Down. I decided early on that the event HQ would be best located at the White Spots County Park. This park is located between Bangor and Newtownards and it also divided the map up nicely with the flatter countryside to the east and the much hillier west side. At first I though of using the area further down the Ards Peninsular, but Strangford Lough and the coastline was limiting the route options and made the area too compact, especially for the 4 hour course. After completing a number of scouting rides I soon realized the area was perfect for trailquests. The area between Bangor, Newtownards and Donaghdee was a maze of quite country roads and lanes and, of course, on the west side you have the Holywood hills, and the forests of Cairnwood and Clandyboyle. The was also Scrabo, which was just south of Newtownards, which I knew was not bike friendly, but was too good a feature to leave out.
I wanted to try something different so I decided to cover a slightly bigger area and have about 32 controls. This lead to a problem that 32 controls divided into the max score of 600 lead to most of the controls being lower that normal scores. In fact there was only one 40 pointer. I was also aware that using a bigger area meant the chances of teams collecting all the controls were greatly reduced. My main reason to using 32 controls was route choice. I didn’t want an obvious route to stand out, but wanted teams to think more about the terrain, points, control locations and their own riding ability, before deciding on a route that best suited them.
But nothing goes according to plan and I did come across a few problems even before the race began. First one was the map – it was so out of date, even the 2009 edition showed lanes and tracks that were no longer there. I had to redraw some of the map and add/delete lanes and mark clear ‘no go’ areas where lanes cut directly through someone’s front yard. Another problem was the vegetation. About 4-5 weeks ago all of the trails and rough country lanes were all ride able and fast. When I checked some locations last week the grass and nettles had exploded into live and made some of the tracks a nightmare to get through. Even the windmill base on top of the hill at CP123 was easily visible a few weeks ago, but when I when up to put out the control on Saturday evening the surrounding trees and bushes had basically doubled in size and completely obscured the windmill from the laneway. I also hoped placing two controls within Scrabo Country Park would not cause too many issues. That is why I placed them at the quarries rather that putting them higher up on the main paths where most of the people would walk. Scrabo was too good a place to miss out, so I did take a gamble as the area was a ‘no cycling’ area (like most parks/forests in Northern Ireland). However, some teams did meet the warden and gave them a bit of an ear full, which I have to apologize for. I think in future I will simply have to leave Scrabo alone, which is a pity.
Since the event and with going over the map again I learnt the following lessons;
1. 32 controls are too many (especially when I have to gather them back up at the end). I think 24 controls should be the max for these events. Mainly, because, people like to go and will make the effort and collect a high scoring control, but understandablely feel cheated when after so much effect to ride up a hill they only get 20 points. Having 24 controls divided into 600 points will give the option of a few high scoring controls to play with.
2. Control location is a continuing problem with most events, including mine. I think as planners we need to understand that the main idea behind a trailquest is to pick the best route between the controls and navigate to them. I think if you have to search for a control for longer than 2 minutes, then that control is not well placed. A trailquest is not about hunting for the control once you arrive to the control circle on the map. Adding to the fact that the 1:50000 OS maps are not the most detailed, then once you ask people to navigate to a control which is not clearly marked on the map is asking for trouble. At this stage they purely have to rely on the description you provide…..and someone interpretation of a description can be different to another persons interpretation. For future events controls locations must be clearly shown on the map i.e. bends, junctions, trig points etc. If the control is located off a track then the description must be from an obvious ‘attack point’ i.e. on tree 5m north of bend, inside ruin house 10m east of track junction. In these examples ‘bend’ and ‘track junction’ would be clearly marked on the map and once competitors arrive at the locations then they should easy follow the description to the control kite. Of course to simply have the control kite on the bend, junction would be the best answer, but this cannot work all the time.
3. Finally the course on Sunday covered too big an area. Of course as a planner you do not want teams to get the full 600 points. For a winning team, we should design the course so the winning team gets about 500 to 550 points. Most top teams with cover about 65-75 km in four hours. So to clear a course the distance to do it in should be around 80-85km.
However, Sunday was a great day and I think everybody enjoyed the riding around North Down. I got some good feedback and took note of any negative comments and will use them to improve the event for next year.
Finally a big thanks to Ivan Millar, who without is his commitment to start a MTBO and trailquest series would have make our Sundays slightly more boring. The Dromara CC with be starting their popular Winter Trailquest series around November/December time – so hopefully I will see everyone there.
