JWOC Trial Hapua Wetlands Middle Distance Feb 2008
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Winterless Warm Weather Wairarapa Waitangi Weekend Waterless Wetlands Wonderland

Now I've got all those W's out of the way (W9 or W3 * 3) I can comment more traditionally.

Thanks to Dick for his great help - more than one checking is always required to stop any error from occurring - and there are endless ways an error can occur in an Orienteering event. It is always a relief when the first finishers on a course come in and report that all is ok.

Courses were long for a middle distance event - the selectors asked for a little bit longer for the juniors but I think it ended up being about 5 minutes too long - due to the blisteringly hot day (probably 33-36 degrees) and the physical hills and bush. Luckily there was a breeze. At Easter at the nationals, the top course did 5km in 30minutes but did not have to do much running in the bush and had less climb.

Sorry about some electric fences being on - I tried to get the farmer to turn them off but he did not turn of the solar-powered ones.

I did hear many positive comments and I thank you for all for them. One selector mentioned that it was a good trial - about the best we could do to simulate Italy conditions.

However, you can't please everyone all of the time. I'm a glutton for punishment and I waited at the finish when some elites finished - it's interesting to hear the off-the-cuff comments which you have to take with a grain of salt at times - the acerbity of the comments is directly related to how well someone has run.

These were some that I heard in the space of a minute by two top elites:

- 'course was unfair'
- 'I contoured round from the clearing and ended up way too low' - intimating the map was wrong
- a cliff should never have been mapped
- a control under a cliff was in the wrong place.
- a watercourse did not extend all the way to a stream.

Fascinating, how we can race around a course and work out with a great deal of assurance that the map is wrong or the planner is wrong.

To you the reader, I ask, how often do you run on a course and blame the course planner, mapper, weather etc when something goes wrong? Do you presume innocence or automatically assume something or someone else other than yourself is guilty? My point here is that if you do this often, you are doing yourself a disservice - I always try to assume that it was my own navigation skills at fault and not anything else. It was me that caused the error and noone else and I have to try to get better at reading the map and interpreting the mapper and planner. If I don't do this, I won't improve - remember that the best Orienteers always seem to come out on top no matter what the map.

One other elite at the finish said (as a course planner and mapper himself) that I should not have been there but I'm a little mashochistic and I think there are lessons to be learnt from constructive and destructive criticisms at times.

To refute the allegations / innuendo / intimations above:

- I mapped and planned the event and have done so for many years - I'm always trying to make a course fair - but it is the nature of generalisation and subjectiveness of mapping that will always cause some debate.
- Picking up the controls, I also ran the same route (for about the third time) and saw that the sheep tracks were leading slightly downwards and that if I followed the contour rigidly (a much slower route) I would hit the control. I can see little wrong with both the route and the mapping around the control.
- Cliffs are so subjective - some in the gullies I marked as passable and in the extreme dry they may be more easily crossible but when I mapped them they were slippery and a hazard. Others were marked where I thought it was dangerous. Obviously some elites are supermen.
- The control under the cliff was fine and in the right place - I rechecked everything again (for the nth time) when picking up the controls.
- the watercourse problem is a matter of intepretation and mapping stlye - I use the dry ditch / watercourse feature to make the map clearer and easier to read - blue is easier to see than a small brown reentrant and quite often I extend it all the way to where the reentrant meets the main gully.

Constructive comments about the interpretation about an area were what I was after - it will make me a better mapper in the future. As an example, a gentle one from another person saying that a hilltop should have been a spur places a flag in my mind to make sure I check them from all sides in the future.

I thought I would just share some insight into the world of a planner and what we have to deal with - pretty normal for all the events I've planned - mostly positive but always some negative. I'm not trying to be overly negative here - I'm just trying to report examples of what occurs to a planner to everyone - it's happened to me on most of my maps - and I'm trying to make some people maybe analyse how they orienteer and cope with mistakes. The enjoyment I get out of mapping and planning far outweighs so far any negativity from the minority.

The life of an administrator is rough at times and we have to be thick skinned. From my observations of the selectors at the event they had to deal with all sorts of almost litigious comments and with people pontificating to them. Theirs is a thankless task.

Be easy on us administrators but if not please be careful what you say - we are human and we are trying our best.

And to the person who took it upon himself to move a control thinking it was on the wrong side of a knoll - I know you were well meaning but the correct procedure is if you think there is an error on a course to come to the finish and report it. In this instance, the person had to go back to replace the control on the right side again, and luckily no harm was done.

I've exported some maps which show the course routes I saw when planning - Hapua is a great area for providing good route choice:

(Included on the web pages is this report and also a copy of the report about the real reason why I planned this event - the Winter Classic 2008 event where I was inspired by the committment of juniors and their parents to Orienteering)

http://www.orienteeringresults.com/O/nzof/maps.htm

On a happy note, I thought I would sign off with some words of wisdom which are poignant for Orienteering from Jason Mraz's song:

'But I won't hesitate, no more, no more, it cannot wait, I'm yours' (how to spike a control)

'Look into your heart and you'll find the sky is yours' (an Orienteering heart)

'We're just one big family' (Orienteering family of course)

Bryan Teahan, Planner's Report, Hapua JWOC trial, Middle Distance, Feb 8th, 2009.