Tunnel Gully, 25 Aug 19
Course planner
Fine sunny day. A bit of winter wetness on the logging tracks, but the established bike tracks in good nick. 30 participants. Single 11km course, with a short option of about 6km.
Michael writes...
We've been waiting 10 years for various bits of logging to finish and we've now got our 3-D playground back. 3-D because there's that fascinating route choice of "tackle the hill head-on or go through the tunnel and loop back from the other side". We've also got that nice little forest maze between the lower picnic area and Station Drive to play with. Thanks to the NTrailz guys who were creating more trails even as we rode.
First time back in the area we made the most of the close-in tracks and it got an hour or more out of all of you. The first half (1-4) was about route choice between two alternatives. After a tootle along the old Remutaka rail route the accent in the second half was on the navigational puzzle among the maze of tracks and directional restrictions. Then the picnic run home. There's more to ride in the area, next time could be quite different.
Well done to all of you and special thanks to Gavin Scott, Mark Malone, and various Topps who did the control put-out and take-in. Names came off the cards, please correct any misinterpretations.
6km Bike
- Ali Power 73:10
- Sarah Underwood 73:20
11km Foot
- Mark Malone 81:50
11km Bike
- Magnus Bengtsson 61:30
- Echelon Topp +1 75:50
- Nic Mitchell 77:00
- Clinton Topp +1 80:10
- Mike Fee 90:10
- Ryan Topp 93:30
- Jenny Visser 95:25
- William Power 98:40
- Paul Clarke 101:50
- Lucy Ellwood 106:40
- Peter Thompson +1 112:40
- Gavin Scott 123:30
- Leanne Arthur Gavin Coleman +2 littlies 122:30
- Val Spooner +3 128:50
- Steve Peters +1 129:20
- Hamish Trolove DNF
- Eleanor DNF
Kapiti Crews Mark III, 19 May 19
Course planner
Fine sunny day. Dry underfoot and underwheel. 65 participants. Score event, 2 or 3hrs. Max score 1930
Michael writes...
Another exploration of the Kapiti Coast, with literally highways and byways and little pockets of bush, the wonderful Waikanae river, and the beach. Hope you enjoyed it as much as we enjoyed mapping it.
Whether you used the cellphone app or not, its worth looking at the MapRun website. Go to the Results tab, and choose either Leaderboard for a tabulation of controls visited (with the oddities noted below). Or go to Routes, In both cases you'll have to search an index for the event called "Kapiti Crews Mk3 Main46 etc" among the hundreds of events there. In Routes, choose a course called "Course1" and you should see people who had the app going. You can select one of them and display the route. Or you can select several or all of them and run the animation. Little dots speed over the map. This assumes that the 2hr and 3hr teams started together, it might be better to pick only teams in the same category.
So this was another practice for MapRun. There are a number of things that can interrupt scoring and upload to the MapRun website, the backup process was your answer sheet. Let me know if I haven't recognised every control you visited. Over time we'll learn how to use this new technology.
A little explanation that the (Australian) app uses 30 pts/min for lateness and we have over-ridden that to our usual 10 pts/min. And the app was told the time allowance was 3 hours so for a couple of 2hr teams we've had to apply a penalty where the app didn't. In the event of discrepancies between the MapRun website and this page, this one takes precedence.
Results
"A" means we took your score from the App, "P" means from the Paper answer sheet. Where we recognised a discrepancy we have added some P points to the A points. Feel free to point out any points we have missed or anything else we got wrong. L means lateness penalty.
2hrs Foot
- Alan Teesdale-Spittle 520P -10L =510 (2:01)
2hrs Wheel
- J R O Man: John Robertson 1050A + 260P =1310 (2:00)
- Dave Rudge 1260A +40P -60L =1240 (2:06)
- Mike Fee 1190A (1:58)
- Jenny Visser 1160A (1:59)
- Team Fuzzball: Simon and Miro Kennett 1010P (1:57)
- Paul Teesdale-Spittle 770A (abt 1:30 started late)
- Andersons: Claire and Mark 770A -10L =760 (2:01)
- MaddX5: Greg Paula Nicole and Zoe Maddigan 720A (1:58)
- Michelle and Sarah Przychodzko 690P -110L =580 (2:11)
- Lucy Elwood 520A (1:16)
- Emma and Louise Anscombe 500A -30L =470 (2:03)
- Canucks: Alistair, Lisa, Alex and Matthew Howard 380A +80P =460 (1:59)
- Family Ramble: Ruth Rothman, Ethan, Troy, Eve 110A (1:49)
2.5hrs Wheel
- Christine Dean Mike Webber 660A (2:28)
3hrs Foot
- L2: Leon Perrie Lara Shepherd 910A (2:57)
- Keldon Reid Jacob Holmes (No sheet)
3hrs Wheel
- Bomb: Jim Sutherland Howard Symmes Bill Clark 1600A (2:59)
- Crazy Cat and Zedd: Hamish Trolove Eleanor Howick 1110P (2:56)
- Catjanjen: Jenny Cassie Jan Sheppard Catherine Pantling 1070A (2:58)
- Gavin Scott 970P -30L =940 (3:03)
- Your Face: Janine Simons Mia Thompson Ness Simons Tiffaney Te Moananui 890P (2:57)
- Hop Swiss: Benedicte Florin Tony Dagger 910A -20L =890 (3:02)
- No Fomo: Joanna Baylis Wendy Horning 760A -20L =740 (3:02)
- The Suckers: Simon and Thomas Wakeman 720A (2:57)
- Super Snails: Amie Maxwell, James, Ashley 640A (2:30)
- Cager-Lloyd: Simon and Linus Cager Aidan Spence 600A (2:55)
- The Disoriented Express: Janice and Paul Kang, Fiona Hood 570A (2:58)
- Baby Face: Milla Weatherly Rafe Thompson Felix Thompson Hugo Weatherley 450P (2:48)
B-Max Intro Event Take II, Wainui Trail Park, 14 Apr 19
Course planner
. 22 riders.
A re-run of the February Intro event, which was affected by weather and other circumstances. But Feb did give us confidence to promote the cellphone app "MapRun", and most participants used it this time.
We're all developing familiarity with it and below the results we'll list a few things to make it run more reliably. But I think we'll be using it more, its marvellous to whizz past the controls without stopping!
That aside, the courses got a decent workout this time. If you thought they were a bit on the short side, MTBO has some shorter formats which are done in complex track areas so they test quick thinking rather than route choice and endurance. Today was good practice for beginners and experts alike.
Results
Your own results are available via the app on your phone or the MapRun website, including your tracks overlaid on the map. But it's a bit quirky, so the summary below is provided, with comments. Delve into greater detail on the MapRun website, and choose the "Results" tab. Hint - you'll need to use the "Filter". Type in "Wainui" and it will find "wainuibm2019" which is the longer course. Click on that and you'll get "wainuibm2019 Course A" for the shorter one. (They only allow one course per event so I haven't worked out what to call my courses.)
Course A, 1km including the M/C skills area. Bear in mind everyone was getting used to the app here, and because of the closeness of the checkpoints there were lots of spurious beeps. We list clean results above runs where something seems to be wrong.
- Billy Rodenberg 8:52
- Ryan Topp +1 10:55
- Mike Fee 11:01
- Jenny Visser 13:53
- Jim Sutherland 14:08
- Howard Symmes 15:07
- David Darby 15:51
- Pam and Len Rodenberg 17:22
- Katie Durrant +3 23:08
- Clinton Topp +1 25:57
- Hamish Trolove (Not using app, time not recorded)
- Karen Orr 10:53 (Missed #12, #14, track not uploaded)
- Val Spooner 12:57 (Missed #12, #14 in m/c area)
- Ollie and Mike Taylor 24:08 (GPS track bad early on. App says "mispunch", but I think you got them all, perhaps not in the right order. Spotted a wrong direction for #15)
- Ben Neville 35:45 (GPS track crazy esp early on. App says "mispunch", but I think you got them all, except not in the right order.)
Course B, 2.8km, Wetland Loop
- Ben Neville 28:43 You may have mis-interpreted #12 as being on the single-track whereas it was in the big groove between the cliffs. This leads to a tunnel entrance but the tunnel was never built.
Course E, 5km, Wetland Loop with embellishments. I set A and E up as if it was a score event so everyone would get a result. Normally the app would check that the order was correct, so I had to eyeball your tracks. Clean results above others.
- Mike Fee 37:12
- Hamish Trolove 40:00 (Not using app, time estimated)
- Jenny Visser 40:55
- Pam and Len Rodenberg 56:08
- Billy Rodenberg 29:02 (Missed #13)
- David Darby 38:42 (GPS lost reception between 1-4 and 4-6; Missed #12 and #18)
- Jim Sutherland 38:49 (Wrong direction into #4)
- Clinton Topp 39:41 Missed #18
- Howard Symmes 40:39 (Track not uploaded; wrong direction into #18)
- Ryan Topp +1 41:43 (Wrong direction into #2)
- Ollie and Mike Taylor 53.22 (Wrong #13, wrong direction #18)
- Val Spooner 62:13 Some out of sequence
- Katie Durrant 62:18 (wrong #4)
- Karen Orr 62:20 Some out of sequence
MapRun (Cellphone app) Lessons for Participants
- Some cellphones just have a poor GPS. The tracks on the map are by no means perfect but you can tell when the track of your movement goes crazy. The majority of recent cellphones do work.
- A couple of courses didn't upload to the MapRun website. Needs more investigation.
- Cellphones can "go to sleep" and if you have it tucked away the first you know is failure to beep at a control. I know now to fish it out, and there's a message saying do you want to resume. Of course! I can reduce the problem by increasing the display timeout from std (1min) to max (10min). Don't know what would happen if controls were half an hour apart, but then battery life is going to limit long events.
- Various other cellphone settings may need tweaking. One person had the sound level turned off and couldn't hear the beeps. See cellphone guru below.
MapRun (Cellphone app) Lessons for Course Planners
- Controls too close together will generally confuse everything .There's a 10m tolerance built in to cope with (a) GPS error and (b) control circles and maps aren't perfect either. We can avoid this at the planning stage. May never be suitable for very short courses that criss-cross a lot. Not sure about performance among tall buildings.
- A test course is a good idea for new users to test their phone and know what to do. It only needs to have one control - eg an obvious feature visible from the start and finish.
- We may need an Android/iPhone guru at events for a while to solve phone issues.
- We need a shady spot for the rego area otherwise people can't read their phones. Separate from the start triangle otherwise timing starts before they're ready.
- The map needs to be pretty well perfect where the controls are otherwise participants won't get a beep. Among lots of people there are bound to be a few cellphones/locations that won't beep and we need a protocol for this - take a selfie with marker in the background?
B-Max Beginner Event, Wainui Trail Park, 24 Feb 19
Course planner
. 1 rider.
An unfortunate combination of circumstances today - neighbouring club put on a competing event; and the forecasters promising dire weather. Be it known that the rain was quite light, reaching an annoying level only after the closing time of noon.
We'll re-run the event in weather better suited to kids and beginners. And next time we'll be able to depend entirely on the smartphone app MapRun for timing. This uses your phone's GPS to tell us whether and when you visited each control so does away with question-and-answer, clipcards, expensive electronic boxes, honesty systems and the like. Before today we weren't sure whether it would work in the bush, and (at least for the planner's phone) it does! Stand by for more events like this.
Results
Course A, 1km including M/C skills area
- William Power 11:13
Course B, 2.8km, Wetland Loop
- No takers
Course E, 5km, Wetland Loop with embellishments
- William Power 48:25
For questions about the results consult the course planner or series coordinators, for questions about the page consult OHV's webmaster
