Day 2 Controller’s Report

It was a delight to control with Alan to learn at the feet of the master in this my second foray into trail-O controlling. With the Day 2 being necessarily early on the Sunday to give adequate time for our overseas competitors to travel home, I was unavailable to compete as my friends in the sport are aware that worship takes priority for me on a Sunday morning.

One of the benefits of controlling trail-O is that not only do you have the opportunity to experience the course in similar terms to that of a competitor, but then immediately afterwards get feedback from the planner and settle the matter in your mind there and then!

Then there comes the opportunity to check out the control from various viewpoints, checking possible bearings and features lining up. Then follows a check that everything about the map in the vicinity of the control matches to the ground, a check that the description is fully accurate and finally an opportunity to make suggestions improve the challenge. This could be for example changing the location of the spurious flags to make them seem more feasible or adding additional controls. And of course you do get to do all this on a beautiful sunny day.

For the record I got both the timed controls incorrect and it was gratifying to see that most competitors did also. After relatively straightforward timed controls on Day 1, I think the Day 2 controls where probably the most technical timed controls I have ever come across. I also was incorrect in numbers 4 and 6 so would have had a theoretical score of 16. However a comparison cannot be strictly made as there were some changes to the controls I got wrong – in my view the reasons why I got them wrong of course. But after a few suggestions some of the other controls were possibly harder then.

In fact out of the 20 controls there were changes, mostly minor in 15 of the controls which hopefully added some value. Only one control (No 13) had to be relocated as an tree mapped as an isolate was judged to be so close to merging its canopy with an adjacent copse that it would have probably done so during the growth spurt of late April. Unfortunately Alan’s shears don’t stretch to 4m, but fortunately another similar scenario was adjacent.

The high incorrect scoring at number 11 was something of a surprise. Whilst it was for this control forbidden to continue beyond the decision point there was no restriction on crossing the road to the opposite side from where the edge of the underpass was apparent. I’m fairly sure that the placing of the markers was correct as per the solutions map, although when setting up this site we did notice that a sector was required to avoid confusion with site 12 and most of my attention was diverted into setting this up.

Unfortunately there was a slight issue with the map at number 17 which I only noticed when Alan was placing the controls on Saturday evening and I was at the decision point when it was of course too late to adjust the map. The embankment and wall has more curvature than is shown on the map which may have caused some difficulty. However I am confident that the controls were correctly placed and indeed was waving at some distance to Alan to move flag C further away from flag D so that the 3 flags on the quayside were equally spaced as on the solutions map.

Alan is surely correct that participation in Trail-O can lead to greater consistency in planning, controlling and surveying, but I also suggest in Foot-O in general. Check out Alan’s straight line splitsbrowser graphs for evidence! Of course you could argue that Alan is so competent at Trail-O because he is a very consistent orienteer. However I do think that my own “in the circle” performance has improved in recent years benefiting from trail-o thinking. I am also sure that controlling Day 2 was key in clinching the ITOC title which had eluded me to date!

Now planning Trail-O would be a whole new departure, but it would be nice to see Alan compete for in Ireland for the first time ever!