Round 4 - Thalamorph Rally

Provisional Results are now up, which will become final on Friday 1st October at 21:00. (All is in place bar the map solutions for Route Cards 10-12 which will be added this evening).

As in previous rounds, if you have a query, please post it on the relevant thread on the forum.

For the Novices and Experts the times and scores show that I pitched the level about right, perhaps a little easy on certain cards. However it is safe to say that I provided the Masters with a challenge - perhaps even more than I had intended.
It certainly highlighted the need for the 'intermediate' level which hopefully we will see in the future.
It was interesting to see Gavin Rogers change his approach for this event and not worry about setting fastest times. It almost worked too.

I must thank all of you who took the time to add comments, both good and bad, with your answers. One or two even appreciated the more difficult cards!

One of the many things I learned in the process of setting and marking the event was how difficult it is to select route checks. Getting a good balance and covering as many 'loops' of the route is not always easy and in some cases I had no choice but to resort to letters. Hopefully this will be a thing of the past if the proposed trial of map marking software on the next event works.

So as I have not received any death threats (yet) from either competitors or Ray, I may have the dubious pleasure of organising another round in the future. Given how long it took to put the event together this time, I had better start on the next one now...

So provisional congratulations to the Class Winners, David Bell, David Smoley and Ian Doble.

Best Regards,

Iain

24 September 2010 @ 14:15
RESULTS FINAL on 3 October 2010 @ 12:30

Here's a few handy links:

Welcome to the Thalamorph, the final round of this year's championship. Note that there have been no regulation changes and no bulletins issued since the last round.

I have chosen not to use any audio or video files, geocaching, interactive or Google maps for the route cards. I've nothing against these, in fact I quite enjoy them, I just wanted to keep my first attempt simple and use more traditional presentation. If I am foolish enough to offer to organise another round in the future (if I am invited to do so again!) perhaps I will be more adventurous... That said, there are one or two sections that may be new to you or have not been seen for a while. I hope you will find them both enjoyable and challenging.

The route checks are a good mixture I hope, letters are used but after the last round I have tried to avoid any ambiguous ones, though I am sure there will still be some - please remember the new rule, if you think it is ambiguous, include it in your list and add a comment. There will be some counting of spot heights, churches, telephone boxes and gradient arrows required so have your magnifying glass or poti ready. This event may be the last one to use this method of route checking, hopefully we will get to try Crow's new system later this year.

Please note that I will have no or limited internet access on the following dates: 15th, 17th and 22nd August, 3rd, 4th & 6th September, so please be patient if you have any queries on these dates.

Finally, remember as the event started a week later than originally scheduled, the new finish date is Wednesday 8th September.

All the best,

Iain

August 11, 2010