I too thought it was a great course, and since I was there for setup I'd
like to make the following observations:
1) I actually took 2 stacks of spare cones from the offset gates on the
backside and moved them away, fearing that they would be used to build a
"road" out of that section as well. And honestly I think the course was
better for it.
2) I think it is true, we build a lot of "roads" here and it proves
that having a lot of cones and having a course that's easy to follow
don't necessarily go hand in hand. Courses at National level events
don't have a third of the cones that we have but they are always easy to
follow because they are well designed.
3) I don't think yesterday's course was too much of a "road". Also I
would like to point out that it is not really the course designer's
fault most of the time. I and many others have designed plenty of
courses with well defined gates and strategic cone density in the key
parts. But once the motorhome goes out, the kind volunteers inevitably
throw out one stack of cones every 10 feet. Then more volunteers who
have not really seen the course map well go out and arrange these
hundreds of cones into nice, tidy straight lines :) There's really only
so much time to fix this and usually it's not enough.
So basically, I'm in favor of better thought out cone placement. But
it's not an easy task. Personally I think if the motorhome volunteers
cut the dump rate by about 50% that would be a good place to start. But
also, if you are setting up the course and there are more cones then you
need, just stack them up and leave them at a work station as spares.
That and follow Glenn's excellent guidelines about placing cones
strategically for the most intuitive layout. Reading the Roger Johnson
guide to course design is also a good way to avoid the "sea of cones",
but it is a team effort.
I agree 100%, a course should not be visually confusing. That does not
make it "challenging". A course should be simple to follow, but
challenging to drive. And definitely having more cones does not
necessarily make a course easier to follow. I think we do a pretty good
job given the time restraints we have at our events, it is not easy to
change these things but maybe bringing up the subject to raise awareness
is a good idea.
Peter
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