Course Setter: Justin Stafford
Start Times: 8:00am – 9:00am
Directions: Head west from the Glendale crossroads, turn right after 500 metres at the lights into Frederick St. Start is at end of Frederick st, park in the surrounding streets
From the Setter : Justin Stafford
Brush Creek is always a challenging place. It is difficult navigationally because of the large spider web of constantly changing tracks. It is difficult technically, because the majority of tracks are rutted and twisted due to motorbike activity. It is demanding physically due to the hilly nature of the area. Combine that with hot weather and I am stoked that, aside from control placement a little high, most riders enjoyed themselves and had a good ride!
I do feel for the plethora of riders who suffered breakages – tubes, tires, chains and even derailleur hangers…
I was also excited to be the setter for the first official Newcastle event to use the SI gear (the DuO is a NSW event). This allowed for some interesting analysis, highlights including:
- Every control was visited, with a reasonable spread – a good result in my books.
- The most popular was 186 with all but two of the 41 riders punching – I assume due to the fact that it was an easy “enroute” control.
- The least popular was 187 and 188 with only 4 visits – I guess this makes sense as they were a challenge to get to and of lower value.
- Surprising to me was the large number of visits to 181 (top middle) and the low number of visits to the 2 and 3 point controls in the SE corner.
I have put together a visualisation showing the relative number of visitors to each control.
Thanks to Andrew, Geoff and Cheryle for their support with the event, and to Nicole, Tim, Steve and Sallyanne for control collection.