A Good Trialing day in Yorkshire

[telecat]

Over 100 Riders at Tong for the Horsforth Club and over 70 At the Yeadon And Guiseley Club Trial at Addingham on the same day! Both Trials had very healthy Small Wheelers entries as well. Even the Spen Valley Trial at Harden Moor the previous day in appalling weather had 38 riders! Looks like the clubs hard work with courses is paying off.

[jsp]

the horsforth trial was a belter, sections where spot on another few rides for the new

flagging system to sink in and happy days. even the weather couldnt spoil it. sounds like

west of leeds, horsforth and spen valley are all going to be using the same flag system so

thats even better

jsp

[scoobydo]

Yes Spen Valley riders have voted overwhelmingly to adopt this method too.

Agree that it will take a few events to bed in. Probably for the guys setting out as much as the riders !

Have to say for me - (riding the Spen event) it was clear that the sections were plotted clearly for the skill levels for that particular route and therefore no 'over the top' parts were in unlike before with combined sections.

Actually think that in time it will be easier for course markers to work this system once they are all a few events in.

Better for all levels of rider skill

Better for observers

=Better events !

Happy days indeed

Cheers

GAW.

Edited January 17, 2011 by Scoobydo

[johnnyboxer]

Can someone explain the new system?...............succinctly

[jsp]

red and blue mark the hard course with yellow and white to lessen the sections for the clubmen

at the harder points and green and orange markers only mark out for the easier route, so your

not riding to sections looking for the 50/50 signs. hope that makes some kind of sense.

jsp

Edited January 17, 2011 by jsp

[scoobydo]

Just add to the last post - you could in fact (if the person marking out wanted to - and the terrain may dictate this for example) have 3 entirely different routes. They would all start at the same gate and eventually finish at the same gate but what is plotted between start and finish can be 'tuned' to suit the Hard course route - Clubman route & the Clubman easy route therefore catering for all riding levels without penalising / forcing anyone to ride what they find too easy or too hard.

It works !

Edited January 17, 2011 by Scoobydo

[tricky dicky]

Most of the clubs I know have been using this system for years now albeit using different coloured flags.

We run red/blue for the hard route, yellows for the clubman route and whites for the easy route. We dont call it a beginners route as its not entirely fair as some of the riders dont want to push themselves onto the clubman route which is fine as it is all about a good days sport.

We used to run a 50/50 route and I see a lot of clubs are adopting this. I personally think it doesnt work. The Macclesfield club run 3 standard routes and then 50/50 between expert and clubman and also between clubman and easy route. The 50/50 will work if the sections for the expert route are set out as normal and not taking into account that the clubmen are riding some of them. From what I have seen in the last few years since clubs are adopting this method is that the sections are clearly laid out easier when the clubmen are riding a hard route section. This therefore achieves nothing as the clubman route needs a few mark takers anyway to sort out the results. All it achieves is that the majority of the clubmen clean the so called "harder" sections and the hard route end up riding 5 or 6 rubbish sections which dont on the whole take any more marks from the clubmen than the normal clubman sections.

I see this happen at the majority of the trials that run a 50/50 route. The other trials that run 50/50 seem to make the hard route easy and the hardest hard route sections are being ridden by the clubmen. To me that doesnt make sense as the idea of the 50/50 is for the clubmen to ride half of the easier hard route sections not the harder ones! The whole idea of the 50/50 is to give the clubmen more of a challenge and not for them to ride the sections the experts are struggling with! I just think the hard route should be layed out to take a wide spread of marks then if the clubs want to run 50/50 then the 5 or 6 easiest sections are picked for the clubmen to ride. That is the only way it will work othwerwise it is false. That is in my opinion why the 3 seperate routes works best.