The marshal on the restart has just asked the Chief Official about the
rules for stopping in the restart box. Bit late considering half the bikes
have gone thru.
rules for stopping in the restart box. Bit late considering half the bikes
have gone thru.
Just read Michael\’s comment on the Bamford restart:
"The marshal on the restart has just asked the Chief Official about the rules for stopping in the restart box. Bit late considering half the bikes have gone thru".
As the Chief Official concerned, a couple of comments. There was a desparate shortage of marshals for this year\’s Edinburgh, as anyone receiving the club email newsletter would have known. In the event, we had just about enough to run Bamford, but no one who had marshalled on the hill before, and almost all never anywhere before. It\’s a long hill with bad phone and radio reception, and organising the team was very problematical in the time available. In the circumstances, I think all the team put in an excellent effort despite being in some cases extremely cold to the point of severe discomfort at the end of seven hours in the very cold wind mentioned.
The point of clarification which Michael witnessed with me was relatively minor, and merely confirmed that the marshal concerned had a correct understanding of the detail on vehicle positioning, and that no one had been wrongly penalised. Knowing the importance of the restart, I was able to put two marshals on this, and I am sure that their observations were fair.
Whilst I understand that competitors want the best service they can get from marshals, it would help if experienced people who aren\’t competing would volunteer. Whilst I enjoyed the blog, the trials – particularly the Edinburgh - are at risk if they don\’t. Personally, it\’s going to take me a few days to recover from the severe mucscle cramps I\’m now suffering from walking up and down the section at least twelve times to to check on the team.
Thanks for your understanding.
Hello – Michael here – Very kind of you to clarify. I could see that the marshals were inexperienced. The rule MCC about restart boxes can be difficult to grasp, although if you read it in the routecard it is very clear. You certainly worked hard yourself and I though you kept things running pretty well. I don\’t know what you do for a living but boy did you work hard "walking the job" I was exhausted just walking up half the hill when we left and you were up and down all the time. I agree that it is very likeley that anyone was un-fairly penalised and once they had spoken to you they seemed pretty clear.
Michael
Thank you for the response. I wasn\’t hiding my name – just couldn\’t log in properly last night on that part of the site.
I should stress that not all the marshals were inexperienced - and I\’m very grateful to those who helped to keep things in order.. But Bamford is a complex hill with poor line-of sight visibility – I think the team deserve all competitors\’ thanks for turning out. The majority were NOT past competitors, which tells us something. (I am, and intend to be next year, so how about you running Bamford!).
FYI, generally the marshals this year (at least the ones I had) were NOT supplied with route cards and programmes routinely – perhaps an understandable function of the (very necessary) make-do-and-mend setup this year with the trial nearly cancelled for lack of officials. I was therefore forced to coach people on what was expected of them as we started up. I agree that, had they been fed the information to read ahead of time, it would have been fair to have expected them to read it…
By the way "what I do for a living" is unfortunately deskbound – and my legs still ache today. The restart official concerned is one of my colleagues whom I dragged along last-minute to help. He has navigated in the past , but not marshalled. I\’d like to have had a more experienced official at the restart, but I hope you appreciate that a complex start area and the mid-section holding area both required the best expertise we could allocate.
Barry Toogood
Thanks for response again Barry, I put a link on the main site to this thread as I thought it only fair having said something against the marshalls. When I do these "on the road things" it tends to be whats on your heart at the time. I plan to be driving myself again next year so won\’t be putting my name forward to run a hill. I don\’t really want to get into this subject here but like a lot of people I am a member of quite a few clubs (four in my case) and you have to choose which ones you help out on the organisational front. My local club (Falcon) used to provide a team to run a hill on MCC events but doesn\’t do so any more for reasons that are known to the MCC committee. My personal marshalling program includes our two local trials in October in November, followed by The Hardy, The Allen (if they need me) and The Clee Hills.