Away from the kit side of this issue I still have concerns about the effectiveness/ability of race monitoring procedures to comply with the rules in the real world. I accept that the requirements are desirable, and that they will be achievable on many occasions. I can not accept that they will be achievable every time. But the rules expect this - they dont say 'except when....' or 'it is recognised that on occasion despite the best efforts of the organiser...' As I understand it they say and mean this MUST be achieved.
I hesitate to mention particular races because I dont want to give the impression (and I certainly dont mean to) that I am criticising the ROs - quite the opposite. Neither am I criticising the committee - I am trying to constructively debate some developing rules that I believe could cause us some problems in the future because they haven't been met because they can not be met. To me it seems obvious - we can probably all think of races we have done where marshalls and CPs are out of touch with the race start. They dont know how many started or how many retired before reaching them and they cant tell control how many have passed though their CP until they get back to the valley or to somewhere with radio or mobile phone coverage. Thats not because of any carelessness or lack of effort by the RO, its just an unavoidable fact. I'm not saying all races are like this but some are and as fellrunners and as the FRA I feel that we should be prepared to accept and acknowledge that within the structure of the rules that we will be judged by in future.
