Controls seemed to be too dependent on hot canteen food. Most places I'd have been happier to stick with toast and cereal and biscuits and fruit, which some of the controls did*.
On a related note, Spicy food is as the same as no food for those of us whose stomachs become very sensitive on long rides.
(* There was an absurd situation overnight at Barnard Castle where there was a huge spread of hot food that no one wanted, and multiple people requesting cornflakes which had to be fetched from a far away back cupboard and were apparently only really meant for those with special dietary needs)
Because a choice of bacon, beans, eggs, pancakes, porridge, greek yoghurt, mixed berries, grapefruit and another bowl of fruit in juice that I can't remember what it was from the servery or oranges/bananas/flapjacks self service just isn't enough options to keep topped up from 4am to 11am...
Foodwise I discovered last time that controls can't do right for doing wrong. No choice, too much choice, no hot food, no cold food, too spicy, too boring, no jacket spuds, nothing but jacket spuds, everybody is serving pasta, you haven't got any pasta, why are you serving the same thing as last time I checked in, why aren't you still serving the same thing as last time I checked in, I'm fed up of beans, you should have beans.... They are all complaints I heard during or after the last one.
Anything self-service that isn't individually packaged has a potential for massive hygiene issues. I've seen the state of some riders...
I was a DNF but would echo a lot of the comments above.
But - public tracking was amazing. This was probably revelatory for many thousands of people worldwide and appreciated by relatives galore. Even people at work were tracking me. SPOT trackers would take the pressure off Phil W and allow the same detail in planning. However the sheer load of servers required probably means that we would have crashed any server not actively managed like Phil did.
As a punter, with friends and family riding, I completely agree - when it works, when people actually scan out etc. It's great to be able to keep tags on the less communicative of the people I'm interested in - the ones who aren't using social media or other comms to update the world. But as a volunteer I found it frustrating eventually, dealing with punters' issues and anxieties around tracking when I could have been focusing on looking after riders. Also a fair number of people seemed to have not allowed their tracking data to be public in the privacy settings they chosse and then wondered why (or had friends and relatives enquiring on fb why) they couldn't be tracked...
I did really like the fact that the vast majority of riders exiting BC were a bit 'meh, why do you need to scan me out, I don't care' until we pointed out that it helps the controls to know who is coming their way and plan the catering accordingly at which point they became _much_ more enthusiastic.