| Planners'
Comments
This was the first major
event I have planned and so I relied
on Graham's and Steve's experience for a lot of the time. I was given
the
opportunity to plan the Brown, Men's and Women's Green, and the Light
Green
courses. However in reality a lot of controls were shared with the
courses that
Graham planned.
I would like to echo Steve's apology for the closed bridge that
affected some
of the courses. As a result some people were disadvantaged and
I can only
apologise to them and their clubs. I hope the rest of your runs went without incident.
In planning the courses we tried to make the best use of the runnable
forest to
the North East of the area, and the challenging contour area to the west of the car park. Graham and I had
difficulty
interpreting the contours every time we entered this area, and so I
hope you
found it challenging.
The length of the Brown course, allowed
competitors to visit the most southerly part of the map. This area has a lot of dunes that are
too small
to be mapped, so navigation requires a lot of
concentration. Sadly, we lost the most northerly part of the
Brown course
two weeks before the event, as 'thinning' work
over-ran.
I hope you all thoroughly enjoyed your run on the dunes,
particularly with
the weather being so good. Trust me it is a different challenge when the
rain comes.
David Bolton
|
Organiser's
Comments
The
Organisers would like to thank everyone for attending, and welcomed all
comments, which were very largely positive. The one complaint
involved the cost of the White course, which once the EoD supplement
was added offered questionable value for money calculated in £ per
km. The entry fee for the event was carefully worked out on the
basis of actual cost along with expected entry for such an important
event. With hindsight however, since the yellow and white courses
were not part of the main competition, there are grounds for treating
them differently and we wish to apologise if you feel the cost was
excessive.
Organising the start times was quite complicated,
especially for heavily- subscribed courses (especially Blue Men).
Thank you for your patience if you had to wait for your start
time. Thank you also to Club Captains for organising your teams.
We
apologise for not publishing the interclub results on the day. This was
down to a programming error which has now been corrected. [Results are
below]
The organisers would like to thank all the MEROC members and friends who
cheerfully turned out to help. The co-organiser (Matthew) would particularly
like to thank his colleague (Paul) who shouldered the vast majority of the work
- it's thanks to Paul's unstinting effort that the event went so smoothly.
Matthew Cochrane
I
would like to endorse Matthew's comments and add my thanks to the staff
of Range High School who provided us with a well appointed and
convenient assembly area.
Paul Bolton
|
Controller's
Comments
I
hope you enjoyed your run on Formby. My role in this event
was mainly
as a spectator as everything was so well organised and planned by the
experienced team from MEROC, who did exceptionally well given the small
size of the Club. Unfortunately, by hosting this event it
inevitably
meant that MEROC did not have the opportunity themselves of taking part
in the competition.
A couple of apologies are in order, firstly
for the problem with the transfer of pictorial descriptions to text
format. The lesson for me is that programs like CONDES have
made life
much easier for Planner and Controller alike, but you need to be aware
of the limitations of the software in order to know what still needs to
be checked. The second issue was the closure of the bridge
across the
pond/marsh to the NW of the start (which was not indicated on the
map). Fortunately this was not an optimum route for most
competitors
but for those disadvantaged as a result, I am very sorry.
Acting
as Controller gave me the opportunity to walk / run around the area on
several occasions using the outstanding new map that Graham has
produced. It was a delight to be able to navigate from
control to
control using the contour features shown on the map, which so
accurately represent the hills and depressions on the ground. Graham
and David together produced some challenging courses for which I heard
only praise. They had to confront external issues right up to
the last
week before the event as changes to the out of bounds areas meant a
replanning of the Brown Course.
Paul and Matthew organised
their small band of helpers very ably and ensured that they could cope
with the above expected number of entries. They had an
excellent event
centre, which fortunately could just cope with the parking requirements
Finally
my congratulations to the winners of the Cup and Trophy in this round -
DEE and PFO - very well done and best of luck for the Final!
Steve Ingleby
Deeside Orienteering Club |