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Splits by Course
Splits by Club
The day didn’t start too well when my alarm clock failed to go off, costing me 45 minutes of my planned schedule, and also my breakfast! There was then further excitement when my key refused to unlock the barrier at the car park entrance (I had tried it successfully the week before – honest!). Fortunately Terry Smith arrived a few minutes later with a key that did work, so not much time was lost, and (the non-existent) Plan B for parking did not have to be implemented. The early shift workers turned up soon thereafter, collected their equipment, and got on with things in their usual efficient manner. Despite my best efforts, all was in place on time, and some early runners were able to get away a little before the advertised start time.
There was a scare during the day when Chris Lipscombe of WIGHTO was taken ill at the start, but thanks to prompt and expert attention by Tracy Crickmore of WSX, a potentially very serious situation was avoided. Chris, who was returned to the car park after a check out by paramedics and able to return home with her colleagues, has asked me to thank those of you who helped her at the time, and offered her good wishes afterwards.
By and large the day seemed to run smoothly, with the exception of the White course competitor who got to the start without a map, (next time we have this procedure with such a distance to the start we will make sure that there are a few spare White and Yellow maps at the start), and the two late starters on the Brown course, where some of the later controls were removed before they should have been. If there were any other problems, I didn’t get to hear about them. A big thank you to the small but beautifully made group of SOC members who turned out to help, we wouldn’t have had an event without them, and a big thank you to all the competitors, we wouldn’t have had an event without you.
I know the distance to the start and from the finish was longer than some of you would have liked. When we gained land access and parking permissions the intent was to have the start and finish just across the road from assembly and take the white and yellow courses along the route that you walked to the start. However, this was always going to provide a challenge to meet the Yellow and Orange course guidelines. When I visited the area later, wire from the fence line had been cut for several hundred meters and was snaking all over the intended junior course routes. Taking these factors into account, I opted to base the entire competition area across the marsh where linear features would provide safer and more acceptable junior courses.
Denny Lodge is relatively flat and at this time of year reasonably fast running. I tried to give the more technical courses a mix of open, runnable woodland, long legs with alternative path / cross-country routes to tempt the runner's into oxygen debt interspersed with some short legs where precise navigation would pay dividends.
I have to apologise profusely to two late starters who arrived at control sites in the quarry area towards the end of their courses to find some controls had already been collected. When I accepted an offer from a club member to collect these controls my focus was still on the incredible good fortune we had had when Dr Tracy Crickmore (WSX) was on hand, when seconds counted, to resuscitate a competitor who had passed out at the start.
The winning times turned out to be broadly in line with guidelines and a number of people were kind enough to reward our efforts with praise. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Julian and Jan for their unassumingly efficient organising and controlling, the team who helped put out and collect controls and you, the competitors, who made it all worthwhile. Thank you for coming.
The only complaints I heard were from a handful of green course competitors who had problems with their first control(224). This was a shallow re-entrant just inside a block of young trees. This area was indicated as being rough open on the map, but some of the young conifers have now grown to over head height so maybe it should have warranted a map correction. However, the vegetation change was very obvious (mature deciduous to young conifer) and competitors who followed the vegetation boundary would have seen the control from the boundary.
I found the SOC team to be a ‘well oiled machine’ which made my job as controller quite easy. I certainly found it a pleasure to be able to control such a well organised event. There was one emergency which necessitated the call out of the emergency services. I hope the lady from the Isle of Wight who took ill at the start had a safe journey home and has now made a full recovery.
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