Planner's Comments

Queen Elizabeth Country Park is a difficult area to plan on for numerous reasons. Firstly, as I’m sure everyone noticed, it is very hilly and I had to choose my start/finish location to cater for the junior courses. I hope that the 1km, uphill walk to the start wasn’t too daunting.

Secondly there are only a limited number of features, particularly in the NW area and the undergrowth at this time of year can be limiting. That said, there are some areas of the forest that have matured nicely and I tried to take people into these wherever possibly and get you away from the major path network. Regrettably that meant that the Green course started and finished with physical legs crossing the valley, but hopefully you enjoyed the middle bit.

Finally, being a very public area, the map goes out of date very rapidly. I tried to make amendments as I found them and also to reflect the vegetation growth, especially where this affected route choice, so I hope that no-one found the map too bad.

The number of competitors was very encouraging and despite printing significantly more maps than previous events held here, Green was oversubscribed and we had to buy back maps from finishers. My thanks to them and apologies to anyone who was delayed at the start awaiting the arrival of a map. I have made arrangements to send out replacement maps to anyone who left their details, but if for any reason you have missed out please contact the club and I’ll get one sent.

Thanks to everyone who attended, to Robin Smith for his guidance as Controller and to all of the SOC members who helped on the day.

Mike Maliphant, SOC

Organiser's Comments

Hopefully it was not too obvious that this was my first attempt at organising an event of this size. I am not aware that anything was so far wrong that it spoiled anybody’s enjoyment of the day so I think my first aim was met. As with all such firsts there was a huge amount to be learned and there are several things I would certainly do differently another time. I must thank the many senior club members who responded to my very basic questions in the lead up to the day, without that guidance things may have been very different. A big thank you also, to all SOC members, who came and performed the various tasks necessary to make the event run smoothly.

The desire to utilise an area of the forest not recently used for the more junior courses meant quite a long uphill walk to the start from registration. I hope this was appreciated by runners and that the walk to the start proved a good warm up. That we were able to park east of the A3(M) at least offset part of the regular walk in.

We took the decision to locate the string course with the main competition area due to there being little suitable area around the car park. It was also hoped that families would only need to climb the hill once and that their day could be a little shorter than it might otherwise be.

That the green course started, and others finished, through the string course was not such a great idea and I hope this did not cause any inconvenience. This was down to a number of small changes during the planning process, not fully appreciated by all concerned until it was too late to change.

The weather was certainly kind to us and resulted in higher numbers than last time an event was held at QECP. We had printed at least 20% more maps than were used in 2005 ( 50% for junior courses ) but still ran out for the Green course. Thanks to those of you who surrendered their map at the finish, we will get further copies to you as soon as possible.

QECP is probably the most visible of all the SOC mapped areas and as such is an opportunity to raise the sports profile to the wider public. The event was advertised at the visitor centre and many came either as a result of that or on spec, hopefully they would have enjoyed the experience and will return again. We did take the opportunity to promote forthcoming events of several clubs local to the Park so hopefully the sport as a whole will see some new faces.

Jes Dickin, SOC