Firstly thank you to Ursula for asking me to control the event, I have always been a strong supporter of short race orienteering as it provides head to head racing and is particularly suitable in EA as it allows smaller areas to be used.

The essence of planning short races is to have short legs with as much criss-crossing and looping as possible, to develop head to head racing but with an element of confusion. The courses for the prologue should not be too long as otherwise the start intervals between competitors can become too large. The final should encourage head to head running with short legs and changes of direction.

Judging from the good comments received from several competitors, Julia managed to achieve the essential elements for a short race competition.  She managed to use the better areas of the wood and avoid the heavily brambled areas. She also managed to use relatively few controls but ensured that no competitors visited the same control twice other than on the yellow and white courses.

I enjoyed working with Julia in that I only had to make a few initial suggestions and she came up with what I considered to be the best solutions without any further explanation. The planning was very thorough and it was fortunate that Julia was able to give so much time to getting all the jobs done. It was unfortunate that after all her hard work and careful preparation that the vandalism of the controls produced so much last minute work on the day. I think that it was only because Julia was so well organised that all the missing controls (bar one) were replaced and checked with only a 20min delay to the start.

I hope that most people enjoyed the courses and look forward to next year's event hopefully as a competitor although I would be pleased to control again if asked.

Tim Eden (NOR)

Having been asked if I would take on the planning of the Chasing Sprints with 2 months to go when the original planner had to back out due to work pressures, I knew timescales would be tight.  Fortunately I had a good idea where the best bits were in Bush Heath and also, having been made redundant at the end of March, I had time to make several visits to the Heath on lovely sunny days when most of you were at work.

WAOC have never put on a Chasing Sprint before and I've never taken part in one so the format was new to us. But with some guidance from Bruce Marshall and Ursula Oxburgh, the format and course lengths were decided upon and I just had to plan the courses appropriately. Many thanks to Tim Eden, my controller, for his advice on my courses and help in deciding what to do about one small area which is not mapped very accurately. Also many thanks to Bruce Marshall for giving me a quick course in programming SI control boxes.

Apologies for the longish walk to the start. I wanted to have the start in an area where you could see competitors visiting one of the spectator controls and in fact to have spectator controls on all adult courses. This restricted the
start to near the open area on the west side of the map. I perhaps should have advertised the fact that there were spectator controls more clearly. There was a sign on the way to the start but I think many of you missed it. Still, Tim Eden, Jenni Renfrew and I enjoyed watching you race through these controls. I also hope I succeeded in taking you into the most runnable areas and you didn't find too many brambles. Generally the northern part of Bush Heath is very lovely at this time of year, although the stinging nettles and bracken were up a bit higher than on my last pre-event visit to the Heath.

On the morning of the event I was very calm having got all the controls out in plenty of time for Tim to check them all.  So it was a bit of a shock to get a call from Tim only 10 minutes before the 1st start to report that several controls
had gone missing.  In the end we discovered 10 SI boxes had been stolen so I then had quite a task of replacing them all.  This was the cause of delaying the starts. I hope the fact that there was still 1 control missing when some of you started did not affect your enjoyment of the event.

Julia Wotton (WAOC)

When Mike Capper, our Fixtures Secretary, suggested a short race format for our late Spring event, I remembered Tim Eden's enthusiasm for short races when he was chairman of EAOA so I was delighted when he agreed to control our first chasing sprint.

Although Julia had sent me the map with start and finish on some time before, it was only when I looked at it a couple of days before the event that I realised that the start was a full 1K from registration and download.  With only 1 hour of starts and just about everyone who was coming planning to run it was extremely difficult to work out how to man the start so I am very grateful to the Woods family who agreed so willingly, and particularly to Sue and Katy, who took the first stint before Peter and the dog got back.  For various reasons, Sue and Katy covered 5K between start and car before running their morning courses long after anyone else.   I feel that the sacrifices they had to make were too great and I am very sorry to have put them in that position.

The other problem, discussed at length in committee e-mails, was to find a digital clock which displayed seconds and was not radio controlled so that we could set it to race time for the chasing start.  I followed a number of leads but in the end had to admit defeat.  Then Bruce Marshall, who had already agreed to manage the SI system, downloaded suitable software off the net and installed it on a laptop.  Many thanks to Bruce, who also handled the chasing start, to the Humphries family for SI and registration help and to Kate, Ali and James for their help.  Thanks also to CUOC for their long-term loan of Bush Heath to us - sorry, folks, I'm afraid this event is not going to make either of us any money!

Which brings me to the vandalism.  We have used Bush Heath with SI before, but earlier in the year, when it is presumably too cold for overnighting on the Heath.  We have never had any problems with vandalism, despite the proximity of the houses of Mildenhall on the W.  This time there were a couple of youths spending the night out and presumably they took the 10 controls and also lit the fire that a number of you saw.  I phoned the police as soon as we discovered what had happened but they said that it was a big wood and there was nothing they could do.  We found one box when Neil Humphries stepped on it in the forest - they may have thrown the others down as well but we did not find any of them, despite looking around while collecting in controls.  Then late on, after the event was over, one more control went, this time off the White course and presumably taken by a lad on a motor bike. - there were a couple of them zooming around by then.

We were lucky again to have Tim as controller, and Kim (too injured to run in the event!) as his assistant.  They and Julia set off so fast with replacement controls that the starts were not unduly delayed - I gather that the Woods managed to get you all off before 12.

We only had 71 competitors overall, though most of them ran twice, but judging by the comments and the atmosphere at the finish those who came really enjoyed themselves - I was particularly pleased to see 7 finishers on the Junior sprint as that was my idea.  Come back next year and bring your friends!  I hope to get a run next time and I think you deserve one too, Tim.

Congratulations to Ian Renfrew, and Rolf Crook just 4 seconds behind, on the M Open,  Jessica Halliday (W16) on the W Open, Simon Gardner (M16) who set off 4th and won the M40+/16-,  Joanna Halliday (W14)  who won the W40+/16- and Thomas Louth who won the Junior race.

Ursula Oxburgh (WAOC)