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Santon WarrenBrandonSaturday, 25 Jan 2003 |
This being the first time I have organised an event in the UK, I approached CUOC's Icenian with some trepidation! Here I had to worry about rain (Spain it wasn't really an issue), work out transport Cambridge not allowing us to have cars doesn't help), and work out how to convince a load of students that they wanted to get up at odd hours of the morning to help! Fortunately need not have worried - although it rained in the early morning the day metamorphosed into being bright and sunny, various generous people drove their cars, and CUOCers both old and new willingly lost sleep.
Due to an unfortunate mistake on my part, the control descriptions for courses 2, 6, and 11 were incorrect on one point (incorrect control code). Despite Keith Downing (controller) and Alan Elder's (planner) rapid steps to rectify the situation, a significant number of people lost time due to this error. Keith and I have adjusted those results that we deem to have been affected, but if any participant feels that they have not received an adjustment where one is due, they should contact me.
I would like to thank WAOC for their enormous help in lending us kit, providing advice and transport, SI kit training, dealing with the entries, help on the day. etc. It was a great pleasure to work with Bruce Marshall, Nicola Gardner, Tim Mulcahy, Ian Renfrew, Neil Humphries, Caroline Louth, and Fred Northrop, to name but a few. We are also indebted to Bob Hill at RAFO for the loan of their SI equipment.
Thanks are of course also due to all those members of CUOC who put up with my constant requests for them to do things (!): Alan for the excellent courses in an area with little detail, Rosemary Dyer for her work on the maps, Blanka Sengerova for ferrying and helping out with controls as well as download, Jenny Costigan for managing to speedily get everything we needed ordered, Mark Collis and his knowledge of all things map-printing and setup on the day, Rolf Crook for control placement and finding the significant switch on the generator (!), and everyone else who made the event work (using improvisation where necessary!). Angela Tyrell was also very significant in driving a kit-packed car across Cambridge, and the stalwarts who helped bagging maps over a period of 6 hours definitely deserve a mention.
I am very grateful to Keith Downing, who, as the controller, had the fraught task of putting up with many of the highly last minute arrangements, and then came to my aid at various times on the day. Many thanks are due for his patience and calm advice.
Wilf's flapjack was very definitely a calming influence, and Simon Broad from Ultrasport helped with collecting in controls - thank you for coming! Janet Towler from Forest Enterprise was also a great help in getting permissions and parking sorted out.
If I am asked to organise next year's Icenian, there are many lessons I have learnt from this one that will be applied. Overall I am pleased with the success of the event - I hope you enjoyed it!
So it's 6.20 AM, pitch black, and I'm running around a forest looking for a little depression, "I'm sure it was here last week" I think to myself. And then it starts to rain.
Well, things got a lot better thankfully - the sun came out, the little depression was found, and apart from a problem with the control descriptions everything else went pretty smoothly, thanks in no small part to the great support and help from Keith, David and various members of CUOC and WAOC.
In fact Keith deserves special thanks for agreeing to be controller late on, and for his patience with me for being a little behind schedule (I think I had him worried at one point when I disappeared off to America for Christmas!).
I guess I should probably mention
something about the courses themselves. The area isn't the most interesting
feature wise, and the abundance of paths can make things easy - I hope you
didn't have too much track running! That said there are some nicer blocks
of forest, which were really nice to run
through.
Generally the gold times were about right, although slightly on the low side perhaps - especially on the M21L where there was something of a Scandinavian slant on the times.
I certainly enjoyed planning the courses, and I hope you all enjoyed running them.
I thought my appointment as stand-in controller was late in the day and the previous controller who wasn't well enough to carry on would have done the bulk of the work, leaving me only to tidy up the loose ends. Through no fault of his, that was not the case and everything had to be compressed into the few weeks remaining. Add to this the difficulties of Cambridge students not having cars and having to plan their visits to the forest to fit the erratic train timetable in between their extended vacations. Just before commencing his Christmas break, Alan had sent me his first draft courses that showed him to be working along the right lines, but changes were almost certain to be expected when the revised map was ready. It all seemed as though things would come together in time - except that holiday trips took the key players away to places where they could do nothing constructive.
My concerns became more noticeable, but then everything arrived leaving me with little time to make the tweaks which may have been expected but which were fortunately not required in any significant way. One of my requirements did however contribute to the problem that affected two courses on the day. The original suggestion had been only to make control descriptions available on the web and not on the map, but I was not satisfied with this and required them to appear in the conventional way. Unfortunately in the last minute rush, the first, incorrect, version was used on the map after the correct version had been loaded onto the web. This caused problems for some of you, for which sincere apologies. I hope the subsequent adjustments to course times have corrected this for those of you who were affected.
Thetford can always provide fast but lengthy courses, although winter planning has to take into account the possibilities of serious weather that did in fact occur, but fortunately days after the event. Coupled with visiting Scandinavian runners, this provided some speedy winning times, but overall lengths were about right - and don't forget that I had to run right out to the furthest M21L controls several times before the rest of you even had chance to set foot in the forest.
Student clubs do not have a steady core of experience on which to rely as by their very nature, a large proportion of members change every year. CUOC put on a good event that did not suffer from this and benefited from the enthusiasm and willingness of the key players and other club members on the day, making my task much easier.
Congratulations to WAOC, who have won the Icenian Trophy. This is a team competition, awarded to the club whose top ten runners had the lowest total time behind the winners of their respective Long/A classes at Santon Warren. The ten had to include at least four of each gender, and at least two juniors (20-), seniors (21-45) and veterans (50+).
The winning WAOC team was made up of Alice Campbell, Lindsey Freeman, Helen Gardner, Nicola Gardner, Simon Gardner, Noreen Ives, Edward Louth, Thomas Louth, Chris Morley and Julia Wotton, with a total time defict of 41:12, ahead of NOR (73:01) and SOS (86:39)."
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Warren WoodsBrandonSunday, 26 Jan 2003 |
The dawn at Warren Wood brought with it some heavy unwelcome rain that gave the early morning tent erection party a good drenching. But as the car park started to fill the rain stopped and eventually some sunny spells would break through. Overall, the event seems to have been a success with almost 500 competitors enjoying a challenging and rewarding day's orienteering. There were however a number of hitches. The deluxe loos failed to flush and weren't fully operational until later in the day when the maintenance engineer arrived - tapping the pump with the proverbial hammer had failed. The computer printers also packed up early on and so, disappointingly, we couldn't produce results lists on the day. But the most frustrating problem was running out of drinks for 20 minutes or so. I apologise to those competitors who didn't get a drink whilst I dashed off to Santon Downham for a refill. Hopefully, you were able get a hot cup of tea from Wilf's instead.
The organiser's best friend is always his/her helper without whom there would be no event. I was very fortunate to have a team of both willing and energetic helpers who all did their jobs splendidly. Getting the event off to a good start was very important to me and so I thank the tent erections team for their early arrival. Forests are not designed with the car in mind but the key job of marshalling the parking was done excellently by Steve and Peter. The Registrations teams coped admirably with the rush of EOD and the Download teams were always in control despite the contrary printers. I would thank Rolf especially for managing all matters regarding the crucial electric generator and Neil, Mark and Bruce for their IT expertise backup. I had very competent Start teams who managed the proceedings efficiently. I would also like to thank the helpers who manned the Finish rota. Behind the scenes, Nicola did a Trojan job on the pre-entries and as WAOC convenor Bruce was always there to support me with the pre-event preparation. My thanks are also due to the Day 1 officials Dave, Alan and Keith who all assisted me and with whom it was a pleasure to work.
Special thanks are also due to Wilf's Café and UltraSport for providing their range of products on the day. Also, I would thank the St John Ambulance team for their First Aid service.
Finally, no event is complete without the keen participation of orienteers who run hard and who are sympathetic with the endeavours of the officials. Many thanks for coming to our event and making all our hard work so worthwhile.
Warren Wood was a combination of two existing areas, parts of Thetford Warren and Santon Downham, with a new section joining the two. I hope you enjoyed the new perspective this brought. The new section included a small detailed block near the start for most of the longer courses which was well-mapped and fairly challenging for Thetford, I hope you enjoyed it. On the day I only really heard positive comments, selective deafness perhaps. 'Fast runnable and enjoyable' seemed to be the consensus, and the times were, as expected, very fast.
The planning process this year was rather more stressful than it should have been due to an unfortunate series of timing changes. I was planning to move house in the late autumn, but that ended up occurring 2 days after the event! The map was very good, but a bit late in arriving, partly due to the Forestry chopping down a large chunk of prime runnable forest just a few months before the event, something we didn't find out about until it started. These events and a new baby meant I had a bit less time than I had anticipated and condensed the whole process into a couple of frantic weeks. I don't think I could have got it all done without tremendous support from Jenni Barclay, Bruce Marshall, Mark Collis, my controller John Ward, and the dedicated WAOC helpers both before and on the day.
Thanks to you all.
Warren Wood is relatively featureless, but fortunately there are a few areas that merit the description of TD5. Mark Collis had mapped these extremely accurately, and Ian made good use of them in planning courses that had to avoid the ongoing felling. I heard many favourable comments about the courses, and although winning times were inevitably very fast, I felt that greater distance would not have added to the average competitor's enjoyment. Tim's team of helpers coped well with the few problems that arose. It was disappointing that both printers failed, but now that results can be posted on the website so soon after an event, any suspense will be much shorter than a few years ago! I would like to take this opportunity of thanking Ian, Tim and all the WAOC helpers for their part in providing so many entrants with the concluding day of another successful Thetford Thrash.
