Organiser's Comments – Eleanor West

I'm never too sure what to say in these comments so I'll just stick to thank you. Thank you to all the helpers who turned up and gave so willingly of your time and energy. I had a comparatively easy job and it was due to the capabilities of the club members to whom I delegated. Thank you to Mark and Martin for providing the courses and for not minding that I wasn't too organised in advance. And thank you to you the competitors for turning up and for coping with the short race organisation – I hope you enjoyed it!

Planners Comments – Mark Johnson

What a day!

I hope that the atrocious weather and boggy ground conditions did not spoil your visit to Hatfield Forest too much.

The Short Race competitors seemed to enjoy themselves despite the teething problems.

I apologise to those competitors who found the Orange course too difficult. The course did not prove to be as straight forward in reality as it appeared to be on paper (mainly because some the paths and ditches on the first half of the course were somewhat indistinct).

I will try to do better next time.

Thanks to:
1. the National Trust for granting us permission to use Hatfield Forest for this event.
2. you for coming.
3. Martin for his support and encouragement, and
4. Eleanor and her team for organising everything so efficiently.

Controllers Report – Martin Sellens

I thought Mark's courses were excellent, and made good use of novel control features that generally allowed you to avoid the grottiest parts of the forest and, for orange and above, kept you off the rides for most of the time. Unfortunately, the rides on the white and yellow courses, which had been drying out nicely by the previous Wednesday, were linear mud baths by Sunday morning. I suspect that most young orienteers probably enjoyed this opportunity to get legitimately filthy, but I commiserate with parents and washing machines. Oh, and Pauline (Stevens; W75), I found your control card, and I apologise for the siting of the control in the ditch. Mark and I forgot to cater for the more mature yellow runners.

We were also perhaps a little too challenging on the orange course; the winners finished in guideline times, but some orange neophytes were out for too long or retired and I apologise for the difficult early legs. The first two legs in particular were more tricky on the ground than they appeared on the map. I hope no-one was put off by this example of indifferent controlling.

On the day I heard nothing but praise for Mark's courses and I'm sure that no-one had to queue for a punch as the forest positively bristled with duplicate canes. I didn't spot any glitches in the organisation either. Just as well as I had adopted a low profile approach to controlling the organiser, Eleanor, on the grounds that she's an old hand at this sort of thing and that organisational ability is undoubtedly an inherited trait. Anyway, the SOS machine is pretty well oiled by now and runs smoothly with the minimum of intervention. I hope you all had a good time, albeit that sunlit forests were in short supply, and my thanks and congratulations to Mark and Eleanor for reminding me how planning and organising should be done.

White Course – 1.3km, 10m, 7 controls:

Yellow Course – 2.1km, 10m, 7 controls

Orange Course – 2.5km, 15m, 11 controls

Light green course – 3.3km, 25m, 10 controls

Green Course – 4.6km, 25m, 16 controls

SHORT RACES:

Long, prologue – 3.3km, 25m, chasing start – 4.6km,25m

Medium, prologue – 2.5km,15m, chasing start – 3.3km,25m