OK Nuts 2022 Results
The OK Nuts 2022 was run on Sunday 10th April in and around Leith Hill Place Woods. The organiser was Simon Moss, the planner was Charlie Turner, and controlling were Ronan and Julie Cleary. Thanks to London OK for use of Leith Hill scarp slope, and the landowners and farmers for allowing and facilitating our races.
The OK Nuts Trophy 2021 winner is Michael Crone of the home club South London Orienteers. Thomas Howell of Southern Navigators was second, and Adam Conway of Guildford Orienteers was third.
The Heather Monro Trophy winner is Sarah Rollins of Southern Navigators. Second was Lyudmila Gotseva of South London, and third was Kate Skinner of Mole Valley.
In the junior classes the winners were Tommy Rollins (Southern Navigators) and Madeleine Pitcher (Dartford OK.)
Organiser Report
I hope you all enjoyed the day and your runs.
This was really Charlie’s event. He did all the work to map, plan, sort out land permissions and find such a great car park. Both SLOW and the sport owe him a debt of gratitude for resurrecting an area that hadn’t been used for orienteering for many years.
Simon Moss
Planner Report
On the day it was great to see everything happen after such a long lead up from the club’s previous event here in the mid 1980s. I must particularly thank the team of control hangers for their Saturday involvement and then again arriving early on Sunday to activate the SI boxes. I had a lot of fun mapping, together with planning and those of you that visited the central section of the forest seemed to really enjoy the challenge. The day organising team, combined with the weather and superb view from the car park and excellent cafe setting hopefully made your trip to Leith Hill Place a good day out.
The event was controlled by Julie and Ronan who due to COVID were unable to be at the event. They had a big input in your courses and their joint double checking was much valued by me, notably when I had a computer failure and lost some of my Purple Pen course arrangements. They were desperately disappointed that they were unable to be at the event.
Charlie Turner
Controller Report
As Simon says in his Organiser Report, this was Charlie’s event – and what a great event it was. Charlie produced an excellent map and got the best out of a complex area with his course planning. All we had to do were some suggested tweaks around the edges – things that a 2nd (and, in our case, 3rd!) set of eyes spotted – especially as there is already one less set of eyes interpreting the map, suitability of control sites etc. when the mapper is also the planner. There were no previous events to assist with estimating running speeds, so Charlie asked Ralph Street to run a draft Brown course on an early version of the map last December. This proved invaluable and set the parameters for the Black course from which the other course length/climb combinations were derived.
Because of our heavy involvement in organising the BOC2022 starts and focus on finalising the courses with Charlie in good time, our input to Simon on the organisational side was, of necessity, “light touch”. However, Charlie and Simon were in close communication ensuring nothing was over-looked and Charlie kept us informed on all key areas. We had full confidence in the SLOW Team and no doubts that all would run very smoothly on the day, once we could be sure all the controls were out in the terrain, activated and in the right place. This took on added importance when, after having avoided it since the outset, we both tested positive for Covid-19 on Saturday, 2nd April. While our symptoms were thankfully on the milder side, we have nevertheless been quite unwell and late last week it became clear that we would not be well enough to attend the event on the day. Without batting an eyelid, Charlie put in place a system to ensure all controls would be activated/ checked on the morning without any assistance from us.
Well done to Charlie, Simon and all the SLOW Team for hosting a top quality event. Although bitterly disappointed not to have been there on the day, we can now look forward to running on the area as competitors the next time it is used.
Ronan & Julie Cleary