Planners’ Comments

We hope you liked the slightly novel score format for this event which was decided upon because of the necessary late start time. We discussed and agreed this format early on with the Co-ordinator of the SENiLe series, Keith Tonkin, to whom thanks are due for advice.

This format then meant using only the middle section of the map to avoid runners crossing roads with fast moving traffic. However, also avoiding the grotty bits meant the distance on the 60-min. score was a probably a bit short (optimally 7.2 km), but only three of you managed all the controls in the hour.

Talking afterwards we gathered that some runners on the 60-min. score assumed that all the controls they found off the paths were on their course: in fact, the 45-min. course did have a few unique controls of its own.

We hope you liked the pre-printed maps: the courses were overprinted from PICOVER / OCAD via a colour laser printer onto the club’s existing stock of conventionally printed maps. Once we’d got the registration right the printing operation ran very smoothly. (The "jitter" from map to map seemed to be less than 1mm)

Attendance (at 39) was rather lower than we’d hoped for, but the foul weather during the day probably put people off. We were therefore especially pleased to see some juniors and novices on the Ochre course.

Our thanks go to SLOW’s officers, in particular Ann-Marie Kjos (Organiser) and Chris Fry (Equipment Officer), to our Controller Simon Errington for his sensible and intelligent advice, and to our children Caroline and Edward for test-running the courses in the dark and putting out and collecting in controls.

Ginny and Richard Catmur (SLOW)