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Planner's Comments
 Over a year ago, when Ginny mentioned that SLOW would be putting on the Peter Palmer Relays, I jumped at the chance to plan! As always I left things to almost the last minute but had planned draft courses before the Welsh 5 Day. Thanks to David Thomas, my controller, for his advice; it certainly helped to improve the courses.

I wanted to include gaffling into the 8-lap relay as each team ran the red, orange and light green twice, to split the runners up where ever possible, but, at the same time, to keep competitors close together so that they felt they were in a head-to-head race. To do this I included several single-control variants rather than totally different loops for the parallel courses. In case you have not worked it out red and orange both had two variants and the light green had three.

Using OCAD and PICOVER to plan allowed me to put through a number of map corrections and print multiple combinations on a laser printer. This meant that although in total every team on the main relay did the same distance and visited the same controls, no two teams ran the combinations in exactly the same order.

My biggest disappointment was the vandalism of two controls on the yellow course at approximately 8.45 a.m. Eight teams were affected, for which I am very sorry. With hindsight we could have patrolled more, with shot guns! A sweep search of the area found both controls hidden in bracken over 200m away from the control sites.

Andrew Leaney (SLOW)

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