Thank you to all who ran.
Controllers and Planners note on Brown Course
Sorry for the mistake on the control description on the first control. It should have read 202 not 182.
We have removed legs 1 and 2 from the results rather than void the course.

Also a big thank you to Alan Hartley of Hartley IT Services as this was the first real test of new software developed in conjuction with Walton Chasers. It is designed to make sportident entry on the day colour coded events easier to run. Having seen it in action today it should make a big difference to colour coded events in the future.

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Controllers Comments.

The error on the Brown course description sheet arose from the late rejection of a control site. It became necessary to change two courses. This was done correctly. A third course , Brown, whose first control was on a gully 182 near the rejected site had its control circle inadvertently moved to the new gully control site 202, without its description also being changed. I had checked the original Brown course on my computer and continued to assume it had remained unchanged. Master maps were printed from the changed computer file. The overprints were produced in OCAD and not PICOVER, which would have sorted the change correctly on the overprints and on the description sheets.
I think that is what happened. My apologies. I should not have assumed. The lesson for controllers is never assume, always prove.

Doug Peel.

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Planners Comments.

Firstly, I would like to apologise for the problem with the first control on the brown course. As Doug has explained fully, I will not go into it further now. Luckily with Sportident, this can be disregarded, allowing results to stand, although I realise people may still be affected by it later in the course.

When I first walked around the area several months ago to get a feel for the courses, the event was still scheduled to be a badge event. I felt this would be inappropriate - there was too much felling, little runnable woodland, and I knew the undergrowth would be much higher. I thought if I had travelled to run a badge event on the area, I would be disappointed, early runners would have a huge disadvantage, and ranking points would be won and lost due to undergrowth. I can only thank the fixtures committee for downgrading it to a colour coded event (it was only later it was upgraded to a WM Galoppen, where points count, because events previously scheduled to be Galoppen events had been cancelled).

Courses were planned on the short side to make allowances for the difficult going, and where the more runnable areas were available, they were used for short legs. I tried to give route choice around the worst bits.

The undergrowth was the major problem on the day, and while I spent several hours on the easier courses destroying vegetation, it is not so simple on the more technical courses, although I did attempt it (as did Doug) at some of the more 'bingo' controls. What was particularly frustrating was watching the bracken grow 3 feet in the 10 days before the event.

Thank you to my control hangers, Mark Garside and Andy Yeates, and to the team of helpers who were press-ganged into collecting them in. A big help.

It is always good to get compliments after events, and everybody can learn from constructive criticism. Thank you to everybody who has provided it. I hope the hours of effort I have put in over the last few months meant you enjoyed at least a little of your run on the Chase.

Cath Williams