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Controllers Comments.
Firstly, I must apologise for not being at the event, and particularly to Bob, who was denied a run because of it. After agreeing to control the Club Champs, Alison and I received an invitation to celebrate the wedding of an old friend of mine, over from Australia, on the same weekend as the Club Champs. Bob agreed to control the Club Champs on the day, and the rest is history.
Missing the Club Champs meant that I also missed the feedback, though I gather there were some comments about it being hilly. Nevertheless, I hope you enjoyed the event. Chris and I put a lot of effort into the event to make it as interesting as possible. I must thank him for his kind comments and add a few of my own. It has been a pleasure to work with him; he took almost all my suggestions to heart, and dealt me a few of his own, though he was not too keen on my suggestion for reducing the number of controls (sorry, Bob). The end result, I thought, was a great set of courses.
Congratulations to the winners; commiserations to everyone else.

Andy Yeates

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Planners Comments.

Take My Advice

If you’re ever asked to plan an event in a very hilly area, take my advice:

Locate the Start as high as you possibly can (while remaining within easy reach of the car park), and site the Finish in the Assembly area. By all means calculate the climb on each course, but don’t publish this information; it can only discourage competitors. Spend most of the morning at the Start. If any runner asks you about the extent of the climb, then rely airily that “it’s a net descent”. On no account go anywhere near the Finish. This will merely provide the opportunity for competitors to tell you how hilly the area is (something you know full well having spent the previous day trudging around putting the controls out).

Rawnsley is always going to offer a physical challenge. I felt that my task as a planner was not only to minimise the unavoidable climb by introducing a number of contouring legs, but also to match the physical challenge with the degree of technical difficulty that the area permits. Looking at the times, this seems to have worked very well; certainly the comments that filtered back to me were mostly favourable (and wasn’t the handicapping good).

This is the third event that I’ve planned in eight months, and the event that I’ve enjoyed most. This is in no small part because of the constructive input of two Controllers; Controller No. 1 (before the day), Andy Yeates, and Controller No. 2 (on the day), Bob Dredge. Thanks to both Andy and Bob for their advice and attention to detail. Thanks also to Mark and Cath, as always, for SI equipment and maps, and to Doug for an excellent map with which to work. Special thanks to those of you that offered to collect controls after the event. Half an hour or so of your time at the end of an event makes a huge difference to the Planner (particularly with light failing), so my thanks go to Mark Garside, Tom, Dave Thomas, Jim Matthews, Andy Goode and Robert Little.

Finally, many thanks to you all for coming along. I hope that you enjoyed the day.

Chris

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Organisers Comments.

Considering the high winds of the preceding two days, we were very lucky with the weather. It was good to see so many people at the event and I hope you all enjoyed yourselves on what is bound to be a physical area. There isn’t very much work involved in organising the club champs, especially with the team system which works very well. My thanks to all the people who helped on the day, Stodge, Dave Bushnell, Rod Niven, Tom Roach, the planner Chris Earnshaw and the controller Andy Yeates, assisted by Bob Dredge on the day.

The advantage of pre-entry is that there is very little guessing about the number of maps to be printed. A few spares were printed, but we ran out of maps on the Light Green course and two late runners had to run on the Green course instead. Two juniors were encouraged to run on the Light green course instead of the course which they had entered. If I had known this in advance, I could have done something about it. Instead, all I can do is to apologise to Emily, who found no maps in the Light Green box after she had started, and Helen, who was forewarned. Thanks to both of you for running up a class.

Congratulations to all the winners.

To misquote Oscar Wilde, to mispunch is a shame, to lose a compass while it is still attached to you is careless. (Spam award)

Chris Horwill