Officials: Organiser: Bob Richardson Planner: Fred Miller
Comments
Although a smallish area, Dr Pit and Gallagher Park presented a bit of a challenge. The area consists of several blocks of trees of variable accessibility separated by wide open (and largely featureless) rough open grassland, but with a couple of parts of the forest containing a bewildering number of paths. With such a small area, all courses had to use both the open and the forested parts. The challenge was to construct courses to suit the full range of ages and abilities. As I expected, the controls in the SW block of forest behind the Start and Finish were the trickiest part for most competitors, but most of you eventually managed to find your way through.
The Long and Very Long Light Green courses were both on two maps because as the Extended Light Green showed, a length of about 4.5 km of criss-crossing legs was about all you could squeeze in for a conventional course. The use of two maps, plus adding the two small urban areas to the East and West, allowed me to reach a Blue-like length of 6.2 kn for the Long Light Green, with a little judicious use of the same control more than once. The same again plus a butterfly loop solved the problem and a Brown-like length of 8.2 km was achieved. The aim was, where a control was used more than once, to make sure that the approach each time was from a different direction. As a result, the control on the South side of the thicket was used three times, with approaches from the SW, the NE, and the East!
Dr Pit was already pretty soggy, so I was pleased that the weather behaved itself while we were there.
Thanks go to Barry Young of NN, who broke his run at least twice to help youngsters who were in difficulties. Some may frown at offering help, but when you're well and truly lost, it's a pretty worrying place to be.
Finally, thanks to Bob Richardson, the Organiser and Controller, for his comments and assistance, and to Andy Clarke, who stepped in to help with the usually dismal business of closing up shop at the end of the race, as I had to dash off to see my brand new granddaughter, born just a few hours before the race started!
Fred Miller
White (1.0 km. )
1 Matthew Dalgleish M10 MBPS 9.46 2 Alex Metcalfe M06 NATO 20.40
Yellow (2.3 km. )
1 Rosannah Metcalfe W07 NATO 28.25
2 Hannah Brown W10 NATO 33.05
Matthew Dalgleish M10 MBPS rtd
Orange (2.9 km.)
1 Joseph Metcalfe M12 NATO 65.06
2 Tania Bertram W12 NATO 94.11
Robbie Wright M10 NATO rtd
Light Green (3.5 km. )
1 Aoife Lakey W14 NATO 50.19
2 Alex Hare W12 NATO 65.15
3 Elaine Clarke W55 NATO 76.53
4 Gill Hardy W75 CLOK 82.04
Mike Hardy M75 CLOK m7
Extended Light Green (4.5 km. )
1 Jonathan Lakey M18 NATO 71.52 2 Andy Clarke M55 NATO 75.30 3 Helen Rafferty W65 NATO 78.04 4 William Lamb M14 NATO 79.22 5 Mike Hudson M70 NATO 86.00 6 Jenny Lamb W16 NATO 105.48
Long Light Green (6.4 km. )
1 Patrick Smyth M55 NATO 53.40 2 Willard Wright M45 NATO 54.44 3 Jeremy Lakey M50 NATO 75.39 4 Mary Rack W50 NATO 93.37 5 N Gardner W55 WAOC 93.51 6 S Marsh Ind 146.00
Very Long Light Green (8.2 km. )
1 Richard Purkis M20 NATO 59.43 2 H Gardner W21 SLOW 68.44 3 Adrian Barnes M60 NATO 74.04 4 George Hare M45 NATO 86.58 5 Barry Young M50 NN 119.50