Essex Stragglers Orienteering Society (SOS)

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Colour coded event (Level C) incorporating ESSOL
Hilly Fields, Colchester
Sunday 10th January 2016
Final Results

Officials' comments

Organiser – David Lumby david.lumby@thomasmiller.com

Thank you to everyone who came and ran at Hilly Fields. The weather was kind to us and none of the previous day’s rain fell during the event. There was however still a fair bit of mud on the courses. I hope you all enjoyed your runs.

My thanks to Colchester Institute for allowing us the use of their site and buildings and to Chris Childs and Colin West for the cooperative approach to planning and controlling. From my point of view everything went smoothly on the day not least due to the willing band of helpers.

Final results and par times are now visible on the website. Winning times on the longer courses at 6 to 7 minutes/km indicate how runnable the terrain was. Hilly Fields is a relatively small area and to get the required distance the longer courses had to cover two laps together with some urban orienteering which will have helped the speed somewhat.

I noticed that there were some mispunches on the shorter courses. We looked carefully at the results to see if there was any indication of faulty equipment but we did not find any. Perhaps a coaching point to those runners to pause briefly at controls and make absolutely sure that the unit has beeped and flashed and if in any doubt to dib for a second time. I know it can be difficult to find time to do this when you are aiming for a fast finish time. I hope the mispunches will not put you off coming to the next event.

There was one item of lost property that was found on the course and handed in - a Silva baseplate compass that looked fairly new. It will be identifiable by the colour of the bezel and cord. I will hold it and if the owner contacts me by email I will find a way to get it back to them.

Planner - Chris Childs

Planning my first full Orienteering event at short notice was a fairly daunting affair and whilst I know Hilly Fields quite well it is difficult to get the distance for the longer courses in such a confined area. So those on the blue course were taken out into surrounding urban area and some controls were used twice approaching from opposite directions. I hope I made it sufficiently tricky for the more accomplished of our competitors but not too intimidating for others.

My sincere thanks to the following:-
   Colin West (controller) for general guidance
   Bruce Marshall WAOC (EAOA computers)
   John Collyer and Kevin Machin (maps)
   Les Childs for helping me set out the controls in the dark during the pouring rain on Saturday night.

Thanks also to David Lumby. The event ran smoothly even if we did have one of the controls stolen just before the start! The use of the Colchester Institute was a great base for the event.

I hope everybody enjoyed the day.

Controller - Colin West (SOS)

Blessed by a break in the rain, the well-drained soils of Hilly Fields gave good runs across much of the terrain. The small area offers varied pace and complexity, which allied to the short urban section on longer courses challenged runners to maintain focus. There was additional constraint from a sensitive area of vegetation, which Chris planned courses to avoid.

Chris made good use of the area to plan up to the Blue course, and was also able to ensure good courses at White and Yellow.

Colour Coded Award times

Naughty Numbers

Final Results

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