Essex Stragglers Orienteering Society (SOS)

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Colour coded event (Level C) incorporating ESSOL and SWELL
Danbury Park and Lakes
Sunday 19th June 2016
Preliminary Results

Officials' comments

Organisers - Alex and Eleanor Evans, eleanor.evans0712@gmail.com

Well, it ended up as an organisers' dream - good weather and more helpers than jobs. Thank you to everyone who volunteered their time to help make everything run so smoothly. We found ourselves in the unusual position of being able to sit with feet up for chunks of the morning (20 month old son having been taken off round his first white course by a doting aunt and uncle). The one area of worry was the car park but hopefully those of you who had to overflow onto the road weren't inconvenienced too much. Reports from those arriving back from their courses seemed to be generally very positive so thanks must go to Darren and Graham for managing that side of things so well.

Final thanks to Essex Outdoors for the use of their facilities and to all of you for coming and running. See you again next time.

Planner - Darren Cook

Thanks to everyone who turned up. We were lucky with the weather, but the rain in the week also meant we got to go home with a satisfying amount of mud on our shoes. What more could you ask for?

This was the second colour-coded event I had planned, but the first one was 25 years ago, and technology has dramatically changed orienteering! There was a bit of a learning curve, but in the end it was not so bad. Still, I was very relieved when the first few runners came back and everything was working.

I had not been to Danbury before, and my first impression on looking at the map was that it was small and potentially boring. So, with the longer courses I tried to make them as challenging as the area would allow. I didn't hear anyone moan it was too easy; in fact a couple of people called me sadistic, which I have decided to take as a compliment. With lots of vague, curving paths in Danbury, the shorter courses provided their own challenge: losing juniors is frowned upon, apparently. I hope everyone enjoyed their course and got lost a bit, but not too much. (If you didn't get lost at all, you should be running up.)

Thanks to Graham, for his advice and subtle nudges at every stage, which helped make all the courses better; and to Kevin Machin who spent a large amount of time updating the map - not easy when both humans and nature keep changing things.

Controller - Graham Batty (HAVOC)

Congratulations to all schools competitors and winners.

Well done to Darren on his course planning after such a long time away! Planning at Danbury is made a little difficult by the area being divided in two by fencing with limited access points across the areas. The success of courses is shown by the small number of competitors failing to complete their course. Some parts of the White and Yellow courses remained muddy on the day but I'm sure the sunny weather compensated for that. It was also good to note that some club members said they had visited control sites not used before.

Just a few points in answer questions raised:
- The map scale was incorrectly advertised (1:10,000) ahead of time but was correct (1:5,000) in the on the day final details.
- On reflection the Short Green course should have been a little longer (although I hear the winner is a happy man!)
- Control 143 (thicket) was nearer path than shown on the map but I'm sure no-one lost time there.
- Control 147 (rootstock): there were three rootstocks in the area rather than two shown on the map but the control was on the southernmost one so once again I'm sure time loss was minimal.
- Control 146 (ditch) was at the end of the ditch and the mapped rootstock was there for fine location.
- The controls at 134 and 140 were not placed in the ditch and stream respectively as originally intended to avoid competitors slipping into the water but perhaps on reflection the control descriptions should have said east side and west side respectively.

It was good to see 150 competitors and all courses used, even better to see 2 HAVOC members in the top 4 on Blue and 2 HAVOC members in the top 4 on Green!

Finally well done to Eleanor and family for organising the event with her band of SOS helpers and to all those (thanks SMOC ladies) who collected controls at the end along with Darren and myself. We were all off the site by 3.30pm.

Colour Coded Par Times

Final results

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