Essex Stragglers Orienteering Society (SOS)

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Colour coded event (Level C) incorporating the Regional round of the Yvette Baker Trophy and Shield competitions, SWELL and HAVOC Club Championships
Hockley Woods
Sunday 31st March 2019
Final Results

Officials' Comments

Organiser - Julie Laver julieannlaver@btinternet.com

Organising an event for SOS always restores my faith in human nature. Of course there are the usual anxieties before the event that everything is in place and you have not forgotten anything (in this case the kitchen roll for the cake stall) but on the day helpers materialise out of the morning mists - even with the hour time change - and get to work. Once they are there the jobs just seem to get done with minimum fuss and maximum efficiency. Yes there were a few on the day hiccups but they were quickly sorted out. Sally and Eddie sorted the misplaced controls and most runners on the affected courses did not seem to notice this!

And the runners who were happy to give up their maps due to unexpectedly large number of entries on the Green and Short Green courses are to be congratulated for their good natured attitude (hi-res images of these maps can be downloaded here - Green, Short Green). Even the weather was good and the forest with wood anemones in flower a lovely place to be.

A big thank you to all the helpers who made the event go so smoothly from my point of view. Well done to Eddie in his first planning role. I heard some very favourable comments from returning runners. Thank you to Sally (and Clive) for their time and guidance. Thanks to the staff at Belchamps Scout Centre for their help and use of facilities.

And lastly well done to the clubs who came and took part in the Yvette Baker trophy and Shield Competitions. We had 3 teams competing in each. I hope you all enjoyed your day.

Lost Property

Some safety glasses were found. Contact the Organiser.

Planner - Eddie Banks

Hockley Woods was at it’s best yesterday with the trees starting to come into leaf and wood anenome in bloom. The overcast conditions added to the technical difficulty of what is a small but quite complex area. The SWELL event led me to squeeze a brown course out of this quite compact area, and that seemed to work reasonably well. I tried to make best use of the runnable areas and encourage participants away from the paths where possible. I’ll be interested to see the uploads on Routegadget.

I enjoyed trying my hand at planning a regional event for the first time and was pleased to see good numbers for all courses. The planning resources on the BOF website by Barry Elkington were extremely useful. I’d like to thank participants for their kind comments and the coaching, help and encouragement I received from Sally and Julie during the whole process. Also thanks to Rod Mansell for providing the computer code for the YBT scoreboard.

My apologies to any early longer course competitor who was affected by my switching controls 139 and 149 during the early morning set-up; (maybe I can blame the hour less sleep!). Thanks to Alex Ware for drawing our attention to this so it could be rectified.

Controller - Sally Wilkinson (SUFFOC)

It was a pleasure to be the controller for Eddie on his first planning of a Level C event. I hope you agree that he created some interesting courses which were both challenging and enjoyable. I know from personal past experience that Hockley Wood can easily confuse as there are so many paths and features that can be mistaken for others if the compass is not consulted regularly! I will be very interested to see the par times on each course as juniors and adults alike that I spoke to had taken longer than they would usually expect on many of the courses.

Thank you also to Julie for her excellent organising. She is always so calm and today was she instrumental in ensuring that everyone got a run in spite of the higher than expected turn out by requesting maps for recycling. Thank you if you gave up your map – I know SOS will make these available on the web site to download. However, it was lovely to see orienteers from outside of East Anglia – I hope the area met expectations.

Lastly, I would like to apologise for not spotting the mis location of controls 149 and 139. This is my second event as a controller and I am definitely still learning! As one kind orienteer said, I saw the number I wanted to see – how right she was! Checking them one after the other definitely contributed – next time I will include in my checks looking at the number on the tape which is what I know some orienteers did when visiting the control and helped them solve the conundrum!

Par Times

Results