Essex Stragglers Orienteering Society (SOS)

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2020 Summer-Autumn Mid-Week-O Event No.6 (of 6)
Halstead
Tuesday 20th October 2020 - Evening

Organiser/Planner: Jean-Pierre Carraud, JPCarraud@btinternet.com

This is to say many thanks to all those entrants that turned up to take part in the first Urban event that Oliver had planned. The weather turned out to be better that expected which made for a fine Autumn evening of Orienteering. Night certainly adds an extra dimension but did not deter those participating with lots of very bright head touches to show for that. Orienteers are a ‘Hardy Lot!’.

‘We counted you all Out and counted you all Back in again’.

Oliver set out to give participants lots of route choice, particularly as Halstead has lots of alleys, paths and very minor tracks to make things interesting. Comments at the end suggested that this was appreciated and some of the participants found extra shortcuts through hedges and breaks in fencing. We do however apologise for the Caravan parked directly across one fire hydrant control, which is actually illegal to do so and was not present at time of planning. Allowance was made for this when scoring

Well done to all those that participated, Oliver and I are glad to hear that the courses proved to be interesting and challenging; but most of all enjoyable.

Hope to see you all again soon rather than later in these uncertain times.

JP

Series Coordinator: Chris Childs, christopher.childs@tiscali.co.uk

Another very successful series, thanks to the hard work and creativity of our volunteer planners, Eddie (Great Notley}, Kevin (Chelmer Village), Jackie (Danbury), John (Stanway), Colin & Lyn (Braintree) and Oliver & JP (Halstead). Six superb events supported by SOS members, runners from other orienteering clubs, running clubs and others.

Thanks also to Jackie for setting up Maprun in Essex. We promoted it in the series with the incentive of a 50 point bonus, and those who took part all seemed to think it was great fun.

The handicap system is designed to ensure that all ages of either gender are in with an ongoing interest in the league which seems quite a good principle. I believe the table is based on world records. However, I believe the results show that it is weighted a little too much in favour of those of us getting on a bit, so I am going to tweak it back a bit next time around.

Coronavirus has been a major impediment to our plans and involved a lot of work in the background. So I thank you all for your cooperation and hope things improve next year.

The timing of the next series is yet to be determined but when the time comes, I shall be once again be twisting arms to secure volunteers for the next series. Planning is quite an enjoyable process and help is available so maybe give it some thought. In the mean time if you have any comments on the format or how we might improve things please email me.

Chris