Leicestershire Orienteering Club

Final Results for East Midlands CSC & CST, Belvoir, 27/02/2005

(Drawing courtesy of Wendy Williams)

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Organisers Comments : Planners Comments : Controllers Comments

Compass Sport Cup

Compass Sport Trophy

Organisers Comments

Firstly, on behalf of LEI, I must thank the Duke of Rutland for his permission to use the event area and also the Estate staff for their extensive help before the event and on the day.

I hope everybody enjoyed their run and many of you will have discovered that Leicestershire is not all flat. Once again the “weather gods” seem to have smiled on us giving a few hours of reasonable weather. For 12 hrs before and 12hrs after the event Belvoir was a much less pleasant place to be.

Not all the competitor’s maps were claimed at the end of the day and I do have a quantity left. If you would like a copy please e mail me with a postal address and a course number. onecphillips@lineone.net

Finally thanks to my fellow club members at LEI for their help before and on the day.

Chris Phillips

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Planners Comments

This was the first time that we have had use of the area on and below the scarp between the track to the west of the start and Wood Lane. I am sure that all those who have run at Belvoir before will not have any regrets about my first decision, which was to avoid the fairly featureless jungle in the lower parts of the wood.

One of my aims with the medium and longer courses was to try and avoid long path runs and limit the amount of climb going up and down the scarp. Unfortunately, this meant that some of the legs were a bit shorter and did not offer as much route choice as I would have liked. One of the pitfalls of armchair planning is that things are not always quite as they seem on the map. I originally planned the Yellow and Orange courses to go down the scarp about 500m west of the start where some power lines follow a ride. However, one look from the top ruled that out as being far too steep and slippery for me to go down even with spikes on. This effectively constrained the Yellow course to Old Park Wood. I am sure all those who went up the scarp that way will vouch for its steepness. It appears from the finishing times that the Blue and Brown courses were a little short but I thought the undergrowth and the mud / ice would have slowed competitors down quite a bit more than they did. Perhaps on the longer courses it would be more appropriate use 150m, rather than 100m, as equivalent to 1km when calculating equivalent course lengths.

Thanks go to Ernie for his extremely constructive comments. I would also like to thank all the other club members who assisted me with putting out and taking in the controls and bagging and printing maps. Several of us have also improved our knowledge of using OCAD for planning although we are still learning. It is great in many respects but incredibly frustrating in others – let’s hope they’re fixed in version 9.

John Marriott

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Controllers Comments

Fortunately, though it might not have seemed like it in the bitter icy wind on the sunny Sunday morning, the weather changed for the better – Saturday had little to recommend it other than the sunset that suddenly brightened up a very cold, wet and murky day that did not promise well for the day to come. Also, the boots of hundreds of long-distance charity walkers passing through the length of the competition area – the top of Wood Lane was the 11 mile point in their journey complete with a hot food and drink van and a constantly replenished bonfire – churned up the snow and the mud on the tracks and rides and made under-foot conditions less pleasant than they might have been, certainly by the middle of Saturday afternoon..

A decision made at the beginning of the planning process to make use of the newly available area that had always been shown as OOB on previous maps and not to use any of the northern third of the map, concentrating instead on the southern two-thirds, especially the escarpment, enabled John to focus on ways of making good use of the slopes and the contour detail.

John’s courses encouraged lots of friendly debate in the Castle Car Park, especially the available route choices, and he received compliments from almost all of those who took the opportunity to make comments. The challenge, both technical and physical, of the orienteering was aided by accurate control placing and adherence to the BOF Guidelines.

Someone jokingly said on the day that the Belvoir Event was the Regional Championships but without trophies for all of the Course winners – one has only to look at the winning times taken in covering the variety of terrain on offer to realise that the fitness and orienteering skills of the upper echelon of male and female orienteers is indeed remarkable. My personal congratulations to the members of winning Club NOC and the worthy runners-up DVO in the Cup and to HALO in the Trophy – ‘Good Luck’ to you all in the autumn Final.

During the day and before the final mid-afternoon results were displayed I made the decision that as there was a problem with one of the SI boxes at the Small Knoll North-East Side (106) that no competitor was to be disqualified for a ‘No punch’ at this particular control. The other problem that took some time to resolve concerned the three competitors who appear to have taken part but for whom there was no record of them finishing and downloading – fortunately by 4.00 p.m. the organising team had eliminated all owners of cars still in the car park and then found themselves fending off passing visitors to the area who wanted to park thinking that the Castle and the grounds were open – every Sunday in March if it helps but not February!

Please remember to download at all events, especially at ones such as Belvoir where only EODs were asked to supply vehicle details and not the hundreds of pre-entries. If there was a saving grace in the situation it was that the presence of so many orienteers completely filling the car park area left no room for casual visitors throughout most of the day to park, leave their cars and then indulge themselves in a long bracing walk with no realisation on their part that by mid-afternoon their empty vehicle may well have inadvertently caused a ‘lost competitor’ search!

My thanks are due to Chris and his team of helpers who, after this event and Day 2 of JK2004, could find themselves in demand elsewhere – a major event in another Region in 2007 maybe?

Finally, my personal thanks to John – he worked really hard to make a very successful contribution to the day whilst maintaining a reasonable attitude towards an aging Controller who couldn’t stop reminding him of the paramount importance of the Rules, Appendices and Guidelines and who was determined that everything would literally be as good as possible on the day for the most important people at the event – the competitors.

Ernie Williams

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