SE Relay Championships 2009
3 October 2009
It was a happy coincidence that the Happy Muntjacs won the hart-shaped trophy as Handicap champions, though in our confusion (partly engendered by my gardening tendency to prefer unhappy muntjacs) we gave their trophy to the Southdowns Junior champions. I hope we will find the Junior Trophy and restore the Handicap Trophy to Hertfordshire. Congratulations to these teams as well as the Women's Open champions from SN who succeeded in making sure they can re-use their team name next year, and to SLOW Open champions whose only defect was a lack of interesting team name (for which I am minded to dock points but I'll let it pass this time).

And so to thanks. James for excellent planning in a patchily impenetrable area - hope you found all the runnable bits like he did - and Linda for bearing his torch as he set sail for the Himalayas in September. Andy for controlling quietly and effectively. Gary and Gary for taking all the burden of organising off me so I could focus on doing battle with the software - I think I won in the end, but I'm still not sure. Jon and Alastair for their "phone a friend" and "ask the audience" assistance with the during-the-event skirmishes when I was all set to throw the laptop away and revert to pin-punches... Barbara for her as-ever completely irreplaceable organisational skills at Registration. Chris and Gareth similarly on the Starts and changeover management. Keith, Neil, Louise, George, Dave oh dear I am going to forget someone, but you are all gratefully acknowledged.

Jeremy, Organiser with Gary's help


Planner(2) comments

I stepped into the planning role at quite a late stage, so all the glory goes to James Crawford for the excellent courses and innovative approach with the sprint format and butterfly legs. This was warmly appreciated by all the competitors I spoke with after their runs and clearly could be picked up for other relays. Perhaps some of our smaller areas in the SE could provide interesting terrain for relays.

I was left with all the computer stuff i.e. getting the map and descriptions onto an A4 format and pretty late on, deciding that the courses should be all on one side rather than split them onto 2 sides and 2 half-courses. I hope you all felt that the benefit from seeing the whole course on 1 map outweighed any overcrowding. I also hope that the bending of the lines aided clarity rather than confuse you all.

It was my first time tackling course gaffling, and the exercise was more complicated than I thought. I was hugely happy that all the labelled maps seemed to have been done accurately.

My sincere apologies for the control description on the blue course that had a blank entry. You all being all very clever people, it didn’t seem to cause any problems!!

My thanks go to Andy for his controlling support and teaching me new OCAD techniques and to Neil Harwood for coaching me through the map formatting. Thanks to Alastair for sharing the controls putting out task and to team GO for collecting them very efficiently afterwards.

Linda Pakuls

Controller comments

It was a pleasure to work with first James and then Linda, second.

I would like to think James and I had some very constructive discussions at times and any points I made taken very well.

The work that Linda then took on was a testament to her skills in particular on the day, I would like to think Linda more than contributed to an excellent event.

The comments I received on the day justified James planning and the hard work Linda and her helpers put in on the day, in particular the 'Butterfly' concept on the Blue course. Observing the start was very satisfying watching the 'butterfly' in action.

Finally I would like to thank all the team for the sterling work they put in and I would be more than happy to work with Guildford Orienteers in the future.

Andy Cottrell (SN)