Last updated 9 March 2002

Heyshott and Ambersham Commons – 3 March 02 - Comments

And the winners are …

 

Men

Women

UK Cup Short Race

Nick Barrable (FVO)

UK Cup Short Race

Heather Monro (Halden)

Senior OO Trophy

Mike Murray (SLOW)

Senior OO Trophy

Hilary Palmer (NOC)

Junior OO Trophy

Tom Chesters (DEVON)

Junior OO Trophy

Cerys Manning (SWOC)

 

Congratulations to all winners (especially Mike Murray who has retained the Trophy from last year), and also to the runners up, who since they are non-obvious for the OO Trophy are recorded here:

Senior men: 2. Arthur Boyt (KERNO), 3. Jim Prowting (TVOC)

Senior women: 2. Sarah Brown (SLOW), 3. Pauline Ward (DVO)

Junior men: 2. Oleg Chepelin (GRAMP), 3. Chris Sellens (SOS) – a clean sweep for the M18As there!

Junior women: 2. Lizzie Adams (SOC), 3. Amy Pennington (SOC)

 

LOST PROPERTY: A UK Cup competitor lost a dark blue thermal top in the Clothing Dump black bag. Please get in touch if you might know where it is.

 

FOUND PROPERTY: One not very nice but very warm looking black sock. Also a very nice reversible hat (blue/maroony-magenta) by Mountain Equipment (size M) labelled “35 Everest Expeditions”. If I had a webcam I’d model it for you … there’s a lucky escape for both of us.

 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: These events were held with land permissions from the following, to whom we are grateful: Cowdray Estate, Mr Haverhals, Mr Robertson, Mr Baillieu and English Nature.

 


Organiser’s comments

Loads of thanks to everybody in GO and SLOW who helped us at Ambersham. We have learnt things about managing SI events that we would rather not have learnt the hard way, but fortunately we now have a full set of correct results, even though it was not possible to fix all of our problems on the fly on the day. We are very grateful that you were all determined to enjoy the Sunday despite the glitches!

I also want to express huge gratitude to our Controllers, Katy and Dave, who were great to work with. If you can get them for your event, do! Both in preparation, and on the day, they helped immensely, despite a close family bereavement just before the events (thank you to Simon Errington and Tim Pugh for filling in the short controller pause).

And so to our Chronic Challenge. Apart from the faulty controls (122 and 200), the principal problem was that the Start and Finish boxes, while being perfectly synchronized with each other, were running 1 minute late on GMT. Meanwhile, out in the forest, the other controls were all happily running GMT. This affected the first and last split times only (ie those involving the tardy Start and Finish boxes). You can correct these as follows:

All competitors except UK Cup, deduct 1 minute from your split time to first control.

All competitors, add 1 minute to your run-in split time, from last control to Finish (corrected for the UK Cup published results).

This meant that the total run times on the punching start courses were correct, but the timed start (UK Cup) courses gave you an optimistic time one minute less than your actual run, in the on the day results. The published results have been fully corrected for the UK Cup competitors, including the final split times.

Finally I would echo Keith, who said to me in the car park afterwards: I can tell you my comments now, in two words: “never again!. Only, I know he didn’t mean it … and neither do I.

Jeremy Wilde


UK Cup Weekend Co-ordinator’s comments

Now there's a grand title.  Where on earth did he get that from?  Somewhat self-awarded I'm afraid.  I'd been very impressed by the atmosphere at a similar weekend in the West Midlands two years ago.  Shortly after that I was checking out the map of Battersea Park and reckoned there was enough on the ground for a good Park Race.  The idea was born and various parties needed nudging into place - see the next paragraph for just who?  I then saw it through to the end and so you may well have noticed me flapping my arms around at Sunday's start and talking a lot at the prize-giving.  Hence the grand self-awarded title.

It's really nice in post-event comments not to have any inquests to be held or excuses to be made and only thing to do is thank people. So here goes:

·        at SLOW, all the officials, but especially the Park Race organiser Ginny Catmur (a.k.a. land permission negotiator extraordinaire) and the Park Race planner Alan Leakey (a.k.a. mapper extraordinaire). Both uncomplainingly did a huge amount more than they thought they were letting themselves in for.

·        at GO. Firstly as a club for quickly and enthusiastically taking on board the UK Cup idea when they had already committed to the British Nights and a Badge Event. And then to Jeremy, Keith, Angela and Jon who had a lot more work to do as a result.

·        all the other organisers, planners, controllers and SportIdent whizzos, who all put a lot of time into event preparation.

·        and finally the competitors, for coming, being so good-humoured and all the kind comments.

Thank you all.

Andy Robinson (SLOW)


Planners’ comments

One year ago, I planned to visit Ambersham common to see what the terrain would be like, as I had no recollections of it. A few days before, foot and mouth struck, so I was unable to do so. When eventually, I did manage to see the common, the bracken was six feet tall in places. This restricted the choice of control sites to those that I could be reasonably confident with.

The ground is crossed by one road and two streams running roughly north south. At the outset I decided to play it safe and only make the courses cross the streams at bridges. In this area the levels can rise and fall very rapidly. Only a few weeks ago, I drove to the common to do some taping. There was a gale blowing and a lot of rain. When I drove away, I abandoned my first route out after meeting three progressively deeper floods. The alternative that I then took had an even deeper flood and I was lucky to get through it. Fortunately on the day we had no rain and the streams were low. The consequence of my policy resulted in a longish run along the old railway line, which I hope did not spoil the courses too much. The shorter courses were kept to the east of the road, as the area to the immediate west of the road was rather featureless and had a lot of out of bounds areas. A further unknown at the time of planning, was that some of the western area was due to be felled and some more thinned before the event. The relevant area was felled but the thinning has not yet started.

This was my first attempt at planning with sport ident controls. They certainly do give the planner more options, but they also pose additional logistical problems. I am very grateful for the help of the forest team, who solved these problems, which were made more difficult by having a day event immediately after a night event using the same SI units.

Special thanks to Keith Tonkin, my fellow planner, for all the extra work he did organising the logistics, drawing up all the courses and organising the printing. Thanks too to the controllers Katy and Dave Stubbs, who shared the controlling of the day and night events and were very helpful and considerate.

Iain Cairns (Planner, Badge and colour-coded courses)


BNC & UK Cup planners' diary

February 2001 – Visit area to assess what the vegetation is like 1 year before the event. Extremely surprised how wet everything is and start to worry about finding a dry car park field. I'm only working part time so everything quite relaxed. Foot & mouth closes the countryside and puts things on hold. Mapping scheduled for March is also cancelled, as is the badge event I was scheduled to control in April (which later is deferred a year....)

August – It looks like we are back on and we get land permission and a green light from English Nature.

September – English Nature give us the out of bounds areas and we learn of extraction and thinning plans by the landowner, all of which impact the advance planning. Still no car park.

October – We identify some possible car park fields so I select my first choice and start to consider courses based on that. Plenty of time to go to the event so I concentrate on training for the KIMM. Tear my cartilage in the KIMM so no more running for me until I have an operation, although I don't actually find this out until after I have a scan near Xmas.

November – It's now down to serious planning but on the old map. Due to F&M our mapper, who had been scheduled for March, can now fit us into mid-December. So we plan away and hope things will work out.

December – It's time for controller's feedback. Also the draft map arrives around 20th December. I replan the courses slightly but make a fundamental mistake on course measuring. It turns out that despite being an accountant I cannot divide in my head and all the courses are about 15% too short. Back to the drawing board.

January 2002 – Courses about final but last minute tweaks because I want to use the area to the SE of the map but prefer not to have everyone cross and re-cross the one bridge. Start to get to grips with Picover – a baptism of fire about to happen there. Map also finalised.

February – Into intricacies of course overprints and pictorial descriptions for BNC and both Sunday events, 33 separate courses in total. This turns into a bigger task than I ever thought. I couldn't believe it but it took the best part of three weeks.

March – Before we know it the weekend arrives and we are putting out controls, watching competitors start, watching them thankfully finish again and then collecting everything back in. Boy oh boy was I tired on Monday.

Anyway, I hope you all enjoyed the courses. For BNC I was broadly happy with the times. My target time for M21 was around 60 minutes but I had expected that 55 may be nearer the mark. Oli beat that by over 2.5 minutes. On W21L I was targeting around 52.5 minutes but Sarah beat that by 3.5 minutes. I think our combinations on courses 5 and 6 could do with a review as for one or two age groups the course could have been a bit shorter but was right for others. Maybe this would fit in with a course that is suitable for M16B competitors as the long novice course is probably too easy and M16 was too long. At the UK Cup I tried to keep the courses in the better parts of the area, to keep the route changing direction and to make sure that runners were having to make decisions whilst tired. I was targeting about 25 minutes for both courses. I was very close for the men but underestimated the speed of the women. But my thanks to you all for turning up and making all our hard work worthwhile.

And for my next trick? An operation on my knee which is scheduled this week, straight after BNC. Then at Easter it's year end at work, which is never a quiet time for a bean-counter, and I'm back controlling a badge event in early April ..... how did I let myself in for all this?!

Keith Tonkin (Planner, UK Cup courses)


Controller’s comments

The organiser has already explained the timing issue and two failed control units. Otherwise the event went very smoothly and it was a pleasure to work with the planners, Iain and Keith, and the organising team. Special thanks to Keith, who not only planned the UK Cup courses (as well as the Night event), but also co-ordinated all the course overprints and control placing for the two events.

Controlling the morning after a heavy rainstorm, Katy found herself in water well above her waist testing the depth of a stream (what we controllers do for you runners!). The decision was therefore made that the two streams would have to be crossed by bridges. This put some constraints on the courses forcing the double use of the southeast bridge crossing for some courses.

In hindsight, I consider that courses 13, 14 and 15 might have been better to be slightly shorter for juniors running on the sandy tracks and courses 10-12 slightly shorter for the older competitors. However, the courses were planned to the Guidelines and all other classes gave acceptable times.

Dave Stubbs (BKO)