I'm not in favour of self-congratulatory event official's reports - no event is ever perfect and there's much to be learned from others' experiences whether good or bad. So, what do I need to confess? Well:

· The course lengths were too short. We based these on the assumption that Britain's best man would run at 5.5 min/km, a figure based on limited hard evidence from previous events staged at a completely different time of year. In fact, the terrain was about as fast as it's likely to be and, had Jamie Stevenson turned up, a speed of 5.0 min/km would have been nearer the mark. So, we were ~ 10% out before we started.

· Although the Guidelines don't say so, we should have put on a W75S course.

· I should have rejected control 122: although it was mapped correctly, the variable vegetation around it made it hard to spot. In my defence, all I can say is that I must have visited it half a dozen times in the months before the event, each time being spot on when compass and pacing to it. On this basis I decided to allow it, but competitor feedback suggests the opposite.

What else is to be learned? We decided to use OCAD 8's planning tools from the armchair planning stage onwards in order that the Planner, course drawer, Controller and Assistant Controller could all receive drafts by e-mail and all be commenting on the same files. This is fine in practice, but when OCAD has no foolproof version control system and you're dealing with two different maps at two different scales, the procedural logistics can sometimes become nightmarish. So much time was spent in checking and double-checking courses that it was not clear that we saved any time overall by using this method. There's a desperate need for someone (the new BOF Rules Committee perhaps?) to gather together best practice and write guidelines about OCAD for planners and controllers (who are not mappers).

However, we got there in the end with the final results looking highly professional. Many thanks here should go to mapper Roger Maher and map advisor Jim Prowting for the map and to Neil Harwood for his patience in meeting our every request for changes to be made to OCAD course files within impossibly short timescales.

One success story relates to the SI equipment. It is widely known that the batch of SI control boxes purchased by the SEOA some time ago was subject to a fault whereby some of them spontaneously rebooted on the day of the competition, giving nonsensical split times as a result. Their use for punch checking was unaffected. These have all recently had a firmware upgrade and the evidence of NE1 is that the problem has finally been solved once and for all.

Blackheath is a lovely area to run in when the Summer/Autumn vegetation has died down but it poses few technical challenges. This does not make it a poor orienteering area however, a claim sometimes made by those from other parts, and I was delighted to hear so many finishers declare how much they'd enjoyed themselves. The random path network means that you have to keep closely in touch with the map and the terrain offers the possibility of medium length route choice legs, something which Mark Smith made excellent use of. Having a Planner who lives on the area is a great boon to the event as Mark's local knowledge and contacts smoothed the way through many a potential hurdle. Having a Planner who's also a Grade 1 Controller was also a great boon as Mark's wide experience was terrifically useful too. I'm also grateful that he never tried to pull rank on this humble Grade 2 Event Controller too!

My life was also made so much easier by having one of the most experienced organisers in Britain as the Organiser. Tim Pugh anticipated every possible pitfall along the way and had no problem in recruiting and motivating a strong GO team of helpers, able to adapt easily to the last-minute changes brought about by the bad weather beforehand.

Finally my thanks go to my Assistant Controller, Charlie Turner, who took a very great load off me throughout, especially in the last weeks when we split all the jobs equally between us and he proved to be an excellent and totally reliable ally throughout.

Well done Guildford! All the hassle was worth it!

David May (SLOW)