My house is now back to normal. I am lucky enough to live in a wonderful location and I enjoyed sharing it with so many fellow orienteers. If any of you had time to notice the view as you ran in to the finish field, it was about as good as it gets in Surrey and I see it nearly every day.

Tim in his Reflections from the Organiser has already mentioned nearly all the people I would have done. I pass on my thanks to them all as well, and in particular to David May, Charlie Turner, Neil Harwood and all the people who helped me put out controls and bag maps. David's attention to detail ensured that the event ran without any major problems and it was a pleasure to work with him. I learned a lot.

The role of planner, organiser or controller at a major event has now become even more time consuming. Planning and controlling also now requires a pretty high level of computer skills particularly on OCAD. In truth I had insufficient time and insufficient computer skills to do my role properly. I originally agreed to plan a relatively low key badge event and as it was next to my house I thought I could just about cope. When it started to become a much bigger event I felt I could not back out. Cutting corners is not the best thing to do but I think I just about got away with it.

Regrets: I couldn't spend more time on the courses. They could have been better.

Pleasure: The many hours I spent in a beautiful forest.

Satisfaction: The event running smoothly with no major problems.

Education: I learned how to use OCAD, if only in a basic way. For those of you who know how crap my computer skills are you will appreciate what an achievement this was.

Lessons for the future: Never again criticise event officials, even behind their backs. They give up vast amounts of their spare time in good faith to try and ensure we all enjoy our sport. If they make mistakes they weren't intentional and we should be tolerant. If we don't adopt this approach we may struggle to get people to take on this huge commitment in the future. I was fortunate that absolutely nobody complained to me, it felt good and made me think that one day, I might just do it again.

I am now going to return to training and competing with renewed enthusiasm. Average M45's beware!

I am going to enjoy everybody else's hard work for a while.

Mark Smith