Results software provided by Michael Napier, e-mail mnapier@cix.co.uk

Organisers Comments

With all that rain, it looked like a nightmare - but ever imaginative and resourceful, LEI had a new slant on luxury Orienteering........  Imagine a warm, comfortable indoor start - no muddy knees or dog turds for us! It was indoor registration, indoor start & even indoor map marking!

Many thanks to all the helpers, it was a very smooth event thanks to all the volunteers. Special mention for Tim & Naomi Law, who planned & laid out the String Course.

Paula Baldry

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Planners Comments

This was my first planning for several years & my first with E punching.  I only volunteered mid November but thought two months should be plenty of time. Wrong! A third of my original desk top controls were lost to non-existence, map inaccuracy in the locale or neck high brambles as were many of the best “legs”. Hence, I foraged the “green” areas looking for (& finding) new opportunities. My customers (that’s you, don’t collapse with shock) do not want to cross brambles above knee height in any circumstances, are especially not keen at chest height & are not that keen on those below knee height. You don’t want to make a route choice assuming you can cross the “white” at speed towards the end of a leg when you can’t & you should have chosen a different route from the start. Oh, & the more technical course competitors are not keen on long path runs. And, you’d like it fairly technical with lots of route choice. If you start in the woods, you’re too close to some of the few bits of runnable wood you’d like to use & if you start outside the wood, the path configuration & the “seasonal lagoon” makes “White” & “Yellow” very hard to plan. Tricky!

 So, I used a short taped section on White & Yellow put the start near the car park. (Convenient as it later transpired for Pete Hornsby’s inspiration to mark up inside & use the side/back entrance)  The technical courses used the four reasonable patches of woodland on the Groby side of the M1 either going out or coming back in various combinations. There was a shortage of viable features & as on the whole course, a shortage of viable point features. Ditches & stumps were widely used together with & a few control sites which were fair but which were not 100% to guidelines. (controls a bit too close together, a couple of iffy re-entrants & a depression which if it had ever existed, had benefited from Prozac) Hence, the opportunity for route choice became the driving factor. My original courses were a bit shorter & involved longer on the east side going out but with a very long dead leg from the west side to the finish. Pete Hornsby, quite rightly objected to that & hence the re-shuffle which made the technical courses a bit longer but quite a lot better by bringing them back into the east side on the return trip. He thought my Yellow a bit dull so that got a revamp too!

 Ø      White & Yellow

The paths & changes of direction are close together near the end so it needed about 40m of taped route. On each course, there were legs longer than guidelines but each was straightforward. It was quite a long way out before the turn for home for yellow & this may have been disconcerting. White times were fine & Yellow a little long (for which I blame the mud, not the planner! But seriously, I’ll examine the splits to see if there was a control that gave general problems) I was very impressed by the finishing times of the first three on White.

Ø      Orange & Purple

Perhaps unsurprisingly, nobody knew what Purple is. Since Jan 1, Red is now an Orange 3.5km to 5km & Purple is an Orange 5km to 7.5km. (including climb @ 10:1) My heartfelt thanks go to Simon & Christopher for running Purple. There were two controls on it which weren’t used by any others & I’m not fit enough to be putting out controls unnecessarily. Orange had less interesting controls than is ideal but the features one would have used near to but not on paths, were shrouded in vile brambles. The times were a bit long, probably due to the mud & the real length being quite a bit more than the “as the crow flies” one.

Ø      Light Green

I lengthened this from my original course because I thought that at 2.6km, it would seem too short to potential competitors & I was conscious that Green was on the long side. It would probably have been about right. I think the longish times were for reasons similar to those on Orange but there were also a couple of quite testing controls.

Ø      Green & Blue

These were difficult to plan due to the insect-shaped nature of the area. There weren’t enough options for testing legs for Green to be kept to the east of the M1 but once Green went to the west,  in order to make the dead legs across the M1 worthwhile, it was likely to be a bit long time-wise. That proved to be the case even though the lengths were within the new guidelines & Martinshaw cannot be at the upper end of technicality or general difficulty. With Blue it was necessary to go into the open Ratby Woodlands area but there’s no point in going a third of the way just to come back. This means that Blue was in effect “just passing through” Martinshaw west. Blue was a little long, I think due primarily to the mud & water. 

Apologies to both courses for the use of depression 110 in the area of the new forest track & even newer ditch (last week). There’s no other suitable control site in the area & it’s key to avoid the temptation of running round the road on Blue & to give route choice on Green. However the new ditch made it really confusing & I wouldn’t have used it had I known about that before Saturday when I put the E frames out.

Ø      Brown & Black

The new guidelines are for Brown to be 7.5-10km including climb & Black to be above 10km & of similar technicality. These courses went right to the south west end of the map onto Old Hayes (or New Water Splash as it is to be renamed) Dave Bray told me afterwards that the hedged depression is not marked in the right place by his compass bearing. I hadn’t picked that up & will pass it on to the re-mapper. The rather naff controls of “seat” & “hedge end” were used to give route choice & keep you away from the paths. Discussion afterwards indicated that the objective was achieved. Black used only controls which were needed on other courses but I was still pleased that four of you gave it a go & made it worth the effort of planning. It must have been punishing – hope it was worth it!

See comments above re control 110.

 Your comments made all the time & effort worthwhile. Planning reminded me to be considerate of apparent shortcomings at events I go to because there are so many constraints that are planned around so that competitors don’t even know they exist.

 E planning involves lots of people. John Cooke called in on his way home from work to set the punches to come on & go off. Kevin Bradley programmed the laptops & put the provisional results on the web by 2:55pm when Pete & I were still collecting controls!  Derek Gale maintains the E equipment in a thorough manner so it is easy to use. Roger Kelly does the same with the LEI equipment with the same benefits for the planner. We increasingly rely on a few specialists. Fortunately, they’re reliable, committed & competent.

 Thanks to Pauline Baldry for being such a composed, warm, happy & encouraging organiser. How anybody can decline to help when she asks, I cannot imagine.

 Thanks to Kevin & Maureen for collecting controls in. It was really appreciated & prompts me to plan to have a late run sometimes & offer to help other planners. Even 10 controls makes a big difference.

 It is usual to thank the Controller but I believe this would transgress a LEI  by-law as it was Pete Hornsby. It was necessary to ply him with Pedigree in order to get him to approve some of my control sites & I understand that this cannot be reclaimed as an event expense. The courses were much better as a result of our combined efforts & I enjoyed the experience. Pete helped a lot practically with control descriptions, putting out & taking in controls etc.

 Colin Drury

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