Thank you to all those who helped and attended at MV’s orienteering event held in Reigate Priory Park on Sunday 15th December. Delighted that SLOW could use the event for their club championships. We enjoyed the mulled wine and mince pies with you all!
Results: SportIdent | Routegadget | British Orienteering | WinSplits
Congratulations to the trophy winners of the Vets and Supervets:
- Women’s Vets (W40+, on green): Abi Weeds, W45, SLOW
- Men’s Vets (M40+, on blue): Tom Davies, M45, SLOW
- Women’s SuperVets (W60+, on short green): Jill Blount, W60, SO
- Men’s SuperVets (M60+, on green): Ian Ditchfield, M65, MV
Planner’s comments (Ian Roberts, MV): Taking on my first planning role has been fun and an interesting insight into what a course should deliver. I certainly learnt a lot, especially from our controller Helen Marsden : A Huge Thank You to Helen for putting up with a rookie planner and for all your great advice and the time you put in for our event. Thanks also to Ian Marsden for stepping in on the event day as Helen’s was unable to attend.
Planning on Reigate Priory Park was always going to be a tight exercise as the area is quite small for a Forest event. The Greensand ridge also makes the hills a little challenging, so the courses were planned to be a shorter to compensate for those hills. I tried to create variety and from all the nice comments I think we put on an interesting event.
I would definitely like to plan again in the future and would recommend anyone thinking ‘how can I help a little more’ to give it a try. The process takes some effort, several hours’ computer time and four trips to the park to verify control sites and tag them. This was less than I thought it might take. Having said this, smaller events like the summer series, GLOSS etc should take less time, and maybe good events to cut your planning teeth on ?
Many thanks to Tim for Organising, the event ran very smoothly due to lots of work from Tim in the months leading up to the big day.
Finally a big thanks to all the help from our squad of volunteers – the event is impossible without you all doing your part. From a planning perspective, very grateful to Mark F, John P and Tony S for joining me at first light to put out controls – and then staying behind to help collect them !
Organiser’s comments (Tim Scarbrough, MV): Very much well done to Ian Roberts who was cutting his teeth as planner. The courses were well appreciated by the participants. And thank you Ian for accommodating the change in venue when permissions for choice #1 were not forthcoming. And therefore thank you again to the Reigate and Banstead Council for hosting us in the Priory Park again, and for taking the view that “the more the merrier” in the park! We knew in advance about the santa run that YMCA were putting on and their race route (though didn’t know until the day about the tapes they were putting up), and found out relatively late about the ice rink. But it was nice to embed ourselves in the thick of it, to enable passing footfall to see us and ask about the sport.
Also thank you to the Marsdens (HH) for controlling… Helen M putting in the hours beforehand, with helpful comments for Ian R. And then for Ian M for stepping in on the day in Helen’s absence.
I was so happy to find so many volunteers from MV putting their hands up to help – thank you volunteers for making it run smoothly on the day. The main difficulty I had was trying to anticipate the amount of mulled wine and number of mince pies to get in advance. Last year’s festive event had unfortunately run out and I was keen to avoid a repeat. But it’s not helped by the large number of entries at very last minute – 244 pre-entries! But no matter, we had surplus, and I’m glad you all appreciated the chance to socialise a bit more after your runs. The weather, thankfully, was ever so kind on that front: not windy to blow tents away, not wet to dampen spirits and not cold. Can’t plan for that though!
This fixture used to also host a competition for families, which wasn’t run last year due to poor turnout the year before that. Looking at the results, we had several families taking part, as long as the threshold for taking part had been 3 family members rather than 4 as originally set. So, I hope from next year we will bring back this part of the fixture, with the bar lowered to 3 family members. Roll on next year!