DISTRICT EVENT
NORBURY PARK
14 SEPTEMBER 2008
Results without split times
Results with split times
Yvette Baker Trophy FINAL results
if you have any queries or questions about the results please send them to
info@mvoc.org
Badge times
Brown 73:15 Blue 70:25 Green
54:34
Light Green 64:25
Orange 60:57 Yellow 27:13
White 26:58
Winsplits
Splitsbrowser
Routegadget
Pre-event information
Flyer
Planner's Report
Planning this event I soon realised that the vegetation and path
changes required to the map were more substantial than my limited
cartographic skills could cope with, so I invited Mike Elliot to take care
of these. Mike did a splendid job starting only three weeks before the
event and I would particularly like to thank him for dropping everything
to resurvey the map. I would also like to thank controller Alan Wallis for
his tolerance of receiving courses rather later than he would have liked.
The 'distinctive tree' control sites provided one issue which neither Alan nor I
had anticipated. Where it was easy to reach the trunk, I hung the control close
to the trunk. Where it wasn't, because the tree foliage came down to the ground,
I hung the control just outside the foliage canopy. It never occurred to either
of us to do anything else, but I heard reports of people battling their way
through foliage to reach the trunk, only to find that the control wasn't there.
Is the control feature for 'distinctive tree' the tree trunk, or is it all parts
of the tree which reach the ground? I've never heard of any standards on this,
perhaps there should be some? I tried to provide the technical courses with
some route choice. Please use RouteGadget to record where you went, so that the
various options can be compared. Feel free to use the comment facility on
RouteGadget too! I'm under orders to produce a report to go on the web at the
same time as the results, so I haven't been able to study them. The course which
most worried me before the event was the Light Green. There's nothing, I think,
wrong with it, but it is planned to the correct technical standard, rather than
being 'dumbed down' to make it easier than the Green, as is sometimes the case
in areas which don't support really tricky Green, Blue and Brown courses. In
fact, because the Light Green didn't have the length to allow a long
route-choice leg, a greater proportion of it required accurate navigation into a
control, so arguably it was the most consistently technical of all the courses.
I hope nobody found it too difficult.
I'd like to thank the organiser for providing perfect weather, not just
during the actual event, but for the control hanging as well. I
particularly enjoyed putting out SI boxes by moonlight on Saturday
evening.
Ian Ditchfield
MVOC Organiser's Report
"Let it shine and they will come" . . . and you certainly didn't let us down.
It was great to see so many of you come along to sample the delights of Norbury
Park on a lovely sunny day. I hope you all enjoyed Ian's courses.
Apologies to those earlier competitors who felt that the route to the Start
could have been taped better than it was, particularly when coming back out of
the farm yard; also for the slight delay whilst waiting to Download.
My thanks to Surrey Wildlife Trust for use of the area and also to James
Gowing of Bocketts Farm for providing the field for parking and allowing us the
use of their facilities - I hope some of you enjoyed their Tea Room after your
run!
A big thank-you to all the Moles who turned up to help on the day, and to
Alan Wallis for Controlling the event.
Finally, congratulations to Southdowns on their narrow victory over SLOW in
the Yvette Baker Trophy heat - we wish you luck in the Final.
Neil Lewer
MVOC
Controller's Report
The whole event was organised in a short timescale. I was asked to control about
5 weeks before the event, when land permission had been obtained but nothing
else started. With 15 days to go I was starting to get concerned - I had seen
just 3 draft courses, hadn't managed to contact the organiser, there didn't
appear to be permission for the first choice car park, and the map update hadn't
started! That everything worked out well on the day is a tribute to those,
particularly Ian, who worked hard during the two weeks prior to the event. It
also shows how email has enabled timescales to be compressed, without
compromising quality to any great extent.
Norbury Park has a variety of terrain. There are parts with significant
undergrowth - but hopefully you didn't encounter too many as Ian tried to ensure
that the courses avoided the worst bits. The three longer courses had a route
choice leg along the scarp slope, and both choices on Green/Blue, and all three
on Brown, appear to have been adopted; I think the 'top' route for the former
and the 'bottom route for the latter were probably the fastest options.
Looking at the results I was a little surprised by the number of people who
lost time on the controls in the southern half of the area, west of the road.
Most of these were with 100m of a clear attack point, which could have been used
to relocate quickly if the control were missed. This appears to have affected
competitors on Light Green more than other courses, and as Ian says perhaps this
is because such courses in the south-east are sometimes not quite planned to the
full technical difficulty.
From comments gathered at the finish nearly everyone seems to have enjoyed
their course - even if they didn't always pick the best route - and of course
the perfect weather made things much pleasanter.
Alan Wallis
SN
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Mole Valley Orienteering Club