Deeside Orienteering Club Evening Score Event, Halkyn  Thursday 7 July 2005

Planner's Comments | Results
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Planner's Comments - Robin Tilston

About three weeks before the event, after I had done the armchair planning for six courses, I discovered that it was advertised as a Score Event. Naturally, this came as a big surprise, particularly, as I am not fond of score events.

A week before the event I found that I didn't have an organiser. Or to put it another way, Tim didn't know that he was the organiser and as a result he had not looked to planning his work commitments to take account of the event!

I spent several hours on the mountain checking the control sites, moving them, re-surveying some parts to ensure that the runners could match the control sites with the details on the map. There are many more pits on the ground than there are on the map and many of those on the map are not where they are shown.

As I said, I don't like score events, mainly because they seem so unfair on the less mobile runners or (in my case) walkers. In order to even things up a bit I placed nearly all the high scoring controls in the start-finish area, with points getting progressively lower as one got further away. I did put two distant controls with high points in an endeavour to lure people out and into penalties. Points were awarded for being early, but only a maximum of 15 points for being 5 minutes early, earlier than that did not improve the score. It has always annoyed me to find that the penalty for being just a little late usually costs the points from the last two controls. So I made the penalty for being a little bit late not too expensive but very late did pile up the deductions. The main object was to try and encourage as many people as possible to come in on the hour and this is what happened.

I was aware that I could not put all the controls out myself so I co-opted the limping wounded, Terry Harper. It is amazing that the controls that we spent a total of about 3 hours putting out could be visited in 39 minutes by the speed merchants. Well done all. I am very grateful for Terry's assistance in putting out the controls. Also, the efforts of Tim and Jenny who took the money, handed out the maps, collected in the finishers and did the results in the Britannia on the laptop. I am also greatly indebted to the Vokes, Pete Owen & Noel Schorah for saving me the agony of having to collect controls.

PS. The landlord of the Blue Bell up the road felt left out and offers his house as the venue after the next Halkyn event! Maybe I will check it out some time.

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