Bridge Wood 09/09/07

All a first time organiser can pray for is good weather, excellent helpers and appreciative orienteers. I believe that we achieved all three at Bridge Wood on Sunday. Thank you for coming and supporting the event. The numbers that turned up made the advanced planning of the event worthwhile and we hope to see you at another of our - or one of our neighbours - events in the near future. Thank you to Neil Carter for planning some excellent courses and Paul Lowe for his guidance on some of the finer points of organising an event. Also thank you to all the helpers who responded to my e mails and phone calls for help, without you we would not be able to run any events. I enjoyed organising my first event and would recommend it to anyone, the sense of achievement, even on a small event, is immense. However, I did sleep soundly on Sunday night - something that I hadn't on Saturday!!

It was great to see so many people at the event and many thanks for all the positive comments received, it makes all the time and effort worthwhile.  It was particularly nice to see people trying the sport for the first time and I hope to see you again at future events.

Many thanks to Paul for 'controlling' the event and guiding me through the planning process and OCAD for the first time.  Particular thanks for the constructive feedback on my courses and stepping in to help tag sites as the evening light began to fade....

Special thanks to Bill McLean for bringing the map bang up to date and also to Simon Peck for technological support.  Thanks also to Bill and Yvonne for helping me put out the controls on the day.  The time and effort involved is most appreciated and made my job easier.  Well done to Clive for superb organisation allowing me to just concentrate on getting the best courses possible. Thanks also to my family for patience, support and assistance throughout the planning process.

Over the Summer we have set-up our RouteGadget website to enable you to draw your route online and compare with other runners.  This is an excellent way to improve your technique for your next run!  I will be very interested in the various routes people have taken so would appreciate it if you could take the time to draw yours online.  Our Tangham event on 25th November will use electronic punching, giving splits for each leg, which really makes RouteGadget come alive.

As a first time planner Neil is to be congratulated on the good courses he produced for you all, especially given the constraints of the area. Each of them were within the guidelines (once the climb was taken into account!). Clive, a first time organiser, also did a good job co-ordinating the the jobs for the usual merry band of helpers - without whom events just would not take place.

Whilst doing the results, it became quite apparent that we are not used to using Control Cards. Some had more than 2 punches in a box, others missed out a box completly (all normally would be reasons for disqualification). However, we decided to be lenient as long as the actual punch pattern was visible. As a lot of runners failed to fill in their details on the cards I resorted to a bit of detective work (using other event results) to get age classes, clubs etc.

See you in the forest