Event 5 - Hurstwood

Planner's comments

I wanted to organise an event at Hurstwood as one of the Autumn Series events as I fell it is one of PFO's best areas but is vastly underused. I realised the reasons for this early on as there is no convenient place for a white course so it had to bend a few rules and send it through the more exposed quarries- if it had been raining this could have been a poor decision. The yellow was much easier to plan as the reservoir is conveniently the right length to go round for a yellow. I felt that to make the navigation more challenging I would add some features just off paths such as a knoll (sorry those who didn't know this is a small hill- even though no-one mispunched it).
The orange presented another challenge as there are not enough line features to base the course on so I used my imagination and used the edges of the quarry as a line feature to good effect (with some help from Jim as a marshall). The re-entrants course deemed excellent by several competitors despite only one competitor finding number 6 as it was placed in the wrong re-entrant by my Dad!! Many competitors however found the red tape which marked the control site so they can claim a moral victory. We apologise to those who lost time as all competitors have been reinstated. If we had SI punching I would have deleted the split times either side of the control to make the result fairer.

Words from the Autumn Events Co-ordinator

My grateful thanks to all planners of our very successful Autumn Series 2007. The innovative Technical Courses were particularly well-received and will doubtless be repeated in Spring 2008. The average attendance was 75 competitors, which included 45 children, and average participation per course was White 10.4, Yellow 19.6, Orange 13.0 and Technical 14.0.

My thanks too to Gillian for typing during the series and all club members who assisted at the events. On a personal note, I particularly enjoyed patrolling the top of the quarries at Hurstwood to ensure nobody went wildly astray on Alex's challenging but fair Orange Course.

Jim
(Event Co-ordinator)

This little article will give you guidance in using your results to build your orienteering confidence.

If you are in the bottom half of the results, and want to improve look at the middle finishers time and try and run the course distance without navigating to see if you can manage the speed. If you can you need to work on your navigation. If you can't, you need to work on your running ability.

If you are within the top 20% of the results, a useful tip is to look at the winners time and try to run the course distance without navigating to see if you can manage the speed. If you can you need to work on your navigation. If you can't, you need to work on your running ability.