Firstly I’d like to thank everybody for turning up and for the overwhelming number of positive comments I received about the courses and the area. Obviously I can only take credit for one of these aspects, but I’m glad you could all appreciate what a stunning area Bigland is! However that said planning on Bigland is not without its challenges. The best terrain is the beautiful wooded hillside, however this is also steep, physically tough, and narrow, and it was difficult in area to plan for changes in direction without making the climb go through the roof or encountering walls or other features. The Middle Distance format of the race allowed for shorter legs to be planned, keeping runners in the terrain and away from handrails for most of the course, providing a sustained challenging navigation from start to finish.
The loss of the small block of wood to the east of the finish only two weeks before the event affected some courses, most notably the Black and the Green, causing a rapid rethink of a few legs and a slight delay in approving the draft map prints, but nothing was too adversely affected.
Early in the process we were approached by British Orienteering with a view to using this weekend for WOC selection. Whilst the long distance clearly required separate courses, this was not the case for the middle race, for which the shorter format allows a wider range of people to compete together. I was keen to set testing courses for our top runners, and was targeting 35minute winning times for both courses. Neither the Men or Women quite broke the 35minute barrier, but both courses were won in sub 36 minutes, so I was satisfied these courses were pitched at the right level. Congratulations to the selected athletes and good luck in France!
I decided to keep the shorter course off the steepest part of the area, a decision for which most competitors seemed grateful, although the Green needed more extra length than I allowed due to being in the less physical and thus faster parts of the area.
Getting the stakes out was a killer job, done gradually over the previous week in evenings on the way home from work. I am very grateful to the team of control collectors who helped get everything in quickly and efficiently so I was only slightly late for an old friends wedding reception in Newcastle!
Thanks also to SROC and WAROC for loan of equipment, and a big big thank you to my controllers Nick and Jane Campbell from DEE who were fantastic to work with, kept me on track and checked everything with an impressive thoroughness, as well as helping place kites and boxes on the Friday.
Unclaimed Maps
We still have a handful of unclaimed maps from the Women’s Brown and Black courses.
Please contact chris.heppenstall@yahoo.co.uk to reclaim.
Chris Heppenstall LOC
