Results for DVO Regional Event, Eyam Moor, 05/12/2004

Comments: Organiser, Planners, Controller.
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Organiser

The worst thing about being an organiser is trying not to dwell too much on the "what if". Yes you have to be aware of it but it doesn't do your sleep patterns much good when you start dwelling on them. None of my "what if's" came to pass, though I like to think that the DVO team leaders and helpers could have coped with most of them.

Thanks to all the DVO helpers, who made my job so much easier on the day. A special thank you to those who came to help but in the end were not needed, I would rather that than be short of helpers.

Thanks to the various landowners and to Ray for gentle yet firm controlling (even though he came up with a few more "what if's"). I am also very grateful to the weather for making the job a lot pleasanter on the day.

Steve Kimberley

Planners

Planning is fun. The purpose being to offer enjoyable and challenging, fair and safe competition to all. For the fair and safe part, a lot is due to the controller. So my thanks to Ray for his always good natured and frequently duly firm guidance. I hope that I got the enjoyable and challenging parts about right, though I know that they weren't perfect. One early decision, after ensuring that the shorter and least technical courses were viable, was the siting of finishes in the valley, so that the climb out was more relaxed that it might have been. Also, Bretton Clough is such a geomorphological wonder that it made sense to send all the most technical courses in there, even though it's very narrow. I was disappointed, though, that there seemed no option other than a taped route on course 10. Some of the controls in Bretton Clough were a bit too visible from too far away, because of their siting and not because of the nature of the control hanging. But it was great to see people out there, some fast and some not so fast. I received positive comments from several finishers, which really did help to make me feel that all the time and effort was worthwhile. So may I return the thank you to those people.

Since I now live about 150 km from the area and almost that far from DVO's heartland, I had to rely heavily on fellow club members. So thanks to Neil Forrest and Helen Finlayson for not only hanging more controls than I did but also for arranging the bagging and sealing of maps, ably assisted by Viv and Ranald Macdonald. Thanks to Derek Gale and Mike Godfree for programming the control boxes, and quadruple thanks again to Mike for not only arranging map printing but also being my OCAD guru. His tolerance in the face of questions along the lines of, "which button do I press to get .." was way beyond the call of duty. I didn't even have to collect the map bags, since this was swiftly and efficiently done by Dave Vincent. Finally, heroes who are often left unsung are the control collectors, without whom my skeletal remains would still be in the area buried under a tangle of stakes and kites .. Jayne, Erin and John Malley, Kate Ruffell plus one, Graham Johnson, Ruth Johnson and Phil Burdge, Paul Wright, Dave Bennett, Alex Ross and Paul Armstrong .. I hope I haven't forgotten anybody. Special mention to Paul Armstrong, who set off to collect the furthest controls at 2pm and returned to meet the search party setting off at 4.15. By then we were all tired, and though Paul had collected 9 kites and stakes, we could only seem to find 8 boxes in his rucksack. The 9th turned up hidden amongst the kites, in the back of my car, the following day.

And well done, Steve, for organising a bright December day.

Dave Brodie

Controller

Thanks to Steve Kimberley and the DVO organisation for producing a fine event in a beautiful area.

As an 'Experimental Event' the controlling was not unlike an enlarged Colour-Coded event with over-printed maps. There were probably 20 fewer control sites. It does lighten the load a little, but had there been 750 runners, Courses 4,5,6 may have become full and in danger of 'packs' forming. Not many people elected to run down, and about as many as normal elected to run up. The 21Novice courses were more popular than we had expected.

The pre-event phase was a little tricky with a planner living in Wales. However, OCAD and eMail can work wonders, but still don't allow the extra site visit to check the viability of that depression 50m away to fine tune a course.

Dave's scheme to get all the TD5 courses into the landslip area was very successful. This entailed a longer walk back from the finish but that was much better than a 40m uphill slog to a Finish.

Had it been foggy or cold and windy - then there was a real risk of competitors being overdue, and with darkness descending by 16:00, courses were trimmed to be short. As we were so lucky with the weather (mind you it was thick fog at 06:45), winning times were quick.

Eyam is impossible to cover by one controller on the day, and I thank my assistant, John Dalton, for test-locating for himself all the moor controls that snowy weekend in November, and for checking them on the day.

At the near start I saw a few people without studded footwear. At the finish it was obvious that most people had fallen somewhere. What a slippery place it is!

Badge Times: As the event coincided with the Yvette Baker Trophy Final the Junior courses are very underpopulated, and there were many absent parents too. It has not been possible to fix every anomaly in the Juniors but I have adjusted M45L/S, M60L/S, W40L, W4, W45L/S, W50L/S, W55L to make mins per km a logical progression - allowing for courses from the far start having some heather sections.

Ray Barnes (NOC)

Any queries, errors, or omissions should in the first instance be addressed to Michael Napier, 0115 928 9663, mnapier @ cix.co.uk

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