Thank you for the many positive comments received today. It makes all the hours of planning worthwhile. I certainly enjoyed my own non-comp test runs on Green and Blue.
Getting the event on was the biggest challenge I've ever had to face as a planner. "Start early" is the best advice a planner can ever be given, but sometimes early just isn't early enough. By November I'd researched the felling plans with the Moray Estates Office, had a quick recce of the forest and had planned the courses in draft. Chris, the controller, had gone through them and suggested a couple of helpful changes. All set to do the serious forest work over Christmas. Then the snow came.
And it snowed and it snowed, and we began to realise that it wasn't going away in a hurry. No choice then but to go out, wading through knee-deep snow to investigate buried control sites and call the bluff on the estate forester's tiny little white lies or was it over-enthusiastic tree harvesters? Eventually, temperatures warmed up a bit, and knee-deep became shin deep - luxury! But at least it made it possible to see the vegetation a bit better and to make many updates to the map (sorry to Brown/Blue runners for the bit of felling I missed en route to the last control). It's amazing just how many changes you make once you get out in the forest, and I think that the countless tweaks made to the courses resulted in a good event. For some reason we couldn't upload the updated map to Route Gadget, and if you compare your map with what's on your computer you might spot some of the changes (no prizes for getting them all as I can't remember them all!).
As far as the courses go, they seemed to fit the BOF time guidelines very well, at least in terms of leading times. There were some very slow times on Green and Light Green suggesting that there are many of you out there who like to get your money's worth and have a real challenge. Good on you! The Brown was deliberately on the long side. Only last Sunday I decided to add 300 metres and 2 more controls to the Brown course to avoid a rubbish leg during the second half. I was expecting Jon Musgrave to manage about 68 minutes and I think with a cleaner run you might have almost managed that Jon. I'm a great believer in setting the Brown at a distance that will give the elite a decent run, especially where there are shorter courses that provide as good a technical challenge. From the many routes up on Route Gadget I was please to see most of my route choice legs produced the desired variety of routes. The leading 3 runners on Brown took different routes on the long track-running route choice leg and I was pleased to see a Moravian runner taking over a minute out of the lot of you on that one. Shame a few other legs let you down a bit Ben - but your day will come.
Anyway, thanks for coming out in such huge numbers. Some of you travelled quite long distances and I hope you felt that was travelling time well spent. Haste ye back to our next exciting 'district' event - an Urban special in Forres on 18 April if we can put together an organising team - somebody else can plan it though. Watch our web site for details in a month or so.
Mike Rodgers