Organiser’s Report

What a wonderful day our Summer Score event turned out to be. A light shower early on gave way to a dry and pleasant day for most runners. The shortest straight line route for the course was 7.4km but as this would have involved a line crossing an uncrossable marsh twice I wasn’t expecting anyone to manage all 26 controls within the allotted hour. However, a couple of runners gave it a good go, both missing just one control. At the end of the day it was our own Jon Hollingdale that just pipped Robert Daly from Aberdeen with both runners achieving 565 points but with Jon proving quicker by 1 minute 15 seconds and no time penalties.

Steve Smithwaite took an early run and with his recent experience in Canada took a gamble and went for the lone control, worth 35 points, that the 2 top runners choose to ignore. It nearly paid off but with a harsh one point penalty for every second over 60 minutes, he just lost out as the excursion took him 36 seconds over time. For others, the excitement started well before the start with one runner injuring their hand in a non-orienteering related incident before they arrived and 2 runners needing assistance to the start when their map memory failed them in the journey from the car park.

A small glitch in transferring the results from Emit to the computer meant that half a dozen runners were deprived of 40 points that they should have been given for visiting Control 63. Corrected results have been posted and these show a few changes in overall position. My apologies for the error and thanks to Derek who spotted the mistake.

Organising an event in the summer was a gamble. The wisdom had been that with everyone taking their holidays an event wouldn’t be well supported. I took the view that if people were willing to turn up for events in freezing, wet, snowy conditions earlier in the year then surely people would turn up for an event on a gorgeous summer day. Fortunately the gamble paid off. For every regular Club member who was away, there was somebody to take their place. With holiday makers from Rugby and Cumbria, a strong contingent from INVOC and even a few first time runners, 51 runners took up the challenge. The Score format worked well too and I was particularly pleased that some of the youngsters who are normally confined to paths on their white or yellow course had the opportunity to venture just off track to pick up a few extra points and some new experiences.

May thanks to Moray Estates for letting us use the area, to Mike, Ian and Grant for help on the day and also to George for helping to collect in controls. Apologies for not having the results available on the day but I guess that if you are reading this then you know how well you did. Thanks for everyone who turned out and the positive feedback, it makes it all so worthwhile.

Planner/Organiser: Malcolm Aldridge