Malcolm who? Malcolm Aldridge. Who’s he then?

You’ve probably never heard of him or seen his name in the results at events, so let me tell you. Malcolm came along to an event with his family a couple of years back, and now comes along to the occasional event when he has the time. Although he admits it himself, he’s no runner and not a particularly world-class orienteer either. However, Malcolm wanted to do his bit for the club, and so he stuck his neck out and agreed to do an evening event for us last year. That was a success and so he agreed to plan a colour coded event. In preparation for this he did a planners course and now I have had the pleasure of being his controller for this, his debut event at Roseisle.

I would like to thank Malcolm, as I’m sure you all will, for the effort he put in. He got to grips with Condes, sorted out overprinted maps for you, and came up with courses that nicely fitted the guidelines. The only error in the event was my fault in that I didn’t pick up a small error in placement of one of the controls (a knoll west side, a few hundred yards north of the finish). My apologies to those of you who had the skill to notice the error while running – fortunately the error was only by a few yards and I don’t think anybody lost silly amounts of time as a consequence.

Moravian has a ridiculously small number of active members at the moment, and if it weren’t for the likes of inexperienced members like Malcolm willing to give it a go, then we’d be pushed to put on any events at all. As a controller, it was so satisfying to help him out, and see how much he learned during the planning process and I’m sure his orienteering skills will improve as a result. If anyone out there reading this sees themselves as another Malcolm, please think about having a go yourself. Your club will appreciate it and you’ll be glad you did.

On a more negative note, my enduring memory about this event will be the absolute mess that the top end of the forest was in. Dozens of beer cans, bottles, fag packets, (and probably other unmentionable things that I never spotted) were strewn around all over the place, and those of you who arrived early would have seen the appalling state that the picnic area was left in by the imbeciles who had obviously held a birthday barbecue on Saturday night. I helped the Forestry Commission clean up during a spare half hour, so hopefully this will have kept us in their good books. Experiences like this make you develop some pretty radical right-wing views on life and I hope I never see the likes of this again.

Thanks you all for your positive comments, and thanks for supporting our event.

May you run in litter-free forests.

Mike Rodgers

Controller