What a great event last Saturday at Darnaway!

  First and foremost, a big thank you to Nick, Liz and Andrew for putting on the event as a family project. This was Nick and Andrew’s first foray into the black art of course planning and what they produced was first class. Liz did a great job doing registration at what I think is our second-best attended Saturday event ever.

  The long course was a bit of a step up from what we’ve laid on at previous Saturday morning events. The course is normally planned for a winning time of about 25 minutes, where the technical difficulty is usually restricted to medium (TD3 in BOF speak) with an occasional foray into medium-hard (TD4). This course was definitely TD4 with an occasional foray in to TD3! I’d asked Nick to come up with a course of about 4 Km that provided plenty of route choice with the option to use paths and tracks. Controls should be mainly on contour features but there had to be a line feature quite close by. Having run the course myself I can definitely say that there were bags of route choices! On virtually every leg I had to think quite hard while deciding the best route to take, and there was definitely scope to make errors! Had Jon not had an off day I’m sure his time would have been close to 25 minutes so the course length was about right as well.

  I hope that those of you who took quite a while to complete the course got a lot out of it. Remember that the aim of these events is to help everyone improve their skills without the pressure of competition against other clubs. As the tech difficulty is not as hard as is normally found on green, blue and brown courses, the more experienced runners get the chance to run the course really hard, while those who are learning the sport can really stretch themselves. On the junior course there were a couple of places that you had to be careful and a few youngsters were caught out. Well done to Aubrina and Ashleigh for some good unshadowed times, and congratulation to young Lewis Barber who was the fastest, with only minimal help from dad. It was really nice to have a junior course planned by a junior who was running this standard only a few months ago, so any other juniors who fancy having a go at planning have a word with mum or dad about putting on a ‘family’ event like this one – there are plenty of us in the club who can guide you through it.

  Talking about family orienteering, it was nice to see families taking part together. This is very a good idea for juniors who are still learning the basics, and it’s best to run with a friend or parent if you’re not absolutely certain you can deal with the situation when you get lost. Nick did have to mount a search party at the end – no names mentioned!

  Talking of getting lost, I was very impressed with young Adam Nicolson, who on only his 12^th event made a big step up in difficulty and navigated really well throughout nearly all of the course until he went off on the wrong bearing from no 9 and ran off the map. Showing great maturity for a 12-year old he applied common sense and relocated himself using major features like tracks and completed the course. Well done Adam.

  Skilled orienteers make mistakes just like beginners, but the difference is that the experts manage to relocate themselves quite quickly, maybe only losing a minute or two instead of 10 or 20! The only way to learn to do this is to make plenty of mistakes and learn from your experience, so if you’re in that category I hope you’ll remember what you did wrong and what you did to get out of it.... and try not to make the same mistakes next time!

  Our next 2 mini events are being planned by novice planners. Anne Smith is setting the courses for Cluny Hill on Wed 9^th September while the Macpherson-Stewarts are doing the Findhorn event on 24^th October, mentored by Margaret and me respectively. Please come along to the events and give them your support.

  The league table is starting to get exciting. With the best 6 events counting, Jon needs a win to go joint top, and Eddie is still within striking distance with Ade not yet out of it. Johnstone is top dog in the juniors but Andrew Barr is still capable of overtaking him once he gets rid of the low scoring events from early in the year. Caroline is well ahead in the ladies competition but with Anne set to score 95 points for planning Cluny Hill, all she needs is one more good result to get close!  Remember that once we get past 11 events, it’s 7 to count so no complacency please!

  Finally thanks to everyone for their enthusiasm, which is helping the club go from strength to strength. Membership is better than it’s ever been, we’re putting on more events that we’ve ever had and the club is really getting noticed. See you at Cluny Hill, and, if you can make it, at the Forres Schools Champs on Friday 11th September for an exciting morning of junior racing.

  Mike R