Results for the QO Christmas Anniversary Waltz at Norton Manor Camp 27 December 2003

FROM THE PLANNER AND ORGANISER

First, the thanks: to Geoff Eggleston who works at Norton Manor and arranged access and the buffet: to Bill Vigar who was responsible for the electronic punching, without which an event at the camp would have been rather hard to plan: and to all of you who came, in spite of the inconvenience of having to pre-enter, creating a cheerful mob on the day, even if you found yourself on a shorter than expected course, or running twice.

This was the first use of the camp for a QO event: its size means that a long score course is not sensible, and the length of a normal course is limited if you are not to visit every part three times. The planning owed something to Sprint-O, which I got involved with for the first time at the British Championships at Ham Hill (also on QO’s patch) earlier this year, and the racing did seem suitably fast and furious.The split times on the website are, due to an error of inexperience, 1m 25secs too long for the Long and Medium courses’ last legs, and also for all the elapsed times from the start time listed in the results.

I could, perhaps, be accused of of misleading competitors by saying that all teams would have a roughly equal chance of winning. This for various reasons is not really the case, especially when teams are re-arranged or made up on the day, but the spread of times was not too great, and I don’t suppose anybody had the idea that this was a anything but a fun event. The persistence award for the day goes to Denise Mullins of SARUM, the last to return, but who started with an Achilles tendon injury.

For those not at the buffet, why was the event called The Anniversary Waltz? This day was our wedding anniversary; Christine and I reckoned it well spent.

Arthur Vince

Splits are available here