Cothelstone Gallopen April 2004 - Final Results

Planner's Comments

With previous events starting adjacent to the car park, the first thing I decided was to give everyone a change of scenery, especially the shorter courses. By starting south of the road, not only did the short courses use a new part of the area, but also all but the Blue and Brown courses did not have a road crossing. It also gave most courses the chance to enjoy the views from the top of the hill. However, the fence surrounding the top of the hill did cause a few planning problems, especially getting some long legs in.

I tried to keep the courses to the most runnable parts of the area (i.e. the upper parts of the hill). At this time of the year, with the bracken and brambles very low, the running conditions were mainly very good and fast (with the possible exception of some up-hill sections). The late spring flowers added to the beauty of the area, with primroses and swathes of bluebells. I hope you all managed to enjoy the flowers, especially those on Brown and Blue walking (running?) up the carpet of bluebells by control 10. I also believe some of you even had time to enjoy the view from the top of the hill.

The unusually warm weather (for QO events at least, from what I am led to believe) was welcomed, but resulted in some very heated finishers. The (very) late decision to put water at the map switch for the two longest courses was appreciated by most. From the comments I received at the finish, you all seemed to have enjoyed the day, and it is always pleasing to be sought out and thanked. The constructive comments we received were welcomed and will be taken into consideration for future events.

My thanks to Richard for his encouragement and constructive suggestions which helped to improved some of the courses, to Bill for all the ‘electronic’ bits, and to all who turned up on the day.

Jim Mallinson (SLOW & QO)

Organiser's Comments

The event seemed to go quite well and the weather came out 'to order'. As with all events there were one or to hic-cups but nothing major. The computers stopped talking to the printers and I am sorry if you were one of the ones that did not get a print out; they did start communicating again later on so I hope you were able to come back for a second go. If not then you will find the splits attached to the results page on the web. The final results and splits took a little longer to get out then I hoped; we had to investigate a couple of problems and didn't feel we should put the final results out until we were absolutely sure. On the organisational side I received one or two helpful comments which proved most useful in the post event discussion.

This will have been the first time many of you have seen the 'Joe Lee' system and I hope you weren't too fazed by it. It produces the same information as the SI but in a slightly different way. The actual dibbing is done when your dibber makes contact with the centre of the control and the metal rim (thus completing the electrical circuit). The control then writes to the dibber and the light flashes. This operation seems quite lengthy to the SI devotees however it is the same for everyone and is quite simple as evidenced by the fact that everyone managed ok. Some of you will have heard we had a couple of dibbers go down however all competitors got the correct result because we had manual punch back up, timed and punching start and an official at the finish to record any 'problem' finish times. We are investigating the dibber failure but are confident that it we will will get to the bottom of it soon. That said we are very happy with the system, it's price (about 1/3rd of the SI) and it's overall efficiency. Two things we will sort out before next time - we will find a viable alternative to the high tech string and I will provide a 'dibber runner' for Ho… of BOK who said he found it very difficult to bend over and look at the light!!!!

Finally our thanks to Mr Warmington of Cothelstone estate who once again allowed us to use his estate free of charge (the club made a donation to the estate Church Restoration Fund) and altered his lambing schedule to give us the wonderful scenic car park field. My thanks also to everyone who helped and or competed and, in particular, to my wife who by doing 'everything else' allowed me to get things organised for you. I hope you enjoyed the day

Had Teeth

Controller's comments

A lovely day made the Quantocks even more beautiful than usual. Most of you seemed to enjoy the views from the top of Cothelstone Hill even if you didn't appreciate the physical nature of the longer courses quite as much.

It was good to work with QO again and I thank Jim for producing such good courses. I was feeling confident when I arrived on Sunday morning to check the controls. This was affected somewhat by discovering that the first control I visited had been removed. Further delay resulted when my dibber packed up and I had to wait an hour for a replacement. (Our dibber man will get up earlier in future - Ed!!!!!!)

However competitors seemed to enjoy the courses and I am pleased that, at last, QO got the weather they deserve.

Richard Raynsford