Galoppen and District event 30 Oct 2005 - Longleat Cannimore

as at 3 Nov 2005 , any queries to John Parfitt - 01985 216371 or SarumO@aol.com

Results

Organisers comments -When I heard the weather forecast for Sunday I thought we would probably only get about 200 competitors if we were lucky. So we were very pleased that 269 of you braved the elements to compete. For the early runners weather conditions were grim to say the least, but I was most impressed with how cheerful you all were! We were very restricted with the parking area we had available and I would like to apologise for any inconvenience this caused. We wanted to use a part of the Longleat estate that had not been used for sometime and there weren't really any alternatives. We had one complaint about control 9 on the Brown course. This has been investigated in full and although I have some sympathy for the complainant I have decided to let the result stand. The complainant has been sent my reasons for the decision. As Organisor I would like to thank all the Sarum members who once again rallied round and made my job easy. I ended up with more volunteers than I needed! Special thanks must go to Steve and Shirley Robinson who did a marvellous job in planning the courses. They were on the go from dawn to dusk on the Sunday and were still cheerful at the end! Jan Belza

Planners comments When we were originally asked to plan this event it was supposed to be at Sidbury Hill in Tidworth which is much closer to home than Longleat but we still decided to go ahead and plan as it was an area that we knew fairly well and could do a lot of pre-planning at home.
Having the car parking in Canimore enabled us to fit all of the shorter courses in this area giving most people, especially the juniors somewhere different on the Longleat estate to where they may have run previously. The longer junior/senior courses had to use the whole of the area with the associated climb over the road (and back), onto the Shearwater side. Looking at the results it seems as though the courses were about right, maybe light green was a bit tougher than we thought.
Putting the controls out on the Saturday gave no indication of the conditions that greeted club members, the emit team and competitors on the Sunday morning which turned the finish track into a rivulet and the final track on the yellow/orange course into a muddy mess, we just hope the juniors enjoyed it. Conditions did dry up later in the morning and those starting later on had some decent weather to run in. Apart from the weather everything seemed to go okay with few competitors having major problems but we must apologise to those on the brown course who had problems with control 83 and those on the green/light green who found an additional path on their way to control 58. If the event had taken place two months earlier control 83 would not have been used as the ferns would have been too high, as it was they had died back considerably. Of those that had trouble with 58 nearly all said that they found control 79, (brown course no 4), first. Finally our thanks must go to all of you who turned out in the rain and made it all worthwhile; Clive the controller who allowed us to use the courses we had planned with few amendments, David and Denise Mullins for helping put out controls on Saturday, all of the helpers who collected controls on the Sunday and last but by no means least David and Catherine Howlett for providing accommodation and lots of tea. You all made our job a lot easier and more enjoyable. Steve and Shirley Robinson

Controllers comments - The draft courses were well planned, so there were few amendments to suggest in advance. The sites were all tagged correctly. The map needed little changing. So my job was made easy by competence of the other officials. On the day I was first impressed by the early and cheery arrival of the SARUM helpers, despite the deluge. And then again by the good turnout of competitors. The results show the spread of times to be within the guidelines for all courses except light green. It was noticeable how many people kept to the paths - understandable given the weather, but it did mean running much further on some legs. I did insist on taping the straight route from 1 to 2 on the orange course because the undergrowth there had not gone down as much as we'd hoped. The organiser and planners have mentioned the two sites that gave some problems; no.9 on the Brown was the most difficult control of the lot, but I was satisfied that it was fair; while the unmarked path that led to 74 instead of 58 on the green courses was 150m to the East and in a direction we didn't expect people to be approaching from. Clive Caffall (BOK)