Lake District National Event Sunday 11th March 2007

National and IOF World Ranking Event
WHITBARROW SCAR

A New Area in South East Lakes
Also a UK Cup and Future Champions Cup event

Planners’ Comments             Organiser's comments                                    Return to Event Details

Our overriding concern was to provide courses that were interesting, challenging and enjoyable, bearing in mind the safety considerations associated with the tricky terrain. We hope most of you feel we achieved this.

Back in 2005, our first task was to assist the organiser in finding an assembly area and parking field. Unfortunately there was nothing suitable on the East side, leading to the selection of the field by Witherslack School as the best compromise. That did mean a steep walk to the start and a long walk back from the finish.

Malcolm Campbell did a tremendous job with the map which remains legible at 1:15000 (with high-quality printing) while accurately showing the complex rocky areas and limestone pavement.

The woodland is the most challenging part of the area and we wanted to give nearly all courses a taste of it. However, large parts consist of very rough and featureless (give or take the odd ‘bingo’ sink hole) tree-covered limestone pavement with lots of thorn bushes. That restricted us to using the few more-runnable lines. We were also restricted to spring when the seasonal vegetation is at its lowest.

The woods are surrounded by rather unstable dry-stone walls. Since we therefore had to make crossing points compulsory, we put a control on each one to make it absolutely clear.

By contrast, the open areas were much more runnable though many older competitors still found the stony ground challenging. The accurately drawn but subtle contours were deceptively tricky; many people wished that they had been more careful attacking their first control.

We had 1500 overprinted and bagged maps in our filing cabinet from March 2006 and we wanted to use them if possible. We decided that recent felling did not invalidate the control features in those areas and so the main error on the map was just the date of the event.

We received many positive comments about the courses and were pleased that most people seemed to have enjoyed their runs.

The courses were a little short for a National/World Ranking event. In particular M21L could have done with an extra few kilometres. Having spent a lot of time on the area in driving rain and thick mist, we were very aware of the safety issues. We were concerned to avoid over-long courses, particularly when the original plan was for many people to have run the JOK sprint the previous day. As it was, running conditions were almost perfect and the sure-footed could skip quite easily across the dry limestone. It certainly would have been slower in the wet. The extra felling also made approaching a few controls much faster than a year ago.

Thanks to our controller John Bettinson (LOC) for his helpful input, and to Liz and Malcolm Campbell who test-ran some of the courses. Thanks also to those stalwarts who helped us put out and collect controls. We used Picover for course planning which integrates well with OCAD. On the day the SportIdent equipment all worked well, but preparing it was a challenge as we had to resurrect a lot of older-version kit. We’ll be pressing SROC/LOC to upgrade all their units to the modern BSF-7/BSF-8 models.

David & Miriam Rosen SROC
Organiser's comments                                                                                       Return to Event Details

I think the event was a success. It certainly turned out better than I could have hoped for. The weather played a major part as the forecast all week had predicted rain on the Sunday, but luckily this did not materialise.

I would like to thank all those who took part on the day, all the team leaders, their helpers, John Bettinson the Controller, all the providers of equipment, the farmer, the landowners, all the competitors, and the biggest thank you to Brian Jackson who had already ‘put on’ the event last year to be robbed at the final hurdle by the snow.

Dave Hargreaves

Last Updated :13.03.07                                                                                                   Return to Event Details