Thursday 21:30 Controllers comments added. Tuesday 19:28 Results uploaded to Brisitsh Orienteering website.  PG

Monday 22:00, provisional results updated to add missing names. British Orienteering results upload may take another 24 hours as I seem to have lost my upload capability.  PG

19:21 Sunday.  Thanks to Michael Napier, I have now produced provisional results with the start clock adjusted by 1 hour and 1 second.  There are still some anomalies; e.g. two results without names, just e-card numbers.  I'll try to resolve these before uploading to British orienteering site. RouteGadget is now up.

Apologies for the problems with the timing.  All the boxes were reprogrammed for GMT on Friday.  Somehow today's start box was missed, despite thinking we had checked all the clear, check, start and finish boxes after programming them.

Planner's Comments:

First of all I hope you enjoyed your run, whether it was at Night or Day (or both for those with a masochistic streak). Planning this event was a real challenge for a number of reasons, but chief amongst them is the devastation of large areas of forest which have been felled and left to the ravages of brambles and bracken following the wet summer. I'm afraid Greno Woods has lost some of it's appeal as an O venue, certainly at this time of year, which is why I incorporated Wheata Woods for the longer courses. For the other courses it was a case of finding nice patches of forest and linking them together without an excess of path running.

After the Night Event I had mixed feedback, which ranged from high praise to criticism that some of the controls were 'hidden'. That was certainly not the intention and it's something I'll certainly bear in mind when hanging controls at any future Night Event. That said, winning times were largely as expected and the real shame for me was the behaviour of the mountain bikers who seemed to think they have exclusive permission to use an area which was needed for one control.

The Day Event was, I hope, satisfactory for most people. Comments I received in the download tent were positive and I think everyone felt they'd been set a challenging course which provided 'value for money' as well as a genuine test of their navigational and physical limits. I know that after spending many hours prior to the event and then around 20 hours on the area over the 2 days, Greno is tough. Congratulations to all the course winners and indeed to everyone for running on what was a bitterly cold but thankfully dry day.

Finally some thanks - to David (and Juliet) Morgan and Ian Cooper for their expert Controlling. Between us we made over 60 amendments to the map as well as trying to create courses which were fair and at the right technical standard. Thanks also to Oli Johnson for preparing the final competition map and Peter Gorvett for ferrying equipment round in the week leading up the event when I was ill. Final thanks to the sterling efforts of Bill Hanley and Colin Lynch for helping me collect all 84 controls on Sunday afternoon, managing to get it all in with around 5mins of usable light remaining.

Karl Marshall (SYO)

Controllers' Comments

Having intended to retire from active controlling a couple of years ago, I accepted Peter Gorvett's request on the condition that I would have assistance on the day. I couldn't have asked for anyone better than Ian and Oli. Initial visits showed that there are large chunks of Greno that are totally unusable and I began to despair about the event. Whilst I don't think a controller should replan courses Karl and I had endless discussions and ended up with lots of changes. In particular the original plan to have a second start for the long courses across the road in Wheata Wood was changed to produce adequate course lengths after some particularly nasty areas were omitted.

One problem was the positioning of control markers on the short courses. Greno is a very public area and all the White and Yellow controls were left out overnight after the evening event so Karl decided to gripple them for security. White and Yellow controls should be hung to lead the youngsters onto the correct exit path but unfortunately these positions did not always fit with suitable gripple points so Juliet spent quite a while on the Sunday morning moving them and hoping they wouldn't be vandalised - they weren't.

Finally congratualtions to the results team and to Mike Napier for sorting out the timing glitch so quickly. The start box might have thought it was still summer time but walking round the car park we knew it was definitely winter.

David and Juliet Morgan (EPOC)