Results

Results and Split Times
A good selection of ‘quickest’ splits spread across the results.

Routegadget & Splitsbrowser

WinSplits

Mapper & Planner’s Comments

This was my first time mapping and also planning for an event. The mapping began 9 months ago. Starting with a 20 odd year old map it was clear that the whole area required mapping from scratch. Working through the mapping process, with thanks to the excellent Martin Hire guide from British Orienteering, was a steep learning curve but once out it the field surveying the whole process felt natural and very satisfying. Planning was another tricky task especially trying to get the requisite course variation and length in such a small area of woodland. The roads to the north and central estate helped with this regard and added good variation to the courses. I think with the weather being so hot today the longer sections out of the woodland were somewhat cruel and this mixed with the severity of the terrain lead to some much slower times than indicted by the course distances on paper. However with that being said It was very encouraging to hear the positive feedback especially with regards to the mapping. Well done to everyone who competed today in what were fairly gruelling conditions.
David.

Nice to see faces old & new at a sunny Catton Park. Here are the Results and Split Times

Next event Lion Wood, Sunday 25th June – see you there!

Congratulations to Marcus Richardson, who recently won 2 gold medals at the British Championships weekend in Northern Ireland. The Sprint championship took place in the city of Armagh on Coronation day. The morning heat took place in the grounds of Armagh Planetarium, and Marcus successfully navigated round the solar system to run a clean race and win by just over a minute. This proved crucial because it meant he started last in the final. So, when the 8 finalists all came together midway round the tricky final course, Marcus just had to stay with them to ensure the win, and his first British title.

The middle-distance championship took place the following day in the very different surroundings of Drumkeeragh Forest in County Down, where the contours and vegetation made the going hard. Marcus made his move on legs 4 & 5, both on contour features in green forest. Having gained a 2 minute advantage over his nearest rivals on these 2 legs, Marcus held on to win by 44 seconds.

Marcus then spent the rest of a glorious sunny morning playing rugby and football in the assembly field with his fellow M12s, and is looking forward to the rematch at the Scottish 6 days.

Glen also won a  bronze medal in the sprint.

Results and Split Times
Routegadget & Splitsbrowser
WinSplits
BOF Ranking Points
EAUL Standings

Organiser’s Comments

Hopefully everyone enjoyed the event today. I heard lots of positive comments about Roger’s courses, which seemed to provide plenty of variety and a few traps along the way.

Originally we were going to use the sports centre (opposite Morrisons) for the event centre, but after having a wander around it became obvious that this would not work for the junior courses, as we would have to provide innumerable road crossings, which would have stretched our volunteer base to & beyond its limits. However, I found Dereham Meeting Point and realised that it gave access to the water meadows and Scarning to the west, which would be ideal for courses 6 and 7; as a club we always try to make the junior courses a “proper” urban, as opposed to a run round a park.

I thought the atmosphere in and around the event centre was lovely today (if a bit stuffy until we opened the windows). The tea and cake stall seemed to go down very well, and hopefully encouraged people to stick around a bit longer than they normally would and have a chat. There were only 4 slices of chocolate fudge cake left at the end, which pleased my wife, although she was hoping for more ginger cake! We raised over £110 for GOSH.

As with all orienteering events they only work because of the effort put in by volunteers on the day. Thank you all for making it run so smoothly. A particular thank you to Emma & Kate Jarrett (WAOC), who helped on the cake stall and helped tidy up at the end. I am sure many of us would be happy to help out at other club’s events, so maybe this could be the start of a new trend. It would also help build links between the clubs, and foster the East Anglian Orienteering community, a bit like at The JK, where SUFFOC, WAOC and NOR put up their club tents next to each other each day.

See you all at Sudbury in a few weeks.

Jonathan.

Planner’s Comments

Dereham and New Scarning has several areas with interesting networks of roads and alleyways which presented navigational challenges, though in the courses these had to be linked with less interesting connecting legs.  The green spaces broke up the road and path sections and offered some variety.

On the longer courses I varied the early controls in New Scarning which meant courses 3 and 4 did not include control 211 which proved challenging in courses 1 and 2.  Also later, on course 3, control 218 was approached from the north which meant it was less difficult than when approached from the east on courses 1 and 2.  Overall the competitors made light work of the technical problems on courses 3 and 4 and it appears these courses ended up less challenging.

As I started putting out the controls I was surprised to find densely parked cars, a van and a lorry parked close to some of the control sites in areas which I had previously found uncluttered on a Sunday.  This affected the visibility of controls 207 (courses 3 and 5) and 234 (courses 6 and 7) and WinSplits shows this led to time loss.

I would like to thank Jonathan (mapper/planner) for his comments on the early drafts of the courses and the production of the maps, Mike (controller) for feedback on the later drafts, Daniel for sorting the files for SI and Routegadget and the control collectors for finishing things off by mid afternoon.

Roger.

View all the courses and the controls Roger mentions on Routegadget, add your route if you haven’t, and see which route(s) others took.

Controller’s Comments

Dereham has some interesting areas for urban orienteering and Roger made good use of these even though it meant some longer connecting legs. The area has a nice variety of streets connected by alleyways, an area of houses with only pedestrian access ideal for juniors, as well some green open areas and the complex shopping and car park centre of town. The people I talked to enjoyed their courses. The map suffers from the limitation of a lot of urban maps that the specified minimum gap between lines on the map of 0.15 mm is too small for most of us to resolve. This makes route choice a bit of a lottery and that was true today. Also people didn’t spot the ‘ruined’ part of the control description for control 204, the linear thicket, which according to IOF specifications, means parts of it have fallen to ground level and therefore are presumably crossable. I’m sure I wouldn’t have done if I was running.

Mike Bickle.