Thanks to everyone who braved the heat and the steepness of the crags yesterday to compete in yesterday's 2x2 relay event. Results are now published on the Results page, and comments from the organiser are here.
Thanks also to Greg for the planning and organisation, Carol for masterminding the map issue and exchange and to Steve for sorting the post-event drinks and venue! (plus all the other helpers who, as usual, make running a complex event a breeze!).
Next event is a more traditional League event at Ninewells next weekend (16th July).
(Results Update 12/07: Issues with the preliminary results on the website have hopefully now been corrected. Unfortunately the split times uploaded to Routegadget cannot easily be changed, apologies to anyone affected)
A few comments from the Organiser….
Thank you to everyone who attended our relay event on Leckhampton’s “Mountain” on a very warm day.
With the area having extremely steep sides, a fairly narrow flat top and with the whole area having a quite narrow horseshoe shape, it is quite a challenging area on which to plan good, fair courses. Beforehand, I was actually quite pleased with my courses and felt I had managed to limit the amount of climb reasonably well in these circumstances. Hence, all those MP's, retirements, long times and the amount of grumbling I heard was rather distressing for me. I've done some soul searching over all this, but when I look at the courses again I find it difficult to see how I could have done much different on this area. I will take on-board the comments about hiding some controls and the courses clearly being a bit too long, and will try harder to avoid sharp ups and downs on Short Green, in particular. I do apologise to those who found it all a bit too much.
Of course, the heat was unavoidable and made everything that much harder for everyone! To make matter worse, the summer vegetation had sprung up alarmingly since I planned the courses.
I hope that in spite of all this, most people enjoyed their day out. I am sure that Steve’s beers and the buffet will have had a miracle affect in refreshing spirits and that the pain was soon forgotten!
As always, many thanks are due to the NGOC team of helpers. In particular, to Carol for handing out the right maps to the right people at the right time, to Hils for collecting the buffet food from Morrisons and delivering it to the brewery that morning, followed by standing for hours in the sun on Check Duty, to Pat for managing and setting up the kit and to the 9 control collectors for venturing out for a 3rd leg. Perhaps most of all, to Paul for coping with the complexities of relay computing and results, despite the mass start, mini-mass start, a few extra ad-hoc starters and people choosing not to run their second leg! And all this having never managed a relay before and John Fallows going down with Covid at the last minute. I understand that Paul is still grappling with some of the finer points in the results, but be patient, we’ll get there in the end.
Greg (Planner & Organiser)
