Doug Wilson writes:
Thank you to everyone who came along to the Middle Distance event at Toadsmoor. Although the area is reasonably small it is packed with a variety of features and the middle distance format lent itself to making good use of them as the focus is more on navigation rather than distance. Greg Best has done a lot of work on mapping the area since we last used it in June 2019 (putting the two maps side by side will show you just how much). I did look at using more of the area to the north and east but it doesn’t have the same variety of features and I soon realised that it made the courses too long.
Having not planned a full set of six courses before I was very grateful for Simon Denman’s advice at various points. The Yellow and Orange courses proved surprisingly difficult to find the balance between too easy and too hard. Simon’s advice of “Whatever you do don’t lose the Yellows” will stick with me for a long time – and we didn’t lose any! I remembered the craggy area in the south west from the 2019 event and wanted as many courses as feasible to use it. Even though it is a thin strip it has loads of interesting contours and features such as caves which begged to be included.
Despite the courses being reasonably short they proved physically challenging due to the climb involved. The combination of rain the day before and decaying wild garlic leaves also made conditions slippery in places which added to the physicality. For a Middle Distance event the expected winning time is 30 to 35 minutes and I was concerned that courses were a bit on the short side. However, the finish times would suggest that they were about right with the possible exception of Green which took longer (winning time 44 minutes) – although I know a few people who would usually run a Green course decided to go for Blue.
As always the event was only possible due to lots of NGOC volunteers. Thank you to Carol Stewart, Pat Macleod, John Fallows, Hilary Nicholls, Ian Phillips, Ginny Hudson, Ashleigh Denman, Steve Lee, Rhiannon Fadeyibi, Paul Horsfall, Clive Caffall, John Miklausic, Dave Hartley and Andrew Hartley. Particular thanks to Greg Best for an excellent map and to Simon Denman for his wise advice throughout.