Nopesport and SEOUL Urban Race at Dorchester, Saturday 8 June
Chris Branford (Organiser) writes:
Saturday was the Poundbury Urban event and we must give a big thank you to John and Di Tilsley for planning and Mike Kite for controlling the event.
The weather was fantastic and over 150 people participated and enjoyed an excellent event. It was an event made even better with the help of so many WIM helpers – so a big thank you to all of them as well.
Top 3 WIM results were
Sarah Horsler 2nd Womens Young Junior
Karen French 2nd Womens Open
Tamsin Horsler 1st Womens Vets
Kirsty Staunton 2nd Womens Super Vets
Sue Hands 1st Womens Ultra Vets
Chris Branford 3rd Mens Ultra Vets
Deb Mays 1st Open D course
Dick Keighley 1st Short run
Liz Whittingham 2nd Short run
Well done to all of them.
Controller’s Report
This was my first experience of controlling an urban event and I was delighted that John Tilsley was the Planner. The Tilsleys are a formidable team, alert to the details that can make or break people’s pleasure, and I’d thoroughly enjoyed controlling their courses at the Kingston Maurward sprint event last year.
The courses made excellent use of the technical challenges presented by Poundbury’s complex of streets and alleyways, where continuous, accurate route decisions at speed are crucial. Course F kept younger children south of the town centre road; Courses C, D and E made good use of both ‘old’ and ‘new’ Poundbury; while Courses A and B also visited parts of south and west Dorchester. Planning was complicated by building sites (Poundbury is work in progress!) and courses carefully avoided associated hazards.
Great attention was given to Ocad cartography to make sure lines and circles were cut sufficiently so that relevant detail was not obscured, but without indicating particular routes. Given the vast amount of urban detail and the many changes of direction between controls, it wasn’t easy – an unusually delicate task. The final prints (following some tweaking to get everything on A3+ sheets) were splendid!
A few things went wrong. There was an arm injury requiring a visit to A&E, where the unfortunate lady was treated for a fracture: we wish her a swift recovery. School gates were locked. There were places where saplings had appeared or disappeared unnoticed by us, and one tree thought it was the adjacent lamp post – sorry about that. The real puzzle of the day was a little alleyway south of control 179, open to the west but with a locked gate at the eastern end. Access from the east affected route choice on Course B and, to a lesser degree, on Course A. Why was it not clear? When I zoomed in to the Ocad basemap on my home PC the reason leapt out. On a computer screen, the line in the east is distinctly symbol 526.4 "Building outline (not passable)", but when printed at 1:5000 scale it’s almost impossible to discern the sub-millimetric width of such a very short line. Our apologies to all who felt disadvantaged by this. It should have been unambiguously bold.
Congratulations to our youngest competitors on Course F – it was very tough with lots of twists and turns, easy to get lost. Three youngsters had times well under 20 minutes and seven young people on Course E had times under 30 minutes – most impressive! Times for Senior courses were also quick, with most finishers in the 30 to 60 minute range.
The courses were superb, as the many appreciative comments of competitors showed. Everyone seemed to enjoy their run in the sun and at the Devon OC East Hill event next day people were still buzzing with enthusiasm. Thank you to John & Di, Mary, David Bland (for map updates) and not least to Chris Branford and his willing band of WIM helpers who made the event flow so smoothly. A club to be proud of!
Mike Kite
Results on Wimborne Orienteers website View courses on RouteGadget
Photographs by Mary and Mike Kite