Dorchester SEOUL Event
Sat 1st July 2017
Planner’s comments
Having controlled the Dorchester night event planned by Di in February this year, I grabbed the opportunity of planning a full-blown SEOUL event on the Dorchester map. With a fresh look at the map & some additional mapping, we were able to offer a different range of courses from those offered in previous events in the town.
Modern town planning gives areas in which pedestrians & traffic (allegedly) safely share use, allowing much more latitude when planning the junior courses than is usually possible, in an urban area. It was good to be able to set some challenging junior courses for them, away from their usual fodder of parkland courses. I hope the few juniors that attended enjoyed the courses & challenges we set them!
The areas of Dorchester we chose for this event allowed the use of both the historic town centre & a couple of new housing developments. We tried to use the full range of narrow alleyways & snickets that are numerous in Dorchester and keep runners away from the less interesting (& possibly crowded) post-war development areas.
Our aim was to set challenging route choices but also, even when on a fairly straight forward sections of the route, make you keep your mind on the navigation! We chose control placements where we hoped that there would be no interference from the locals..... and we were fortunate that no controls were tampered with & no competitors were accosted!!
Overall we were quite happy that the times were within acceptable margins, catering for a wide range of abilities within each class. On reflection with course 2, perhaps there should have been more legs where there were greater options for route choices available, to make it a little more challenging! We will try harder next time.
We did enjoy the GPS track of a competitor on course 1 who had a moment of madness & ran off the map for quite a while....
Several competitors helpfully made a few comments about some of the mapping in 1 or 2 areas, particularly in relation to narrow alleyways & those which were not through routes. This has been taken on board & adjustments will be made to clarify things for the next event here.
Thanks to John Shucksmith for his very careful & helpful controlling, ensuring no mistakes with control placements, control descriptions & rule technicalities! Thanks to Chris Branford for his organisational skills (& the WIM members who helped) so the event ran with its usual WIM efficiency. And finally thanks to the competitors who turned up & took part!
John Tilsley (Planner & brains behind the courses, all done on his bike!)
Di Tilsley (Co-mapper, Condes operator, control tagger & general factotum....)
Part of Course 2