Park Final - results/report
From setter Karen Blatchford.....
It was great to be able to set the courses for our final ParkO for 2011. I love this map and find it tricky, especially in the intricate buildings, so I was looking forward to setting some challenging legs. With some construction in the school grounds the need to make careful route choices was most apparent. The long course had a straight line distance of about 4.0 km and most seemed to run around a km further ( about half as far as last year !! haha). The short course was a very busy 2.4 km straight line.
From the start triangle both courses had a mix of short sharp legs with lots of direction changes in the buildings before heading out to the streets and agric paddock. Then the long course had a map change and returned for some more busy building work. With the Finish area in the main quadrangle I had numerous sightings of people running about. Was great.
We had grades based on the last three Park events, and our winners for the 2011 park final were:
- A Grade: Josh Blatchford, with a convincing win over "headcamSteve", and Alex Massey took out third. Malin Andersson was our only female in A grade and had yet another convincing run.
- B Grade: won by Bjorn Mella (great to have him back after some absence during the street season)
- C Grade: won by Carolyn Matthews
- D grade: won by Russell Rigby
- Short Course was won by Luke Robertson who has had some dominating runs over the shorter distance.
Some things worth sharing are:
- A lot of people rushed off at the start and some headed to the finish area looking for the first control.
- Competitors were certainly pleased to only have to visit the street area once!!
- Unfortunately one of the "text descriptions" for the short course had the wrong clue. Luckily the circle was in the right spot and the clue on the map was right. Apologies if people got confused there.
- Steven Roberts had such a late start time it was almost dark before he returned and he found it hard to read the map in some corridors.
- 2010 O'shea champ Peter Berkholz decided to take his new pup for a run. Haha at one stage the pup refused to jump up the ledge to the control and Peter had to lift her up!!!! Although the dog did win, reaching the finish with a bit of a lead over Peter. (note from editor: dogs are not allowed at bush events!)
- Malcolm Roberts just had trouble reading the map full stop!!!! ;)
- Yes Steveo wore a headcam for his run. Can't wait to see this uploaded somewhere.
- Terrific to see competitors make the trip from the Central coast for the event. Thanks Nick and Hilary :)
- Some staff members from HRHS hung around after work and had a run as well. Adam Trace - hope you can come to some bush events with that sort of time.
- Didn't lose any controls, although when I went to collect the one near the motel it had been moved to the motel grounds where a very social BBQ was in progress. As I was searching for it I heard: "It's over here!!! Thought we'd move it cause it could of gotten stolen!!" haha
- A huge thankyou to Russell, Malin and Nicola who worked so hard to get set up before the first 5.00 start time. With school finishing at 3.30 I couldn't have done it without them.
- Also thanks to Sally, Josh, Malcolm, Mick, Cheryle, Alex, Geoff T, Margaret, Arthur, Bob, .... and I'm sorry if I've missed anyone :)
I appreciate everyone's comments following the event. I enjoyed setting but would have enjoyed running as well. I also appreciate the Club giving me the chance to use SportIdent. It was nice to see so many competitors comparing splits at the end and commenting on the joy of not having to punch the squares and write up a control card. I had planned to use software to upload splits but after trying everything, I think we have a brummy master station. Ahh well; next time.
Now for the start of the Bush season. Look forward to seeing everyone at Brush Creek on Saturday.
Cheers, Karen