Event: SSS Event 4
Location: Waratah West
Map: Waratah (Street)
Planner/Organiser: Margaret Peel
Vetting: Geoff Peel
Weather: Sunny, moderate temperature
Entrants: 98
Rego/Start: Cheryle Todkill, Nicola Blatchford
Finish: Margaret Peel, Bob Gilbert, Geoff Peel.
This weeks event was quite a contrast to the previous week with many more contour lines confronting participants and points quite a lot more difficult to bag. Whilst a fairly spread set of controls it seemed the setters judgment was about right with overall winner (and series leader) Steven Todkill visiting all but 2 control sites, 1H and 1M (see his course along with others on the RouteGadget site).
It was interesting to watch the start with many competitors heading out to the North side. Was this due to the start clock placement, which sort of suggested they face that way?
There were few surprises in the results with the possible exception being Joanna Latter having a great run, placing third in the women’s section and top 20 overall.
Having been involved in vetting the courses and clues let me advise any of our future setters to leave plenty of time to allow lots of checking. Even with two of us checking the clue sheet several times and visiting control sites on multiple occasions we still had a phone number containing a wrong digit (typo). Fortunately this minor gaff had no net effect in the field and probably wasn’t even noticed by most of the competitors visiting that particular control. It is easy to make such a mistake so getting somebody else to check your course is advised and does keep mistakes to a minimum. We did have one competitor though that swore the statue at 1E was a “white” pelican and not the ‘black’ woman figure. We figure he either needs a new compass or new glasses.