South East Relays, Whippendell Woods, 06/06/10.

Event Flyer ( .pdf ) - Haberdashers’ Aske’s Boys' School Saturday Series Event, 03/07/10.
HH Summer Series ( .pdf ) - Local (Greater St. Albans Area) Tuesday Evening events, 15/06 - 20/07.

If you have any queries about the results please contact Kevin Parkes,

Route Gadget - Draw your own route, view an event simulation and analyse your split times. ( uses java applet )
Results with and without splits. ( Aut-O-Download )

Organiser's Comments

Thank you to everyone who took part in the SE Relays this year. I hope you all enjoyed it.

The biggest concern in the preparation for the event was about the assembly area - it was a bit remote from car park/toilets, a bit small, very rough under foot and very much in amongst other wood users, but the best one available. On the day with everything in place, it wasn't too much of a squeeze, the nettles had at least been cut down and it was possible to feel some atmosphere. Fortunately no horse riders went through until we were tidying up! Map pick-up was also a concern, but no one picked up the wrong map on the day. We did, however, get to use our rehearsed replacement strategy, I'd like to apologise to team 73 who arrived to find no map, due to an oversight on our part.

Relays take a lot of preparation - I'd like to thank David Saunders and Kevin Parkes and Alison, Penny and Laura who put in many hours sorting out the mysteries of gaffles, team allocations, map labeling and data base entries so everything matched. All the preparation, along with lots of great help from HH Club members on the day, who never said NO to my strange requests, meant that the event ran very smoothly on the day.

Máire Convery (HH)

Planner's Comments

Once I managed to find out exactly what was expected at the SE relays, the main challenge was to fit a blue course into Whippendell while avoiding the parts that are too overgrown in June. Butterflies offered a method of squeezing in this longer course and provided an alternative to gaffling to split up competitors, and having decided to go down this route I used shorter butterflies on the green. Sorry if you were expecting the butterfly later in the course, but the plan was to split people up as soon after mass starts as possible. After the long winter the undergrowth was modest until three weeks ago and suddenly made up for lost time. I had feared that despite trying to direct courses through the less bramble- and nettle-prone areas, this would send everyone to the paths, but early evidence from RouteGadget suggests some at least took the straight line routes (and survived).

HH had suggested - and I was prepared to plan - a green/green/green combination that we thought might appeal to 'veteran' teams that could not find two runners willing to tackle blue, but equally did not want to consign an experienced orienteer to a simple orange course. Once this idea was ruled out by SEOA, I tried to provide an orange course that offered reasonable opportunities for off-path options for the handicap teams with three experienced runners, while still being orange standard for the less experienced and those on the middle leg of the junior relay. Comments overheard on the day suggest a veterans' course might be worth revisiting before next year's event.

I am extremely grateful to Brian Daniel, who controlled the courses sympathetically and efficiently, letting me experiment with butterflies and gaffles, etc., while ensuring that everything was exactly as it should be for the competitor. Máire (ably supported by Rory) and the huge team of HH helpers took care of all the practicalities leaving me to potter with maps and controls, while Kevin Parkes (with Laura and Penny) dealt with the implications of the gaffling for the SI software – which seemed to run without a glitch. Finally, Alison might not be credited with planning the courses, but as always she does half the work when I am.

David Saunders (HH)

Controller’s Comments

The courses planned by David Saunders made good use of the small area, especially the Blue and Green courses which used ‘butterfly loops’ to introduce a form of gaffling. The advantage of the method used being that by the end of their course each competitor on Blue/Green has visited the same controls and has completed exactly the same orienteering legs between controls (although in a different sequence). The Orange course used a number of control features adjacent to paths and encouraged some rough navigation through the forest to a line feature, whereas the Yellow course variants were designed to follow paths throughout.

Some amendments were made to the map prior to the event, but it was impractical to have all the bike tracks and seasonal paths included, hence the warning in the final details. Similarly, I thought it necessary to warn competitors that significant groups of BMX jumps were mapped as broken ground. Unfortunately, the broken ground ‘dots’ representing the line of BMX jumps adjacent to control 117 (Pit) look similar to a linear dry ditch symbol. Apologies to anyone confused by this.

It was good to see teams trading places in the Open class as the event progressed. Less easy to judge was progress in the Handicap class, with teams completing the three different colour courses in a different sequence. Congratulations to all the medal winners and on behalf of you all, thanks to the Happy Herts team (led by Máire Convery) for a well run and enjoyable event.

Brian Daniel (HAVOC)