Ogden 21st February  2009  EPOC Night Event

Planner/Organiser’s Comments

Ideally night events are put on the evening before the club uses the same area for a full scale day event so a lot of the planning, controlling and general organisation can be done at the same time and so when I volunteered to put on this year’s event it was in the knowledge that it would be simple case of liasing with Jon Emberton who was planning the courses for Ivor’s Memorial Event at the end of January. Unfortunately, due to a fixtures clash with the British Night Champs the date was moved 4 weeks so it meant effectively putting on a separate event so tasks like sorting out permissions etc. had to be done all over again although I was always going to make use of the public car parks which were ideal for the night event.  

Thank you to Anthony, with his local contracts, for sorting permissions out for me and to Robin Dalton and the other rangers at Odgen Water for their help and support.

With the extremes of weather we’ve been having recently, at least the weather gods were kind and the evening was near perfect, once it eventually got dark enough to start people off on their courses. Perhaps we should invest in a light meter.  Having been in the woods less than 2 weeks ago to find everything still heavily blanketed in snow, the top car park inaccessible and many of the tapes for my control sites buried I was relieved that we had a favourable change on the weather.

I didn’t feel comfortable having people up on the moor in February but having a few controls in the rough open land at the start of the courses before I took you zigzagging round the woods hopefully gave a nice contrast. In the daylight the fields are quite straightforward but when I went back out to pick up the controls I was surprised just how different it all seemed in the dark.   

Its always a challenge making sure you cater for everyone and looking at the results on the long course, which is always the most popular, the majority of people were in the 40-60 minute window which is what I’d hoped for.  The medium was a different story with a far wider spread although the winner by a good margin did have extensive daylight local knowledge of the area and had to run down a class. The short course was perhaps a little too easy for some and although I was limited in my options perhaps I should have tried to make it a little more interesting.  Many thanks to Mike Pownall as my controller for all his comments and suggestions as well taking the time to go and check that I’d taped all the sites correctly.   

Whilst I had the odd trauma in the run up to the event with some scary moments in the car on the way to pick up the equipment from the club store from the hills above Cragg Vale when the roads were still very treacherous with ice and snow as well as suffering the misfortune of a dislocated shoulder just over a week before the event I’m pleased that everything seems to have gone well on the night. My gratitude goes to the excellent team of helpers (Jack, Martin, Anthony, John, James, Mike and Larissa) who ensured the things went so smoothly. Everything was collected in and packed away before 9 p.m.

Alistair Tinto