Results for EM Urban League, Chesterfield, 12/05/2013

course results
course splits
Planner's comments

Countless hours spent walking the streets of Chesterfield and or creating several versions of courses, and it's all over in a few hours.
This was my first time planning an urban event, and it presented some interesting challenges, largely around trying to avoid the busiest roads, and putting a greater emphasis on route choice.
Apologies for the mis-numbered control north of the lake on Yellow: the perils of using two different maps.
It was good to hear many positive comments around the finish and car park, especially from one or two who enjoyed their first try at an urban event.
I'm grateful in particular for much advice and encouragement from Ranald, the support and hard work of Malcolm and the diligence of Mike in fine-tuning the map.
Meanwhile, I'm looking forward to walking around Chesterfield again without having to consider whether every fence, tree or alleyway would make a good control site.
Murray White

 

Controller's comments

Congratulations to Murray on his interesting and challenging courses today. Murray is relatively new to planning but I think he gave you some very good courses that presented you with some route choice, decision making and the need to keep in contact with the map, particularly in the town centre. Chesterfield doesn't have the very intricate gitty and alley network of some areas but Murray's courses attracted very positive comments and you seemed to particularly like the butterfly loops near the parish church and the area below the market square.

I know it was a first urban event for quite a few people so I hope you all enjoyed the different discipline needed to do well at this type of orienteering.

Thanks also to Malc for organising the event - despite having to head off to A&E at the Royal Hospital after an incident with a sharp knife and a plastic tie. Also to all the other helpers who provided the usual smooth operation.

I had to disqualify one competitor who jumped an uncrossable wall near to control 115. The fact that it didn't lead to an OOB area was not the point - 'uncrossable' means that, even if it looks ok to you, crossing it amounts to cheating and the lesson has to be learned. I know the alley South of 115 also tricked people and if I hadn't moved the control away from a gap in the fence I suspect some may have been tempted to punch through it. Lesson - read column five in the control descriptions as it was clearly marked as inside SW corner, not NW corner.

Apologies to the competitors on the Yellow course who rightly spotted that control 3 had the code 103 when it should have been 102. You all kept going and successfully completed your course.

I was drafted in at the last minute to control the event but, as always, enjoyed the experience even if it did mean another early morning when I could have done with a welcome lie in!

Ranald Macdonald

downloadable file of splits in SPORTIdent CSV file format standard splits CSV.