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Speaking about today’s Euromeeting event in Finland, Martin Ward writes:
Interesting to see how the mass-start format has been planned. For the women there are two different 2.2km loops (about 16 mins for the leaders), with one common control so each loop has two gaffles, making four combinations in total. Then it’s a much bigger loop common to all.
Same concept for the men, but it’s three gaffled loops making about 8km total, then a big common loop.
Now why does that sound familiar to me? Well, the gaffled loops are like the ones I included at the event at Aston Hall last week. The medium course had two common controls, giving four combinations, and the long course had three common controls, giving eight combinations. It’s probably a good idea to call this method of separating runners on a mass-start event “Farsta”, like the example I found on the web.
The way my courses crisscross the park it’s hard to see the Farsta pattern, but notice that the common controls are 127 and 128 on the Medium and 107, 118 and 127 on the Long. You can see the loops on the Euromeeting courses (“TUE 5.7. mass-start”) here.
| Maxi 5.7 km | time |
| Iain Embrey | 31:09 |
| Thomas Honniball | 31:39 |
| Alistair Powell | 32:36 |
| John Embrey | 32:39 |
| Clive Richardson | 34:09 |
| Chris McSweeny | 34:35 |
| Ian Hopkins | 34:51 |
| Andrew Emmerson | 35:10 |
| Andrew Clough | 35:32 |
| David Williams | 35:40 |
| Allan Williams | 38:20 |
| Barry Elkington | 38:49 |
| Rod Postlethwaite | 43:51 |
| Ben Swarbrick | 44:20 |
| Peter Sunley | 44:26 |
| Suzanne Humphries | 46:15 |
| Barry McGowan | 47:32 |
| Andrew Payne | 48:24 |
| Jill Emmerson | 54:23 |
| Martin Gibbons | 66:10 |
| Tony Callow | dnf |
| Marian White | dnf |
| Jacky Embrey | dnf |
| Andrew White | dnf |
| Midi 3.3 km | Time |
| Julie Emmerson | 21:40 |
| Mike Hampton | 22:04 |
| Rachel Emmerson | 22:44 |
| John Robinson | 22:57 |
| Ian Turner | 25:03 |
| Peter Carey | 26:27 |
| Sheila Carey | 30:40 |
| Jean Payne | 33:43 |
| Lesley Norton | 43:59 |
| Richard Beamish | 59:10 |
| Sue Lynch | mp |
| Susan Findlay Robinson | mp |
| Zara Ahmed | dnf |
| Geoff Mander | dnf |
| Roy Lindsell | dnf |
The champions are:
Juniors: Julie Emmerson
Open: Iain Embrey
Seniors: Suzanne Humphries and John Embrey
Vets: Sheila Carey, Mike Hampton & John Robinson
Congratulations! Now, who wants to host a park championships next year?
Be careful what you wish for: I wished for nice weather and got it! The summer returned with a vengeance, making the running conditions rather punishing. Thanks to the competitors for coming, and putting up valiantly not only with the weather but also the vanishing controls, and also to Ian and his team for doing such a good job. These photos are by Dave Ellis.
Just a few days now till the park-O event at Aston Hall, and I’ve received the good news that we can use the grammar school car park after all. That should reassure some people who didn’t seem as confident as I was that it’s perfectly safe to leave your car for a couple of hours on an Aston side-street!
More good news: online registration will stay at the lower entry fees till Friday night.
As I’ve already pointed out, my digital camera isn’t reliable enough any more, so if you have an old but reliable digital camera (3 or 4 mp is quite adequate) that needs a new home, I’d be happy to provide it with one! Meanwhile, if someone could lend me a camera to take photos of the competition and prize-giving on Sunday, that’d be great.
Because I was racing I didn’t get any action shots, but others were out taking pictures of us sweating and I’ll link to some later.
Today’s races in Edgbaston were excellently planned by Iain Embrey – the only problem for me was that I was a bit leggy. The mistakes I made were minor, though in this format of orienteering they cost me a few places! Like most people I was caught out by control 6 in the prologue, which was up on the terrace, but at least I did find a way up to it. In the mad dash at the end of the prologue I found the 1:600 scale tricky, and wasted time getting to control 5, but I fared better than those who found the transition from one map scale to another more than their tired brains could manage.
My time of 25 minutes dead for the 2.5 km in the morning gave me a reasonable start position for the afternoon race, starting just ahead of 4 other runners, including Andy White and Rachel Emmerson, all of whom caught me up almost immediately! I had a good battle with Andy and Rachel up to control 15: I’m slower than both, but I was lucky enough to make better route choices to controls 5, 11 and 13 that allowed me to keep up. 
Sadly I went and spoilt it all by making a 90-degree error exiting control 15, heading east instead of south, and wasn’t able to catch them again. I completed the 3.5 km in 31:38. My times were nowhere near the winning times, but I’m not sure I want to be as scarily fast as those guys!
As usual, the subject came up of what this kind of event should be called. We understand what we mean by a “sprint”, but 3.5 km doesn’t sound much like a sprint to anyone else. Finally, well done to Alison Sloman for the excellent maps. Mapping buildings to show where they can be run under, through or over is an awkward job.
A common complaint or comment from runners after the short race at Himley last month was that there was something amiss with #42 (south part of copse):
Certainly quite a few people lost time on it, some claiming that it was in the wrong place or that the map was wrong. But I was happy with it, and so was Alison, who mapped it and checked it, and Richard, who controlled it. John Embrey went and had a look afterwards and confirmed that the control was in the right place but something doesn’t seem quite right – I wonder if we’ll ever get to the bottom of it?
1. Simon Errington’s blogged nicely about our plinthing efforts. In the end it all came and went so fast; I managed to forget most of Roger’s tips but I still had a great time. The sun shone, and I felt fine. I nearly tripped a couple of times on the stakes though, which I had to lay vertical (and all the bending down and leaning out over the edge gave me aching legs for the City Race next day). Thanks to everyone who helped beforehand and on the day.
2. It was a bit manic chez Bailey when I got home – the Himley event was just a few hours away. Come the morning, the sun shone again, the courses were good (even if I say so myself) and it was a pity that there were so few people there. I’m beginning to think that the Black Country is more like a Black Hole… My publicising efforts seem largely to be a waste of time, and I think I’ll go back to taking a back seat and/or organising things bog-standardly.
3. Yet another sunny day on Sunday for OD’s league event at Oakley Wood, with its mysterious “fort”. I thought I ran well, with only a couple of mistakes, and was disappointed to be so far down the results. I think the truth is that I haven’t got my speed (such as it was) back from before my injury. Also, of course, in most of the events I’ve been entering lately he average ability of the competitors has been quite high, making me look (even) worse!
Warwick Council bought Oakley Wood last year and is now consulting about its future.
Himley and Baggeridge are nextdoor to one another so I thought it’d be a good idea to have an event with two races, a sprint around the parkland and woods of Himley Hall followed by a normal (or “Middle”) race around Baggeridge Country Park. Thus next weekend’s Black Country Championships were born. It’s clearly a bit more complicated to organise than a single competition, but in effect it’s only about an hour longer than a normal event would be. The Sprint starts are between 10 and 11, and the Middle ones between 12 and 1.30. The event details are here. For the sake of the championships aspect, the courses are organised according to age class, but people can treat it just like a normal colour-coded event if they like.
Paul Basher is planning the Middle race on Baggeridge, and Alison Sloman, as well as doing an excellent job updating the maps, has been out for us checking the controls. Updating the Himley map is a continuous process – trees keep disappearing!
I’ve been over there a couple of times this week and one of these mild days we’ve been having of sunshine and showers would be perfect. Poster
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