London City Race

[Slowtochide]

Something special for 2012...?
Unfortunately there are lots of problems with non-Olympic sports trying to get close (in image or geographically) to the Olympics, which are very protective of their 'brand'. There are a number of people in the South East in particular exploring what, if anything, we can do to benfit from the sporting profile of the Olympics but it is not easy. Yes, it would be great to have a Sprint race around the Olympic village but of course we are not allowed to do that during the Olympics themselves and the builders move in to convert it to social housing immediately after the events are over.... On the other hand local councils are very keen to be seen to support sports at that time so we can expect more cooperation than usual.

On the subject of numbers. Can we cope with 700 or a 1000 runners? Well it depends on the area, but I'm sure we can in London and I see 1000 competitors as a realistic target for the City of London race in a couple of year's time if we can keep getting things right.

Fairness? Well we had a couple of cranes blocking routes in London this year and that obviously affected runners. Where traffic is concerned then I see my job as planner includes minimising the impact(no pun intended) as much as possible (use footbridges, pla legs at a diagonal, don't zigzag across busy roads etc) but in the end it can't be comnpletely fair. That is why the IOF states that top end Sprint racess cannot be held in areas where there is road traffic. But, on the other hand, at last weekend's 'forest' event I heard an expeienced orienteer who had just finished his course say that it was quite clear that the fastest areas of the forest were those mapped in light green as they didn't have the significant undergrowth that blighted the 'white'. We do our best but no orienteering event can ever be 100% 'fair'.

And finally, SLOW has a set of mid week evening urban races every year. Details of this year's are on our club website as usual
AL