Harvester 2012

[Jayne]

It's a bit like an "improvers" trophy, isn't it? Struggled today to explain handicap trophy to work...

Thanks BAOC for a great harvester, we really enjoyed ourselves. The area was great, if pretty tricky at night.

I think you could have a fantastic race in the bit with all the tracks - blow it up to 1:5000 and have lots of controls on path junctions - be a fab sprint race. (The more mean amongst us suggested not having control codes...)

[SeanC]

The only other option i can see is that entries are opened to 'teams' so groups of friends can enter rather than relying on their clubs to heve enough interest.

There's been an ad hoc option for the past 2 or 3 years, but probably not that many people are aware of it, perhaps word will spread.

For teams of punters the event is more about the challenge since the courses are longer and harder than normal, and run at daft O clock in the morning after sporadic or no sleep. I was thinking on the way back about all those running events which offer medals etc to finishers for a bog standard 10k races. We might have taken 11 and a half hours +, but it was an achievement for us to do the A course with no mispunches. Giving medals to all competitors might encourage clubs to see it more as a must do challenge and more punter teams might enter? There aren't that many teams so all finishers could get a medal at the prizegiving, though the mini mass start might need to be earlier to get everyone back in time? Or maybe 1 prize per team as it's a team competition?

The main problem isencouraging clubs to organise it. I think we should

- pay more. Let organising clubs be rewarded for staying up all night. It's a one off event so setting a trend not so much of an issue. £15 per competitor, maybe £20?

- let clubs experiment with the format. It might make clubs more enthusiastic about holding the event if they can innovate and try new things. Traditionalists may not like it, but something slightly different is better than nothing at all and some innovations will work. So long as the event info says that the format is different to the official rules on the BOF website then we know what were getting.....

Any rumours of next year?

Thanks to BAOC for a great event from me too.

[Simon]

Photos - Chris Branford

Photos - Stephen Mallison