The Harvester Weekend

[mharky]

Massive thanks to DRONGO and friends, that was great fun!

Certainly the hardest night orienteering I have ever done. Great courses, really good to have a 1km, diagonally down hill through complex terrain first control! Judging by the tracking, the first leg pack might not think so

[ianandmonika]

You are obviously too young to remember the Midland Night Champs at Merthyr Mawr in 1979. If I remember correctly, out of 21 starters on W21A there were 19 retirals.

[graeme]

The Harvester was tremendous, tough, certainly. Too tough for me, possibly, but not gratuitously unpleasant. It's supposed to be a challenge.

Two finishers? Lightweight:
here's what results from a properly tough courses look like
and from the shorter course
and from the even shorter course

[Spookster]

Great courses, really good to have a 1km, diagonally down hill through complex terrain first control! Judging by the tracking, the first leg pack might not think so

Is the tracking online somewhere? I'd love to see where we were all going. All I've got is my own garmin plot, which makes a huge "S" shape before I find my first control (56).

From the splits it looks like there were 4 first controls at the end of that 1st leg. How close to 56 were the other three (32, 48, 71)? I was completely lost for several minutes before anything started looking like the map again

You gotta love it when the course planner decides there should be more course combinations for some legs than the number of teams that entered the relay!

[Rosine]

here's what results from a properly tough courses look like

Was that the one with the creative interpretation of map scales and distances?

[Jon X]

Great courses, really good to have a 1km, diagonally down hill through complex terrain first control! Judging by the tracking, the first leg pack might not think so

Is the tracking online somewhere? I'd love to see where we were all going. All I've got is my own garmin plot, which makes a huge "S" shape before I find my first control (56).

Here you go
http://www.tractrac.com/web/club-page/2 ... enteering/
Not set up yet with trackers allocated to teams but hopefully you can work out which one was you.....
Kudos to Dave Godfree (tracker 14) for the way he drifts off the back of the pack to spike #1 whilst everyone else misses it, no wonder he was 5mins ahead at first radio after just three controls!

[Spookster]

Here you go
http://www.tractrac.com/web/club-page/2 ... enteering/
Not set up yet with trackers allocated to teams but hopefully you can work out which one was you.....

Thanks. I was T13, and T15 was Jack Leitch.

T11 had some fun finding number 1 then..!

[mharky]

Two finishers? Lightweight:
here's what results from a properly tough courses look like
and from the shorter course
and from the even shorter course

To be fair, the courses were 50% longer than advertised, or indeed shown on the results

[mharky]

You are obviously too young to remember the Midland Night Champs at Merthyr Mawr in 1979. If I remember correctly, out of 21 starters on W21A there were 19 retirals.

Yes, hence it wasn't that hardest orienteering I've ever done.

[Spookster]

The courses are up on Routegadget now

http://www.cuoc.routegadget.co.uk/rg2/#25

[john.o]

@spookster just beat me to posting the RG link

I'll also add that more results links, a photo & video have been added to the harvester page on the DrongO website

[Adrian]

Hugely impressed by the organisational effort that went into this event. The running and orienteering was very tough, even in the daylight, but the experience was well worth the journey.

Was T18 on the tracking injured?

[mharky]

No, why?

[Adrian]

No, why?

At 3:23 he/she seems to stop just before #54 and then walk very slowly back. But looking at it again, I think it's probably just a GPS failure.

[Homer]

Some great write-ups from the main Officials here:
https://new.drongo.org.uk/harvester/

Even more impressed with the organisation having read that. Thanks again Drongo and Derek Allison.

I'm relieved that I got to run a day leg. I struggled enough in Great Tower at the BNOC before the bracken grew up. Not sure whether that was my hardest night-O or the British Nights at Penhale in 1999?

Good to hear that Southdowns have taken it on for next year. We'll be there.